Jesse Singal Misrepresented a Trans Girl’s Medical History and She Called Him Out

Cam Ogden’s pediatrician did not “approve hormones after a 10-minute assessment”. On Twitter, a notorious anti-trans journalist falsely claimed otherwise.

by Evan Urquhart

When Cam Ogden was 15, she came out to her mother as trans. Outwardly supportive at first, Cam’s mother, Jeanne, felt conflicted and frightened by the news. Her doubts led her to a disinformation site which caters to anti-trans parents of trans kids called 4thWaveNow. The distortions and lies led Jeanne to place delays and hurdles up, to stop Cam from recieving an evaluation from a clinic that specializes in treating gender dysphoric youth. In the end, Cam was only able to access hormone therapy after she turned 18. Cam and her mother, who came to fully support her college-age trans daughter, were interviewed for an episode of TransLash Media’s Anti-Trans Hate Machine podcast where they discussed the way 4thWaveNow’s scare tactics harmed the bond between Cam and her mother and interfered with getting Cam the help she needed for her gender dysphoria in a timely way.

Enter Jesse Singal, a journalist who’s made a niche for himself by flattering transphobes and credulously repeating anti-trans activists most dubious claims. Once a mainstream figure, Singal has drifted further and further into the orbit of online anti-trans activists, and it shows. He found the transcript of Cam and Jeanne Ogden’s interview and in a now-deleted Tweet he shared a screenshot of a portion referrencing a time when Jeanne chose not to move forward with a referral from Cam’s pediatriction to have her daughter see a specialist in gender dysphoria in youth. Singal summarized the transcript, incorrectly presenting the pediatrician’s referral to a gender clinic as an approval for hormone therapy.

screenshot of a now-deleted Tweet

On a phone call earlier today, Cam Ogden explained she first heard that Jesse Singal was tweeting about her through a group text. A friend recognized her last name from Singal’s screenshot and shared the tweet, asking if she might be the trans girl Singal was tweeting about. As soon as she saw the screenshot Cam recognized the interview and knew this was about her life. In order to combat Singal’s wild mischaracterizations of the situation she wrote a thread explaining in more detail what her experience actually was and how wrong Singal’s characterization of it had been.

“I’m used to reality being malleable in transphobic people’s eyes, but it hit especally hard when it was my own life, and one of the most traumatic experiences in my life,” Cam said. She’s well versed in anti-trans disinformation due to volunteering with Trans Allies of Ohio, where she an others help lawmakers understand the false messages in the right-wing press. “I wrote this thread to be clear that he is making an unsupported assertion about my life.”

screenshot from Twitter

Cam explained that, in the process of doing the interview for TransLash, there had been private details about her experience with therapy that she and her mom decided to hold back. In the transcript, Imara Jones doesn’t mention therapy, instead summarizing the period by emphasizing that Jeanne had placed hurdles in the way before finally making an appointment for Cam to discuss gender dysphoria with a pediatrician, with one hurdle being that she wanted Cam to “work on her self-esteem.” The reference to the period of waiting and to self-esteem work comes immediately before the section Singal highlighted with his Tweet.

screenshot from TransLash Media

Because of Singal’s incorrect assumptions, Cam felt forced to reveal more of this painful history so she could fully refute Singal’s claims that she’d been on the verge of recieving hormone therapy without a full evaluation for gender dysphoria. In her thread she writes that she “met two separate psychologists and spoke to them about dysphoria” during the period of time after she came out to her mom and before she saw the pediatrician, and that the pediatrician had access to those notes.

After reading Cam’s thread describing her medical history in more detail, Singal deleted the false tweet. As he did he blamed TransLash for the confusion which led to his mischaracterizing Cam's story, saying, “My description was based on the show *itself* saying "the pediatrician at the time talked to Cam for maybe 10 minutes and then said, 'Well, I think Cam knows what she needs and let’s get her an appointment with an endocrinologist to move forward w/treatment.'“

“Treatment” does not necessarily mean hormone therapy, which was what Singal claimed, and while the show did not disclose the fact that Cam recieved therapy in the intervening months of waiting, the transcript is perfectly compatible with that having been the case. Singal has vigorously defended himself from the accusation that he lied about Cam’s treatment on the grounds that he leapt to the assumption that Cam hadn’t had therapy and that a referral from a pediatrician was the same as an approval for hormones honestly. Assigned reached out to Singal for comment this morning, and will update this article if he responds.

For her part, Cam gives Singal credit for deleting the false tweet. “I appreciate the fact that he deleted it. It takes a lot to admit when you were wrong. But he still refuses to take responsibility for getting the facts wrong. I don’t like that it’s OK to lie about trans people and when you get caught you blame the trans people themselves. It’s not an excuse to say something you knew was untrue [referring to Singal saying the pediatrician had approved hormones], just because I had to come and give enough details and prove it was untrue.”

Cam’s final words on the topic were “If you look at the text it does not say what he says it does.” So let’s look at the words once more, why not.

Here’s the transcript: “So the pediatrician at the time talked to Cam for maybe 10 minutes and then said, Well, I think Cam knows what she needs and let’s get her an appointment with an endocrinologist to move forward with treatment.”

Here’s Singal: “Pediatrician with no specific training in gender/developmental issues approves hormones after a 10-minute assessment.”

It does not say what Singal said it did.