I can't even imagine having to clarify yourself this many times. I'm sorry, Jesse. I love your writing, but for your sake, hopefully we can see more stuff focused on your book...and YA Twitter.
Yup, I have a satisfyingly large number of book podcast interviews already scheduled, and I specifically *didn't* send this one out as an email because I think it's just too much of that stuff for my newsletter subscribers. But I do want to debunk what I can debunk -- even just giving people something to link to helps, I find. Overall, yes, hoping to not have to write much more about any of this in April.
There are some "he said/she said" back and forths between journalists where I can see both sides. But the persistent misreadings of you and your work are so blatantly wrong that I can't fathom any other explanation than that these people are operating in extreme bad faith. I know they're worried about trans people and kids, I get that. But using tactics like this leave me with little sympathy for their lies about you.
I don't know about this, that they're so worried about trans people and kids, you're being a bit generous here. I mean, they must be aware they're operating in bad faith. They must be aware that they're distorting Jesse's words and his work, and why would you do that if you genuinely believed this work was worthless? You'd just describe it accurately and let people see how awful it is by themselves! Instead, they feel the need to lie... that's pretty telling.
If they cared about trans kids, they wouldn't reject desistance research, they would welcome it with open arms and want to know more about it and find out how to keep it from happening. If many gender dysphoric teens are wrongly put on a medical pathway without proper assessment, it means lots of detransitioners in the future, and lots of lawsuits, and lots of pain, which could call transgender healthcare into question (the pendulum swinging back hard into the other direction). This attitude just doesn't make sense if what you're worried about is trans people and trans kids. By promoting gender affirmation at all costs and insisting desistance is a myth, they're just creating the conditions for detransition and backlash. One might say they're creating the problem precisely by denying it.
Yeah, I was trying to take the most charitable interpretation as possible. Not that their thinking is clear, but maybe they have an inkling of some sort of noble impulse, even if it's horribly misused.
"an inkling of some sort of noble impulse, even if it's horribly misused" is a rather beautiful way to put it :)
In the meantime, I've realized it didn't make sense to say it didn't make sense for them to act like this, since people don't make sense. They're probably convinced they're doing something very good and noble and protecting trans kids. I guess. It kind of makes it worse though.
I mean, it's pretty clear that gender dysphoria is not severe if someone feels like the opposite sex but does not feel significant emotional distress. That's when, e.g., you could socially transition but not go on hormone replacement.
I can't even imagine having to clarify yourself this many times. I'm sorry, Jesse. I love your writing, but for your sake, hopefully we can see more stuff focused on your book...and YA Twitter.
Yup, I have a satisfyingly large number of book podcast interviews already scheduled, and I specifically *didn't* send this one out as an email because I think it's just too much of that stuff for my newsletter subscribers. But I do want to debunk what I can debunk -- even just giving people something to link to helps, I find. Overall, yes, hoping to not have to write much more about any of this in April.
There are some "he said/she said" back and forths between journalists where I can see both sides. But the persistent misreadings of you and your work are so blatantly wrong that I can't fathom any other explanation than that these people are operating in extreme bad faith. I know they're worried about trans people and kids, I get that. But using tactics like this leave me with little sympathy for their lies about you.
I don't know about this, that they're so worried about trans people and kids, you're being a bit generous here. I mean, they must be aware they're operating in bad faith. They must be aware that they're distorting Jesse's words and his work, and why would you do that if you genuinely believed this work was worthless? You'd just describe it accurately and let people see how awful it is by themselves! Instead, they feel the need to lie... that's pretty telling.
If they cared about trans kids, they wouldn't reject desistance research, they would welcome it with open arms and want to know more about it and find out how to keep it from happening. If many gender dysphoric teens are wrongly put on a medical pathway without proper assessment, it means lots of detransitioners in the future, and lots of lawsuits, and lots of pain, which could call transgender healthcare into question (the pendulum swinging back hard into the other direction). This attitude just doesn't make sense if what you're worried about is trans people and trans kids. By promoting gender affirmation at all costs and insisting desistance is a myth, they're just creating the conditions for detransition and backlash. One might say they're creating the problem precisely by denying it.
Yeah, I was trying to take the most charitable interpretation as possible. Not that their thinking is clear, but maybe they have an inkling of some sort of noble impulse, even if it's horribly misused.
"an inkling of some sort of noble impulse, even if it's horribly misused" is a rather beautiful way to put it :)
In the meantime, I've realized it didn't make sense to say it didn't make sense for them to act like this, since people don't make sense. They're probably convinced they're doing something very good and noble and protecting trans kids. I guess. It kind of makes it worse though.
Didn't Gorcenski claim that she'd leave activism forever about a month ago?
I wish we were that lucky
FTR she wrote a response to the response. It's wild to me that she's surprised Jesse claims the correction increases his confidence in the original claim, since he mentions that every single time he mentions the correction... https://www.emilygorcenski.com/post/jesse-singal-still-got-more-wrong-than-he-thinks/
I mean, it's pretty clear that gender dysphoria is not severe if someone feels like the opposite sex but does not feel significant emotional distress. That's when, e.g., you could socially transition but not go on hormone replacement.