my Jesse Singal story

Note added March 16, 2021:

Back in late 2017, I wrote “my Jesse Singal story,” which was a 4,000-ish word essay about my experiences with him up to that point – that post remains intact below. Since then, there have been numerous developments that support and/or dovetail with points I made in my original piece. And since Singal recently dragged my name through the mud again, I thought it best to begin by briefly summarizing everything that has happened up to this point.

For those who don’t know me, I am an author and scientist who has written extensively about transgender people and issues, including trans healthcare and children. In 2016, for reasons unbeknownst to me, Singal took an interest in these latter topics, penning a series of articles – starting with How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired through 2018’s When Children Say They’re Trans – that most of us familiar with these matters felt were heavily slanted, if not intentionally biased. Those links will take you to my immediate responses to those two pieces; even more critiques of these and his other trans-related articles can be found here.

There are lots of people who disagree with me about trans issues, but I don’t go around writing “stories” about them. Singal is the sole exception to this, the reason being, he is the only journalist I’ve ever encountered who has attacked me on a personal level. Specifically, after I penned a civil blogpost critiquing his first trans-related piece, he began publicly smearing me, as documented throughout this post. For those looking for a TL;DR, the main incidents (all described in more detail below) are:

• In the middle of one of his trans-related science articles, while refuting my position, he brought up an article I had written about my dating experiences. I knew he had read my writings on the effectiveness of sexualizing trans women as a way to invalidate us, so I presumed he was trying to slut-shame me. If you read the original post below, you'll see that I provide evidence that he didn't actually like the piece in question, which has been his go-to defense whenever this comes up. Whether you think this incident constitutes slut-shaming or not, it's clearly inappropriate to bring up a woman's dating experiences in the middle of an unrelated article about science and *children*.

• After I wrote Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation: A Guide for Understanding Transgender Children Debates (a nuanced essay on the topics he had taken interest in), he smeared me in a private email group of “elite” journalists and writers (insinuating that I didn’t understand the “tricky science stuff”), then he intentionally lied about my views on detransition in order to whip up a Twitter mob against me, leading to the worst pile-on I’ve ever experienced.

All of this was sucky, to be sure. But what drove me to write this post were conversations I later had with other trans women who had similarly bad experiences with Singal, in which he either crossed personal boundaries and/or publicly disparaged them. One of those incidents (regarding journalist Katelyn Burns) is described below—specifically, after she went public about his tactics, he penned a Medium article to denounce her, going so far as to add “GamerGate” as a tag in a brazen attempt to whip up an online mob against her. (As you will see, online pile-ons are kind of his thing.)

Since then, Singal has used similar tactics on other writers, most of whom are trans women, but honestly, he is quick to go after anyone who he feels threatens his sense of “truth,” trans or otherwise. I’ve collected a few of these instances here. These are merely ones I’ve observed on Twitter, so it’s best to consider this list noncomprehensive. To mitigate further harassment of all the involved parties, most links point to archived tweets, but the originals still exist if you want to read any associated attachments.

Jun 18, 2018 – Katherine Cross on Singal sending her an email “swearing a storm at me because I tweeted something he disliked that he felt was untrue.”

Jun 18, 2018 – Cat Fitzpatrick mentions Singal threatened to sue her for politely disagreeing with him.

Jan 15, 2019 – Singal levies legal threats against two writers who mention that they personally know trans women who’ve had bad interactions with him.

Jul 7, 2020 – the day the Harper’s Letter (which Singal was a signatory) was released, Singal instigated pile-ons of multiple people. I captured him initiating the pile-on of Jennifer Finney Boylan as it was occurring in this thread (both up & down from linked-to tweet). Emily VanDerWerff reacts to Singal’s pile-on of her here and, two days later, discusses the aftermath of that pile-on (which included “Death threats, rape threats, invitations to commit suicide, constant misgendering, etc”). Ari Drennen took screenshots of Singal targeting Aja Romano.

Because Singal’s attack on Emily VanDerWerff was premised on his false presumption that she was trying to get one of her employers fired (which she has denied), lots of other writers began coming forward with stories of Singal contacting their employers and editors because he disliked what they wrote. Here are some of those instances:

Jul 7, 2020 – Katelyn Burns on Singal “repeatedly emailing my employer until they fired me” is found here. A week later a co-worker corroborated that story.

