The statement "Singal isn't anti-trans but… a lot of people tried to paint him as one" implies that the people who believe Singal is transphobic tend to be "pro-trans", or at least have some sort of agenda. I'm simply noting that a lot of anti-trans people seem to share that belief about his motivations.
That in and of itself doesn't mean he's transphobic, of course. But it does undercut the idea that one side is smearing him.
Right, but you seem to be implying that because two disparate groups believe the same thing it lends credence to the idea, but have you considered that maybe Group A believes what they believe due to the existence/behavior of Group B, not because of some external facts they've both found?
In other words, maybe pro-trans people assume Singal is anti-trans because there are a bunch of anti-trans reply-guys in his tweets, without actually determining if Singal himself is or not.
Or... maybe the anti-trans people are only gravitating towards Singal in the first place because the pro-trans people are calling him anti-trans (without it being true), so the anti-trans people assume he is/will be a good banner-man.
In both scenarios, there is only one prime motivator, and it is not that Singal is actually anti-trans. Might Jesse Singal be anti-trans/transphobic? Of course. Does the likelihood increase just because two disparate groups see him that way? Not really. The only thing that matters is what the man in question has actually said/done, not how people think of him.
Sure, pattern matching like that is a shortcut that inevitably yields some false positives. I think the amount of credence it lends is basically an inverse of how much time you want to spend on the issue. If you want to engage deeply, you do your own research; otherwise, you end up taking the word of people whom you already trust.
I don't mean to imply that it lends credence beyond that. I just think it's unfair to characterize this as if only one side were doing the painting, when multiple groups of people seem to have reached similar conclusions.
That in and of itself doesn't mean he's transphobic, of course. But it does undercut the idea that one side is smearing him.