Trans Man Harassed, Dehumanized in Right Wing Press After Sharing Surgical Horror Story

A trans man’s story of post-surgical horror went viral. Then the right wing media found out.

by Evan Urquhart

Rylan is a transgender man from Ohio who wanted to share his concerns about his surgeon after a harrowing experience involving severe, potentially life-threatening complications. He traveled for top surgery with Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher in Miami earlier this year and was alarmed by how he says he was treated when he began having complications. Dr. Gallagher has a huge social media presence which presents her as fun and affirming, and she takes patients of all shapes and sizes while some surgeons limit access based on BMI. She’s been featured in many mainstream articles about top surgeries, all of which has driven more trans people to seek her out, including patients like Rylan who come from other states. After his experience with Gallagher, Rylan hoped to warn the trans community about the issues he’d had. He felt the surgeon had neglected her responsibility to help patients who experience complications, perhaps even rising to the level of medical malpractice, and so he spread the word on TikTok and Medium, as well as via his (now inactive) Twitter account.

As a trans person with a large social media following, Rylan’s story reached a huge number of other people in the trans community, just as he’d hoped. But as it reached a wider and wider audience he faced increasing harassment by transphobic trolls. His story also reached the right wing press, where multiple pieces have misgendered Rylan, called him dehumanizing names, and used his story as more fuel for the right’s escalating efforts to deny trans people the right to access healthcare. Despite all the hate he’s faced, Rylan remains committed to spreading the word of his experiences to his community and helping to keep fellow trans people safe.

“After what I went through I felt a strong responsibility to come forward and tell other trans people what I wish I’d known about [Dr. Gallagher’s] history of negligence,” Rylan wrote me via text. “Like I stated in my post, top surgery is an act of self-love. Sharing my story with the world was an act of community love. Informed consent is key to safe healthcare, so knowing who our surgeons are, especially when they have massive influence in the trans medical community [as Gallagher does], is vital. I was hoping to give people that information and  feel like I successfully did that. So many people have contacted me and thanked me for helping them make a more knowledgeable decision. That’s all I ever wanted, and why I was so deeply vulnerable in what I shared online.”

Rylan’s post on Medium is a very tough read. Chest masculinization (a procedure which includes but is not identical to a double mastectomy) is a serious undertaking. It’s also associated with markedly positive outcomes and reduced gender dysphoria for the transmasculine and nonbinary female-assigned patients who seek it out. Like any surgery, top surgery comes with serious risks, including the risk of complications during recovery, after the surgery is done. Good surgeons stay involved with patients who experience complications, either directly or by advising and referring them to doctors who can help them heal. According to Rylan, this is where Dr. Gallagher failed him by repeatedly telling him that he was healing normally as the complications got worse and worse. Rylan says when he finally stopped listening to Dr. Gallagher’s reassurances and sought emergency medical help he was already close to death.

Many trans people, including this reporter, have heard whispers of bad doctors in spaces such as trans community subreddits, Facebook groups, and other anonymous semi-private spaces where trans people gather online. While doctors and surgeons naturally vary in their abilities and ethics, the trans community seems particularly vulnerable because of fears that going public could fuel misleading and hateful narratives about our bodies and our surgeries, potentially even contributing to conservative efforts to have treatments for trans people banned. What happened after Rylan’s story went viral, seems to completely validate those long-held fears. First the online harassment started, then the right wing press piled on. These propagandists folded Rylan’s story into their false narrative that all gender affirming care is tantamount to mutilation, misgendering and demeaning Rylan without a thought.

Here are some examples. The Daily Wire called Rylan a “trans identified female” and misgendered him throughout their piece:

But the cruelty above was mild compared to the extreme right wing site Natural News, which called Rylan “another body botched transgender” and mocked his experience, implying that there was something normal or expected about the horror he went through.

There were many other stories as well, most cribbing from the Daily Wire, all misgendering Rylan and using dehumanizing far-right language like “trans identified female” for a transgender man.

Rylan was affected by the far right hate, as anyone would be, but he told me he’s not sorry for seeking top surgery, and he’s not sorry for sharing his story either. He shared some further thoughts about his treatment by the right wing press:

After receiving thousands of comments per day charged with transphobic, fatphobic, antisemitic and misogynistic vitriol, I felt numb by the time the large right-wing press began rolling in. That being said,The Daily Wire’s felt especially dehumanizing. Them trying to use me as a political pawn is predictable, because queer suffering is something they love to make useful, but my story doesn’t fit their narrative at all. I don’t regret a thing. It feels like they’re desperately grasping at straws and making false connections, which is common among conspiracists. The misgendering does blow my mind, as strange as that sounds. I guess I just wonder, how could you see someone so determined to live as themselves that they survive a near-death experience trying to achieve that, and still insist on addressing them as someone they’re not?

How could you have so little understanding of how human desire and identity function? They forget we have power too. While it’s hard not to internalize words like “mutilated” and “ruined” I know I’m not. I have an incredible local queer community that feels like family, an amazing transmasculine therapist, and more support on social media than I know what to do with. People can twist my story into anything they want, but it doesn’t change the reality of my life, that even after everything I’m both trans and happy.

Rylan’s refusal to give up on telling his story in the face of this right wing hate campaign is important. Transphobes viciously attack trans people who tell hard truths, even when those truths seem to go along with right wing narratives. The hatred for trans people is too bedrock to this ideology to allow them to be humane. Still, despite the ugliness of transphobia, it’s important that trans people become more willing to speak out and hold medical providers accountable if they fail to provide ethical care. The marginalization of trans people makes us vulnerable to unscrupulous actors who rely on our fear, and on the stigma and prejudice we face, to take advantage of us. This can happen on a personal level, as in romantic relationships where trans people are far more likely to be victims of domestic abuse, it can happen in employment settings where discrimination makes us afraid we won’t find other work when we’re mistreated, and perhaps most concerningly in medical settings, where some doctors seem drawn to working with us because our lack of social power makes it easy to evade all accountability.

While many of our providers are deeply ethical and caring, it can be difficult for a trans patient to tell good ones from bad in a climate of silence and fear. However, we cannot let our fears silence our voices any more. More trans people need to face up to the bullies on the right, as Rylan has, and tell the truth when we have bad experiences with providers, so that others in our community have the knowledge to make an informed choice on who to trust with their medical care. There’s nothing shameful about experiencing complications from surgery: Every surgery involves risks, and we can acknowledge those risks without taking anything away from how vital these procedures are to allowing trans people to live happy, healthy lives. However there is something very shameful about doctors who think they can avoid accountability because trans people are too fearful to speak out. For the sake of all trans people it’s time for us to let go of our fears and speak up loudly for our dignity and our right to ethical care.