We Have to Talk About Dr. Ting and Epstein

The Epstein files don't reveal wrongdoing from the doctor, but his relationship with the world's most notorious pedophile is concerning

Editor's note: I want to be clear that I am not accusing Dr. Jess Ting of Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan of any malfeasance or crimes. Everything I mention here has been documented in other publications.

Dr. Jess Ting is a plastic surgeon and surgical director of Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York City. He is a pioneer in the field of vaginoplasty, having innovated the peritoneal vaginoplasty technique for transfemme bottom surgeries.

He's also all over the Epstein files.

His name appears in the files over 900 times, though many of these are emails in which the surgeon is CCed or on a longer email chain with other people. There are no implications that Ting engaged in any malfeasance or criminal activity related to Epstein's international pedophile ring, but it's clear that the two had a personal and professional relationship with each other that lasted past the time Epstein was initially charged with sex-related crimes.

Emails in the files indicate that Ting and his family visited Epstein's now notorious private island in the US Virgin Islands to "play with [Epstein's] toys", though an examination of Epstein's calendar indicated the financier/pedophile wasn't there at the time. Ting confirmed to The Advocate that he and his family did visit there one time on a family vacation in the area.

Ting told The Advocate that the the "toys" were jet skis and a sailboat.

According to a Politico report earlier this week, Ting solicited a $50,000 donation to a breast cancer research project he was involved in. Emails released in the files indicate that Ting personally treated some "VIPs" sent to Mt. Sinai by Epstein on numerous occasions. One time, the plastic surgeon "fixed" a hole in a woman's nose from a nose ring at the request of Epstein.

Again, there is nothing incriminating here. Their personal relationship is icky, for sure, but not enough for Ting to see official consequences.

But that relationship gets at a larger point about trans health care that I think a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the industry fail to understand:

The trans medical industry attracts a lot of creeps.

Elsewhere in the Epstein files, in emails not involving Ting, Epstein is seen conversing with dozens of conservative men about trans people. In one exchange, for example, evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers says trans women are "the best of both worlds," a reference to the fact that most trans women have both breasts and a penis. Trivers goes on to say that trans men are "the worst of both worlds."

A Feb 2016 email from Epstein to Trivers encouraged the evo biologist to do a talk about trans people.

A later exchange saw Trivers notify Epstein of an upcoming talk from Trivers in London titled, "An Evening on Evolutionary Biology: An overview covering Feminism, Transgender, Homosexuality and Honor Killings" in October 2016. Trivers tells the pedophile that he'll be receiving a $3000 fee for the lecture with an additional $3000 added on after.

"[J]ust as you outlined—this will create an immediate internet wave especially in the UK with coverage in all the major newspapers and so on", he wrote.

Another email exchange from 2014, years before trans issues became a contested issue in US national politics, saw a user named "SHanson900" mention a 2014 NY Mag article about women's colleges and trans people to Epstein.

"You spoke about it only 6 + mos ago. Now the cover story. Dam !!" Read a comment in the email.

A different email in the files revealed that SHanson900 is someone named Stephen Hanson. This person's identity has not publicly been identified, though I am working on confirming it and will update this story if I do. (Update) William and Mary professor Stephen Hanson responded to an email from Burns Notice saying that the emails were "[d]efinitely not me. Good luck tracking the person down."

I won't go into every instance of trans people mentioned in the Epstein files, but it was clear that many of the wealthy elites who hobnobbed with the notorious pedo had trans people on their minds even before we became front page and opinion fodder for English-speaking newspapers across the globe.

The emails reveal that Epstein at least took part in introducing the international moral panic against trans people that is currently underway in multiple countries. That Dr. Ting, who has hundreds of trans people in his current or past care, was so closely involved with him should be concerning to all of us.

The reality is that trans health care as a field attracts many who could be considered abusers, though again, I am not accusing Ting of any abuse. It's easy enough to see the "professionals" who believe they can fix or cure us of our transness, but even those who claim to support our right to exist can find ways to torture us.

Consider the many hoops adults have to jump through to access gender affirming care. We have to prove our own seriousness, our state of mind, and that we are capable of giving consent for trans-related surgery. Most procedures for cis people do not have such requirements (with the very notable exception of hysterectomies for child-bearing aged cis women).

Even then, we are required to go through a full year of therapy and live in the gender we are transitioning to for over a year just to get a first appointment with a bottom surgeon like Ting.

In my own transition, my therapist knew very little about trans people when I first started going to her, and I taught her a great deal. She used what I taught her to build out a full client list of trans therapy clients. And then when I asked her to write me a letter for surgery in April 2017 (a year after when I started going out as a woman), she denied me, saying I had to wait until October for the letter (which is required before even contacting potential surgeons). October was a year after when I began presenting as a woman at work.

I never voiced my concerns about all this to her, lest I risk her dumping me as a client and having to wait another year of seeing a new therapist for a letter.

Later in my transition, I received a botched revision. I won't go into details, but will say it was minor in relation to my health and the operation of my new equipment but also that it was a major fuck up on the surgeon's part. My doctor locally was horrified at the basic mistake, the gynecologist I was referred to confirmed the problem, and my pelvic floor therapist also confirmed that it was not normal.

Yet still the surgeon's office tried to gaslight me into thinking that it was fine and no big deal. It wasn't until I threatened to write an essay about the whole situation that the surgeon's office offered to fly me out to fix it.

In August 2020, I wrote about the alleged abuses of surgeon Dr. Kathy Rumer for Jezebel. She was not my surgeon, but has been referred to within many trans communities as "the butcher." Publication of the piece was delayed for months because Rumer tried to bully me and the publication with a phony lawsuit (the details of which are discussed at length in the piece).

Surgeons, therapists, and doctors all hold positions of power over trans people, who are disproportionately unemployed, underemployed, or trapped in poverty. It's the perfect field for abusers to enter and find helpless victims.

As I noted in the Jezebel piece, there's no central authority that trans patients can turn to to report provider abuses, and it can be difficult to report problems in the press. Alongside all of this, the professional transphobe industry turns any reported abuse into an argument against trans health care in general.

They're already starting to do this with Ting and his Epstein connection.

We are so marginalized by society that even when we do try to name our abusers, we are frequently bullied for doing so. We saw it with Rumer's attempted lawsuit against me, and we saw it in MeToo when everyone laughed at the allegations against Jeffrey Tambor by multiple trans women on the cast and crew of "Transparent".

It wasn't until a cis woman, Jessica Walter, came forward with her own allegations against Tambor that he faced any consequences from the public (he had been dismissed from Transparent after the initial allegations emerged).

It's not lost on me that one of Epstein's first accusers was a trans woman named Ava Cordero. According to an Observer report from 2008, she "claimed that in 2000, when she was 16 years old, Mr. Epstein invited her to his Palm Beach mansion, took off her clothes and requested a massage, proceeding to then grab her and request oral sex against her will."

Epstein's attorney claimed that Cordero was trying to take advantage of a rich man after other allegations about him started coming out and the case against him was dismissed.

Cordero was roundly mocked by newspapers covering the allegations at the time. The NY Post wrote about the suit repeatedly, with consistently mocking language about Cordero.

How many girls and women would have been saved if society took a trans woman's allegations seriously back then?

So no, Ting didn't appear to do anything criminal, but there's also no reason why trans patients should trust him with their health care either. He likely won't face consequences for any of this, but his patients should enter his care with both eyes wide open.

Editor's note: This article was edited from its original version to add emailed comments from Professor Stephen Hanson

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