2017 academic dispute
The feminist philosophy journal "Hypatia" became involved in a dispute in April 2017 that led to the online shaming of one of its authors, Rebecca Tuvel, an assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis. The journal had published a peer-reviewed article by Tuvel in which she compared the situation of Caitlyn Jenner, a trans woman, to that of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who identifies as black. When the article was criticized on social media, scholars associated with "Hypatia" joined in the criticism and urged the journal to retract it. The controversy exposed a rift within the journal's editorial team and more broadly within feminism and academic philosophy.
In the article—"In Defense of Transracialism", published in "Hypatia"'s spring 2017 issue on 25 April—Tuvel argued that "since we should accept transgender individuals' decisions to change sexes, we should also accept transracial individuals' decisions to change races". After a small group on Facebook and Twitter criticized the article and attacked Tuvel, an open letter began circulating, naming one of "Hypatia"'s editorial board as its point of contact and urging the journal to retract the article. The article's publication had sent a message, the letter said, that "white cis scholars may engage in speculative discussion of these themes" without engaging "theorists whose lives are most directly affected by transphobia and racism".
On 1 May the journal posted an apology on its Facebook page on behalf of "a majority" of "Hypatia"'s associate editors. By the following day the open letter had 830 signatories, including scholars associated with "Hypatia" and two members of Tuvel's dissertation committee. "Hypatia"'s editor-in-chief, Sally Scholz, and its board of directors stood by the article. When Scholz resigned in July 2017, the board suspended the associate editors' authority to appoint the next editor, in response to which eight associate editors resigned. The directors set up a task force to restructure the journal's governance. In February 2018 the directors themselves were replaced.
Some members of the academic community responded with support for Tuvel. The affair exposed fault lines within philosophy about peer review, analytic versus continental philosophy, diversity within the profession, who is deemed qualified to write about people's lived experience, the pressures of social media, and how to preserve the free exchange of ideas.
Background.
"Hypatia".
Founded in 1983 by Azizah Y. al-Hibri and the Society for Women in Philosophy, "Hypatia" is owned by a non-profit corporation, Hypatia Inc. At the time of the dispute in April 2017, the journal was published by John Wiley &amp; Sons. Miriam Solomon (Temple) was president of the board of directors and Sally Scholz (Villanova) editor-in-chief. In addition to the directors and editorial staff, in April 2017 there was a 25-strong editorial board; a 10-member advisory board; 12 local editorial advisors; and a board of 10 associate editors. The associate editors, who appointed the editors-in-chief and advised on editorial policy, consisted of Linda Martín Alcoff (CUNY); Ann Cahill (Elon); Kim Hall (App State); Cressida Heyes (Alberta); Karen Jones (Melbourne); Kyoo Lee (John Jay); Mariana Ortega (John Carroll); Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir (SFSU); Alison Wylie (Washington); and George Yancy (Emory).
Author.
Rebecca Tuvel was born in Toronto to a Jewish family; her mother is a pharmacist and her father a dentist. Tuvel attributes her interest in justice partly to the loss of family members during the Holocaust; both her grandfathers were survivors. Specializing in feminist philosophy, the philosophy of race, and animal ethics, Tuvel obtained her BA from McGill University in 2007 and her PhD in 2014 from Vanderbilt University for a thesis entitled "Epistemic Injustice Expanded: A Feminist, Animal Studies Approach". In 2014 she joined Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, as an assistant professor of philosophy.
"In Defense of Transracialism".
Jenner and Dolezal.
Tuvel began writing the transracialism article after noticing the contrast between the reception given in 2015 to Caitlyn Jenner's coming out as a trans woman in April and that given in June to Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who identifies and had been passing as black. Jenner became one of "Glamour" magazine's Women of the Year and appeared on the cover of "Vanity Fair", while Dolezal lost her position as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter in Spokane, Washington, and became, in her view, unemployable. Tuvel was not interested in the details of the cases but in their structure. She set about writing an argument in support of the position: "Since we should accept transgender individuals' decisions to change sexes, we should also accept transracial individuals' decisions to change races."
Arguments.
Tuvel suggests that "generally, we treat people wrongly when we block them from assuming the personal identity they wish to assume". Self-identification and social recognition of the new identity are the two components needed for a successful change. As an example, she offers conversion to Judaism; if there is no reason to block the conversion, such as the rabbi doubting the seriousness of the commitment, transition to the new identity will be accepted. Arguing for "an account of race that allows for racial membership on the basis of social treatment and ... self-identification", she maintains that race is a malleable social construct and that, while ancestry—a feature external to the body—is a highly valued determinant of race in America, its value varies elsewhere. In Brazil, for example, Dolezal's self-identification as black, her living as someone society had accepted as black, and her exposure to black culture would be enough to deem her black, according to Tuvel.
Tuvel addresses four objections to transracialism. First, a claim to be black requires the experience of having grown up with the suffering anti-black racism causes; the journalist Touré called this the "one thing that binds black people". That trans women are not raised with the suffering caused by sexism is not reason enough, Tuvel argues, to reject their identification as women. Therefore, in Tuvel's view, Dolezal's experience of racism while living as a black woman would be sufficient exposure. A second objection is that Dolezal cannot identify as black because of the importance placed in America on ancestry; no matter the facts, there is intersubjective agreement that ancestry matters. Tuvel argues that this position holds the possibility of change "hostage to the status quo".
