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.
The level of professionalism and use of unbiased language in your writing is amazing in this context. After any given sentence I half expect the next to read "Can you believe the nerve of these f*****g lunatics?"
It is so important that you continue writing the way you do, as it is the only way to bring more sane people into the light. The events described are so horrific, any other presentation might lead to undue skepticism by the reader. I'm sure more inflammatory language could get more clicks, but not change more minds. We owe it to kids like Clementine to support your work.
Agreed 100%. Ben has consistently advocated for the use of accurate language and terminology when covering this issue, which is invaluable. As just one example from this piece, Ben describes Billboard Chris as an "anti-gender-transition-treatment activist." In a mainstream media outlet, Chris would be labeled as "anti-trans" and easily branded as a hateful bigot by his detractors. Regardless of how one might feel about Chris, it is most accurate to describe him as opposed to treatments, not people.
Like me you were probably adding the “fucking lunatics” into the text whilst reading it. This whole thing makes one feel quite mad, as any sane person does when living in a mad world I suppose.
It's a great piece indeed but Ben is not unbiased. He consistently calls people who call themselves the other sex by pronouns that refer to that other sex. In this regard he doesn't stand on the side of reality, nor does he show respect to the people who over and over make clear to Ben that our sex isn't a costume (or vv).
Do you believe people who are on the fence are hard supporters of pronouns matching biological sex? No, those people, like yourself need no convincing. Furthermore Ben focuses on pediatric medicine, which is a separate set of issues. To maximize impact Ben must continue to avoid tripping unnecessary wires. First we must restore sanity to pediatrics.
Personally I'll add, I don't want language to be policed by anyone, you, me, or trans activists.
Im also persuaded by the arguments for sex-based pronouns. And I like that your comment, unlike a lot of the pushback Ben’s gotten recently, doesn’t throw out the baby with the bath water or resort to name calling. (I just saw someone refer to him and Singal as “maggots”).
“Nor does he show respect to people who make clear to Ben over and over that our sex isn’t a costume”
Can you say more? Do you feel Ben’s use of preferred pronouns commits him to viewing womanhood as a costume? Or does this come from a different part of the controversy over what language to use?
The “you can just go get breasts later” comment has haunted me since I first heard it. It’s so emblematic of the way this movement views the body: not as a holistic, functional organism, but as a corkboard onto which one pins and un-pins various signage. Body parts are purely symbolic. Breasts aren’t meant to produce nourishment for, comfort, and help you bond with your babies. They aren’t meant to provide sexual pleasure for you and your partner. They aren’t meant to respond to the hormonal rhythms of your body and in so doing let you know what’s going on with your cycle, with a pregnancy, etc. Breasts are a pair of lumps on the front of a person’s torso that signal to the world that the person identifies as a woman. If the person doesn’t identify as a woman, remove them. If they subsequently identify as a woman again, just affix some new lumps so people will know. It doesn’t matter that they won’t be *actual breasts, that function*; they’re just there to communicate your gender identity. It’s such an impoverished and grotesque way to conceive of the human body.
Thanks for inserting the video interview with JOK and Aydin. I jumped to a random 5 minutes in the middle where they were asked how they learned to counsel youth about gender. JOK says she's never had any trouble with difficult conversations. Aydin says JOK was her mentor and gave her this valuable advice: when talking to a child and a skeptical parent, always remember you know more than the parent. They belong in prison.
Outstanding coverage. Placing these updates in context is so important to understanding them, and you do that as well and as thoroughly as anyone covering this issue can. A very good example of why I decided to start supporting your work.
After all this time immersed in studying and speaking out abut this horrific, abusive topic, I didn't think it was possible to feel a new level of outrage, but here I am.
My hope: a gazillion dollar judgement against one of these butchers, and the insurance companies up their malpractice insurance premiums to astronomical levels.
My hope would be prison, or at least complete social and economic death for these doctors. People should turn their backs when they enter a room. Good old fashioned shunning.
After having read this excellent reporting I am filled with tears and rage. Thank you Benjamin Ryan for all you do to expose the madness, corruption and the harms of this medical scandal.
Thank You Mr. Ryan for this thorough and deeply-researched reporting!
Just in case you don't already have it, Olson-Kennedy also published in 2018 a study on "Chest Reconstruction and Chest Dysphoria" that indicated her clinic performed double mastectomies on girls as young as 13:
Modern day medical-negligence horror show! Thank you, again, for your concise and well-documented writing and reporting on this issue -- and providing us the details leading up to this landmark legal case. (I don't know when you sleep?)
I finished this at 2am and woke up about four times through the night to check my phone, because I wasn't allowed to publish until after Jesse's piece ran and his piece was following UK time.
