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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Radio 4: NatureBang discusses the science of sex

43 replies

nauticant · 08/12/2020 09:11

On in 20 minutes:

Dragon Lizards and the Gender Spectrum

Sex is simple. Or so we're taught; animals can be male or female. But even the briefest glance at the animal kingdom tells us that this simply isn't true. Some creatures have only one sex; some have three; some have none at all. Some animals are two sexes at the same time; some flip flop between them when the time is right. When evolution came to solve the problem of procreation, she did it in a myriad of mind-blowing ways.

When it comes to humans, it's even more complicated - we have this thing called Gender, too. It's often defined as the social and cultural side of sex, distinct from the biological. But that's not the full story. Becky Ripley and Emily Knight travel back to the dawn of human culture, and into the tangled depths of our genetic code, to try and unravel why we are the way we are, and why it matters so much that we understand it all properly.

Featuring Professor Jenny Graves, geneticist at La Trobe University, and the writer and scholar Meg-John Barker.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3ks

OP posts:
Melroses · 08/12/2020 10:07

Someone in programming must be pissed off with them then Grin

nauticant · 08/12/2020 10:03

As an unintended contrast it was followed by How To Make The World Add Up by Tim Harford, www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3l1, which was about having proper definitions for things and how, if you don't have proper definitions how can you understand anything? It was about "what is a nurse?", "what is self harm?", "inequaility of what?" and how not defining what is being discussed is "not only unfair but strangely incurious".

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NecessaryScene1 · 08/12/2020 10:02

There's a reason they call this "post-modernism". It's giving up on the idea that you can actually understand stuff, and going back to pre-Enlightment-style "stories" about things with no actual evidence or predictive value.

nauticant · 08/12/2020 09:59

It was a first part of interesting information about the science of sex, proper stuff, then a bridging portion about behaviours associated with sex, which became gender/sex being defined by behaviour, and then on came Meg-John Barker and it was a load of gender guff. The second part was about how a certain special group of people feel and seen in that way had nothing to do with the science of the first half.

This is how you indoctrinate an audience.

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MichelleofzeResistance · 08/12/2020 09:53

The human race has managed its entire evolution so far with two sexes and no waffle. Whatever people want to do with their physical appearance and their self definition, their sex is one of two things and doesn't change.

It's not complicated; there's just a lot of people enjoying their own cleverness in paddling about trying to justify why male people get to take away female people's spaces.

merryhollybright · 08/12/2020 09:49

I just listened to this. I was really hoping they'd say something sensible but I didn't seem to catch it. Just sounded terrified to offend anyone and therefore being offensive to biological sex, to me.

Babdoc · 08/12/2020 09:48

“We’re the BBC, innit. Woke central. Science is for, like, really old folk.
We wanna be down with the kids, y’all hear what I’m saying.”

Melroses · 08/12/2020 09:48

but there we have it - you tell them there is sex and there is gender then instead of clarifying, you conflate the two. Usual MO.

False teaming.

PaleBlueMoonlight · 08/12/2020 09:43

So close, then just misses it.

nauticant · 08/12/2020 09:43

And there was the switch. It was about science, then it became about behaviour, and then it was Meg-John Barker talking about gender identity and suddenly it was is incomprehensible:
"1.7% of people are intersex"
"We're all a mix of hormones"
"Behaviour creates that mix of hormones"
"Top Shop Travis"

You know what's missing? In a programme where sex was displaced by gender, where's the question: What is gender?

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PaleBlueMoonlight · 08/12/2020 09:42

It is called being gender non-conforming!!!!!!

Missproportionate · 08/12/2020 09:35

"its all about sex genes - and I don't mean tightly fitted Levi's"

!!!

Missproportionate · 08/12/2020 09:34

Oh god I just turned this on. It's all so gushing and light-hearted.

The trailer alone was Shock

nauticant · 08/12/2020 09:30

Right , here we go. Let's see how much the science of sex has to defer to the ideology of gender.

OP posts:
7Days · 08/12/2020 09:22

Nearly 8 billion current examples of sperm meets egg.
It isnt that complicated.

FreezerBird · 08/12/2020 09:19

I just heard the trailer for this and turned off the radio in disgust. Just sounds like a load of nonsense 'oooh it's so complicated' whiffle.

It's not complicated. The existence of gender as a social construct, and people with differences in sexual development, make no difference to the fact that homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species.

If we're not a sexually dimorphic species, we've got incredibly lucky in terms of the right individuals having sex with each other to continue the species thus far.

Melroses · 08/12/2020 09:16

La Trobe University is in Melbourne, Australia.

They have had to go a long way to a geneticist for this programme.

Melroses · 08/12/2020 09:14

Oh dear Hmm