Benjamin Ryan

A Legal First That Could Change Gender Medicine At 16, Fox Varian got a mastectomy while undergoing a gender transition. She sued her psychologist and plastic surgeon for leaving her ‘disfigured for life.’ Benjamin Ryan reports from the courtroom. Read the @TheFP article: thefp.com/p/a-legal-firs… Follow and support my Substack, where I cover pediatric gender medicine: benryan.substack.com. I was the only reporter to attend the entire three-week trial and will be providing more in-depth reporting and commentary on the case. The opening of my Free Press article: Fox Varian had a turbulent childhood. Her parents split when she was seven, triggering a three-year custody battle that ultimately saw her estranged from her father. She suffered from a constellation of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, and social phobia. She was diagnosed with autism and bounced around various schools. Her first period sent her into a meltdown, and she battled disordered eating and body-image issues. By mid-adolescence, she was completely lost. At 15, she began questioning her gender during sessions with her psychologist. She changed her birth name, Isabella, to Gabriel, which she saw as androgynous. Over the next two months, she cut her hair short, began binding her breasts, switched her name again, to Rowan, and started telling people she was transgender. In December 2019, 11 months after she started this public social transition, Varian underwent surgery to remove her breasts. She was 16 years old. Varian, who adopted the name Fox at 18 and is now 22, is one of thousands of minors who underwent gender-transition surgery over the past decade. And she is just one of the young people who have come to regret permanently addressing what was only a temporary identity shift. Three years after her mastectomy, Varian stopped identifying as transgender and began a process known as detransitioning. In May 2023, she filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the two principal Westchester County, New York, care providers who oversaw her gender transition: her long-time psychologist, Kenneth Einhorn, and Dr. Simon Chin, who performed the mastectomy. On Friday, a jury in White Plains, New York, awarded Varian $2 million in damages. Varian’s case is the first malpractice suit from a detransitioner to go before a jury, and I was the only reporter to attend the entire three-week trial. Represented by personal-injury attorney Adam Deutsch, Varian said she had been injured by the defendants due to their deviation from standard practices and a lack of informed consent. While there are no guarantees in medical malpractice lawsuits, legal experts believe Varian’s victory could inspire a wave of similar cases that would significantly disrupt pediatric gender medicine.

Dow average down 11% since Bondi cited it during her Oversight hearing

@KFILE Is that Focus On the Family’s address?

I feel like when I stayed home from school I would get this ad at least three times a day

@margerymeanwell I auditioned for a reality show in like 2006 that was about gay guys faking being straight. I didn’t make the cut.

@benryanwriter There was an MTV show called 'Faking It' in 2014 about two girls at an ultra-woke school who pretend to be lesbians for social clout. A few years earlier, that would have made no sense, and a year or two later, you'd never get that on the air.

I never would've seen this coming when I was a very miserable little gay boy in the early 1990s.

@BobMann2001 Surely*

@BobMann2001 If everyone stopped gambling, that would sure end this.

Sports, brought to you by gambling.

@mattyglesias Longer than 90 seconds, so yes.

Do you generally think movies are too long these days?

in the new york times today

Audible gasps from the crowd at Sen. Adam Schiff’s Hollywood hearing when he says that from 2022 to 2024 L.A. County lost 42,000 motion picture industry jobs.

NEW: Last year, a former modeling agent who famously introduced Trump and Melania asked a top ICE official to have the mother of his son detained. Paolo Zampolli told the official that it would help him in a custody battle. The ICE official agreed to help. nytimes.com/2026/03/20/us/…

NEW: A top FEMA official has history of violent rhetoric and said he once teleported to Waffle House cnn.com/2026/03/20/pol…

@JosephBenjaminL @SageKnowsAll No, because I saw almost none of it. But for a year I read everything that was written about her. Total nonsense!

@benryanwriter @SageKnowsAll Would you consider writing a piece on how this "Meghan marketplace" works?

In 2020, I had this cushy gig wherein this company mistakenly paid me $200 per post to write digests of trashy news items according to a byzantine formula meant to prime the search engine. I wrote five a day for over a year and made a fortune doing what AI could now do for free.

@celebchai @mikawilson777 I literally read all of it. It’s all based on innuendo and anonymous sourcing and the totally BS title of “royal expert,” which is a circular reasoning type of title granted to anyone who talks about the royals enough to be deemed an expert. My favorite is Lady Colin Campbell.

@benryanwriter @mikawilson777 yes, exactly. I am glad you read so many articles and found nothing. The show isn't everyone's cup of tea. I thought she had good friendships. All guests seemed at ease

@MetalsNZ Such finer nuances are not important to Erin. All I did was summarize other people’s stupid dishy writing.

@benryanwriter I must have missed the bit where you stated your writing was “misleading”.

My secret is out! I wrote slop for a while!

@mikawilson777 @celebchai Meghan seems totally fine to me. I thought her show was kind of dull. But totally inoffensive!

@benryanwriter @celebchai I’ve noticed how easily and quickly the public rushes to gather salacious information about the wealthy and famous (even if it is not true). Lying tabloids are slop-spreading, but the greater blame falls on the public for lapping it up.😒

@mcdermott It can happen to YOU.

@benryanwriter BREAKING: Local Writer Takes Gig to Pay the Bills

@Barbara27541025 No

@benryanwriter Omg! This need to be investigated 😳‼️ Can you disclose who your paymasters were?

@SageKnowsAll No. I was the most minor of unseen and unread players in the global Meghan marketplace.

@benryanwriter Ben, did you ever contact Harry and Meghan and tell them you’d been commissioned to do this btw?

@Timodc This is mistress erasure.

Straight people subjected “partner” onto the gays to create a second class status and then stole it back when Gay became en vogue and it is v annoying. You get husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, “significant other”, or “gentleman caller” sorry thems the breaks.

@MapleSyrupYummo This is true. The upside is no one read the garbage I wrote. The project collapsed and was shuttered after a year.

@benryanwriter So you were part of the problem. Shame on you