Fact checking Michael Hobbes

Debunking podcaster Michael Hobbes has a new episode of his podcast If Books Could Kill, about the US v. Skrmetti Supreme Court decision upholding Tennessee's ban on pediatric gender-transition treatment.

In this🧵I will fact check Hobbes:
⬇️ Here is a link to the podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

If, for the sake of argument, no one can prove that pediatric gender-transition treatment prevents suicide death only because such deaths are so rare, then why has this treatment been sold, first and foremost, as “lifesaving”?

Why have people who have called that claim into question been savagely attacked and sidelined?

Marci Bowers, former head of WPATH, herself told me last year that suicide death has never been a good metric of the success of this treatment.
Debunking podcaster Michael Hobbes is himself one of the prime sources of misinformation about pediatric gender-transition treatment. He has routinely falsely claimed that there is no evidence that children get these drugs after absent or cursory assessment periods. There is copious evidence that this happens routinely at some of the top gender clinics in the nation. Despite all this evidence, Hobbes has never acknowledged his fault.

But you can see here that he is combining his longstanding claim about assessments with a claim about what he characterizes as false claims that there are large numbers of kids getting these drugs. That question should not necessarily be conflated with the assessment question.

About 1 in 1,000 youth with private health insurance went on cross sex hormones by age 17 between 2018 and 2022. That number was higher for natal girls and was probably higher for all youth by the end of that period.

One thing that has concerned some people is not necessarily the number of kids getting these drugs, but the rate of increase of that number. They have been concerned over where that figure might end up.

The Liberal Misinformation Bubble About Youth Gender Medicine

How the left ended up disbelieving the science

By @HelenLewis for @TheAtlantic theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

The Bleuskie crowd is livid over Andrew Sullivan’s Times opinion essay about LGBTQ activism: 🧵

https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/1938294607852212616

How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized, and Lost Its Way

By Andrew Sullivan for @nytopinion
🧵⬇️ GIFT LINK: How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized, and Lost Its Way

By Andrew Sullivan
nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opi…

Debunking podcaster Michael Hobbes has issued a stream of false or misleading claims about the Times article about the @ACLU’s tangled path to Skrmetti—the SCOTUS case on pediatric gender-transition treatment.

Allow me to demonstrate how wrong Hobbes is.

🧵⬇️ The thing about conspiracies is that sometimes they actually occur. Subpoenaed records show WPATH squelched systematic reviews of gender care they commissioned when the results did not support their advocacy movement.

And Hobbes, perhaps because he doesn’t know or understand what those reviews are about, issues a sleight of hand by suggesting that the reviews were irrelevant since there is no evidence kids are getting rushed into surgeries. But that’s not what the reviews were about. They were about the strength of the evidence backing gender-transition treatments.

A must-read that diagrams how Chase Strangio at the @ACLU and others in what @MattYglesias, for one, calls The Groups—the advocacy nonprofits that form a backbone of Democratic power structures—advocated for maximalist advances in trans rights and lost spectacularly.

https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/1935678922009526583

Alejandra Caraballo is livid over the Times article, in particular for citing @BriannaWu, who has called for moderation while Caraballo has been out front taking maximalist positions on trans rights and attacking her perceived adversaries left and right.

How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost

The inside story of the case that could set the movement back a generation, by @NickConfessore for @NYTimes. nytimes.com/2025/06/19/mag…

BREAKING: U.S. v Skrmetti has been decided, 6-3, upholding the constitutionality of Tennessee's ban on gender-transition treatments for minors.

This will likely entrench bans of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in 25 states. supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf…

NEWS: Under pressure from all sides by the Trump administration, the pediatric gender clinic at Children's Hospital Los Angeles that is run by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, will stop providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender-transition surgeries to minors. removepaywall.com/search?url=htt…
latimes.com/california/sto…

Despite copious evidence supporting the conclusion that there are many avenues for kids to be referred to an endocrinologist to receive pediatric gender-transition treatment after a single assessment appointment, debunking podcaster Michael Hobbes continues to pretend otherwise. open.substack.com/pub/benryan/p/…

The long-awaited New York Times six-part podcast series on pediatric gender medicine, The Protocol, is up. Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

YouTube: youtube.com/playlist?list=…

I have been subjected to Alejandra Caraballo’s calls for people to blacklist me. She is one of the loudest and most effective voices to silence and intimidate reporters covering pediatric gender-transition treatment.

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1929909094556520486

How Cancel Culture Is Still Coming For Me


And how activists will eagerly cut off their noses to spite their faces in service of virtue signaling and maintaining an image of ideological purity amid the battle over pediatric gender medicine. open.substack.com/pub/benryan/p/…

Pete Buttigieg told @BulwarkOnline that if he could do it over, he would’ve worked to get the schools open faster in 2020. In response, @TaylorLorenz denounced him as a eugenicist.

