ACLU Deputy With $543,500 Salary Issues Many False Or Misleading Claims About Pediatric Gender Medicine
🧵⬇️I report: The 4th highest paid staffer, AJ Hikes was the ACLU's 1st DEI chief and is at the center of an NLRB case against the ACLU that found it illegally fired an employee on claims she used racist language.
LINK: ACLU Deputy With $543,500 Salary Issues Many False Or Misleading Claims About Pediatric Gender Medicine benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
The 4th highest paid staffer at over $500,000 per year, AJ Hikes was the ACLU's 1st DEI chief and is at the center of an NLRB case against the ACLU that found it illegally fired an employee on claims she used racist language.
The ACLU’s fourth highest paid staffer, who is at the center of a National Labor Relations Board case against the legal nonprofit that it lost in August, made a series of false or misleading claims about pediatric gender medicine in a recent interview.
@AJ_Hikes, who identifies as nonbinary, uses they/them pronouns and describes themselves in their ACLU bio as “a social justice advocate, community organizer, TED Talk Speaker, and unapologetically queer and Black,” holds a powerful position at the liberal legal juggernaut as the deputy executive director for strategy and culture. benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
According to the @ACLU’s 990 tax form, AJ Hikes, who does not have a law degree, earned a salary in 2023 of $543,532, plus $30,884 in “other compensation.” This represented a 50 percent jump compared with their $363,055 salary in 2022, when they were the 11th highest paid staffer. In 2021, when they served as the ACLU’s first chief DEI officer, their salary was $313,806. In 2020, this figure was $264,274. benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
In the Dec. 23 edition of the Bad Queers podcast, entitled “F*ck ‘Em (w/ AJ Hikes),” Hikes spoke at length about the case, U.S. v Skrmetti, that on Dec. 4 received oral arguments at the Supreme Court concerning Tennessee’s ban of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in minors. Among the numerous false or misleading claims that the ACLU deputy made during the interview were the suggestions that such treatment is only given to minors in their mid-to-late teens and that cisgender (non-transgender) boys can simply go to the doctor and request testosterone to make their voice deeper. benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
In fact, gender-transition treatment can be given to children with gender dysphoria as young as eight years old. And testosterone is a controlled substance; boys cannot legally obtain the hormone for mere cosmetic reasons. They would need to have a diagnosis of a medical condition, such as an endocrine disorder, to obtain a prescription.
The @ACLU's @AJ_Hikes is a central player in an unfair-labor-practice case that the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, brought against the ACLU and that went to trial earlier this year. The case concerned Kate Oh, a Korean-American lawyer who was fired from her position as senior policy counsel at the legal nonprofit in 2022. She accused by the ACLU of using “racist stereotypes” to characterize her Black bosses in her internal complaints about them. benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
The NLRB charged that the @ACLU retaliated against Kate Oh’s complaints when it fired her. In August, a judge ruled against the ACLU in the case, finding that the organization had illegally terminated Oh. The ACLU is appealing the decision to the full NLRB. benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
AJ Hikes, who according to their LinkedIn page has a master of social work degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a received a B.A. in English from the University of Delaware in 2006, joined the @ACLU in 2019 as, according to their bio, its first chief equity and inclusion, or DEI, officer. Their bio emphasizes how powerful a position they hold at the ALCU, stating that Hikes “serves as chief counselor and principal partner to the executive director overseeing the critical functions of organization strategic planning and programmatic priority setting.” benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
Prior to joining the legal nonprofit, @AJ_Hikes, who previously went by the name Amber, was executive director of Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs. (Some people consider it offensive to cite the previous name of a transgender or nonbinary person, calling the practice ‘dead naming’. I am specifying the name Amber here for clarity, given the name comes up in references I make below.) In that position, Hikes made a mark by adding black and brown stripes to the rainbow LGBTQ Pride flag.
AJ Hikes’ elevation to their current title at the @ACLU in Nov. 2022 and massive pay raise occurred in the wake of the departure of Ronald Newman, who had been the director of the ACLU’s national political advocacy department since 2019.
