𝓝𝓪𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓮 𝓦𝔂𝓷𝓷  💎

I hope I don't come off as enraged, triggered, hysterical, or narcissistically deluded (tho if I'm being viewed through a bigoted lens there's not much I can do) if I point out that this is maybe a little bit of a red flag.

Now, Singal doesn't write about MtF sexuality. He writes about trans children. But the fact that Dreger is his inspiration tells you his core attitude: trans people are not competent to speak about their own issues; we need objectively minded cis people to figure it out for us.

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.