Jul 7, 2020 – Noah Berlatsky shares: “also Jesse emailed me to demand I save DMs from Katelyn and others and investigate them for him, implying he would sue me otherwise.”

Jul 7, 2020 – Katerine Cross shares: “Back when I wrote for Feministing, he repeatedly badgered the editors trying to get a critical post that mentioned him briefly changed or taken down.”

Jul 9, 2020 – Harron Walker shares how Singal “emailed my editor many times after this was published seeking correction....on my ANALYSIS of his work”

Jul 19, 2020 – Abigail Nussbaum shares how “Jesse Singal has emailed me some endless screed demanding retractions on a post I wrote about him directing abuse towards Emily VanDerWerff.”

Dec 18, 2020 – Grace Lavery shares “Statement After Being Brutally Savaged by the Sharp Tongue of the Renegade Jesse Singal, 12/18/20.” Here is Lavery’s editor on the piece in question responding to Singal’s pestering. 

Singal has persistently tried to frame my personal experiences that I recount below as me misinterpreting or exaggerating what took place. I hope that these additional incidents where he has gone after other writers demonstrates that this isn’t merely a “he said/she said” disagreement between him and me, but rather a more general pattern of him repeatedly trying to smear or silence his critics.

Finally, there are three common misconceptions about my original post that I feel the need to clarify. 

First, some people (including Singal himself) have mistaken the case I make here as evidence or an accusation that his actions are sexually motivated, or that he’s a “trans chaser,” or what have you. I make it *very clear* in this piece that that’s not what I’m saying (the two relevant paragraphs can be found in tweet form here). Notably, whenever Singal brings up or attempts to address my complaints against him (as he did recently), he always harps on my claims about the slut-shaming incident (which I stand behind, even though it’s not the most serious charge) and the notion that I have accused him of being sexually motived (which I have never once done). In contrast, he has *never* to my knowledge addressed the fact that he knowingly lied about my views on detransition (thereby creating a horrific pile-on) or that he belittled me in a private email group with other prominent journalists and writers (which very well could negatively impact my own writing career). My hunch is that Singal knows that many people – especially the anti-“cancel culture” fanbase he’s increasingly courted – will be sympathetic to “I’m being falsely accused of sexual misconduct”-type claims, when in fact I have been making a very different argument (which I will re-assert in the next paragraph).

Second, some have assumed that the purpose of this post is to show that Singal is transphobic. This then becomes a giant straw man that he and his supporters (who don’t quite understand how prejudice works) will attempt to take down by pointing to that one article where Singal said lots of nice things about Contrapoints. So let me state for the record: I couldn’t care less whether Singal is prejudiced against or "phobic" of trans people or not. I judge him based upon his actions. And from those actions, I can say two things for sure: 1) He has written multiple articles about trans children and healthcare that seem overflowing with “fair and balanced” verisimilitude if you are unfamiliar with the subject matter, but which are clearly one-sided to those in the know – so much so, that his “When Children Say They’re Trans” article has been cited in a federal court case intended to undo transgender legal protections, and GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) includes an entry for him in their accountability project. 2) Singal has repeatedly—both behind the scenes and in online settings—set out to silence or smear the reputations of numerous trans women, including me.

Lastly, since writing this piece, I’ve had multiple people accuse me of trying to “ruin” (or in today’s parlance, “cancel”) Singal. I address this at the very end of the post below, but it’s worth reiterating here: Unlike Singal, I have never once attempted to contact his employers, editors, publishers, etc. Furthermore, I am a writer who has a career too. In fact, pretty much every person who is mentioned above is a writer with a career of their own. Before writing the original post, I had only ever critiqued Singal’s articles, not him personally. He was the one who made this personal – multiple times, in fact – before I ever considered writing this. So if you, dear reader, are deeply concerned about the possible impact that this post might have on Singal’s career, but couldn’t care less about what impact his actions may have had on my career, or the careers of all the other writers who’ve since felt the need to speak out against his tactics, well then I’d encourage you to give some serious thought as to why that is. 

-julia

subsequent Note added March 19, 2021: The events that instigated me adding the above Note, and subsequent events that forced me to close and protect my Twitter account, can be found in Statement on Jesse Singal, canceling, & deactivating my Twitter account. As a result of me having to protect my account, some of the links below may not work for you, at least for the time being. Some of these past tweets may be archived on the Wayback Machine. I hope to make my Twitter account fully public again as soon as possible, once I feel that it is safe to do so...

