Many in the media aren’t happy that one of their own is writing about trans people – with regrets.
The Atlantic’s “When Children Say They’re Trans” article in its July/August issue was recently met with completely expected outrage across media platforms. That’s because the article featured several transgender people who went back to their biological gender. Writing on this perspective proves to be a death sentence by other media, particularly for this story’s writer, Jesse Singal.
In response, Jezebel asked, “What’s Jessie Singal’s Fucking Deal?” Contributor Harron Walker argued that Singal used his trans articles as a “smokescreen for his anti-trans sentiment” and even asked why The Atlantic “decided to publish as its cover story a cis writer’s article about trans people who aren’t trans.” She accused the outlet of “play[ing] host to Singal’s bullshit.”
ThinkProgress called the story a “a loud dog whistle for anti-transgender parents. LGBTQ editor Zack Ford said that the “article’s lopsided perspectives and dearth of citations” gives parents a reason to “justify any doubts they have about their own transgender children.” Several of Singal’s talking points, he added, “appear to be borrowed directly from advocates for ex-gay conversion therapy.”
Alex Dalbey from The Daily Dot stated that the article “plays into largely unfounded fears about trans children.” Dalbey worried that the Atlantic’s headline reading “When children say they’re trans” instead of “When children are trans” casts “doubt on a child’s or teen’s ability to identify their gender.” Dalbey agreed that “gender is complicated” and “it can change over time,” but said “this change does not make the identity invalid.”
Slate writer Alex Barasch said that Singal had a “history of biased reporting on trans lives.” By only talking to “detransitioners,” Singal refused to “engage meaningfully with the far larger mass of trans people” that “correctly recognized their own readiness to transition.” Singal perhaps tries “telling a difficult but essential truth,” he added, but “the media landscape” and the “medical one” do not reflect this.
In reaction to the outrage, The Atlantic posted the first in a series of responses with the headline, “I detransitioned. But not because I wasn’t Trans.” Writer Robyn Kanner claimed that Singal was “attempting to provide hope to parents that their child who says they’re trans might not be” by leaving “enough doubt for you to consider gatekeeping your child’s identity.” Kanner called it “irresponsible” and even compared a teen’s exploration of gender identity to picking a college major. Even though “75 percent of college students end up completely changing their major,” Kanner wrote, we still make young people “decide whether they’re going to go into thousands of dollars in student-loan debt.”
But while choosing a college major is a reversible decision, gender reassignment surgery is not – at least according to many in the media.
