Jesse Singal is an American journalist. He has written for publications including ''
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
'' magazine, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' and ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
''. Singal also publishes a newsletter on
Substack
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack ...
and hosts a podcast, ''Blocked and Reported'', with journalist Katie Herzog.
Much of Singal's writing deals with the social sciences, and he previously edited ''New York'' magazine's behavioral-science vertical, "Science of Us".
In 2021, he published a book, ''The Quick Fix'', about the failings of popular psychology. Singal's writing on
transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...
issues has attracted controversy, particularly in his 2018 cover story for ''The Atlantic'', "When Children Say They're Trans".
Singal's political orientation has often been described as liberal but "heterodox", though he has expressed an aversion to the latter term as a descriptor of his work.
Biography
Singal is one of three sons born to Sydney L. (née Altman) (1949–2021) and Bruce A. Singal. Both his parents were attorneys. He received a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton's
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school provides an array of comprehensive course ...
.
He is of
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
descent and lives in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
.
Writing about transgender issues
Singal has been described as one of the most prominent journalists working in the area of transgender issues.
His work has been negatively received by prominent members of the trans community.
2018 ''Atlantic'' article
Singal wrote the cover story for the July/August 2018 issue of ''The Atlantic''. Originally published under the title "When a Child Says She's Trans", the online version was later retitled "When Children Say They're Trans". The
long-form piece includes profiles of several adolescents who identify or previously identified as transgender, interviews with youth gender clinicians, and reviews of some of the studies, statistics, and protocols related to
youth transition. In a follow-up, ''The Atlantic'' published four letters from parents of transgender children reacting to Singal's article with a mixture of criticism and praise.
Alexandria Neason, writing for the ''
Columbia Journalism Review
The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its contents include news and media industry trends, ana ...
'', stated that despite being fact-checked, the story was considered transphobic by many readers, journalists and activists, and suggested that more diversity in editorial oversight could have averted the problem.
Among the controversial aspects of the article was how much it was focused on the stories of multiple adolescents who had desisted or
detransition
Detransition is the cessation or reversal of a transgender identification or gender transition, whether by social, legal, or medical means. Some individuals detransition on a temporary basis.
Estimates of the rate at which detransitioning occurs ...
ed — that is, reverted to identifying with their assigned gender at birth, either before or after undergoing physical transition. In the article, Singal acknowledges that the stories of detransitioners are sometimes viewed with skepticism or suspicion by the trans community, in part because they have been used by conservative media to further misleading narratives. Alex Barasch, writing in ''
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'', faulted the article for not including the story of "a single happy, well-adjusted trans teen" in its first 9,000 words.
This complaint was echoed in one of the parent-penned letters published by ''The Atlantic'', which said that the two stories of happily-transitioned teens were "buried deep in the article".
Barasch also criticized Singal for failing to include the stories of individuals who had detransitioned for reasons other than a realization that they were not trans, such as social stigma.
Some commentators questioned whether it was appropriate for Singal, a
cisgender
Cisgender (often shortened to cis; sometimes cissexual) is a term used to describe a person whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth. The word ''cisgender'' is the antonym of ''transgender''. The prefix ''wiktionary:cis ...
man, to write on this topic, rather than a trans writer.
Subsequent controversies
In March 2021, Singal was listed on
GLAAD
GLAAD (), an acronym of Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, is an American non-governmental media monitoring organization originally founded as a protest against defamatory coverage of gay and lesbian demographics and their portrayals ...
's "Accountability Project", which the organization described as serving to document "anti-LGBTQ words and actions from politicians, commentators, organization leaders, journalists and other public figures".
Singal responded on
Substack
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack ...
, stating that his inclusion on the list was based on "previously disproven internet scuttlebutt". Singal was supported by sex columnist
Dan Savage
Daniel Keenan Savage (born October 7, 1964) is an American author, media pundit, journalist, and LGBT community activist. He writes ''Savage Love'', an internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column. In 2010, Savage and his husba ...
, who derided what he described as a "long & dishonest campaign" against Singal,
and urged readers to listen to Singal's interview of a youth-gender clinician before judging him as transphobic.
Podcast
Since March 2020,
Singal has hosted the podcast ''Blocked and Reported'' with Katie Herzog, a journalist based in Washington state. The podcast focuses on internet culture war controversies. According to its website, "Journalists Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal scour the internet for its craziest, silliest, most sociopathic content, part of an obsessive and ill-conceived attempt to extract kernels of meaning and humanity from a landscape of endless raging dumpster fires. (And sometimes they talk about other stuff, too.)"
. Herzog and Singal have both been described as politically liberal,
but "heterodox"
and "
woke
''Woke'' ( ) is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and Racial discrimination, discrimination". Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social ineq ...
-skeptic."
Herzog was also the subject of online ostracism (characterized in the ''New York Times'' as an attempted "
cancellation") as a result of a controversial 2017 article she wrote for Seattle weekly ''
The Stranger'' about people who have undergone
detransition
Detransition is the cessation or reversal of a transgender identification or gender transition, whether by social, legal, or medical means. Some individuals detransition on a temporary basis.
Estimates of the rate at which detransitioning occurs ...
, halting or reversing their gender transition.
Within three months of the podcast's debut, it had more than 1,400 financial supporters through
Patreon
Patreon (, ) is a membership platform that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service. It helps creators and artists earn a monthly income by providing rewards and perks to their subscribers. Patreon charges a co ...
, collectively paying more than $8,000 per month.
As of July 2021, this had increased to approximately 5,600 patrons and $37,000 per month.
In October 2021, both the hosting and patronage provider was migrated to
Substack
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack ...
.
Book
Singal's debut book, ''The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills'', was published in April 2021. The book examines a number of popular psychology
fad
A fad or trend is any form of collective behavior that develops within a culture, a generation or social group in which a group of people enthusiastically follow an impulse for a short period.
Fads are objects or behaviors that achieve short- ...
s such as
positive psychology
Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living, focusing on both individual and societal well-being. It studies "positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions...it aims t ...
,
power posing
Power posing is a controversial self-improvement technique or "life hack" in which people stand in a posture that they mentally associate with being powerful, in the hope of feeling more confident and behaving more assertively. Though the underlyi ...
, and the
implicit-association test
The implicit-association test (IAT) is a controversial assessment intended to detect subconscious associations between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory. Its best-known application is the assessment of implicit stereotypes hel ...
which, according to Singal, turned out to have weak empirical support or reproducibility, or which were exaggerated into stronger claims which are "scientifically questionable but sexy and exciting". The book examines the
replication crisis
The replication crisis (also called the replicability crisis and the reproducibility crisis) is an ongoing methodological crisis in which the results of many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to reproduce. Because the reproducibili ...
in social sciences, and some of the underlying causes such as
''p''-hacking, and suggests remedies for "how both individuals and institutions can do a better job of resisting" exaggerated pop psychology.
Writing for ''
National Review
''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief i ...
'', Michael M. Rosen called the book "engaging and persuasive", and wrote that it was based on "rigorous research and thoughtful interviews".
An anonymous review in ''
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
'' called the book "impassioned yet disappointing", complaining that its presentation of scientific details was too convoluted for lay readers.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Singal, Jesse
American science journalists
American podcasters
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
21st-century American journalists
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs alumni
21st-century American male writers
American male journalists