An anonymous reviewer of my article criticized me – get this – for quoting a book by a scholar who many years after publishing the book became “transexclusionary.” Meaning, she criticized Spanish laws regarding trans issues. Among other things, these laws allow 12-year-olds legally to change their sex. It’s the first and the most aggressive such law in Europe. The scholar I quoted apparently expressed disagreement with them. Shocking, I know.
The book I quoted and my article are in no way related to trans anything. I’m writing about Spain in the early 1950s. Clearly, nothing trans was much of an issue.
The reviewer says my article is excellent but I should remove the citations of the “transexclusionary” scholar. Which, obviously, I’m not going to do.
It’s so upsetting, though. I’m really proud of this article. It’s quite poisonously sarcastic. I’m adopting this writing style in my scholarly work that readers of this blog greatly enjoy. It’s where I start kind of praising a book and then absolutely demolish it with venomous fake compliments. I was hoping that reviewers would give me suggestions on how to improve the article, take it deeper into the text I analyze. I tend to be more superficial than is good for me, and I need to be pushed to go deeper.
Instead, I got many compliments and this weak-sauce suggestion about the ideologically unsound scholar.

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