Kudos to philosophers Ned Hall (Harvard) and John Schwenkler (Florida State) for drafting the initial statement, and to those philosophers who have joined them: Jose Bermudez (Texas A&M0, Clare Chambers (Cambridge), Cordelia Fine (Melbourne), Benj Hellie (Toronto), Thomas Kelly (Princeton), Jeff McMahan (Oxford), Francesca Minerva (Ghent), Peter Singer (Princeton & Melbourne), Nicole Vincent (Technology Sydney), and Jessica Wilson (Toronto). From the statement:
- We affirm the right of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals to live free of harassment and abuse, and we welcome them enthusiastically as fellow participants in the profession of philosophy.
- We reject calls for censuring or deplatforming any of our colleagues on the basis of their philosophical arguments about sex and gender identity, or their social and political advocacy for sex-based rights.
- We condemn the too frequently cruel and abusive rhetoric, including accusations of hatred or transphobia, directed at these philosophers in response to their arguments and advocacy.
- We urge that the philosophical discussion of sex, gender and related social and political issues be carried out in a collegial and mutually respectful manner, reflecting the full range of interests at stake and presuming the good faith of all parties.
I strongly agree with this statement, and I am hopeful the majority of philosophers also agree. (Professors Hall and Schwenkler shared an early draft with me, but we agreed that since I have been out front longer and louder than anyone else defending gender critical feminist philosophers from harassment and vilification I should not add my name.)
UPDATE: In keeping with the freak show that is Twitter, the overwhelming response from many of the culprits this statement is meant to target has been denial, ridicule, and disbelief. (In the real world, everyone agrees, and is puzzled the statement was needed.) Several readers, who have not been following the misconduct on social media, did ask whom the statement is referring to with this: "We condemn the too frequently cruel and abusive rhetoric, including accusations of hatred or transphobia, directed at these philosophers." Among the philosophers, faculty and graduate students (the latter marked with an *), who have been guilty of such rhetoric, and sometimes worse, directed not only at gender critical feminists but anyone perceived as supporting them (or even just supporting their right to express their views) are B.R. George (Carnegie-Mellon), Jonathan Ichikawa (British Columbia), Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown), Eugene Marshall (Florida International), Rachel McKinney (Suffolk), Rachel McKinnon (Charleston), Garret Merriam (Cal State-Sacramento), *Nathan Oseroff (King's College, London), *Christa Peterson (Southern California), *Keyvan Shaifiei (Georgetown), *Joshua Stein (Calgary), and Matt Weiner (Vermont), and that's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, but these are the worst offenders (some are really sick puppies, like Shaifiei and Stein). Professor Stock has documented many other instances of attacks on the academic freedom and free speech of gender critical feminists, mostly by non-philosophers.
Earlier this summer philosopher Jennifer Frey (South Carolina) called out the hypocritical nonsense of Christa "Fuck Brian Leiter" Peterson, one of the worst offenders for "cruel and abusive rhetoric":
Ms. Peterson has been leading the Twitter charge against Gender Critical feminist philosophers for the last year, dishing out insults, mockery, lies, half-truths, and more, and then playing the victim when anyone calls her on it. (Her capacity to misread and thus misrepresent what she cites is also breathtaking; I suppose she counts on most of her Twitter followers not bothering to actually check.) We first encountered Ms. Peterson more than a year ago denouncing an essay by radical activist and feminist Robert Jensen (UT Austin) as "dumb as shit." She also denounces as "shit" this post by feminist philosophers Sophie Allen, Holly Lawford-Smith and others, refers repeatedly to philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) as "a noted bigot" and mocks her continuously, calls the views of Leslie Green (the Professor of the Philosophy of Law at Oxford University) "repulsive and deeply unserious," and on and on and on, to the order of hundreds if not thousands of tweets full of sneering mockery, misrepresentation, and abuse of philosophers.
Like another bad actor, Nathan Oseroff (who did finally apologize for his misconduct), Ms. Peterson is an adult in her late 20s. She is free to be as rude and abusive as she wants, but she can't complain when others comment on it. She can be held to account for what she says in public, just like anyone else. As someone in Twitter-land once observed:
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