Jesse Singal has ostentatiously quit Twitter–at least for a couple of weeks, he promises–penning not one but two articles explaining this momentous decision. You can totally tell how much he simply does not care about this because he joked in his second piece that he was “writing this from prison. Internet Prison, which is the worst kind.”
HA HA, WOULD HE EVEN JOKE ABOUT THIS IF HE WERE MAD, LMAO?
The self-consciously contrarian journalist, who has proved himself over the years to be quite the useful idiot for the anti-trans forces, had landed himself in hot water over a piece he wrote attempting to vindicate a “whistleblower” who came forward last month to reveal what she said were abusive practices at a St. Louis gender clinic for minors, alleging that doctors and staff at the clinic pushed patients towards hormones and ultimately surgery without giving them adequate information or vetting. The whistleblower’s account was called into question after it appeared in ex-NYT columnist Bari Weiss’ online publication, the Free Press. most notably by a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who spoke to some twenty parents of children who had been patients at the clinic and found zero evidence that anything the “whistleblower” said was true.
Anyway, Singal’s article managed to reveal a lot of personal information from the medical records of various patients at the clinic, which for some reason the whistleblower apparently still has, even though she no longer works at the clinic. The information was anonymized, but enough details were given that any of those whose information was revealed would know the whistleblower was talking about them. As a result, various online critics suggested that at least one person involved in the story–the whistleblower herself and perhaps Singal as well–had committed HIPAA violations by revealing private medical information. (According to the CDC, the “Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a federal law that required the creation of national standards to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge.”)
I’m no lawyer, so I don’t know if anybody violated anything, but I can tell you that Singal is definitely NOT MAD that people are suggesting he may have violated the law, which he DEFINITELY DIDN’T DO, GUYS.
He’s also NOT MAD that some people think he didn’t recognize the common transphobic joke about “identifying as an attack helicopter.”
In his second post on his Great Twitter Self-Suspension of 2023, he announced that he was definitely going to ignore his critics on Twitter, several of whom he quoted in the piece, and that he wasn’t going to respond to their attacks.
I could devote thousands of words to these tweets and how batshit insane they are. I could rush back onto Twitter to defend myself.
He then went on to devote hundreds of words to these tweets, asking:
—Does it make sense to claim I’m hiding evidence (for violating HIPAA, a law I’m not subject to) by deleting my Twitter account, but leaving the article in question up, unaltered save for one sentence I tweaked slightly, in a transparent manner?
—Does it makes sense to claim I was unaware of the helicopter joke/meme when I have written about it, podcasted about it, and when very early on in the article the junior detectives are mad about, I wrote “ ‘I sexually identify as an attack helicopter,’ after all, is a well-worn internet meme, often used as an attack against transgender people”?
But see? There I go again. Even there, I spent far too much time on these ghouls than they deserve.
Totally not mad.
My counterarguments are completely beside the point. The folks tweeting these rumors aren’t doing so because they’re true — they’re doing so because the goal is to inflict as much reputational damage on me as possible, and because at a certain point this becomes a bizarre, religiously infused sort of online spectator bloodsport governed by its own incomprehensible internal logic rather than any clearly thought-through goals or norms or tactics.
Or perhaps they genuinely feel you violated patients’ privacy in order to defend a dubious “whistleblower” who seems to want to do great harm to the trans movement.
Well, one part of it is comprehensible: they are wishcasting. Alejandra Caraballo is spinning what is, for her followers, a deeply satisfying yarn in which my own ignorance and carelessness led to my downfall. Her evidence my career is destroyed is I. . . logged off Twitter. That should tell you everything you need to know.
Of course, earlier this month, Singal also tweeted this, suggesting he’s not necessarily up on all the little details of HIPAA.
Not that Singal is mad that people keep reposting this. Not at all. He’s smiling and laughing, having the best time.
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I can’t see how Singal violated HIPAA. It doesn’t apply to everyone, only healthcare providers, insurance companies, etc. and people / entities who provide services to them.
He may have violated other privacy laws, though.
And the so-called whistleblower almost certainly violated HIPAA. Unfortunately, the clinic could be on the hook too for allowing the breach.
Singal did not violate HIPAA. He is correct that it does not apply to him. He’s an asshole, but not a HIPAA violator.
