Megan Twohey vs. transgender people

Megan Twohey is an American author and anti-transgender activist. Twohey co-wrote a scaremongering New York Times article about healthcare for trans and gender diverse youth titled “They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost?” The piece helped spark a newsroom revolt against management during the Times’ 2020s anti-trans coverage crisis.

Background

Megan Twohey was born on October 26, 1976 to John and Mary Jane Twohey.

Mary Jane Twohey handled PR for Northwestern University after transphobic eugenicist J. Michael Bailey arranged a live “fucksaw” demonstration for students.

Megan Twohey graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1994. After graduating from Georgetown University in 1998, Twohey worked at Washington Monthly, then National Journal from 1999 to 2001, then Moscow Times from 2001 to 2002. Twohey joined the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from 2003 to 2007.

Twohey then joined parent John Twohey at Tribune Media’s Chicago Tribune in 2007. From 2012 to 2016, Twohey was with Thomson Reuters, then joined the New York Times in 2016.

Twohey and Jodi Kantor published a 2017 exposé about Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual abuse and assault that figured prominently into Weinstein’s downfall and ultimate conviction, earning a Pulitzer Prize. Their 2019 book She Said was adapted into a 2022 film of the same name.

Twohey and literary agent Vadim “Jim” Rutman (born ~1975) were married on June 12, 2016 and have one child.

Anti-trans activism

Twohey co-wrote a 2022 New York Times article on puberty blockers for gender diverse youth that culminated in a 2023 newsroom revolt against Times leadership.

The story is about “emerging evidence of potential harm” and the “long-term physical effects and other consequences” of Lupron and other medications that can manage onset of puberty. Any drug carries a risk of side effects, which the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tracks via adverse event reports. FDA approved Lupron for central precocious puberty in 1993. It has since been used for trans and gender diverse youth experiencing unwanted puberty. Doctors have wide latitude to use approved drugs “off label,” including use to delay puberty for trans and gender diverse youth.

Several years earlier, co-author Christina Jewett began reporting on cisgender people who believe puberty blockers which they took as minors led to short- and long-term adverse side effects. Children whose puberty starts at 5 to 8 years old often face social problems, and those capable of pregnancy are at higher risk of unwanted sexual attention and assault. Doctors work with parents to weigh the risks and benefits before getting informed parental consent. As with any medical treatment, some people will be harmed more than they were helped.

Focusing on uncommon side effects and unknown risks is a long-used pretense to restrict or ban contraception and abortion, especially for minors. For more information, see this site’s analysis of “They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost?”

The piece was cited as part of a transphobic series by a small group of anti-trans writers within the New York Times. GLAAD stated: “In November 2022, the Times published a story by Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett that got the science of healthcare for trans people so wrong that the WPATH had to write a multi-page tear-down explaining how the Times misrepresented the facts at every turn.”

2023 correspondence

On September 3, 2023, I received an email from Twohey copied to Times external communications executive Danielle Rhoades Ha. Twohey requested that biographical information on this page be removed, all of which had been previously published.

My reply:

In 2003 J. Michael Bailey was presenting images and confidential clinical information about six-year olds from my community for laughs to future clinicians.
This vulgar misuse of our children without their knowledge or consent was part of a tour for Bailey’s transphobic book that came out under the federal imprimatur of the National Academies Press. That book is framed by the fabricated case report of a six-year-old gender diverse child whose “curing” is presented as evidence that children should not get gender affirming care.
Back when the Times still had a public editor, I expressed my concerns about your employer’s sustained support for Bailey and like-minded grifters like Alice Dreger who manipulate science and media to harm our children. The Times did worse than nothing. That Times reporter and the Science editors defamed me as payback, a major media coup that allowed Bailey and friends to continue harming children, adding years to my work getting their infamous Toronto children’s gender clinic shut down.
I won’t even get into Bailey’s sex with a book subject/patient, etc. Your mother got paid to help Bailey and employer Northwestern get out in front of his live “fucksaw” demonstration. Your family got paid to help Bailey stay tenured.
Not one journalist in America has published one article that speaks truth to power about these 50 years of attacks on our children via Archives of Sexual Behavior. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune once asked Dreger directly about Bailey’s fabrication and Dreger’s cover-up, but the story got spiked.
In a just world, Bailey’s book would be retracted, Bailey’s editor would be fired, Dreger’s article would be retracted, and Dreger’s editor would be fired. It would just take one article. Instead we get decades of Times coverage like hand-wringing about side effects of treatment that is being banned across the country, forcing families from NBA legends to struggling single parents to join in the largest mass interstate migration since COVID.
Few organizations have done more to make trans lives harder than the New York Times. You, your family, and the organizations that have paid all of you are part of the problem. I’m simply documenting all this for historians.
PS: Your profile is standard encyclopedia fare. Your family members are all media professionals who’ve been in the public eye, and your six-year-old’s full name and age are published on the New York Times website.