I feel like there's a massively important question that we are not getting doctors to go on record answering: Do you believe that gender dysphoria can ever be a secondary symptom to a larger issue, or do you believe that every mental health issue is either secondary to or irrelevant to a person's gender dysphoria? JOK did not do a psych eval and did not request one. She is obviously in the camp of people who don't believe that gender confusion could ever be a symptom of something else and that if that "something else" is treated, the gender confusion would also resolve. For example, we know a key feature of borderline personality disorder is unstable identity and shifting sense of self. It's well established this can include confusion about and a shifting sense of sexual orientation, and could of course include one's sense of "gender identity." So many of the ROGD girls and the detransitioners in the lawsuits either have strong BPD traits (either due to trauma, the overlap BPD and autism traits, or because of the BPD traits that can be a normal part of adolescence) or confirmed BPD diagnoses (like Prisha Mosley). Are we really to believe that poor mental health and extreme emotional distress could *never* cause gender confusion? That gender dysphoria is *never* a secondary symptom or a misplaced expression of distress caused by other mental health issues? If the press regularly reported that this is what doctors like JOK believe, that they don't believe in psych evals or think that the results are irrelevant to the child's gender confusion, what would the general public, or even most doctors, say about that?
Yep. They are truly dedicated to their arrested-development-adolescent approach to medical care.
They have a website that anyone can go to and get an endorsement letter for hormones or surgery from a therapist, free and on-demand. Its homepage header motto is "Gatekeeping Sucks":
Thank you for being so thorough and detailed. Thank you for including the video clips.
Seeing JOK’s self-assurance that she is on the right side of history is nauseating. Not a single nuance, qualification, or sense of humility about her power to shape these children’s lives. A true ideologue.
My first impression after hearing JOK was , that's her? A medical director of a large institution? She sounds more like an over animated sales rep. I wouldn't trust her w a 10ft pole.
The level of professionalism and use of unbiased language in your writing is amazing in this context. After any given sentence I half expect the next to read "Can you believe the nerve of these f*****g lunatics?"
It is so important that you continue writing the way you do, as it is the only way to bring more sane people into the light. The events described are so horrific, any other presentation might lead to undue skepticism by the reader. I'm sure more inflammatory language could get more clicks, but not change more minds. We owe it to kids like Clementine to support your work.
Thanks!
Agreed 100%. Ben has consistently advocated for the use of accurate language and terminology when covering this issue, which is invaluable. As just one example from this piece, Ben describes Billboard Chris as an "anti-gender-transition-treatment activist." In a mainstream media outlet, Chris would be labeled as "anti-trans" and easily branded as a hateful bigot by his detractors. Regardless of how one might feel about Chris, it is most accurate to describe him as opposed to treatments, not people.
Thanks!
Like me you were probably adding the “fucking lunatics” into the text whilst reading it. This whole thing makes one feel quite mad, as any sane person does when living in a mad world I suppose.
It's a great piece indeed but Ben is not unbiased. He consistently calls people who call themselves the other sex by pronouns that refer to that other sex. In this regard he doesn't stand on the side of reality, nor does he show respect to the people who over and over make clear to Ben that our sex isn't a costume (or vv).
Do you believe people who are on the fence are hard supporters of pronouns matching biological sex? No, those people, like yourself need no convincing. Furthermore Ben focuses on pediatric medicine, which is a separate set of issues. To maximize impact Ben must continue to avoid tripping unnecessary wires. First we must restore sanity to pediatrics.
Personally I'll add, I don't want language to be policed by anyone, you, me, or trans activists.
Im also persuaded by the arguments for sex-based pronouns. And I like that your comment, unlike a lot of the pushback Ben’s gotten recently, doesn’t throw out the baby with the bath water or resort to name calling. (I just saw someone refer to him and Singal as “maggots”).
“Nor does he show respect to people who make clear to Ben over and over that our sex isn’t a costume”
Can you say more? Do you feel Ben’s use of preferred pronouns commits him to viewing womanhood as a costume? Or does this come from a different part of the controversy over what language to use?
Good. Take this ghoul for everything she’s worth.
The “you can just go get breasts later” comment has haunted me since I first heard it. It’s so emblematic of the way this movement views the body: not as a holistic, functional organism, but as a corkboard onto which one pins and un-pins various signage. Body parts are purely symbolic. Breasts aren’t meant to produce nourishment for, comfort, and help you bond with your babies. They aren’t meant to provide sexual pleasure for you and your partner. They aren’t meant to respond to the hormonal rhythms of your body and in so doing let you know what’s going on with your cycle, with a pregnancy, etc. Breasts are a pair of lumps on the front of a person’s torso that signal to the world that the person identifies as a woman. If the person doesn’t identify as a woman, remove them. If they subsequently identify as a woman again, just affix some new lumps so people will know. It doesn’t matter that they won’t be *actual breasts, that function*; they’re just there to communicate your gender identity. It’s such an impoverished and grotesque way to conceive of the human body.