However when you say:
That is, if true, absolutely evidence of a clear violation of HIPAA. The “whistleblower” had access to the records by virtue of their employee and/or agent relationship with a health care provider and even improperly storing the records is a violation for such a person.
Although to determine exactly which violations occurred we would need more information (and we would need to confirm the information we have), it’s impossible for me to imagine how this “whistleblower” removed records or copied records and removed the copies, then preserved their own access to those records after the end of their authorizing relationship with the health care provider without violating HIPAA.
We’re talking a 99.9999% chance of a violation here.
Assuming the violation is non-criminal, it would be enforced either by administrative action (a federal agency investigating and then possibly fining the clinic) or by a lawsuit against the “whistleblower” and/or against the clinic itself. Assuming that they were happy with their care and don’t wish to limit access to those services, it’s unlikely that the former & current patients would sue the clinic.
So I’d expect nothing to materialize for a while, and then at some point, when the “whistleblower”s identity is discovered, for at least some parents to sue them for everything they’ve got.
Healthcare worker weighing in: Singal doesn’t fall into any of the HIPAA categories of affected workers (aka “those of us who have to go through the training once a year and get a passing grade or get fired”), but the whistleblower, if she had access to PHI (patient health information) and she accessed it for non-approved reasons, that right there is the sort of thing that would get you written up at my workplace, if not outright fired.
For example, if a celebrity was admitted to your emergency room, and you looked up their birthday/address/etc. just for shits and giggles, that’s Not Cool. That’s the kind of thing that gets you put on performance review, if you’re lucky.
If you sold their info to a news organization, congratulations for turning yourself into the kind of cautionary tale that gets trotted out during annual HIPAA training time.
I’ve had access to various levels of PHI over the course of my career, and I’ve typically made it clear to whoever I’m working with that I will not dig into details that are outside the scope of my job. Pragmatically speaking, I don’t have time, and it just feels rude to be reading PHI for fun or for somebody else’s convenience.
David,
I totally disagree with your characterization of Singal. I’ve worked with both you and with him, and I’ve supported you in the past financially. I think SIngal is asking important questions about transgender youth medicine that you accept as gospel from people who are trans, found the treatments helpful as adults, and cannot envision any alternate scenario in which transition could be harmful to someone’s mental health.
P.S. I also used to work in the field of healthcare research. On my day job I had to get up to the waders in people’s HIPAA protected information to assess their suitability for a given research project; this is before they’d given consent for anything. I’m no expert either, but I think Jesse’s source was acting within the norms of her workplace and within the rights of her job to follow up on cases that concerned her for being fast-tracked to drug therapy when more psychological intervention is needed.
It’s sort of a given now amongst trans-friendly publications that Jesse Singal is a “useful idiot for the anti-trans forces”; but I also wonder if you’ve seen the absolutely nasty communications he has to try to take seriously on the platform to continue to act as a journalist. The intensity of it is way beyond what you experienced back in the 2010’s MRA days, when I recall someone threatened to ‘kick a mudhole in your ass and stomp it dry’ (or something like that) if you continued to write about him.
I wish you would reconsider joiing this pile-on to someone who basically does the same job as you on a different beat. You’re coming off as some guy who just compiles tweets and calls it a post rather than do any original research or writing of his own, which is why I enjoy reading what you have to say.
Sincerely,
Margaret Pless
Like Jesse Singal, I have dumb questions, lots of them. But I don’t ask to get paid for work about which I currently have dumb questions.
Of course, that’s just me.
@Margaret, I completely agree with you- Jesse Singal isn’t a useful idiot!
He’s a malicious one. Glad I could clear that up for you.
@Margaret Pless
Hmm, my TERF sense is tingling! Probably because you sound like a fucking TERF!
There must be a DSM diagnosis for dudes who can’t control their obsessions regarding transgender people.
Though there’s probably not one for dudes who keep shooting themselves in the dick.
I think SIngal is asking important questions about transgender youth medicine that you accept as gospel from people who are trans…
And he’s getting his “answers” from a bigot who has since been shown to be full of shit, and quite possibly not actually privy to the counseling and treatment sessions of which he/she was speaking. If this Singal guy is really intent on “asking important questions,” then he should be looking for more informed and credible people to ask them to; not crying about “persecution” when he’s called out for doing a crappy job.
