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Dan Williams and transgender people

Dan Williams is a British philosopher who appeared with Jesse Singal on anti-trans “drama” podcast Blocked and Reported.

Background

Daniel “Dan” Williams earned a doctorate from University of Cambridge in 2018. In 2025, Williams had two books under contract: The Social Roots of Delusions (Oxford University Press) and Why it’s OK to be Cynical (Routledge).

Activism

Singal’s evangelism around “comprehensive evaluations” by psychologists in order to gatekeep trans healthcare can be understood, according to Williams, by two strategies: persuasion, where Singal makes lawyerly arguments to support this position, and pressure, where Singal attempts to discredit and “cancel” critics of this position.

Singal describes Williams as “one of the rare skeptical voices within misinformation discourse.” Because Singal uses highly sophisticated methods to spread misinformation about gender-affirming care for minors, it is instructive to read Williams’ thinking on the subject in order to understand Singal’s strategies.

Williams has presented at the anti-trans Battle of Ideas Festival, an event series held by Academy of Ideas, founded by Claire Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley.

References

Williams, Dan (April 26, 2024). Rational Persuasion vs Cancel Culture. https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/rational-persuasion-vs-cancel-culture

Williams, Dan (June 7, 2023). The Fake News about Fake News. Boston Review https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-fake-news-about-fake-news/

Media

Academy of Ideas (November 30, 2024). Censoring information won’t lead you to the truth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2BrCCWiZOU

Jesse Singal (October 18, 2024). Episode 233: I Heard You Like Fake News So I Put Some Fake News In Your News About Fake News (With Dan Williams). Blocked and Reported https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-233-i-heard-you-like-fake

The Dissenter (December 1, 2022). #711 Daniel Williams: Beliefs, Rationalization Markets, Misinformation, and Motivated Cognition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHXCc2pcg38

Hear This Idea (December 30, 2021). Dan Williams on Political Misinformation, Self Delusion, and Signalling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnr3FiN-AiU

Resources

Dan Williams Philosophy (danwilliamsphilosophy.com)

Conspicuous Cognition (conspicuouscognition.com)

Academia (academia.edu)

  • Daniel Williams
  • sussex.academia.edu/DanielWilliams
  • CV
  • sussex.academia.edu/DanielWilliams/CurriculumVitae

Google Scholar (scholar.google.com)

Substack (substack.com)

International Science Council (council.science)

  • Daniel Williams, Public Value of Science panel member
  • https://council.science/profile/daniel-williams/

University of Sussex (sussex.ac.uk)

X/Twitter (x.com)

Bluesky (bsky.app)