Hypatia transracialism controversy

Hypatia

Miriam Solomon, president of Hypatia, Inc.'s, board of directors 2016–2018.^[6]

Founded by Azizah Y. al-Hibri in 1986 and published by John Wiley & Sons, Hypatia is owned by a non-profit corporation, Hypatia, Inc.^[6][18] At the time of the dispute Miriam Solomon (Temple) was president of the board of directors^[19] and Sally Scholz (Villanova) editor-in-chief.^[7] 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.^[20] The associate editors, who appointed the editors-in-chief and advised on editorial policy, consisted of Linda Martín Alcoff (CUNY);^[21] 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).^[20]

Author

Rebecca Tuvel was born in Toronto, Canada, to a Jewish family; her mother is a pharmacist and her father a dentist. Tuvel attributes her interest in justice to the loss of family members during the Holocaust; both her grandfathers were survivors.^[22] Also interested in feminist philosophy, the philosophy of race, and animal ethics, Tuvel completed her BA at McGill University in 2007, and obtained her PhD in 2014 from Vanderbilt University for a thesis entitled Epistemic Injustice Expanded: A Feminist, Animal Studies Approach.^[23][24] In the fall of 2014 she joined Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, as an assistant professor of philosophy.^[25]

Jenner and Dolezal

Tuvel began writing the article after noticing the contrast, in 2015, between the reception given 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.^[26] 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."^[27]

Arguments

Caitlyn Jenner

Rachel Dolezal

Tuvel suggests that "[g]enerally, we treat people wrongly when we block them from assuming the personal identity they wish to assume." As an example, she offers conversion to Judaism. Assuming 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. Self-identification and social recognition of the new identity are the two components needed for a successful change.^[27]

Tuvel then argues for "an account of race that allows for racial membership on the basis of social treatment and ... self-identification".^[27] 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, Tuvel suggests that Dolezal's exposure to black culture, self-identification as black, and living as someone society had accepted as black, would be enough to deem her black. From a genetic standpoint, there is no matter of fact, no "real race", Tuvel writes.^[28]

Four objections to transracialism are addressed and rejected. The first is that a claim to be black cannot be accepted without the experience of having grown up with the suffering anti-black racism causes; Tuvel quotes the journalist Touré, who called this the "one thing that binds black people"^[29] That trans women are not raised with the suffering caused by sexism is not reason enough, Tuvel argues, to reject their identification as women. Following this argument, Dolezal's experience of racism while living as a black woman would be sufficient exposure.^[30]

The second objection holds that Dolezal cannot identify as black because of the importance placed on ancestry (in America, at least). No matter the genetic facts, there is intersubjective agreement that ancestry matters; it is crucial because it is regarded as crucial. Tuvel argues that this position—espoused by Cressida Heyes, the associate editor who posted the apology—holds the possibility of change "hostage to the status quo". How racial categorization does operate is not necessarily how it should operate.^[31]

Third, there is an objection that the black community is harmed when a white individual seeks to enter that category; several commentators compared Dolezal's passing as black to the harmful practice of blackface. Tuvel distinguishes between what she calls problematic and unproblematic identification. Dolezal's self-identification is not based on a change in physical appearance alone; there is nothing obviously insulting about it; her change does not appear to be temporary; there are no questionable ends; and there is no reinforcement of harmful stereotypes. It is therefore an example of unproblematic identification, Tuvel argues.^[32]

A fourth objection holds that Dolezal is engaged in a "wrongful exercise of white privilege". This argument holds that a white person can restore their white privilege whenever they need it; a black person is denied this ease of movement.^[33] Tuvel quotes the writer Tamara Winfrey Harris: "I will accept Ms. Dolezal as black like me only when society can accept me as white like her."^[34] 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. She argues further than the exercise of privilege is a separate issue. That more men than women get jobs as philosophy professors does not mean we should get rid of philosophy professors; instead, we should address the inequality. Similarly, if society comes to accept transracialism, it could be made easier for all races to transition. Tuvel adds that it is hard to see how Dolezal could be accused of exercising white privilege by choosing to give it up.^[35]

Finally, Tuvel asks whether, if we accept her position, we are obliged to accept any and all self-identification, such as individuals who identify as nonhuman. She repeats that two components are necessary for a successful change: self-identification and social acceptance of the new identity. It is reasonable to ask that social acceptance depend on it being possible for individuals to imagine what it is like to exist and be treated as a member of the category they seek to join. Without that, there is "too little commonality to make the group designation meaningful".^[36]

