Identity and Conflicts of Interest
It is always the lecturer’s responsibility to ensure that students know that they can speak freely.
Earlier this month, The Conversation published an article with the title, “Are trans women ‘biologically male’? The answer is complicated.” But the answer is not complicated—a transwoman is a biological male making an identity-based claim to womanhood. The existence of this article in a magazine whose charter is “knowledge-based journalism… supported by evidence” therefore requires some explanation.
When the author’s photo and bio popped up online, it became clear why the author wrote the article and why The Conversation published it. A man who insists that he is a woman is likely to be motivated to find ways to deny that he is male. A left-leaning publication is likely to want to let minorities speak for themselves, while remaining relatively impervious to any implausibility in what they have to say.
Amid the wash of Twitter ridicule that ensued, one comment captured my interest: “I think when pieces like this article are published it should be the duty of the publisher to highlight that the author themselves is… trans so that the reader can judge for themselves if the article might be biased.”
