*looks directly at camera* 
This latest Herzog-ism is as boring as it is predictable, save for the remarkable detail that the trans community (which she says doesn't exist) has apparently stopped her from smoking a $10k blunt. Truly, we are mighty; and also fake.
There are some broad arguments she makes here that are worth examining, if only because they're so commonplace. So this is less about her than it is about thought-terminating cliches that are flung at any trans people asserting their dignity.
Here, Herzog is horrified and appalled that anyone would suggest Singal fixates on trans women, and acts as if the only 'proof' of this is what one woman said on Twitter. In truth, she was making an understandable observation many of us have made for years.
That observation is based on the fact that, more than any other cis writer, Singal has made a beat out of writing on trans people; and writing broadly similar articles with similar characterisations to boot. He also obsesses over what prominent trans writers/activists say.
Shaming Cliffe for pointing that out is, to put it mildly, a bit silly. She's expressing an opinion with some empirical basis. Same with Herzog's attack on Roxane Gay and Lena Dunham(!?). She's mad that they expressed a (heterodox? 🤔) opinion about her boy.
She also goes in on Cliffe for having "literally never spoken to the author in her life." Well, I have. More than I'd care to. And yeah, I'd rate him as pretty fixated on this issue in a way that goes beyond simply being a science reporter.
Loads of people have written bad articles on trans people. Very few have written quite so many, harping on trans kids specifically.
Anyway, I'd like to take a pause here to raise my mug o' tea to @Nicole_Cliffe for standing up and being counted. She actually seems to understand the difference between standing up for what's right and being a miserable contrarian.
Onto another matter. This straw man of such epic proportions, it's next year's Burning Man:
This is such a wild exaggeration of an argument no one's made, it's infuriating coming from someone preaching the values of truth-telling and intellectual honesty. No one ever said cis people can't write stories about trans people. They can; they just fuck it up often.
One of my favourite fantasy novels, Amanda Downum's "The Bone Palace" features a trans protagonist. Downum's cis. By Herzog's logic I should be calling for her head--yet I'm not. Why? Because the portrayal is fine. Human and humane. Or Rachel Gold's "Becoming Emily."
And a number of news stories about trans people, which don't suck, exist and have written by cis people. None of whom are on Self-Imposed Exile Island with Herzog and Singal (that'd make for the worst Desert Island Discs episode ever, but I digress...)
What Herzog is actually trying to do, and what all people who make this argument are saying, is that cis people are immune to judgement for their writing on trans people. Any adverse opinion is an inquisition, banning them from the subject for being cis.
And, no, sorry. You get to write this, we get to have an opinion on it. The objection to The Atlantic piece was, in the main, against Singal not as a cis man per se, but as a man with his specific views and ideological peccadilloes.
To a man who fails upwards, who, despite making a name for himself as an "expert" on trans issues, infamously misread statistics on the subject for years because it proved his arguments about "desistance." All we got was, basically, an "oopsie." Herzog neglects to mention this.
Pointing out that Herzog and Singal are cis is a way of doing two things 1) you have to work harder to do justice to this subject, 2) there's a structural inequality at play when you get lofty platforms to write this stuff and we don't. Neither is saying "cis people can't write."
Finally, there's this. This is breathtaking in its disingenuousness. Both Herzog and Singal characterise the trans community, our politics and discourse, and trans-friendly medical providers as directly responsible for the plight of detransitioners. And that's how people read it.
This sleight of hand is so insulting that it has to be deliberate. Shrugging off any responsibility and accountability: that's what this whole piece is about. It's pathetic precisely because any halfway disingenuous person could've written it.
That smug two-step is made manifest by the *headline* of the article which says TRANS KIDS in huge text. Now, I know writers don't often choose their headlines. But it hardly seems inapt given the content of the piece.
This Stranger article, which, while being careful in its language here, characterises any criticism of her as ideologically-motivated bullying marshalled by trans opponents of her and Singal's writing. That we don't want the "uncomfortable truth" about detransitioners told.
Meanwhile, why not tell the many, many stories of people who detransitioned because of prejudice or abuse, and then transitioned later in life? A much more common and representative story of trans life? Too heterodox? 🤔🤔🤔🤔
And, a coda. This is a *wild* fuckin' thing to say, this of all weeks.