Publication

The paper thanks J. Baird Callicott (UNT), Andrew Forcehimes (NTU) and David Gray (UofM) for having read earlier drafts and Rhodes College for having given Tuvel a grant to fund the research;^[37] before the controversy she had intended to write a book about the ethics of changing race.^[38] Tuvel submitted the article to Hypatia on 12 February 2016,^[39] and on 26 February she presented it to a conference at the University of Waterloo.^[40] The manuscript was revised on 24 September and accepted for publication on 10 October 2016,^[39] after the standard double-anonymous peer review by at least two reviewers.^{[6][lower-alpha 1]}

Tina Fernandes Botts

On 4 January 2017 Tuvel presented the paper to the American Philosophical Association (APA) Eastern Division, during a meeting chaired by Verena Erlenbusch (UofM).^[42] Scheduled commentators at the APA meeting were Kris Sealey (Fairfield), one of Hypatia's reviewers in 2016,^[43][44] and Tina Fernandes Botts (Fresno State).^[6][44] Sealey responded with a detailed rebuttal, including 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), which then allows ancestry to mean certain things, in certain contexts, for certain groups of people. Hence, the role and predicative force of ancestry, in my racial identity, is not biological at all, but rather, social (or cultural)."^[45] 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",^[46] and that, while Dolezal's racial identity might be approached differently in Brazil, that does not mean that a Brazilian context can be applied to the United States.^[47]

Botts was unable to attend, but she submitted a couple of paragraphs in reply to Tuvel and the panel members, arguing that the contemporary understanding of race in the United States in the 21st century is that it is an "identity marker based in ancestry", which unlike gender is not changeable; she called race "externally derived" and gender "internally derived". She received no response to her submission.^[48] She presented a more detailed position at a meeting at Fresno State in early March,^[49] and at the April 2017 Res Philosophica conference at Saint Louis University.^[6][50] Hypatia made Tuvel's article available online on 29 March 2017 and published it in their spring issue on 25 April.^[39] Botts was at the Res Philosophica conference when Tuvel's paper was published. There was support at the conference for both Botts' and Tuvel's positions. According to Botts, the "view was articulated" 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.^[48]

Criticism

On Friday, 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".^[15] Several feminists referred to her as a "Becky", a pejorative sexist term.^[22][51][52] The article was called violent, crap and "wack shit".^[15][53] Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, who chaired Tuvel's dissertation committee in 2014,^[24] made an effort on Facebook to defend Tuvel 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.^[15]

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 shut down 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."^[15] Tuvel said that people were "absolutely vicious" toward her.^[22]

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".^{[6][lower-alpha 2]} Criticizing Tuvel for failing to cite women-of-color 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".^[4]

Open letter

Rebuttal

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According to Justin Weinberg, associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, and Jesse Singal of New York magazine, most of the letter's claims were false or arguable.^[4][54] Regarding the term transgenderism, GLAAD does caution against its use. The deadnaming consisted of Tuvel including Jenner's previous name in parentheses, a name that Jenner herself refers to, Singal wrote.^{[4][lower-alpha 3]} Weinberg argued that it was unclear why the conversion example was deemed objectionable; it consisted of a paragraph explaining that, barring (for example) objections from the rabbi that the prospective convert is not committed to Judaism, those who wish to become Jews can do so.^[54][27] Weinberg also argued that Tuvel had not identified Charles Mills as a "defender of voluntary racial identification"; he wrote that this allegation was "just plain false".^{[54][lower-alpha 4]}

The criticism that Tuvel had not cited enough women of color may be a fair point, according to Singal, but hardly sufficient to demand a retraction.^[4] Weinberg argued that Tuvel's critics had failed to point out a particular work that was both directly relevant and that had been omitted.^[54]

Associate editors' apology

On 30 April 2017—two days before the open letter was delivered to Hypatia—Cressida Heyes, then one of Hypatia's 10 associate editors,^[20] posted a 1,000-word apology on her Facebook page from "We, the members of Hypatia's Board of Associate Editors". The post was later removed or made private. On 1 May it was reposted to Hypatia's Facebook page, this time ending with "Sincerely, A Majority of the Hypatia's Board of Associated Editors".^[3][4] The apology stated: "We, the members of Hypatia's Board of Associate Editors, extend our profound apology to our friends and colleagues in feminist philosophy, especially transfeminists, queer feminists, and feminists of color, for the harms that the publication of the article on transracialism has caused":

