This article is originally published in English, under license CC BY on Wikipedia, and we translate and partially reproduce it on Jot Down to give context to the series The limits of identity: Going through Tuvel’s argument in the opposite direction.
The feminist philosophy journal Hypatia was embroiled in a controversy in April 2017 that led to online derision by one of its authors, , an assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis. The magazine had published a peer-reviewed article by Tuvel in which she compared the situation of Caitlyn Jennera trans woman, with the Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who identifies as black. When the article was criticized on social media, academics associated with Hypatia joined in the criticism and urged the journal to retract it. The controversy exposed a rift in the journal’s editorial team and, more broadly, in feminism and academic philosophy.
In the article In defense of transracialism, published in the Spring 2017 issue of Hypatia on April 25, Tuvel argued that “since we should accept the decisions of transgender individuals to change sex, we should also accept the decisions of transracial individuals to change race.” 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 team as a point of contact and urging the magazine to retract the article. The article’s publication had sent a message, the letter said, that “white cis scholars can engage in speculative discussions about these issues” without engaging “theorists whose lives are most directly affected by transphobia and racism.”
On May 1, the magazine posted an apology on its Facebook page on behalf of “the majority” of Hypatia’s associate editors. The next day, the open letter had 830 signatories, including Hypatia associate scholars and two members of Tuvel’s thesis committee. Hypatia’s editor-in-chief, Sally Scholz, and its board of directors supported 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 created a working group to restructure the governance of the journal. In February 2018, the directors themselves were replaced.
The academic community responded with its support for Tuvel. The issue highlighted the dividing lines within the philosophy of peer review, analytical versus continental philosophy, diversity within the profession, who is considered qualified to write about people’s lived experience, the pressures of social media and how to preserve the free exchange of ideas.