Third, there is an objection that the black community is harmed when a white person seeks to enter it; Dolezal's passing as black was compared to blackface. Tuvel distinguishes between problematic and unproblematic identification. Dolezal's self-identification was not based on a change in physical appearance alone; there was nothing insulting about it; it did not appear to be temporary; there were no questionable ends; and there was no reinforcement of harmful stereotypes. It was therefore an example of unproblematic identification, Tuvel argues. A fourth objection is that Dolezal was engaged in a "wrongful exercise of white privilege": a white person can restore their white privilege whenever they need it, while a black person is denied this ease of movement. Tuvel writes that the same argument applies to trans women, especially before surgery; that someone could return to male privilege should not preclude their transition.
Peer review and publication.
The paper thanks J. Baird Callicott (UNT), Andrew Forcehimes (NTU) and David Gray (UofM) for having read earlier drafts. Tuvel submitted the article to "Hypatia" on 12 February 2016, and on 26 February she presented it to a conference at the University of Waterloo. The manuscript was revised on 24 September and accepted for publication on 10 October 2016, after the standard double-blind peer review by at least two reviewers.
On 4 January 2017 Tuvel presented the paper to the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division. The scheduled commentators were Kris Sealey (Fairfield), a "Hypatia" reviewer in 2016, and Tina Fernandes Botts (Fresno State). Sealey's rebuttal included that the biology of race "is really about a relationship between actual genetic ancestry (on the one hand), and the cultural and social signification of that ancestry (on the other)". The role of ancestry is therefore not biological but cultural, she argued. She argued further that "the white person who attempts to shed her white identity becomes blind to the racial privilege that she cannot opt out of".
Botts did not attend the meeting but submitted a short reply, arguing that the contemporary understanding of race in the US sees it as an "identity marker based in ancestry", which unlike gender is not changeable; she called race "externally derived" and gender "internally derived". She presented a more detailed position at a Fresno State meeting in March and at the "Res Philosophica" conference in April. "Hypatia" made Tuvel's article available online on 29 March 2017 and included it in their spring issue on 25 April. It was published while Botts was at the "Res Philosophica" conference. There was support there for both Botts's and Tuvel's positions; according to Botts, the view was expressed that Tuvel's ideas were out of step with recent scholarship, but that she might be onto something in calling for the right to reject one's designated race.
Social media response.
Criticism.
On 28 April 2017, Tuvel and the article came under attack on Facebook and Twitter. Tuvel was called transphobic, racist, crazy, and stupid, and was accused of having engaged in "epistemic violence". Several feminists referred to her as a "Becky". The article was called violent, crap, and "wack shit". The philosopher Kelly Oliver, who chaired Tuvel's dissertation committee in 2014, defended Tuvel on Facebook by asking for arguments rather than insults, and suggested that "Hypatia" invite critical responses. She was told her comments were "unforgivable" and that her suggestions were "doing violence" and triggering PTSD.
According to Oliver, several people associated with "Hypatia" joined in the criticism and apologized individually for the article. A friend of Oliver's described one of the Facebook apologies as "like something ISIS makes its captors read in a hostage video before beheading them". Dissenters were, allegedly, silenced or afraid to speak up; several people who wrote sympathetically to Tuvel in private attacked her in public. Others who posted criticism acknowledged privately that they had not read the article. A "senior feminist philosopher" telephoned Tuvel to remind her that she had to appeal to the "right people" to get tenure. Oliver writes: "Through every medium imaginable, senior feminist scholars were pressuring, even "threatening", Tuvel that she wouldn't get tenure and her career would be ruined if she didn’t retract her article." Tuvel said that people were "absolutely vicious" toward her.
Nora Berenstain, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Tennessee, wrote on Facebook on 29 April that the paper contained "egregious levels of liberal white ignorance and discursive transmisogynistic violence". Criticizing Tuvel for failing to cite black women philosophers or black trans women, Berenstain objected to Tuvel's parenthetical reference to Jenner's former name (deadnaming) and her use of the terms "transgenderism", "biological sex" and "male genitalia". The paper's references to surgery, Berenstain wrote, objectified trans bodies, and its reference to "a male-to-female (mtf) trans individual who could return to male privilege" promoted "the harmful transmisogynistic ideology that trans women have (at some point had) male privilege".
Open letter.
Signatories and objections.
An open letter requesting a retraction appeared on 29 April 2017; its point of contact was Alexis Shotwell of "Hypatia"'s editorial board. The letter had 130 signatories by 9 a.m. on 1 May, and 830 by the afternoon of 2 May. The top five signatories were Elise Springer (Wesleyan), Alexis Shotwell (Carleton), Dilek Huseyinzadegan (Emory), Lori Gruen (Wesleyan), and Shannon Winnubst (Ohio State). Two signatories, Gruen and Lisa Guenther (Vanderbilt), had been members of Tuvel's dissertation committee. Delivered on 2 May to "Hypatia"'s editor-in-chief, the letter urged the journal to retract the article; avoid deadnaming; open its editorial procedures to scrutiny; release a statement about improving its review process; and undertake to involve in future "people targeted by transphobia and racism and scholars who specialize in the related relevant subfields of philosophy". It alleged of the article that:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;
Rebuttal.
According to the philosopher Justin Weinberg, most of the letter's claims were false or arguable. GLAAD does caution against using the term "transgenderism". The deadnaming consisted of Tuvel including Jenner's previous name in parentheses, a name Jenner herself refers to, Jesse Singal wrote. Weinberg argued that it was unclear why the conversion example was deemed objectionable. Tuvel did not identify Charles Mills as a "defender of voluntary racial identification"; Weinberg wrote that this allegation was "just plain false". The criticism that Tuvel did not cite