Also, if YOU think Singal’s “questions” are so important, why don’t YOU recommend a more credible source where we can get answers? We’re waiting…
…I think Jesse’s source was acting within the norms of her workplace and within the rights of her job to follow up on cases that concerned her for being fast-tracked to drug therapy when more psychological intervention is needed.
Taking PHI outside of the workplace, and sharing it with non-experts acting as tabloid-level “journalists,” is NOT a valid way of acting on legitimate medical/psychological concerns.
Also, is there really any evidence that ANYONE, anywhere, is “being fast-tracked to drug therapy when more psychological intervention is needed?” I’ve heard that claim a zillion times, but never any citation, evidence or other support. Put up or shut up.
I also wonder if you’ve seen the absolutely nasty communications he has to try to take seriously on the platform to continue to act as a journalist.
Are they as nasty as the communications that trans people, their parents, and their caregivers have been getting recently? Also, if this guy is “acting” as a journalist, then he seems to be a bad actor.
Singal did not violate HIPAA. He is correct that it does not apply to him.
It may not apply to him directly, but as we say of most criminals (the non-filthy-rich ones anyway), ignorance of the law is no excuse. Shouldn’t a decent journalist have at least known enough to ask “Wait a minute, I heard of this HIPAA thingie, are you sure you’re not breaking any laws by sharing what looks a lot like PHI to a non-expert?” Even if he didn’t know about HIPAA (which would be kind of appalling for someone pretending to be a “journalist”), shouldn’t he at least have asked about a possible violation of plain old doctor-patient confidentiality?
I love how you “accept as gospel” the ideas that
1) asking questions is a good thing. There are circumstances when this is not a good thing.
2) David follows others blindly rather than looking at data and research and going with the scientific consensus’s interpretation of the evidence
3) trans people “cannot envision” bad outcomes and thus take it for granted that outcomes can only be good. It was TRANS PEOPLE who noted bad outcomes (for any number of reasons) and pushed for actual, evidence-based research and, as an outcome of that research process, evidence-based standards of care
4) the fact that a treatment can in some cases have a bad outcome is somehow unique to the medical care of trans people
5) it is entirely appropriate to ignore the bad outcomes possible when treatment is denied.
There is research on these topics. Just because you’re ignorant of the state of the research doesn’t mean that everyone else is making decisions blindly, with no thought or evidence or rational evaluation of consequences.
We’ve been doing thinking on this for decades.
Evidence has been collected in quite a variety of ways.
Rational evaluation has occurred.
If you have a question that hasn’t been asked yet, by all means, ask it.
If you have a question that has been asked and answered by the scientific literature but you’ve never bothered to even try to find out whether research on the topic exists, much less what that research concludes, then this is one of those occasions where asking questions is a BadThing(TM).
Just go do the readings, would you? It’s not the job of other people to spoon feed you information.
@Schnookums, et al: But they’re “just asking questions!” Which is never said in bad faith, of course.
I hear the TERFs don’t like being called TERFs. So some have taken them at their word and now call them “Feminism-Appropriating Reactionary Transphobes”. They’re welcome, I’m sure.
“Whistleblower” has definitely violated HIPAA. Singal has violated decent human behavior.
But I’m sure being told this won’t make him mad. Because nothing makes Jesse mad, everyone knows that. Duh.
If this Twitter account belongs to wandering TERF in comments, then whoa fuck what an odious person you are. Holy shit. Go piss on electric fence.
@Skiriki: maybe not, given that the commenter is using a spamy version of that Twitter account’s email address; the Gravatar spells “diletante” dillettante.
If this is a sock, then we’ve got two shitty people who don’t know how to spell dilettante correctly…
@Gaebolga: Just noting that the account I linked is followed by David, so maaaaybe it is a right one. Maaaaaybe it is not?
My invitation to piss on (non-lethal, cattle) electric fence still remains. That post here reeks of FART crap.
hey Margaret, it’s not a gospel if the science backs up our claims. you can ask all the questions you like, but without the longitudinal studies and meta-analyses that demonstrate the validity of the belief that underlies your question, you’re just laying the foundation for more misinformation which in turn amplifies the bigotry against us.
also your little “i supported you financially” nonsense is hilarious. a lot of us have given david money. it doesn’t make you special or worth listening to on that basis alone. you’re pathetic.
Crip Dyke: I also love how she “accepts as gospel” the idea that we “accept as gospel” the claims of a handful of trans people with no other studies or information available to verify any of it.