HERE'S THE ORIGINAL POST:

Many people know of Jesse Singal as a senior/science editor at New York Magazine. Within transgender communities, Singal has garnered a reputation (particularly over the last two years) for repeatedly promoting ideas that are in opposition to, or which flat-out undermine, trans people’s perspectives on issues that impact our lives. He has done this in the form of seemingly serious-minded articles, but also in more flippant or provocative exchanges from his Twitter account (which he recently shut down).

As a trans author and activist who disagrees with many of Singal’s positions, I have gone on the record (in my own articles and Twitter threads) to challenge some of those ideas and his framing of them. But in this post, I want to talk about my personal experiences with Singal, because they are rather out of the ordinary. While I’ve long found these incidents to be frustrating and baffling, I never thought to compile them all in one place before. That changed last Friday, when Katelyn Burns (who is also a trans woman writer) shared her personal exchanges with Singal in this Twitter thread. [btw, Burns was forced to lock her account for reasons explained here, but the thread has since been archived here and here.] While she had far more interactions with him than I’ve had, some of what she recounts very much resonated with my own experiences. So I figured that I’d share my story here (I will explain more about my reasons for doing so at the end of this piece).

Singal first emailed me on January 9, 2016, regarding an article that he was in the process of writing:

I'm working on a story about the closing of the Zucker clinic. If I emailed you some straightforward questions today, do you think there's a chance you'd have time to answer by the end of the weekend? And it looks like this is probably the best one­stop­shopping article of yours for me to read to understand your stance on Zucker, right? Any other reading you'd suggest?

The “this” link (which appeared in his actual email to me) points to an essay I wrote in 2009 entitled Psychology, Sexualization and Trans-Invalidations (it began as a keynote lecture for the 8th Annual Philadelphia Trans Health Conference). It is a lengthy piece that discusses common strategies that people use in order to invalidate trans people’s identities and perspectives. I do discuss Zucker in the piece, but the bulk of the essay analyzes the ways in which sexualization (i.e., reducing a person to their sexual bodies and behaviors, to the exclusion of other characteristics) is used as a tactic to invalidate and dehumanize transgender people, especially trans women. I draw parallels with how a woman will be taken less seriously, and may even be outright dehumanized, if people objectify or slut-shame her (there is plenty of research demonstrating this). There is a long history of both the media and psychologists/sexologists dwelling on trans women’s bodies and sexual proclivities, and I argued that this essentially has the same effect: It enables people to trivialize and dehumanize us. I’ve since come to refer to this phenomenon as the “slut-shaming” equivalent for trans women. (This will become relevant later in this story.)

Anyway, I gave Singal links to some of my other writings related to Zucker and gender reparative therapy. Then he replied with his own thoughts and questions for me—this is when I first got the impression that he was leaning toward writing a “pro-Zucker” piece. So I painstakingly answered all of his questions in a long email, in the hopes that it might shed some light onto issues Singal may have overlooked or was simply misinformed about. 

Singal’s article, How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired, came out on February 7, 2016. It is a long-read that somehow fails to include any actual transgender voices, including any of my lengthy responses. (Parker Molloy was also interviewed for, but not included in, Singal’s piece, as she recounts here). [note added after publication: Brynn Tannehill was also interviewed for, but not included in, the piece.] Now, if you’ve never heard of Ken Zucker before—as is the case for a vast majority of the mainstream public—then I’ll bet that if you read Singal’s article, you’d come away with the impression that it was a thorough journalistic investigation that uncovered some kind of mass transgender conspiracy to undermine science and ruin one researcher’s career. But as someone whose been involved in trans communities and writing about these issues for almost twenty years, I can tell you that the article was heavily skewed and omitted critical information. For this reason, on February 9, 2016, I published Placing Ken Zucker's clinic in historical context, which was essentially my answers to the questions Singal posed to me via email (although I removed the actual questions he asked, as they hinted at his early pro-Zucker leanings, and I had no intentions of smearing him personally; at the time, I wanted to believe that he was simply misguided, rather than someone with a deliberate anti-trans axe to grind).

