The thing about abusers is that they are very often charismatic, intelligent, and persuasive — indeed, those are kind of required skills for the job, it’s much more difficult to manipulate people when you’re shitty to be around and bad at talking to people.

Because abusers have these skills, attempts to reason with them often fall flat. They love debates, because debates give they increased opportunity to air their noxious views and win people over to their sides. Even more: debates give them a chance to make you question yourself.

When you are dealing with an abusive ex, pretty much the only thing you can do is limit harm by removing them from your life, and building up defenses against their tactics of persuasion.

It is harder when the abusive person is someone who targets their marginalized critics and attempts to sabotage their careers, someone who sends their fans after whomever they’ve decided to target, and weaponizes social media in their favor.

I don’t know how you solve a problem like Jesse Singal. His power is not from some institutional position: he doesn’t have some job he can be removed from, and while it might hurt if he lost his book deal, he has a vast Twitter fan base and an apparently popular podcast.

His power comes from his connections and reputation, a densely knit network that cannot be easily severed. There’s no one thing you can do to defang a man like Jesse Singal; indeed, if you cut off one of his heads, several more just grow in its stead.

As a general rule, I personally try to ignore Jesse Singal. I have him muted. When I tweet about him, I often mangle his name so as to stay out of search (something, you may note, I am consciously not doing now). I think, generally, that is a good strategy.

Engaging with him merely gives him more DARVO fuel, more ability to paint himself as the true victim — which, in turn, attracts more aggrieved followers for whom his narrative resonates. (Some of whom are probably just trauma bonding with his victim narrative and not shitty!)

But after seeing him attempt to come for multiple trans women in a single* day, I feel like I have to say something. I don’t feel like just passively ignoring him makes sense anymore.

So. I believe every trans woman who has come forth about being harassed by Jesse Singal.

* Ha

I believe @acvalens. I believe @transscribe. I believe @emilyvdw. I believe @JuliaSerano. I believe all the other women whose names I don’t know, whose accounts haven’t been shared. I believe that Jesse Singal has actively tried to harm the careers of his trans critics.

And I’m not censoring his name because, fuck it, if Jesse wants to come for me, he can come for me. I doubt he will, because he seems most eager to pick people more marginalized than I am. But who knows.

I would love to see other cis people stand in solidarity with trans women.

I would very much like to just go back to ignoring Jesse Singal. Honestly, after this thread, I probably will. But I really needed to say, in explicit and forthright terms, that it is horrifying to me to watch someone play out the same abusive script over and over.

As I said, I don’t know how you solve this problem. But I think that more cis people standing up for the trans women that men like Jesse routinely victimize can only help matters.