Why I despise Sophie Grace Chappell
The full story of one of the more irritating and nasty things that has happened to me in 2024
This week I want to tell you a little story about one of the things that was going on for me behind the scenes this year. It’s just one example of the endless nonsense that wastes my time these days. I really do have better things I want to be doing – but unfortunately if you let this sort of stuff slide, it gets worse and worse. Better whenever possible to nip it in the bud.
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In April I sent a letter concerning the book “Trans Figured” by Sophie Grace Chappell, a trans-identifying man who is a professor of philosophy at Open University, to the university’s vice-chancellor. I also forwarded the letter to the editor at Polity, the publishing house that had commissioned and published the book.
My letter was a complaint about sections of the book I regarded as directed at me – indeed which I knew at least some readers regarded as directed at me, since I had not even known the book of the book’s existence until one of them got in touch with me to bring it to my attention. The letter is posted at the end of this article.
An extract:
…Two weeks ago Chappell published a book with Polity, entitled Trans Figured. In several places it is clearly a response to my book. Chappell does not cite my work by name, but instead engages in what is known legally as “innuendo reference” against me.
A whole section, 1.15, is entitled “When Ideology meets Reality”, and in it Chappell writes:
“And among them are supposedly respectable journalists and academics who are perfectly happy to describe trans people as ‘parasites’ or to promulgate bizarre myths about ‘transgenderism being bankrolled by Jewish billionaires’ – myths that strikingly close the gap between transphobia and anti-Semitism, and sometimes between both of those and conspiracy theories like Q-Anon as well.”...
Polity put the points I made to Chappell, and conveyed his responses back to me by email. He said that the passages of his book which I complained about did not refer to me, were not intended to refer to me and would not, in his opinion, have been taken to refer to me. He said he had not been thinking of me when he wrote them.
He said that he used words matching my book subtitle as the heading for the section containing the remarks I objected to because his book addressed the same intellectual problem as my book, namely how ideology can get in the way of seeing reality clearly.
He said that some specific insinuations were intended to refer to different gender-critical women (whom he did not name in the book), and that he thought readers would think of those women rather than me.
I told Polity I found this response unconvincing and insufficient. After some back and forth, it agreed to amend the digital version of the book to remove the innuendos directed at me, and after further back and forth to add an errata slip to remaining print copies indicating these changes.
The errata slip reads:
ERRATA
P. 31, line 33. For “‘When ideology meets reality’ – the reality of experience” read “The reality of experience”.
P. 36, lines 18-24. Delete the sentence that begins “And among” and ends “as well.”
(This wording was agreed with Polity in order to avoid repeating the most objectionable sentence, thus drawing more attention to it.)
I was pleased that Polity took my complaint seriously and responded appropriately. I was also pleased that senior staff at Polity accepted that my concerns were justified. One wrote to me, in reference to the passage to which I objected most strenuously:
“I can see why you thought this was referring to you and why some others might think this too, given that the title of this section of the book includes the phrase ‘When ideology meets reality’, which is the subtitle of your book. At best, this is unclear, and the lack of clarity could lead readers to interpret the sentence in question in ways that might well diverge from what the author intended.”
I was particularly offended by seeing what I regarded as innuendos directed at me in a book from a publisher I respect. Polity has published excellent books on gender-related topics by authors I admire, including Alex Byrne’s “Trouble With Gender”, Susanna Rustin’s “Sexed: A History of British Feminism” and Jenny Lindsay’s “Hounded: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars”. In my opinion “Trans Figured” was far below Polity’s usual standard – lazy, dull, unoriginal and terribly written.
But I approve of Polity’s commitment to viewpoint diversity. I would like to read a well-written, well-argued book on trans issues that takes a position that opposes mine. I hope Polity commissions such a book in the future.
In pursuing my complaint to the Open University, I focused on Chappell’s failure to follow established academic norms of citation. This failure enabled him to insinuate that authors held objectionable opinions and said objectionable things without naming those authors, and without quoting them directly or giving references to their works. I am not the only author Chappell has done this to in this book, and he expressly says in footnote 47, page 105 that this is a tactic to avoid “legal vexatiousness”.
For example, on page 17:
“...Transgender is an ‘irreversibly damaging’ ‘craze’ that is ‘seducing our daughters’!
(Alert readers will spot which book I am referencing here. I hope all readers will understand why, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not spell out the reference. This sort of talk deserves obscurity, not amplification…”
This is obviously a reference to Abigail Shrier, author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our Daughters”.
On page 43 Chappell once again demonstrates his use of book titles to stand in for authors’ names:
“...when you come across some of the recent books that cisgender people have written about transgender people. (Or perhaps I should say: against transgender people.) Quite often they have subtitles like ‘Why reality matters for feminism’, or ‘When ideology meets reality’.”
This is obviously a reference to Kathleen Stock, author of “Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism”, and to me, though neither of us is named.