But Singal then went on to write many more “trans people are destroying/denying science”-type articles, even though our anti-gender-reparative-therapy and pro-affirming-trans-children stances are shared by WPATH (the world’s largest and longstanding transgender health professional organization) and most contemporary trans health providers. One of Singal’s subsequent articles, What’s Missing From the Conversation About Transgender Kids, was published on July 25, 2016. The focus of the piece was “desistance”—this refers to the possibility that young children who cross-gender-identify may eventually grow out of it over time. People who harbor anti-trans agendas love to cite the dubious statistic that 80% of transgender children ultimately desist, but the studies they point to display numerous faulty assumptions and methodologies (as detailed in depth in articles by Zack Ford and Brynn Tannehill). [note added 6-18-18, see also two recent peer-reviewed articles debunking 80% desistance cited here] Anyway, this particular Singal article promoted this “80% desistance” statistic, and (unlike his Zucker piece) this time he did cite trans people who disagree with him, including myself. And here is the passage involving me from that piece:

And when I emailed Serano for the Zucker story, she made the same argument (as an aside, you should read her Daily Beast article about navigating the dating scene as a trans woman in San Francisco). I didn’t end up quoting from Serano’s response, but she posted it online afterward, and it reads, in part: “These children [at Zucker’s clinic] are not necessarily brought in for “gender dysphoria” but for gender non­conformity. I’ve already conceded (as most trans activists & advocates would), many of these gender non­conforming kids will not grow up to be cross­gender-identified.”

I have no qualms with him including my quote in his piece. But the “read her Daily Beast article about navigating the dating scene as a trans woman in San Francisco” line links to the article shown to the right—it’s an excerpt from my 2013 book Excluded (in the book, the chapter goes by the less bombastic title “Dating”). To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the title “The Struggle To Find Trans Love In San Francisco” or the photo, but as a general rule, writers don’t get any input into, or veto power over, the titles and images that accompany their articles; these are determined by editors or other employees at that media outlet. Anyway, I originally wrote this piece in 2009 and it discusses how—in my experiences, and at that time (things have changed a bit since then)—while significant numbers of straight cisgender men were open to dating trans women, the same was not generally true for cisgender lesbians, and I explored reasons for why that may be. 

Now, you may be thinking, “Oh, isn’t that nice of Singal to mention that he liked your dating piece, even though he disagrees with you on desistance.” But think for a moment about the context: He mentioned this in the middle of an article about transgender children and science. Don’t you think that’s a bit out of place? If he really appreciated my writings and wanted to share them with his readers, he could have instead cited my previously mentioned “Psychology, Sexualization and Trans-Invalidations” essay, which 1) I know he has read (as he specifically referenced it in his first email to me), and 2) would have been far more relevant to the topic at hand. In fact, I’ve written scores of articles/essays about transgender people and issues over the years, on all sorts of topics. Why pick this particular piece? If Singal first learned about me via googling terms like “transgender,” “children,” “Zucker,” “psychology,” “research,” etc. (which I’ve written extensively about), he would have found many of my other writings, but probably not the piece about dating. So did he specifically seek out pieces about my dating habits and sexuality? Or did he read a large swath of my writings and, upon doing so, decided to direct his readers to the piece that had the most sexually suggestive headline and photo? I can’t say for sure. But given the thesis of my “Psychology, Sexualization and Trans-Invalidations” essay (which I know for sure he has read) about how mentioning trans women’s sexualities results in people not taking what we have to say seriously, it seemed (far more likely than any other alternative) that he was purposefully trying to slut-shame me with that citation.

(If you think I’m jumping to conclusions here, hold tight, more evidence to this effect is on the way. But if you are a doubter, just ask yourself this: Imagine that you write about myriad serious topics. And you’ve also written one piece once in the past about your dating experiences. And someone who disagrees with you about one of those other serious matters you’ve written about at great length, in the middle of countering your arguments, tosses in: “as an aside, you should read [insert your name here]’s article about navigating the dating scene . . .” How would that make you feel? Would you assume it was a random flattering comment? Or that there was an ulterior motive behind it?)

subsequent note: In July, 2018, Singal insinuated that I was "hysterical" (great word choice) for calling this slut-shaming, so I conducted a poll, and 73.6% of respondents who were told about the scenario but not specifics (i.e., that it was Singal) considered this to be slut-shaming. All this is chronicled in a separate post: on Jesse Singal, slut-shaming, and calling women "hysterical"

