𝓝𝓪𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓮 𝓦𝔂𝓷𝓷  💎

This is what academic philosophers call "epistemic injustice," the incredulity with which we often regard the testimony of marginalized people. For instance the testimony of two women is worth the testimony of one man. The testimony of trans people isn't worth shit.

So what we have is a lineage of cis commentators (Blanchard, Dreger, Singal) who regard trans people as fundamentally incompetent and unreliable witnesses on such topics as their own sexuality, gender experience, and childhood.

This is incredibly condescending, but it is also unjust. It robs us of our ability to tell our own stories. It imposes on us the viewpoint of an outsider looking at us like something in a Petri dish. No journalist should write about a marginalized group in this way.

This is not to say trans people always get it right. Of course we don't. We're as susceptible to biases, cognitive distortions, wishful thinking, and groupthink as anyone else. But Singal seems to think he can step in and figure it all out for us. No bitch. Sit the fuck down.

Singal et al think they can shake up the dogmatic sloganeering of the trans community by adding their outsider perspective. They don't understand that by foisting their ignorant & inept viewpoint on us they're driving us to close ranks, which is what you do when you're attacked.

They don't understand that they're exacerbating the very problems they claim to want to fix. This is not how journalism about trans people should be done in Current Year. Non-transphobic editors should not hire journalists who write like this.

Let's close with an open letter to @jessesingal: Jesse. Gurl. I don't know what your deal is or why you even care about any of this. I still appreciate the puff piece. You were friendly on Skype, though in retrospect I wonder if I was being observed like an insect in amber.

I've enjoyed talking to you in the past because I love having nuanced freespeechy conversations about philosophy of gender, MtF sexuality, detransitioners, and trans kids. But I often feel I cannot do that in public so long as the conversation is commandeered by people like you.

There are many trans people who want to have these conversations, as well as cis people who approach us with more humility and patience than you and your predecessors. Please step down and let us have that.

It's very difficult to have the nuanced conversations when you're under the heel of an oppressive political regime, hostile gatekeepers, condescending journalists. These are the circumstances that make us distrustful, that compel us to publicly huddle around unified ideology.

In private I've found that any three trans people have four different ideas about what being trans even means. We're not a delusional hivemind. We're fully able to lead this conversation. Your input has not been helpful. Let us take it from here. Really, we've got it.