Jesse Singal Takes Aim at Andrea James
In a recent story for UnHerd, the deep biases of a writer known for skewed narratives are on full display.
by Evan Urquhart
A lengthy story by Jesse Singal was published today on UnHerd, a right-leaning British news site that frequently focuses on culture war issues. It took a harshly critical look at the activism of Andrea James, a trans woman whose Transgender Map website provides resources for the trans community as well as information on anti-trans activists. (Disclosure: Assigned Media has a somewhat similar project in our Trans Data Library, and might be viewed as a competitor.) Singal starts with a discussion of James’ history of directing angry emails and website posts to popularizers of the fringe theory of autogynephilia back in the mid 2000s. He then links these angry posts and emails to James’ entries on anti-trans activists on her Transgender Map website, nothing that some of the posts include information on the families and personal lives of the activists, journalists, researchers, and other figures it covers.
The meat of Singal’s piece is about who has been included as an anti-trans activist on James’ site, whether it’s fair for them to have been included, and the negative feelings on the part of some who have been included. Singal calls James’ website disturbing, and writes that the information included on his personal life “felt like an intimidation tactic.”
Notably, the piece doesn’t include (and I’m not aware of) any instances of direct intimidation, harassment, or violence connected to the website. This would seem to distinguish Transgender Map from more famous instances of political actors online who have been drivers of offline harassment and violence, such as the anti-trans Twitter account @LibsOfTikTok, which has been connected with numerous incidents of bomb threats towards anyone percieved as supporting the trans community. Singal also doesn’t waste time asking if James has a free speech right to publish this info, which is somewhat ironic considering UnHerd’s frequent coverage of free speech issues as well as opinion pieces claiming the need to protect even very offensive speech.
Singal’s close personal involvement with the story is apparent throughout, and it makes the bias that is often found in his work more apparent here than it has often been elsewhere. These personal sentiments include overt statements of his opinions, fr example his feelings about his own page on the site or his high praise for researcher Gordon Guyatt, who Singal describes as “a legend within the field of medical research. He is one of the founders of evidence-based medicine, a (genuinely) lifesaving movement to improve the quality of medical research.” However, his bias is also present in more subtle ways, such as when he props up the fringe theory of autogynephilia, making it sound is if objections to it are entirely a matter of some trans women’s hurt feelings.
screenshot from UnHerd
Autogynephilia is, of course, not merely opposed by a few trans women who take offense to it, but also by scientists (cisgender and transgender) who have criticized Blanchard’s methods and failed to replicate his findings of there being two distinct groups of transgender women. Subsequent research has suggested that cultural factors may be the dominant driver of arousal during cross dressng, with it being more commonly found in a cohort of older, whiter trans women whose romantic relationships have been with cisgender women than any other demographic. Because of this and many other issues, it has never been part of the mainstream scientific understanding of trans identity, but in the above paragraph Singal props up the theory, undermines the credibility of trans people who object to it (by focusing on the offense taken rather than the substance of the critiques of the theory), and takes a dig at his subject, James, as having been “curdled.” A true masterclass in bias.
Singal has long insisted that he is an objective reporter with no particular animosity towards the transgender community, but his time outside the mainstream catering to a Substack audience of committed transphobes has made this pose of neutrality less and less convincing. With this piece for UnHerd dealing with a topic he’s personally involved in, and with it as much opinion and personal narrative as reporting, Singal may finally be embracing his role as a cultural warrior against the trans community and retreating from his posture as the last unbiased reporter left standing.