"If transgenderism is appropriate, then transracialism is appropriate./Transgenderism is appropriate./Therefore, transracialism is appropriate."

That's the argument Rebecca Tuvel believed she was making, but the reason feminist philosophers freaked out, Jim S. argues, is that Tuvel's modus ponens argument flips all too easily into this modus tollens argument:

If transgenderism is appropriate, then transracialism is appropriate.
Transracialism is not appropriate.
Therefore, transgenderism is not appropriate.

"The question is, why did so many scholars, especially feminists, express one sentiment behind closed doors and another out in the open? "

"In private messages, some people commiserated, expressed support, and apologized for what was happening and for not going public with their support," writes Vanderbilt philosophy professor Kelly Oliver, about the article “In Defense of Transracialism” written by Rebecca Tuvel and published in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy.

As one academic wrote to me in a private message, “sorry I’m not saying this publicly (I have no interest in battling the mean girls on Facebook) but fwiw it’s totally obvious to me that you haven’t been committing acts of violence against marginalized scholars.” Later, this same scholar wrote, again in private, saying Tuvel’s article is “a tight piece of philosophy” that makes clear that the position that “transgender is totally legit, [and] transracial is not—can only be justified using convoluted essentialist metaphysics. I will write to her privately and tell her so.” Others went further and supported Tuvel in private while actually attacking her in public. In private messages, these people apologized for what she must be going through, while in public they fanned the flames of hatred and bile on social media. The question is, why did so many scholars, especially feminists, express one sentiment behind closed doors and another out in the open? Why were so many others afraid to say anything in public?

MEANWHILE: In Alexandria, the real Hypatia did not face mean girls on Facebook, but mean men...



... who "tore off her clothing" and either ripped "her body in pieces" with "tiles" or "dragged her... through the streets of the city till she died."

Why name your journal after her if you don't have courage?

"This Is What a Modern-Day Witch Hunt Looks Like."

By Jesse Singal (in New York Magazine). This is a remarkably detailed analysis of an attack on Rebecca Tuvel, a philosopher who published "In Defense of Transracialism" in the feminist-philosophy journal Hypatia. Excerpt from Singal's article:

There has simply been an explosive amount of misinformation circulating online about what is and isn’t in Tuvel’s article, which few of her most vociferous critics appear to have even skimmed, based on their inability to accurately describe its contents. Because the right has seized on Rachel Dolezal as a target of gleeful ridicule, and as a means of making opportunistic arguments against the reality of the trans identity, a bunch of academics who really should know better are attributing to Tuvel arguments she never made, simply because she connected those two subjects in an academic article.

Read the whole thing. It makes me want to read all these other things Jesse Singal has written. Like, "Here’s (More) Evidence Testosterone Makes Men Dumber."

As you can see [from the new study in Psychological Science], testosterone made the respondents significantly more likely to pick the answer that “felt” right but that wasn’t in fact correct. It didn’t seem to have an effect on their ability to solve arithmetic problems, which don’t have an answer that “feels” right and therefore don’t lend themselves to gut-impulse guessing.

Here's a Breitbart article about Jesse Singal: "Meet Precious Flower Jesse Singal: He Thinks You Are a ‘Hateful Idiot.’" It's really insanely intra-Breitbart:

[I]n response to Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos Tweeting out the article about Singal’s piece, Singal began to lose it. “Holy shit Breitbart responded to my beard blog post!!!!!!!!!!! These are some sensitive snowflakes,” Singal wrote....

That goes on and on about Singal going on and on.  Here's Singal's beard blog post (from 2015): "7 Breitbart Commenters Who Think Paul Ryan Might Be a Radical Muslim Because He Grew a Beard."