Jeremy Stangroom

This particularly applies if (a) you're doing philosophy; & (b) you're making your arguments in a journal, where the whole point is to get

to the truth about things. It's got to be possible to say true things that are harmful. Otherwise, philosophers - and sociologists - might

as well just give up and go home.

Part of what people don't like about Tuvel's article is that her thesis can easily be flipped: (a) arguments for transgender identities...

can be used to support trans-racial identities; (b) there are no such things as trans-racial identities; (c) therefore, there are no such

things as transgender identities. But even if the argument can be flipped like that, and even if it causes harm, if the argument meets the

normal standards for publication in a philosophy journal, then tough luck. Religious people in the (early) Soviet Union were harmed by anti-

religious sentiment, but in and of itself, that doesn't mean one can't argue for atheism. Or similarly that one cannot point out that the