While this slut-shaming incident really bothered me, I didn’t make a fuss about it at the time. I was more concerned (as both a trans activist and a scientist) with the misinformation that Singal and others were spreading about desistance and transgender children. So on Aug 2, 2016, I published Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation: A Guide for Understanding Transgender Children Debates—it’s a long-read, because I wanted to address many of the complexities and nuances that often get tossed aside in mainstream takes on these matters. In my piece, I critique Singal’s articles (and similar pieces by other authors) for their faulty claims and framing, but I never went after him as a person. Notably, I did not suggest that readers read up on his dating habits! 

My essay was generally well-received; the media outlet Vox even interviewed me about it (see: The debate about transgender children and “detransitioning” is really about transphobia, which was published August 9, 2016; for the record, for reasons I’ve already explained, I was not consulted on that title)...

pausing mid-paragraph here for a subsequent note: I would later learn – in a 6-27-18 article by Harron Walker in Jezebel entitled Private Messages Reveal the Cis Journalist Groupthink Behind Trans Media Narratives – that my Vox interview drove Singal "bonkers" (his own words), and he proceeded to smear me in a private email group of “elite” journalists. Notably, he refers to me here as merely a "happily transitioned trans woman" and goes on to say that he's more qualified than most trans people to "write about about [sic] the tricky science stuff." To clarify the record here, I have a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, and Jesse Singal... um, doesn't. Anyway, knowing my piece drove him "bonkers" seems to explain what happens next... 

Jesse Singal's message to "elite" journalists dismissing me, from the Harron Walker/Jezebel article linked to above

...I received a few negative responses on social media, as happens whenever anyone publishes any article (especially if it’s about trans-related issues), but not any more than usual. That is, until sometime around August 12, 2016, when my Twitter notifications were suddenly flooded with social conservatives, TERFs, and (to a lesser degree) people who have detransitioned, all of whom were virtual-yelling at me for supposedly denying the existence of people who detransition. Even though I never said or insinuated either of those things in my Medium essay or Vox interview (this is plainly obvious if you read the actual pieces). Turns out that this backlash was largely attributable to an alarmist tweet (or tweets, I don’t remember if it was more than one, and I cannot access them now that he shut his Twitter account down) Singal posted wherein he falsely claimed that this was what I was saying. In other words, he flat-out spread lies about me. 

note added 6-29-18: since publishing this, Singal has re-activated his Twitter account, so I was able to obtain this screen-shot of his alarmist lies about me:

I initially responded to these pile-on-inducing lies on this thread, and more thoroughly in this subsequent follow up post (see paragraph 8).

This wasn’t some random person online who was propagating lies about me. This is a senior editor at a major media outlet, and someone who tries to position himself as a “rational objective voice” on these matters. Singal is extremely familiar with my writings and positions, and I’m sure that he read my essay (if he did not, then it would have been extremely irresponsible for him to make such outrageous public statements about it!). I am convinced that he knew full well that he was misrepresenting my views, and that he did this on purpose (on his Twitter platform which, according to the Wayback Machine, had over 23K followers at the time) in order to sic a social media mob on me. And this wouldn’t be the first time that he did such a thing: In the aforementioned Katelyn Burns thread, she says about Singal, “I was one of hundreds of trans people trying to explain why he was wrong. He singled me out and quote tweeted me with the GG h/t before blocking me.” If you are unfamiliar with what “GG h/t” means, it refers to #GamerGate—as Singal well knows (given that he’s written numerous articles about it) adding that hashtag to any tweet would elicit a horde of men who oppose “social justice warriors” and have a well-documented history of doxxing, smearing, and harassing women and minorities. This is not only an extremely shitty thing to do to someone, but it’s also an extraordinarily unprofessional move for a senior editor of a major media outlet. It’s also extremely hypocritical for Singal to engage in such behavior, given that he also fancies himself a critic of internet toxicity, online mobs, and “witch hunts.”

