𝓝𝓪𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓮 𝓦𝔂𝓷𝓷  💎

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.

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.