Journal of Physiology refuses to remediate anti-trans piece

from the desk of the editor-in-chief (cw scientific transphobia)

Photo by Arthur Lambillotte on Unsplash

Last week, I shared the story of two scientists who were so upset that cis and trans athletes have similar athletic abilities that they published an openly cissexist and gender essentialist opinion piece in the Journal of Physiology. As part of my work on that post, I reached out to the journal’s staff to share my concerns with the editorial standards applied to piece in question. After spending the week dialoguing over email, their response is, briefly, so what?

Some scientists are mad that cis and trans athletes have similar abilities

The opinion piece in Physiology is an intellectually thin rebuttal of a recent study by Hamilton, et al. which found negligible differences in athletic performance between cis and trans athletes. (I have also covered the Hamilton piece at QSL.) The rebuttal in Physiology utilized a rhetorical framing that was openly rooted in cissexism and pseudoscientific gender essentialism. These framings are most evident in its title and in the final section of the piece which consists only of leading questions.

After raising concerns about the harmful and demeaning language of the opinion piece with the Peer Review Manager at Physiology, I was eventually connected with the journal’s editor-in-chief Dr. Kim Barrett, who also serves as a Distinguished Professor and the Vice Dean for Research at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine. Dr. Barrett emphasized that the point of the piece was to generate controversy:

[W]e hope to spark debates in The Journal with these Opinion articles, which are precisely that – a statement of the authors’ opinion on a topic.  Indeed, this is a topic on which reasonable people can disagree.

In other words: since some people deny the validity of trans lives, then it is reasonable for a journal to amplify and legitimize that rhetoric in the name of debate (and clicks). Dr. Barrett also gave her “personal reassurance” that the Journal of Physiology does not tolerate discrimination, a promise that I find to be empty.

This stance dehumanizes trans folks to the level of mere subjects of “debate” without personal knowledge or autonomy and echoes a “both sides” framing that drives anti-trans coverage in major media and political outlets. At the core of this framing are people in positions of power, such as a scientific journal’s editor-in-chief, who fail to use their power for just ends. It doesn’t matter what any individual staff member at Physiology personally believes about trans inclusion in sports because they have abdicated their responsibility to edit out anti-trans hate from their journal.

We all deserve better.