Meanwhile, @DavidZweig’s new book presents an avalanche of evidence indicating that school closures likely did not reduce morbidity and mortality and harmed children. He also demonstrates that there was considerable evidence of the apparent lack of benefit from European nations as early as May 2020. I interviewed @davidzweig about his book about the folly of the Covid school closures, An Abundance of Caution, for my pod. I drew parallels to the pediatric gender medicine field:

open.substack.com/pub/benryan/p/…

The Utah state government commissioned a report on pediatric gender-transition treatment. It comes in at over 1,000 words and concludes that the evidence favorably backs such treatment.

But despite the fact that it bills itself as a systematic literature review, it isn't one.

The authors of the report, from the University of Utah College of Pharmacy, did not register their methodology on PROSPERO in advance as is required for a systematic literature review. Nor did they rate the quality of the evidence as all other systematic reviews of this field have. What's more, their report explicitly takes on faith the claims of authors of treatment guidelines that their own process in developing those guidelines was rigorous. This after the University of York's systematic literature review on such guidelines, published in April 2024, found that all but a couple of such guidelines were of poor quality and not reliable.

Essentially, this report is a narrative review that summarizes the bulk of the research in this field. But it does not seek, like all the actual systematic literature reviews have, to make sense of whether that research is reliable and whether it can properly guide doctors and families in making a solid calculation about the risks vs benefits of these drugs when given to children.

In sum, this report reflects everything that the authors of systematic literature reviews and groups like @SEGM_EBM have been seeking to respond to. Source: le.utah.gov/AgencyRP/repor…

I strongly advise people who think that @AlecMacGillis, who wrote one of the finest Covid-era articles critiquing the school closures, is “lying” about their impacts read @DavidZweig’s scathing new book about the lockdowns, An Abundance of Caution.

Zweig makes a very strong case that there was substantial evidence by spring 2020 that lockdowns did not substantially lower COVID morbidity and mortality. And he further makes a very strong case that the lockdowns harmed kids in myriad ways.

I also suggest people stop and consider that Blooskie is just as toxic as X, but in a kind of mirror image. Here is my interview with @davidzweig about his book on the Covid school closures. open.substack.com/pub/benryan/p/…

Helping out young people need not be a zero-sum effort. Accurately observing that boys are falling behind in many respects need not divert attention away from the plight of women and girls. The real problem is when people pit the interests of the sexes against one another. Moira Donegan really should go read @RichardVReeves’ work and stop trying to be so divisive and dismissive about a real and serious problem facing boys and young men. In fact, Moira's attitude, which is essentially, "Screw those boys, the girls need help," is a pervasive bias that is likely part of the reason why boys are struggling! People look at boys and see the patriarchy and something that needs to be pushed down. This is harmful to everyone in the long run, boys and girls alike.

One of the authors of a just published critique of Britain’s Cass Review on pediatric gender medicine and the systematic reviews on which it was partially based suggests that the authors were “bribed.”

It’s unclear what McLamore means by the comparison of how long peer review took for them, since the Cass Review took four years and was not peer reviewed. But the SRs on which it was based were peer reviewed and published in a journal.

Quinnehtukqut McLamore (they/them) is an assistant professor of social psychology in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia. “The Cass report’s recommendations, given its methodological flaws and misrepresentation of evidence, warrant critical scrutiny to ensure ethical and effective support for gender-diverse youth.”

bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

Today, I was on a Zoom call by an HIV advocacy group about their efforts to combat the Trump admin's cancellation of HIV research grants. One of the activists presenters said he refused to present if I was on the call, clearly due to my reporting on pediatric gender medicine.

The organizer said he couldn't eject anyone from the call; there were about 80 participants. (This despite the fact that that organizer, a longtime activist, had already ejected me from his HIV-advocacy listserv.) So the activist refused to present and had his colleague present in his place. She made a big point about how he had made an "ethical" stand not to present.

I told everyone via the chat on the Zoom that I stood by my reporting on pediatric gender medicine. Which I do.

The irony is that I am among only a small handful of reporters who maintains a specialty in HIV coverage—I have been writing about HIV for 25 years and started doing work in the field in 1995—and who writes for mainstream outlets. And I just published a major article in NBC News about the cancelation of LGBTQ-related research grants, the very subject of the Zoom call, that was totally sympathetic to the activists' cause.

I see a lot of this in my work, in which HIV activists seek to punish me for my reporting by seeking to stonewall and blacklist me. They go to great lengths. It winds up just being inconvenient for me; I still get my work done. What it does accomplish is it ensures that these activists' voices are not heard in my reporting. And it does not stop me from writing about gender medicine. It boils down to ideological purity on their part. They need to take that stand. If these activists had their way, I would not publish articles like this that are very critical of the Trump administration and bring attention to the activists’ cause. Some of them tried to get my sources for this piece to join the blacklist against me. nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-ne…

This is an apparent contradiction that adults such as myself have trouble reconciling with: that there is an apparent element of adolescent culture today that, at least in certain communities, values and valorizes trans over gay identities.

Erin Reed is thus incredulous at the suggestion in the new HHS report on pediatric gender-transition treatment: Fact check: There are, in fact, two studies that have found that suicide deaths in gender distressed youths are rare:

link.springer.com/article/10.100…

mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/27/1/e…

NEWS: HHS has published a 409-page document, per Trump's request

Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria

Review of Evidence and Best Practices LINK: opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/…