To compare ethically the lived experience of trans people (from a distinctly external perspective) primarily to a single example of a white person claiming to have adopted a black identity creates an equivalency that fails to recognize the history of racial appropriation, while also associating trans people with racial appropriation. We recognize and mourn that these harms will disproportionately fall upon those members of our community who continue to experience marginalization and discrimination due to racism and cisnormativity.^[4]

It continued that "clearly, the article should not have been published", and blamed the review process, which had exposed Tuvel to criticism that was "both predictable and justifiable". The associate editors had been asked but declined to name the anonymous reviewers.^[4]

Author's statement

Tuvel issued a statement, on 1 May 2017, in response to the associate editors' apology:

I wrote this piece from a place of support for those with non-normative identities, and frustration about the ways individuals who inhabit them are so often excoriated, body-shamed, and silenced. When the case of Rachel Dolezal surfaced, I perceived a transphobic logic that lay at the heart of the constant attacks against her. My article is an effort to extend our thinking alongside transgender theories to other non-normative possibilities.^[54]

Citing scholars who have adopted sympathetic positions on transracialism, including Adolph L. Reed Jr. and Melissa Harris-Perry, she argued that failing to examine the issues would "reinforce gender and racial essentialism". She apologized for the parenthetical reference to Jenner's previous name,^[54] which was removed from the article at her request on 4 May.^[58] She also acknowledged that "[a] valid reproach is that my article discusses the lives of vulnerable people without sufficiently citing their own first-person experiences and views." Expressing concern about the personal attacks and hate mail she had received, including from commentators who had not read the article, she wrote that commentators had warned her that failing to retract the article would "be devastating for ... [her] personally, professionally, and morally". She argued that "critical thought is in danger", and that "the last place one expects to find such calls for censorship rather than discussion is amongst philosophers".^[54][53]

Early response from Hypatia

Sally Scholz, the journal's editor-in-chief, offered her support to Tuvel on 6 May, writing that "it is utterly inappropriate for editors to repudiate an article they have accepted for publication (barring issues of plagiarism or falsification of data)." The board of associate editors was a policy board with no role in the journal's management, she wrote, and it had acted independently in drafting and posting the letter.^{[lower-alpha 5]} Scholz's position was supported by Miriam Solomon, president of Hypatia Inc.'s board of directors. Scholz, the board and the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, referred the matter to the Committee on Publication Ethics.^[6]

On 18 May the board issued a statement with a mixed message.^[59] Signed by Elizabeth Anderson, Leslie Francis (treasurer), Heidi Grasswick (secretary), Solomon (president), and Lisa Tessman (chair), it acknowledged the "intensity of experience and convictions around matters of intersectionality", and the "egregious history of treatment of women of color feminists and feminists from other marginalized social positions" within academic philosophy. Dismissing the view that objections to the article were too minor to have triggered such a strong response, the board wrote that such a view from "outsiders" reflects "ignorance of the cumulative history of marginalization, disrespect, and misrepresentation of oppressed groups".^[60] The statement continued that the associate editors had apologized without adequate consultation with the editor-in-chief and on their own behalf only. Condemning the personal attacks on Tuvel, the directors said they stood behind the editor-in-chief and that the article would not be retracted "barring discovery of misconduct or plagiarism". The associate editors' apology remained on Hypatia's Facebook page; on 25 May 2017 it was updated to say that it did not represent the views of the editor or board of directors.^[5]

Early academic reaction

The academic community came out in support of Tuvel, particularly on two popular philosophy blogs, Justin Weinberg's Daily Nous and Brian Leiter's Leiter Reports.^[54] Leiter wrote that he had "never seen anything like this in academic philosophy".^[4] Mark Newman, chair of the Rhodes College philosophy department where Tuvel teaches, expressed the department's "complete and unconditional support" for her.^[61]