As Molly Redden @MTRedden reported for @HuffPost in Feb. 2022: huffpost.com/entry/aclu-exe…
"Newman was the subject of sustained complaints about his treatment of staff, including claims of bullying and misogyny and accusations that his fixation on short-term wins was thwarting the ACLU’s ability to push for more meaningful and lasting policy changes. In Newman’s nearly three years as director, his department of roughly 100 people shed dozens of employees, many of them women of color." benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
When AJ Hikes joined the @ACLU in 2019, their bio characterized them as “an unapologetic queer black woman.” By 2022, when they announced their promotion to their current position at the organization, they characterized themself as nonbinary. Hikes publicly announced their name was now AJ in an Instagram post on March 31, 2024. benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
Hikes’ Instagram post about their new name came nine days after The New York Times ran its first article about Oh’s lawsuit, in which Hikes was referred to as April Hikes and with she/her pronouns and the “Ms.” honorific. The earliest archived version of Hikes’ ACLU bio under the name AJ is dated April 5. instagram.com/p/C5L7MBrL4Km/…
References to Hikes in the March 22 Times article included: nytimes.com/2024/03/22/us/…
Soon after, Ms. Oh heard from the A.C.L.U. manager overseeing its equity and inclusion efforts, Amber Hikes, who cautioned Ms. Oh about her language. Ms. Oh’s comment was “dangerous and damaging,” Ms. Hikes warned, because she seemed to suggest the former supervisor physically assaulted her.“Please consider the very real impact of that kind of violent language in the workplace,” Ms. Hikes wrote in an email
.…
The following month, Ms. Hikes, the head of equity and inclusion, wrote to Ms. Oh, documenting a third incident — her own.“Calling my check-in ‘chastising’ or ‘reprimanding’ feels like a willful mischaracterization in order to continue the stream of anti-Black rhetoric you’ve been using throughout the organization,” Ms. Hikes wrote in an email.“I’m hopeful you’ll consider the lived experiences and feelings of those you work with,” she added. (Citing the ongoing case, the A.C.L.U. said Ms. Hikes was unable to comment for this article.)
The many false and misleading claims that AJ Hikes, top @ACLU deputy making over a half million dollars annually, said about pediatric gender medicine in a recent interview:
During the recent 75-minute Bad Queers podcast, Hikes gave a wide-ranging interview, speaking about coming out as nonbinary, the double mastectomy they underwent, the upcoming second iteration of the Trump administration, and U.S. v Skrmetti. youtube.com/watch?v=CxePK2…
The conversation about the Skrmetti case regarding Tennessee’s ban on pediatric gender-transition treatment starts at the 28:00 mark. During that discussion, at the 32:31 mark, the podcast’s YouTube page indicates this is where Hikes is “[e]xplaining gender-affirming care to transphobes.” benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-… youtube.com/watch?v=CxePK2…
Hikes made a series of false and misleading claims about pediatric gender medicine, which I have indicated in bold below.
Hikes:
▶️Asserted that Tennessee’s ban on pediatric gender-transition treatment concerned “fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year olds, young people. We’re not talking about eight year olds, nine year olds.”
In fact, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or @WPATH, places no minimum age on who can receive puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria. Children are eligible to receive puberty blockers as soon as they hit the first stage of puberty, known as Tanner Stage 2. This typically occurs between age 8 and 13 for natal girls and age 9 and 14 for natal boys, according to the Cleveland Clinic. tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.108… my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/pu…
As I reported regarding the recently filed detransitioner lawsuit against leading pediatric gender medicine doctor Johanna Olson-Kennedy, in 2017, she sought and received approval for for her NIH-funded research to reduce the minimum age for prescribing cross-sex hormones to children from 13 to 8 years old. The plaintiff in the case against her, Clementine Breen, received puberty blockers from her at age 12, cross-sex hormones at 13, and a double mastectomy at 14. While the Tennessee case before the Supreme Court does not concern gender-transition surgeries, it’s worth noting that @LeorSapir of the @ManhattanInst found evidence that between 2017 and 2023, 50 to 179 girls who were 12.5 years old or younger underwent a double mastectomy as part of a gender transition. benryan.substack.com/p/detransition… pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31290407/ benryan.substack.com/p/how-harvard-… city-journal.org/article/a-cons…
▶️Used the term “medically necessary” regarding pediatric gender-transition treatment.
