Jesse Singal

Jesse Singal is an American journalist. He has written for publications including New York magazine, The New York Times and The Atlantic. Singal also publishes a newsletter on 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 has attracted controversy for his writing on transgender issues, particularly in his 2018 cover story for The Atlantic, "When Children Say They're Trans".

According to National Review, writer Michael Rosen Singal's political orientation is liberal but "heterodox", though he says Singal has expressed an aversion to the latter term as a descriptor of his work.

Biography

Singal received a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He lives in Brooklyn.

Writing about transgender issues

Singal has been described by Harron Walker and Mey Rude as one of the most prominent journalists working in the area of transgender issues, though his work has sometimes been negatively received by 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. Columbia Journalism Review noted that despite attempted editorial oversight the story was considered to be transphobic by many readers, journalists and activists. With CJR asserting more diversity in editorial oversight could have averted the problems.

Among the controversial aspects of the article was its inclusion of the stories of multiple adolescents who had desisted or detransitioned -- 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, 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 man, to write on this topic, rather than a trans writer.

According to Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Mina Brewer, the model for the story was not informed he would be on the cover of the story and alleged Mr. Singal’s cover story in “The Atlantic misgendered him” as female. With the Nieman Foundation further alleging Brewer was involuntarily outed to family and friends by the story’s choice to use his photos prominently while referring to him as trans. Regarding the reception of the article the Nieman Foundation reported “when the issue came out, author Jesse Singal and his story were heavily criticized by journalists, medical professionals, and activists for being reductive and deceptive.”

Subsequent controversies

In March 2021, Singal was listed on GLAAD'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, stating that his inclusion on the list was based on "previously disproven internet scuttlebutt". Singal was supported by sex columnist Dan Savage, 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 lesbian journalist based in Washington state. The podcast focuses on internet culture war controversies. Herzog and Singal have both been described as politically liberal, but "heterodox" and "woke-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, halting or reversing their gender transition.

Within three months of the podcast's debut, it had more than 1,400 financial supporters through Patreon, 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.

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 topics such as positive psychology, power posing, and the implicit-association test which, according to Singal, turned out to have weak empirical support or reproducibility, or which were exaggerated into stronger claims. The book examines the replication crisis 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 the National Review, 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 called the book “An impassioned yet disappointing debut” Noting “most of the topics he addresses have already been widely debunked, and his analyses of where the science goes wrong are often too convoluted for the lay reader to follow”. According to Literary Hub’s Book Marks review aggregator, The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills currently holds “Mixed” reviews amongst professional critics.

External links

• Official website