Wow, so well phrased! Thank you.
Saved this comment — breathtaking in its clarity.
Thanks for inserting the video interview with JOK and Aydin. I jumped to a random 5 minutes in the middle where they were asked how they learned to counsel youth about gender. JOK says she's never had any trouble with difficult conversations. Aydin says JOK was her mentor and gave her this valuable advice: when talking to a child and a skeptical parent, always remember you know more than the parent. They belong in prison.
Outstanding coverage. Placing these updates in context is so important to understanding them, and you do that as well and as thoroughly as anyone covering this issue can. A very good example of why I decided to start supporting your work.
Thanks a million. I didn't get the suit until Wednesday night, so it was a mad dash to write this.
After all this time immersed in studying and speaking out abut this horrific, abusive topic, I didn't think it was possible to feel a new level of outrage, but here I am.
Ben another careful and strong piece about one doctor who has behaved recklessly in her care of gender questioning youth. Thank you.
Thanks, Erica!
My hope: a gazillion dollar judgement against one of these butchers, and the insurance companies up their malpractice insurance premiums to astronomical levels.
My hope would be prison, or at least complete social and economic death for these doctors. People should turn their backs when they enter a room. Good old fashioned shunning.
After having read this excellent reporting I am filled with tears and rage. Thank you Benjamin Ryan for all you do to expose the madness, corruption and the harms of this medical scandal.
Thank you for your thorough reporting, sir.
Many thanks. Do share it!
Thank You Mr. Ryan for this thorough and deeply-researched reporting!
Just in case you don't already have it, Olson-Kennedy also published in 2018 a study on "Chest Reconstruction and Chest Dysphoria" that indicated her clinic performed double mastectomies on girls as young as 13:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2674039
Modern day medical-negligence horror show! Thank you, again, for your concise and well-documented writing and reporting on this issue -- and providing us the details leading up to this landmark legal case. (I don't know when you sleep?)
I finished this at 2am and woke up about four times through the night to check my phone, because I wasn't allowed to publish until after Jesse's piece ran and his piece was following UK time.
I feel like there's a massively important question that we are not getting doctors to go on record answering: Do you believe that gender dysphoria can ever be a secondary symptom to a larger issue, or do you believe that every mental health issue is either secondary to or irrelevant to a person's gender dysphoria? JOK did not do a psych eval and did not request one. She is obviously in the camp of people who don't believe that gender confusion could ever be a symptom of something else and that if that "something else" is treated, the gender confusion would also resolve. For example, we know a key feature of borderline personality disorder is unstable identity and shifting sense of self. It's well established this can include confusion about and a shifting sense of sexual orientation, and could of course include one's sense of "gender identity." So many of the ROGD girls and the detransitioners in the lawsuits either have strong BPD traits (either due to trauma, the overlap BPD and autism traits, or because of the BPD traits that can be a normal part of adolescence) or confirmed BPD diagnoses (like Prisha Mosley). Are we really to believe that poor mental health and extreme emotional distress could *never* cause gender confusion? That gender dysphoria is *never* a secondary symptom or a misplaced expression of distress caused by other mental health issues? If the press regularly reported that this is what doctors like JOK believe, that they don't believe in psych evals or think that the results are irrelevant to the child's gender confusion, what would the general public, or even most doctors, say about that?
Yep. They are truly dedicated to their arrested-development-adolescent approach to medical care.
They have a website that anyone can go to and get an endorsement letter for hormones or surgery from a therapist, free and on-demand. Its homepage header motto is "Gatekeeping Sucks":
https://www.prospecttherapy.com/hrt-and-gcs-letters
Thank you for being so thorough and detailed. Thank you for including the video clips.
Seeing JOK’s self-assurance that she is on the right side of history is nauseating. Not a single nuance, qualification, or sense of humility about her power to shape these children’s lives. A true ideologue.
My first impression after hearing JOK was , that's her? A medical director of a large institution? She sounds more like an over animated sales rep. I wouldn't trust her w a 10ft pole.
Amazing coverage. Thank you, Ben.
Thanks, Jen!
Mastectomy at 14. 😑 that is some crazy
JOK recommended Clementine have her breasts removed when she was still 13. The surgery then happened a couple of months after she turned 14.