There are two more incidents that I want to share. Sometime around February 9, 2017, Singal tweeted a video (I believe; once again, I am unable to verify the precise content of the tweet) from someone who claimed that trans women are pressuring cisgender lesbians to sleep with them by calling them “transphobic” if they do not. Here are threads from Katherine Cross and Noah Berlatsky reacting to this incident (many others on social media were reacting to this too, it’s just that these are the two threads that I saved the links for and have easy access to as I write this). I don’t know of any trans women who are going around saying such things—this is a famous TERF myth, akin to manufactured fears about trans people preying on women in restrooms). What some of us have said is that anti-transgender prejudice often influences desire (not that “if you don’t sleep with trans women you’re prejudiced”). Here is Cross making this case, and Berlatsky makes similar points via an analogy with anti-Semitism. 

Do you know who else has made this case? Me! In my “Dating”/The Struggle To Find Trans Love In San Francisco piece I mentioned to earlier. You remember, the essay that Singal loved so much that he couldn’t stop himself from bringing it up in the middle of an article about transgender children? That one! The idea that anti-trans prejudice might negatively influence desire is the main point of that piece! The fact that Singal was now championing the exact opposite viewpoint proves that he did not especially care for my “Dating” piece, but he cited it anyway in order to slut-shame me. 

(Alternatively, I suppose that he might have truly liked my “Dating” piece, but nevertheless chose to champion the opposing “trans women are shaming lesbians into sleeping with them” view in order to piss off his transgender critics and/or whip up social media mobs against us. These possibilities are not mutually exclusive. And frankly, I’m not sure which possibility would be more disingenuous or disgusting.)

One final anecdote: On May 26, 2017 (after all the events I just detailed occurred), Singal sent me this email:
  
Working on a piece I'd like to get some of your thoughts on that touches in part on questions of informed consent for younger gender dysphoric people -- already had useful on-the-record convos with [THREE TRANS WOMEN WHOSE NAMES I’VE DELETED]. Hoping to avoid mistakes I made in the Zucker piece, but I also realize/acknowledge that we've had an unfortunately spar-y relationship on Twitter etc., so I wanted to first ask your permission before sending the question. No worries if you're not interested, of course.

Frankly, the “we've had an unfortunately spar-y relationship on Twitter etc.” remark ticked me off. I never followed him on Twitter, and I’m almost positive that I never once @-ed/replied to him on anything. We never had any kind of “relationship”; what we did have was him publicly slut-shaming me, lying about my views, and siccing anti-trans internet mobs on me, and me simply responding to those events and trying to set the record straight. 

Anyway, I replied that I was too busy right then (which happened to be true), but that I’d be open to answering questions in the future if he was truly working to avoid past mistakes. I highly doubted that he was sincere about that, although I wanted to leave that possibility open, as occasionally (however infrequently) people do change. But I have subsequently learned that Singal received a book deal two months prior [March 2017, according to Publishers Marketplace] for a book about “half­baked psychology” that specifically mentions “recent work on gender identity” [i.e., presumably not the older work by gender-reparative-oriented researchers like Zucker et al.]. So it seems as though his avoiding-past-mistakes claim was not entirely genuine.

But here is the thing that really stuck with me after that last email exchange: He was so nonchalant about it. The tone of his message felt as though we were old pals who had simply had an argument or two in the past, but he was now sorry about what happened and wanted to reconnect. I mean, he slut-shamed me, lied about me, and whipped up an online mob against me, when I had done absolutely nothing to him, except for disagree with his public writings and claims about trans people and issues (i.e., I stayed within the realm of what’s considered “appropriate” public discourse). How could he not see that I’d be angry about all the things that he did to me? And sure, other people have publicly slut-shamed me, purposefully misrepresented my views, and/or tried to stir up online outrage at me, but not a single one of those people had the gall to hit me up for an interview afterwards! 

Upon reading Katelyn Burns’s Twitter thread last Friday, this all suddenly made sense (or at least, some sense) to me. Burns described these strange back-and-forth exchanges with Singal, where he’d alternately be nice and friendly, but then other times be mean or belittling. (Or at least, that’s how I interpreted those exchanges.) This is difficult to talk about in a public setting, because most cisgender people have a simplistic view of anti-trans prejudice: a person either hates trans people (i.e., they are transphobic) or likes them (and therefore is presumed to be non-transphobic). But over the course of my life, I’ve met quite a number of men who have a sort of love/hate relationship with trans women, where they are intrigued or fascinated by us, while simultaneously being resentful or repulsed. And I’m not implying sexually here—there is no evidence of that in this case, plus even if there was, I would never slut-shame or deride a person for that. No, what I’m talking about is men (and it’s typically men) who want to both interact with or be close to trans women, while also displaying a compulsive tendency to disparage or hurt us. (I suppose that some men treat cisgender women in similar ways, so I’m not claiming that this is some kind of a trans-woman-only experience; all I’m saying is that this is a phenomenon that I, and other trans women I’ve shared conversations with, have observed.) 