Margaret said:
Let me list the problems I have with this sentence:
Unless you have read the workplace manual, you probably shouldn’t assert that the source was acting within the norms. That’s something her supervisor and other leadership would be the authority on.
“The rights of her job to follow up on cases that concerned her” – where in her job description does it say she can share inadequately scrubbed PHI with someone who has no right to that information? Following up on patients doesn’t usually involve leaking info to a journalist. You follow up within your organization.
“Fast-tracked to drug therapy when more psychological intervention is needed.” According to whom? What are the specific, recognized guidelines that you’re using here? Were the guidelines peer-reviewed and are they accepted by the relevant boards as authoritative? If a doctor is not providing care up to the usual standards, there are processes available that do not involve sharing PHI with a journalist.
@Margaret: As a trans person and a clinical social worker, I find it insulting for you to assert on behalf of all trans people that we are somehow incapable of possibly conceiving of situations where medical intervention may be contraindicated. It’s not only insulting, but it is based on and perpetuates the fallacy of “neutrality”. It’s the same logic that tries to bar gay judges from hearing anti-LGBTQ cases because they’re somehow more invested in the outcome- as though cisgender and heterosexual have no stake in maintaining their socially privileged status. People who fall in line with the status quo are all invested in maintaining that status quo, and some of them protect it downright fanatically (see: Florida).
Let’s not even talk about trans people who feel socially pressured to obtain medical interventions they don’t personally want in order to present in a way that meets social norms enough to reduce the likelihood of being perceived as trans and facing violence as a result.
Let’s not talk about medically unnecessary genital surgeries on intersex infants that often lead to physical pain and dysfunction as well as psychological harm.
But sure, we trans folk just “can’t comprehend” the nuance of medical and psychiatric care enough to possibly have a reliable voice in this discussion….
Remember that time when someone here suggested some sort of “online therapy” thing as cheaper than the real thing, and I objected on, among other things, cybersecurity grounds, feeling that any kind of online thing would prove unable to preserve doctor-patient confidentiality?
Well, about that …
https://freethoughtblogs.com/oceanoxia/2023/03/16/video-betterhelp-shares-your-data-with-facebook/
@Margaret Pless:
AS others have said, you are sounding awfully TERFy. Also, while the asshole known as Jesse Singal wasn’t violating HIPAA, he should honestly have learned something about it before writing healthcare pieces so he could know if the person he is interviewing or getting info from is violating it. Although clearly he doesn’t consider it his job to protect patients (because he’s a despicable piece of shit) he should’ve done it just to cover his own ass!!
And besides him, I can say for sure that the person he interviewed or whatever (the whistleblower) absolutely did violate HIPAA. I am a former grad student advisor and my position was covered by both HIPAA and FERPA. I also ended up talking to our local newspaper about serious concerns I had about things going on in my former department, including student abuse. I did so without violating either act because for me to put student information out to the public like that would’ve caused the students I care about more harm than me saying nothing. So I talked about what happened in as vague a fashion as possible while still getting across all the basic facts. That is not what this “whistleblower” has done. She didn’t give out the names or DOBs, but she gave out so many details that the patients or people who know the patients can tell it’s them. That is still a HIPAA violation. And honestly YOU should know that if you were supposedly “waders-deep” in patient healthcare info.
Agreeing with Yutolia. Also, it’s not like HIPAA guidelines are kept on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard.” There’s a webpage ‘n everything:
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/security/index.html
Strip away all the lawyer-talk, and what it boils down to is “don’t share PHI with unauthorized people” and a lot of info about what constitutes “authorized people.”
Pardon me while I go over to the corner and rant and grumble about how medical ethics are presented in fiction, which seems to be where most people get their info about HIPAA and medical ethics and how hospitals work.
Hey, I got that reference!
@Crip Dyke
It seemed appropriate. 🙂
But seriously, whenever I see somebody online spout off nonsense about HIPAA, I fight the urge to send them to a Vogon poetry reading. It was bad enough before the pandemic, but we saw new levels of stupid from March 2020 on. Sheesh.
Singal has spent years asking the important questions like “Is every major medical association wrong about healthcare for trans youth?” and “Is every trans kid actually confused and not trans?” and “Is my personal discomfort with the existence of trans people proof that they don’t deserve healthcare and other human rights?”