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Jesse Singal LGBTQ row: Dan Savage slammed for transphobia after defending journalist over 'campaign of lies'

Dan Savage defended the blistering attacks on the journalist in a series of tweets saying that he wants to challenge anyone who thinks Singal is transphobic

Jesse Singal, a senior journalist and author, has found himself in a row regarding his views on LGBTQ in his recent podcast where he interviewed a trans woman and Bay-Area-based gender clinician Dr Erica Anderson. He is being slammed for showing LGBTQ in a bad light and for coming across as transphobic. His previous articles on the community are also dragged into the controversy. Singal then got listed on GLAAD for the same, alongside Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and other public figures.

Now, author Dan Savage comes in the picture after he defended the blistering attacks on the journalist in a series of tweets saying that he wants to challenge anyone who thinks Singal is transphobic. He also shared an article from the publication Quillette which supported Singal. This got the Internet sharing their thoughts as social media users slammed Savage for extending support to Jesse Singal.  

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How did Dan Savage come to Jesse Singal’s rescue?

The 56-year-old LGBTQ community activist took to Twitter to express his views on the recent controversy. He said, “I want to say, "I challenge anyone to listen to this interview  @jessesingal did with youth-gender clinician Dr Erica Anderson and tell me he's transphobic, but I know people will continue to insist he's transphobic. But he isn't.” He then tweeted, “I went through this myself a decade ago — people insisting I was transphobic. I was assaulted by people who insisted I was transphobic. People who weirdly invested in me being transphobic. It was an article of faith. I'm not.”

The renowned media pundit then posted, “I haven't said anything about the long & dishonest campaign against @jessesingal because I didn't think it would help. It would be dismissed as one transphobe coming to the defense of another and quite possibly make things worse for Jesse and renew the accusations against me.”  He then revealed the reason why he is talking about it saying, “Anyway, I'm speaking up now because this bulls**t @glaad is pulling is just appalling. Putting Singal on a list with people like Tony Perkins and Brian Brown and Keith Ablow is just f**king bullshit. It's defamatory.” Savage concluded with his tweet, “@glaad should retract this and apologize. They most likely won't, but they should.” 

Who is Jesse Singal?

Jesse Singal is a Brooklyn-based journalist. He has penned books on social science and social justice. His Twitter profile revealed that he was a former contributing writer at New York Magazine. He used to cover “everything from social science to politics to weird internet lingo involving staple crops”, says his official website.

His site further tells us, “Before that, I was a Bosch Fellow in Berlin and got a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Policy, where I studied inequality in America and how to fix it (totally worked). My work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, The Boston Globe, The Daily Beast, and other outlets.” He was also in news for his stories on investigative stories about the controversial ethnographer Alice Goffman, the fired sex researcher and gender-identity clinician Kenneth Zucker and a few others.   

How did Jesse Singal react to the controversy?  

Jesse Singal first penned a lengthy blog where he took on GLAAD’s pointers one by one and also asked them to take down their article. According to GLAAD, “Singal had wrongly claimed that adolescent patients who did not return to a clinic for gender dysphoria had "desisted" and no longer desired to change genders. There was never any evidence that any of the adolescents actually desisted. Singal says he "goofed" but clung to his belief that trans children can and do desist.” Reverting to this claim, Singal stated, “This one’s particularly infuriating because GLAAD is just straightforwardly parroting a false claim about me that has been circulating for years. This refers to a genuine error I made that I explained, in depth, in a Medium post headlined “A Lot of People, Myself Included, Have Been Misreading the Single Biggest Published Study on Childhood Gender Dysphoria Desistance and Persistence — It Offers Stronger Evidence for Desistance Than We Thought.”

According to his blog, “GLAAD Accountability Project catalogs anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and discriminatory actions of politicians, commentators, organization heads, religious leaders, and legal figures who have used their platforms, influence and power to spread misinformation and harm LGBTQ people. The Project reveals these individuals’ own words and actions, to help all Americans evaluate whether to vote for them, or quote them, or support their point of view. As journalists, newsrooms and platforms write stories or book guests for interviews and segments, they can check the record, add context to stories, or help decide whether a person with this history should continue to be given unchallenged air time or ink.”

Jesse Singal also took to Twitter when Dan Savage started facing the heat in the matter saying, “This is an underappreciated aspect of today's affair and how completely off the rails this organization is. GLAAD says right there that it's a problem to think desistance is real *at all*!!! They are pushing genuinely Trump-level science denialism, just from the other side.” In the next tweet, he shared, “Search Dan Savage's name and you'll see a cavalcade of people freaking out at him for defending me. As always, it's a subset of online obsessives who only have the foggiest sense exactly what they're mad about. One rumor appears to be that that *Dan* wrote the Quillette piece!”

‘Dan Savage continues to boost transphobia’

Social media users were not in a mood to calm down after Dan Savage tweeted in support of Singal. Speaking on the same lines, one user said, “Maybe you should listen to trans people on this one. And ...you know...on anything impacting them. I mean jesus dude, you of all people should know better.” One added, “It's useless. Their definition of transphobic is literally anyone who disagrees with them on anything. Disagreeing is a form of denial of their lived experience, which to them is equal to being against their very existence. That's why they talk in terms of "my existence", etc.”

Another said, “Dan, what the actual f**k? I'm so incredibly disappointed in you I can't even voice it all right now. as if the transphobic bigot brigades he incites isn't proof enough. jesus. you're so wrong on this. so so wrong.” The next one tweeted, “Dan Savage proving he's not transphobic by defending Jesse Singal. Maybe not the best approach,” whereas, the other said, “Jesse getting Bruenig and Dan Savage to one after the other say incredibly foolish, ugly, and transphobic things to cosign/defend him is in line with his general role in media, which is to call other powerful people to their transphobia.”

One slammed, “Can't believe that after years of hating, vaginas generally, bisexuals, asexuals, trans people and Black people, dan savage would do something explicitly transphobic.” One user concluded, “Dan Savage continues to boost transphobia and show his desire to hurt transgender people. As if that wasn't clear from pushing transphobic bigot Katie Herzog on us. Jesse Singal devotes his time and effort to hurting and harassing transgender people. Dan is transphobic.”