I have no desire to psychoanalyze Singal from afar—I have never met him in person, and I have no idea what goes on in his brain—but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he fell into this category. It would explain his impulsive need to insert himself into almost every trans-related issue—it’s not just transgender children, but obscure TERF talking points, the Rebecca Tuvel/“transracial” debate, etc.—while almost always coming down on whatever side dismisses trans women’s perspectives. It would explain his lack of empathy towards trans women and his obliviousness over why we might be angry with him (for men who display these tendencies, in their minds, they like us, so they are unable or unwilling to see how their actions may hurt or invalidate us). Finally, it would explain why Singal seems to be generally aware of, and interested in, whatever trans women are discussing and doing online, yet he does not seem to be similarly interested in current affairs and conversations occurring within trans male/masculine communities. 

I said at the outset that I would eventually explain why I decided to write this piece. Believe me, I had way better things to do with my last couple days than re-live my past encounters with Singal, and I’m certainly not looking forward to the inevitable blowback that I will receive from him (and possibly others). I’m pretty sure that he’ll respond in one of two ways. He’ll either turn this into a “he said/she said” thing, and litigate all the small details, not seeing/addressing the forest (i.e., the crappy way he treats trans women) for the trees. This is how he responded to Burns; that post went up while I was finishing up this piece, and while I will not be linking to it here (as a general rule, I believe trans women, but also, in this case, there are too many overlaps between her story, my story, and what I am starting to hear from others), but it is worth mentioning that Singal f***ing added the tag “GamerGate” to his Medium post refuting her!). 

this was the end of Singal's Medium post circa December 4, 2017 when I took this screen shot. after people raised attention to the "GamerGate" tag, he subsequently removed it.

Alternatively, knowing that Singal is a big fan of the Dregerian narrative of supposedly powerful trans women who (despite being a marginalized population who is not taken seriously by society) somehow manage to conspire to organize witch hunts, destroy science, and ruin people’s careers (in fact, Singal pretty much lifted this narrative for his “How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired” article), I would not be surprised if he took a page from that same playbook once again.

Well, I am not a part of any vast conspiracy. I did chat with Katelyn Burns after reading her thread on Friday, and upon learning that there were other stories similar to what I experienced, I decided to come forward. Hopefully, if other trans women have had similar experiences with Singal, this will make it easier for them to share their stories too.

And to be clear, I am not writing this in an attempt to “bring him down” or “ruin his career.” If I did, I would have come up with a far more provocative, headline-grabbing, search-engine-friendly title than the generic “my Jesse Singal story” I ultimately settled on. I do not think that he is an awful person through and through, or that he should be permanently banished from society. All I’m saying is that he seems to have a history of treating trans women rather shittilly. (Or disrespectfully, or unprofessionally, if you are looking for a non-profanity-laden euphemism.) If Singal continues to prosper as a writer/editor, good for him, I will not interfere provided that he stops inserting himself into trans women’s lives and issues. But since he seems compelled to do so, with no evidence of relinquishing any time soon, I feel that it is incumbent on me to share my story and this history, so that people don’t fall for the “I am a neutral outsider objectively analyzing transgender people and science” act he’s been putting on.

Finally, some of you who read this may be disinterested in all the transgender-related issues that permeate this story (i.e., issues that personally impact my life, but not yours nor Singal’s). And you may be inclined to put yourself into Singal’s shoes and say, “Dear lord, this transgender woman is making accusations that could ruin his reputation and livelihood as a writer!” If this is the case for you, I would remind you that I am a writer and this is my livelihood too. I also have a reputation, one which Singal has tried to smear on multiple occasions (via slut-shaming, spreading lies about me, and siccing online mobs upon me). If, after reading all this, your immediate knee-jerk reaction is to believe Singal, and discount me (and Burns, and any other trans woman who reacts to this piece and/or steps forward), then I have a few social psychology books about how prejudice works that I’d be happy to lend you . . . 

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