As subpoenaed documents from Alabama’s lawsuit regarding that state’s ban on pediatric gender-transition treatment indicated, WPATH included this term in its trans-care guidelines for adolescents despite the authors’ awareness that the available science did not clearly back that such treatment is indeed “medically necessary” for gender dysphoric minors. Those documents also showed that WPATH coordinated with the ACLU itself when drafting these guidelines, with an eye towards employing wording that would help them in the very type of litigation that the ACLU is currently waging against state bans on such medical interventions. supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/2… tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.108…
▶️Claimed that non-transgender boys can access testosterone simply because they want their voices to be deeper or in the event that such a boy “wants to grow facial hair and wants to have these typical male characteristics come on faster.”
This falsely suggests that minor males are able to make essentially cosmetic requests of doctors that would warrant a testosterone prescription. Testosterone is a controlled substance. No child could legally receive the drug in this context. To obtain such a prescription, a boy would need a medical diagnosis, such as delayed puberty. A trans male (natal female) would need a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to receive testosterone.
▶️Asserted that cisgender people are the primary recipients of gender-affirmative care.
This claim is indeed factual if one considers that any treatment or modification that men or women make to their bodies that helps emphasize their gender—such as hair transplants for men and breast implants for women—is gender-affirming care, per se.
That said, breast implants obtained for purely cosmetic purposes by cisgender women—which Hikes made reference to in the podcast—are not covered by insurance, as they may be when trans women undergo such an operation. No one is calling a teenage girl’s desire to go from a B cup to a D cup to catch the eyes of boys a “medical necessity.”
And regarding gynecomastia surgeries in particular, Harvard recently misled the public about how common such operations are compared with so-called “top surgery” among natal females who identify as trans males or nonbinary. I covered this previously: benryan.substack.com/p/how-harvard-…
▶️Said that a so-called Brazilian butt lift, or “BBL”, is gender-affirming care for non-trans people.
Doctors strongly advise against minors receiving such a surgery, which has the highest mortality rate of any cosmetic surgery.
Because both men and women obtain such operations to improve their sex appeal, it is not necessarily a female- or male-specific cosmetic operation. niptuckaesthetics.com/what-age-can-y…. nytimes.com/2021/08/19/sty…
▶️Said that erectile dysfunction drugs are gender-affirming care for non-trans people.
The @MayoClinic says of Viagra (sildenafil): “Sildenafil should never be used in children for erectile dysfunction.” mayoclinic.org/drugs-suppleme…
▶️Furthered the claim that puberty blockers provide young people a time to think about whether they want to continue onto cross-sex hormones.
According to multiple sources, almost all children who start puberty blockers for gender dysphoria continue onto cross-sex hormones. As British investigative journalist Hannah Barnes @HannahSBee reported in her book Time to Think, this fact strongly suggests that children are not using that time for reflection about whether they wish to take the second drug. Rather, they apparently see their time on blockers as a mere way station before they get what they want: hormones. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ap… amazon.com/Time-Think-Col…
▶️Said that blockers do not cause sterility.
Given that puberty blocker use is overwhelmingly part and parcel of cross-sex hormone use among minors with gender dysphoria, starting on blockers does indeed typically begin a process that, in particular for natal males who begin them early in their puberty, poses a substantial risk of infertility. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36806443/
▶️Claimed that puberty blockers “have saved young people’s lives.” And said: “Young people are literally dying because they can’t access this care.”
Only one study has ever directly assessed whether gender-transition treatment is associated with an independent, statistically significant difference in the suicide death rate among young people. Conducted in Finland and published in February, the study found no such difference in the death rate. mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/27/1/e… nypost.com/2024/02/24/opi…
Top ACLU litigator Chase Strangio admitted that gender-transition treatment for minors has not been shown to save lives when he told the Supreme Court justices earlier this month: city-journal.org/article/aclu-a…
MR. STRANGIO: "What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some—in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare and we’re talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don’t necessarily have completed suicides within them. However, there are multiple studies, long-term longitudinal studies that do show that there is a reduction in—in suicidality."
▶️Claimed that puberty blockers are highly effective at treating mental health problems.
A 2024 systematic literature review of puberty blockers as treatment for gender dysphoria, conducted by the University of York, found: “No conclusions can be drawn about the impact on gender dysphoria, mental and psychosocial health or cognitive development.” adc.bmj.com/content/109/Su…
Multiple cohort studies, including one conducted by researchers at Britain’s National Health Service that sought to replicate the success of the original study out of the Netherlands that kickstarted the global pediatric gender medicine field, have found that the drugs have no impact on mental health metrics. nytimes.com/2024/10/23/sci… pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC78… pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20646177/
▶️Claimed that blockers are “reversible.”
