Byrne sums up the report:

After surveying all the evidence, and applying widely accepted principles of medical ethics, we found that medical transition for minors is not empirically or ethically justified.

He then surveys various reactions to the report, including mine. In a post about Byrne’s apparent co-authorship of the report, I wrote:

From day one of his second term, President Trump has taken aim at transgender women and men, attempting to deprive them of services, civil liberties, protections, and opportunities, and doing so with mockery and callousness. (Here and here are surveys of some of these efforts.) Of course, trans people are not Trump’s only targets. Immigrants, government employees, the disabled, and the domestic and global poor, among others, have been on the receiving end of his cruelty. Many more would be, were his selfish and authoritarian ambitions realized. It is not unreasonable for people to have differing views about gender identity. But it would be appalling were a philosophy professor to have voluntarily decided to help Trump with any of this. 

In the comments on that post, in response to a question from a reader, I elaborated on the reasons for my criticism; here’s part of what I said:

Trump seems quite happy to pulverize the trans community—for political gain, for the pleasure he takes in domination, and maybe even because he occasionally thinks it is a way to be righteous. It’s horrible. Whatever your views are about the metaphysics of sex and gender, or about trans persons in sports or prisons, or about what kinds of medical care trans youth should have—topics which are difficult and about which it’s not unreasonable to have various views—the Trump administration’s cruelty towards, and indifference to the suffering of, trans persons should be quite clear. (And not just trans persons, of course, and their loved ones, too, but various other populations.) The carelessness with which the administration treats the lives of those it considers others is astounding.

Regardless of its quality, I take the study to obviously be a political instrument in service of Trump’s anti-trans agenda, as it is the result of an executive order that announced its conclusions in advance (the language of “maiming” and “mutilating” in the order further indicating the administration’s heartlessness and disrespect). Voluntarily working in service to this cruelty is what I’d consider appalling.

In his op-ed, Byrne writes:

I wish I could say my own profession has modeled rational debate about these controversies. After the report was published, a philosopher who runs a popular blog reported that my name appeared in the metadata of the appendix. He called my presumed involvement “appalling.” On social media, a prominent senior philosopher accused me (“Herr Byrne”) of contributing to a “project of extermination,” to the approval of other senior philosophers. This illustrates the inevitability of online comparisons to Nazis, if nothing else.

He then replies:

To quote [Hilary] Cass again, “This must stop.” Though the current administration seems not to grasp the point, we all stand to benefit from free and open inquiry, in medicine, academia and in society more broadly. That does not mean elevating crackpots or taking wild conspiracy theories seriously. It means that objections should be made using arguments and data, not shaming or ostracizing.

As a response to what I wrote, this is a non sequitur (so much for “modeling rational debate”). I objected to Byrne working with a cruel would-be dictator. That is not an objection to “free and open inquiry.” I’ve been quite clear in my support for academic freedom, including on issues related to sex and gender, as I’m sure Byrne knows—here’s a post by me defending his academic freedom on these issues (and here’s a post defending Stock’s academic freedom, and one defending Lawford-Smith’s, and another comment defending Byrne’s). To oppose joining with the powers that be in their push for a callous, dehumanizing, agenda is not thereby to oppose free and open inquiry.

Not only is Byrne’s response a non sequitur, but at this point, it’s a cliched non sequitur. No matter how many times or how loud people say it, criticism of you is not a violation of your liberty to freely and openly inquire. I suppose complaining that it is may have rhetorical purchase in The Washington Post and elsewhere, but one should keep in mind that moves like this serve to provide cover to those who actually are empowered to, and have been trying to, strip us of our academic freedom—people like the president and his flunkies. Appalling, indeed.

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[Comments are closed for the time being. Life is short. Your jabs about irony are pre-emptively acknowledged.]