The concept of harm had been "twisted beyond all recognition" by the associate editors' letter, according to José Luis Bermúdez, professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University.^[62] Paul Bloom called the episode "a bizarre and ugly attack".^[4] Several commentators blamed social media's call-out culture for the speed with which the dispute unfolded.^[6][15][16] In the view of Suzanna Danuta Walters, editor-in-chief of the feminist journal Signs, the associate editors had undermined "the whole process of peer review and the principles of scholarly debate".^[16] Dan Kaufman, professor of philosophy at Missouri State University, blamed the profession's "increasing obsession with identity politics" and "purity-purges".^[63] Rogers Brubaker, author of Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities (2016), described as "epistemological insiderism" the idea that certain issues can be covered only by particular categories of scholar, and that as a white cisgender woman Tuvel had no standing to argue about transgender or transracial issues. For Brubaker, acknowledging himself as a white cisgender man, this position means not only that certain topics are too easily closed off to particular scholars, but that scholars with lived experience are expected to focus on those topics.^[8]

Sally Haslanger

Systemic sexism within the discipline was cited. There had been tension for some time between Hypatia and women-of-color philosophers, who believed the journal did not take their work seriously, according to Tina Fernandes Botts. Botts was critical of the Hypatia peer-review process that had allowed the paper to be published. "What you do when someone submits the paper is you find people who are experts in that area to review it," she told The Chronicle of Higher Education, "to make sure that it is situated within contemporary scholarly discussions. Obviously they didn’t do that."^[6]

Sally Haslanger, later appointed co-chair of Hypatia's governance task force, complained about poor working conditions and the narrow focus of philosophy journals; she wrote that there are days she can "hardly stand the arrogance, the ignorance, the complacency, in short, the bullshit, of the profession". The situation was not Tuvel's fault; she had been unfairly targeted, in Haslanger's view. Of 13,000 professional philosophers in the United States in 2013, she wrote, only 55 were black women and 30 percent of those were PhD students.^[64] Citing sexual-harassment complaints and figures showing that, in 2016, 75 percent of APA members identified as male and 80 percent white, Shannon Winnubst, editor of the feminist journal PhiloSOPHIA and one of the open letter's top signatories, wrote that the publication of Tuvel's article had brought "all of the systemic problems" of philosophy and feminist philosophy to a head.^[65] Oliver Traldi argued in Quillette that the dispute was partly attributable to the influence of continental as opposed to analytic philosophy, and the idea that philosophy should be a vehicle for social change, rather than an impartial search for truth.^[66]

Hypatia resignations and task force

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) reported in July 2017 that the associate editors' apology had been inappropriate, and that, when responding to an external complaint about a journal article, an internal inquiry should be held prior to a public response. The associate editors apparently refused to accept the report's conclusions.^[7] On 20 July Hypatia announced the resignation of Scholz, the editor-in-chief, and Shelley Wilcox, editor of Hypatia Reviews Online. They also announced that a task force would restructure the journal's governance, and that anyone holding an editorial or non-board position with Hypatia would be "required to sign a statement of adherence" to COPE guidelines.^{[67][68][69][70]}

According to a statement from the associate editors, the board asked them, on 17 July, to resign or it would suspend the journal's governance documents, thereby removing the associate editors' authority to choose the next editor. Eight of the associate editors resigned. In a resignation letter, they argued that feminist philosophy had an ethical commitment to transform philosophy into "a discipline that honors the perspectives and welcomes the scholarly contributions of historically marginalized groups, including people of color, trans* people, disabled people, and queer people".^[11][71][7]

Sally Haslanger, Serene Khader and Yannik Thiem were named as co-chairs of the governance task force, and Ann Garry, Serene Khader, and Alison Stone were appointed as interim editors.^[69] In February 2018 the five-person board of directors was replaced.^[14] Linda Martín Alcoff and Kim Hall, two of the associate editors who resigned in July,^[11] became, respectively, president of the board of directors and chair of the search committee for the new editorial team.^[14]

2018 symposium, Mellon Foundation grant

Peg Birmingham, editor of Philosophy Today, published a symposium on Tuvel's article in the journal's Winter 2018 edition, with contributions from Chloë Taylor (Alberta), Lewis Gordon (UConn), Kris Sealey (Fairfield), Sabrina Hom (GCSU), Tina Fernandes Botts and Rebecca Tuvel.^[72] In March 2018 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation extended a $75,000 grant to Fairfield University to develop a "code of ethics for publishing in the field of philosophy", naming Sealey,^[73] a member of the Hypatia governance task force,^[74] as the project lead. Referring to "[r]ecent publishing controversies", Amy Ferrer, executive director of the American Philosophical Association, said the aim was to "develop guidance that scholars, editors, and publishers alike can use to ensure that they produce scholarship that meets the highest ethical and intellectual standards".^[73]