University College London neuropsychologist Sallie Baxendale’s recent review paper on the potential neuropsychiatric impacts of puberty blockers concluded: “Critical questions remain unanswered regarding the nature, extent and permanence of any arrested development of cognitive function associated with puberty blockers. The impact of puberal suppression on measures of neuropsychological function is an urgent research priority.” pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38334046/ benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
I presume this here post about me by someone by the name of @awkward_duck is in reference to my reporting about the @ACLU's AJ Hikes's over half million dollar salary and false claims about pediatric gender medicine.
More reporting from @JesseSingal on the case of the young detransitioner who is suing top pediatric gender medicine doctor Johanna Olson-Kennedy. Singal zeroes in on the therapy (or lack thereof) provided by another defendant in the lawsuit.
What The Detransitioner Clementine Breen’s Gender “Therapy” Looked Like
When therapists are also activists, patients can get left behind.
LINK:
What The Detransitioner Clementine Breen’s Gender “Therapy” Looked Like
Detransitioner Sues Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a Top Pediatric Gender Medicine Doctor, For Medical Negligence
Dr. Olson-Kennedy is the most prominent doctor yet to be sued by a detransitioner—for medical negligence after overseeing a mentally ill girl's gender-transition starting at 12 and mastectomy at 14.benryan.substack.com/p/detransition…
In response to a WaPo article in which an Italian child travels to Spain to obtain puberty blockers and does so on the first appointment following a single online consultation, journalist Evan Urquhart claims there “still hasn’t been a single reported example of a minor getting blockers or hormones without a lengthy assessment.”
Evan is ignoring Jesse Singal’s Economist article from earlier this month about Clementine Breen getting blockers after a single appointment with Johanna Olson-Kennedy.
And he is forgetting my reporting that since 2018, it has been Boston Children’s policy to provide only a single two-hour assessment appointment with a psychologist to determine whether a minor should get blockers or hormones.
The Mayo Clinic’s @DrMJoyner: “There are profound sex differences in human performance in athletic events determined by strength, speed, power, endurance, and body size such that males outperform females. These sex differences in athletic performance exist before puberty and increase dramatically as puberty progresses. The profound sex differences in sports performance are primarily attributable to the direct and indirect effects of sex-steroid hormones and provide a compelling framework to consider for policy decisions to safeguard fairness and inclusion in sports.”
The Mayo Clinic's @DrMJoyner concludes: "There are profound sex differences in human performance in athletic events determined by strength, speed, power, endurance, and body size such that males outperform females. These sex differences in athletic performance exist before puberty and increase dramatically as puberty progresses. The sex differences are markedly greater in magnitude (10 to 40%) than the advantages that policy-making bodies seek to eliminate when they regulate equipment or drugs that could enhance performance. As one example, World Athletics amended regulations on shoe manufacturing after advanced footwear technology was linked to a 1 to 2% performance advantage relative to other racing footwear (52–54). Regulation of sports technology and potential performance enhancing drugs is typically based on an evidence-base that is general in nature and based on plausibility, mechanism of action, and real-world data as opposed to RCTs. In this context, exogenous androgens administered to female (XX biology) athletes improve performance but do not close the male-female performance gap and do not eliminate the male advantage. Testosterone suppression among male (XY biology) athletes who have undergone male puberty reduces performance but much of he male advantage is retained, including: 1) muscle strength, power, and size, 2) maximal aerobic capacity, and other potentially performance enhancing attributes such as height and limb length. This evidence summary may provide a useful framework to understand claims about the nature and extent of the evidence that supports existing eligibility guidelines and to consider the merits of reforms that would govern the classification of transgender athletes and athletes with certain DSDs in competitive sports. Both the magnitude and duration of the influence of testosterone and puberty on sports performance should be recognized with appropriate consideration."
Activist-blogger Erin Reed has published a guest article:
"Washington Post Editorial Board Misleadingly Attacks Care Of Trans Youth"
In, fact, many of the claims in this essay challenging WaPo are themselves misleading.