Chappell’s express description of this tactic in his book is why I feel unconvinced by his insistence that the material in a section entitled “When ideology meets reality” wasn’t intended to refer to me. Even if it wasn’t intended to refer to me, it was foreseeable that his embrace of this tactic at several points in his book could lead readers to think that it was.
If Chappell had followed norms of academic citation he would have had to name the authors he was criticising, and quote what they actually said. If in fact the passages in his book were not intended to refer to me, that would have been clear, because he would have named the people they were intended to refer to. If in fact they were intended to refer to me, he would have had to give references to whatever material he was basing his remarks on.
It would then have been clear that these insinuations were unsupported, and in the process of checking what those references actually said he would – I presume – have thought again about what he was writing.
Either way, Chappell would have avoided an outcome that resulted – as I know for certain – in passages of his book being taken by some readers to be slurring me.
Here is my letter to the vice-chancellor of Open University, sent on April 19th 2024. I have omitted one paragraph that related to my opinions and feelings about Chappell’s behaviour, since in this article I wish to stick to the facts of the matter.
Dear Vice-Chancellor,
I am writing to make a formal complaint against Professor Sophie Grace Chappell, of your University, for public actions directed against me that violate standards of academic rigour and public debate, and which bring the Open University into disrepute.
I am the director of advocacy at the human-rights charity Sex Matters, and formerly a journalist at The Economist. In 2021 I published a book entitled Trans: When Ideology meets Reality. It received widespread praise. It was a Times and Spectator book of the year, and a UK and Amazon top ten bestseller. It received rave reviews in publications ranging from the Telegraph to the New York Times, and endorsements from, among others, Daniel Dennett (“A sane, humane book”), Lionel Shriver (“Utterly unintimidated by extremist orthodoxy”) and Richard Dawkins (“Thoroughly researched, passionate and very brave”).
It was also important in paving the way for the Cass Report, which came out last month and vindicated all my concerns, and those of other whistleblowers, about the shoddy, unevidenced, ideologically driven treatment gender-distressed children were receiving in NHS gender services.
Two weeks ago Chappell published a book with Polity, entitled Trans Figured. In several places it is clearly a response to my book. Chappell does not cite my work by name, but instead engages in what is known legally as “innuendo reference” against me.
A whole section, 1.15, is entitled “When Ideology meets Reality”, and in it Chappell writes:
“And among them are supposedly respectable journalists and academics who are perfectly happy to describe trans people as ‘parasites’ or to promulgate bizarre myths about ‘transgenderism being bankrolled by Jewish billionaires’ – myths that strikingly close the gap between transphobia and anti-Semitism, and sometimes between both of those and conspiracy theories like Q-Anon as well.”
These words, in a section that takes its name from the sub-title of my book, are clearly an anonymised attack on me and my work, and an attempt to resuscitate an internet smear of Anti-Semitism against me. This smear is wholly and categorically false. I rebutted it soon after my book was published here.
Chappell repeats this smear without naming whom it applies to in an apparent attempt to avoid legal action. Chappell is explicit about this desire to avoid “legal vexatiousness” (see footnote 47, page 105). More generally, Chappell avoids naming any of the authors that Chappell criticises, explicitly saying that this is motivated by a felt need to avoid legal accountability. Chappell also goes on to dismiss these people as “cranks” and other insulting epithets. I understand that James Esses, Kathleen Stock and Holly Lawford-Smith have all previously been similarly smeared by innuendo by Chappell in unsubtle ways that make quite clear whom is being referred to by Chappell.
[...]
As you will know, the judgment in the case taken by Professor Jo Phoenix against the Open University was starkly critical of the internal culture of your institution, and of the marshalling of non-scholarly, unevidenced smears made against Phoenix and her colleagues. The book by Chappell continues in this tradition at the Open University as if the Phoenix judgment never happened. I understand that you intend to launch an external investigation of the internal culture of the university: it is plain that a culture of smearing gender-critical feminists continues unabated.
In response to this letter, I ask you to do the following:
Please treat this letter as a formal complaint against Professor Chappell, and inform me of how you plan to investigate it. The complaint is of gross misconduct that brings the Open University into disrepute.
Please confirm the extent to which Trans Figured was written on Open University time – the extent to which it constitutes a scholarly output of the Open University, and the extent to which it was paid for as publicly funded research.
Please confirm that any External Investigation will consider this letter as evidence.
I reserve my legal position with respect to Professor Chappell, Polity and the Open University.
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PS: So much excellent commentary has been written about the For Women Scotland case in the UK Supreme Court this week that I have decided not to add to it. There’s a useful collection of links on Sex Matters’ website. Obviously we’re particularly proud of our own intervention! A lot of people have put a lot of effort into making this case as good as it could be, but above all the amazing trio who make up FWS. Their tenacity has been something to behold during the years this case has been working its way up through the courts, and I’m very proud to know them.
Did the Open University follow up on this lack of scholarly ethics?
Typical OU