Philosopher Alex Byrne kindly shared these thoughts (in response to yesterday's post, including my suggestion that he share the referee reports):
On to the possibility of sharing the comments on the first draft of my book, I do not think that readers’ reports solicited (and paid for) by a publisher are mine to share. Moreover, one reviewer simply supplied a pdf of the manuscript marked up with some (minor) helpful and constructive comments. Peter did likewise. (Most of those were incorporated in the version that will appear in print.) Another report consisted of Peter’s notes from a discussion with a reviewer.
There was very little to respond to anyway. No mistakes or argumentative flaws were identified. One reviewer was very complimentary; another was laboring under various confusions which could easily have been cleared up. I have to admit that the book will irritate some people in mainstream feminist philosophy. (N.B. the book is not a scholarly monograph; it is aimed at a general audience interested in the topic of sex and gender. There’s not all that much “philosophy” in it anyway.)
I have nothing to hide (apart from the manuscript, since I want you all to buy my book, if only to commit it to the flames). OUP has my permission to release whatever comments it likes.
I should point out that I received the contract after the usual procedure: book proposal, external reviews, etc. As I said in the Quillette piece, the draft “conformed closely to the initial proposal, both in style and substance. Many sentences from the proposal had ended up in the book.”
On the invited pronouns chapter, everyone will soon be able to judge for themselves whether it should have been rejected without revision. The Journal of Controversial Ideas version is basically the same as the first draft, with some improvements, and cut down by about 2K words.
Finally, it’s worth remarking that all the focus has been on me rather than Holly Lawford-Smith, whose story was a big part of my Quillette article. Her book Sex Matters is only coming out with OUP because of an intervention by the UK’s Free Speech Union.
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