Twohey ignored my outline of the Twohey family’s negative impact on hundreds of thousands of American children, merely disputing my postscript. I then provided Twohey a Times website link. Despite being under no obligation to do so, I honored part of Twohey’s request.

References

Acharya, Ustav (August 19, 2020). Megan Twohey. Bio Wikis https://biowikis.com/megan-twohey/

Klein, Charlotte (February 27, 2023). Inside the New York Times blowup over transgender coverage. Vanity Fair https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/new-york-times-trans-coverage-debate

Jones, Imara (July 17, 2023). S02E05: Capturing The New York Times. The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality https://translash.org/transcript-capturing-the-new-york-times/

Oladipo, Gloria (February 18, 2023). Nearly 1,000 contributors protest New York Times’ coverage of trans people. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/17/new-york-times-contributors-open-letter-protest-anti-trans-coverage

Duffy, Kaiyti (November 29, 2022). Recent Anti-Trans Articles Miss the Point of Gender-Affirming Care. Teen Vogue https://www.teenvogue.com/story/recent-anti-trans-articles-miss-the-point-of-gender-affirming-care

Wulfsohn, Joseph A. (November 15, 2022). New York Times story on puberty blockers fuels critics amid trans debate: ‘Decade late on this story.’ Fox News https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-story-puberty-blockers-fuels-critics-amid-trans-debate-decade-late-story

Thiesen, Lauren (November 15, 2022). How Many Trans People Does The New York Times Believe There Should Be? Defector https://defector.com/how-many-trans-people-does-the-new-york-times-believe-there-should-be

Sonoma, Sirena (April 19, 2023). The New York Times’ Inaccurate Coverage of Transgender People is Being Weaponized Against the Transgender Community. GLAAD https://glaad.org/new-york-times-inaccurate-coverage-transgender-people-being-weaponized-against-transgender/

Eckert, AJ (December 4, 2022). What the New York Times gets wrong about puberty blockers for transgender youth. Science Based Medicine https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-the-new-york-times-gets-wrong-about-puberty-blockers-for-transgender-youth/

Bolies, Corbin (March 7, 2023). The New York Times’ Trans Coverage Debacle Was Years in the Making. The Daily Beast https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-new-york-times-trans-coverage-debacle-was-years-in-the-making

Reilly, Patrick (February 15, 2023). New York Times accused of ‘editorial bias’ in coverage of transgender issues. New York Post https://nypost.com/2023/02/15/new-york-times-blasted-for-editorial-bias-in-transgender-coverage/

USPATH and WPATH respond to NY Times article “They Paused Puberty, But Is There a Cost? published on November 14, 2022 (PDF). https://www.wpath.org/media/cms/Documents/Public%20Policies/2022/USPATHWPATH%20Statement%20re%20Nov%2014%202022%20NYT%20Article%20Nov%2022%202022.pdf

Urquhart, Evan (November 14, 2022). NYT Investigation Offers Biased Reporting on Puberty Blocker Concerns. Assigned https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/nyt-investigation-finds-concerns-about-puberty-blockers-for-trans-youth

Urquhart, Evan (November 17, 2022). The NYT’s big piece on puberty blockers mucked up the most important point about them. Slate https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/puberty-blockers-side-effects-controversy.html

Migdon, Brooke (February 15, 2023). NYT contributors blast paper’s coverage of transgender people. The Hill. https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3859501-nyt-contributors-blast-papers-coverage-of-transgender-people/

Warrington, James (February 16, 2023). How the New York Times was engulfed by a trans culture war. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/02/15/new-york-times-accused-writers-anti-trans-bigotry/

Twohey, Megan; Jewett, Christina (November 14, 2022). They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost? New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/health/puberty-blockers-transgender.html

Jewett, Christina (February 2, 2017). Drug used to halt puberty in children may cause lasting health problems. Kaiser Health News https://www.statnews.com/2017/02/02/lupron-puberty-children-health-problems/