I will go through them in this 🧵⬇️
"It selectively cites three European reviews critical of gender-affirming care, while ignoring the consensus of leading medical organizations—including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—all of which support such care."
▶️While WaPo hyperlinks to three European reviews, there have, in fact, been a half-dozen systematic literature reviews of pediatric gender-transition treatment. All of them have found the evidence backing such interventions weak and inconclusive.
▶️This has lead the health authorities in the UK and four Scandinavian nations to reclassify such treatment as experimental, and to sharply restrict access, in some cases to research settings only.
▶️The Cass Review found that WPATH and the US medical societies that endorse such interventions have engaged in "circularity," which is a more polite term for "citation laundering." WPATH made claims that were not supported by strong evidence in its 2013 Standards of Care 7. Then other US medical societies referred to those claims. And then it its SoC 8 in 2022, WPATH referred to those other societies, not mentioning that the claim they were referring to originated with WPATH. The near unanimity in these organizations is in part a product of the same people cross-pollinating their ideas from one organization to the next.
*Hilary Cass was chosen not in spite of her lack of experience in pediatric gender medicine, but because of it. Ideally, people assessing the strength of evidence in a field will not have financial or intellectual conflicts of interest, as did every single author of WPATH's SoC8.
*A couple of dozen members of the BMA moved to denounce and scrutinize the Cass Review this summer. But after an internal outcry and a letter of protest signed by over 1,000 members, the BMA backpedaled and now has a neutral posture as it conducts its review of the Cass Review.
*Despite the fact that the Yale Law School put up the white paper criticizing Cass on its website, claiming it is the product of experts at Yale is a stretch. There is a Yale Law author, and otherwise Meredith McNamara is the lead author. Speaking of people who have no experience with pediatric gender medicine: she is such a person. Under pressure in a deposition in a Alabama civil case, she admitted that in her entire career as a pediatrician, she has only ever referred two patients to a pediatric gender clinic and has never prescribed pediatric gender-transition treatment. And yet she presents herself in myriad forums as a leading expert on this medical care.
In the wake of the detransitioner lawsuit against them, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has released the following statement, as quoted in WSJ and many other outlets. This statement is highly misleading. The clinic didn’t start giving blockers and hormones to minors with gender dysphoria until 2008 or 2009, according to what I can ascertain. Boston Children’s was the first to do so in the U.S., and their operation began in 2007. So the statement from CHLA effectively doubles the amount of time that they have been engaging in the medical practices that the lawsuit concerns.
It is important for reporters to seek to verify claims made by the subjects of lawsuits. The claim about caring for such kids for 30 years would’ve been pretty easy to fact check.
Several things about Michael Hobbes' false suggestion that my reporting fell apart upon closer inspection:
1) Amy Tishelman was not a whistleblower. She characterized Boston Children's practices as part of a civil trial focused on other things. She filed a lawsuit claiming discrimination and was fired and sued and won her retaliation claim. She did not quit and then go to a higher authority to report the clinic's practices. Instead, she, like Boston Children's, kept them secret.
2) As Tishelman told the Globe, she was not concerned so much about the type of child that the Globe article primarily described: a child with longstanding gender dysphoria that started young. These children were intimately involved with the gender clinic, GeMS, for many years before it came time to assess them for a medical transition.
What Tishelman was concerned about was the type of minor who is now the prototype for those presenting at gender clinics: those who only first express gender dysphoria in adolescence. If these kids show up at the clinic, they will possibly seek medicalization immediately. And all they will get is a single two-hour assessment with a psychologist before being referred to endocrinology.
3) Nothing about the second Globe story contradicted my reporting or the previous Globe reporting. The article frankly blurred the lines between the different prototypes of gender dysphoric children to lend readers the impression that all kids under the Boston Children's system are going to get slow, ongoing care with no rushed decisions.
4) The fact remains that it is Boston Children's policy, and has been since 2018, that if a minor walks in the door and has already started puberty and is looking for transition medications, they will be provided only a single two-hour assessment appointment with a psychologist before being referred to endocrinology.
I stand by my reporting:
Michael Hobbes Is Wrong About Whether Kids Are Being Rushed Onto Gender-Transition Drugs
I juxtapose clips of debunking podcaster Michael Hobbes insisting there's no evidence kids are being rushed onto gender-transition drugs with testimony proving Boston Children's is doing just that.benryan.substack.com/p/michael-hobb…