Christmas lecture Sue Black

Well said @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g Agree with every word.

I've now watched all three lectures. Fascinating stuff. Also listened to Professor Black on The Life Scientific and Desert Island Discs, so many thanks to all for the recommendations and links. I liked how the RI lectures didn't talk down to the children and teenagers present. (I know they're always good, but it's been some years since I last got round to watching any.)

As for the effects meddling with normal puberty may have on an otherwise healthy young body, I hope with all my heart the forensic pathologists and anthropologists will have hardly any specimens to examine in future years. Most European countries are starting to put far tighter controls in place for the prescription of puberty blockers to minor children, and fortunately clinicians have been less gung ho prescribing cross-hormones to minors here than in North America. I see these ghastly experiments as akin to the lobotomies and insulin therapy for mental illness in earlier decades. Now totally discredited, and we look back and can't believe that arrogant doctors, surgeons, psychologists etc ever thought this was a good idea, given they had no idea what they were doing and were in effect doing the exploratory research on living subjects who couldn't possibly have given informed consent.

Do we really know the extent of intervening with hormones not programmed for in our DNA though?

do trans women have a higher risk of breast cancer? What about trans men who get pregnant; what does testosterone do to the baby?

I don’t think it turned out too well for East German female Olympic athletes in the 1980s and I read an article somewhere the damage caused from Russian skaters given puberty blockers.

@EvilBee I noticed you were on another thread since I posted this, so asking whether you could please help me become educated in this subject by answering the question I asked? (If you don't know, please feel free to say, no judgement! )

I'm sure you will be able to, without changing what it is I've asked.

It's become very unclear to me whether "trans" does in fact mean "opposite sex", or whether it's more than that.

I have only watched the first one and it is brilliant. I love how thoughtful and respectful she is of human remains because they are human. Plus the telling the truth about sex. I hope she gets loads more BBC presenting work because her line of work is incredibly impressive and interesting.

Giving cross sex hormones to CHILDREN is an evil experiment as your name suggests @EvilBee . Fortunately more and more countries are waking up to it and banning medical treatment of gender non conforming children

@EvilBee I wasn't stalking you last night, we seemed to be on the same pub crawl😀

With regards my musings on the effects on the skeletons do you know if any studies being done into the effects of the hormones on the actual bones. I'm presuming there's only so much they can do whilst someone is living? Not medical person so this is not my speciality at all

@EvilBee how would one know if a trans person is on the correct hormones? Are you equating "trans" with "opposite sex"? If someone is questioning whether they are agender - which hormones are correct, please?

I don't think it's radical to say that if a male takes feminizing hormones their bodies will resemble female bodies in some ways is it? If they didn't there'd be no point in taking the hormones in the first place.

I mean, like, you do realise that most of the changes in bones are related to puberty and that if a trans young person gets on the correct hormones, their bone structure will grow accordingly? Even starting HRT in the early 20's can see changes in pelvic growth plates. Like even past first puberty, HRT can make changes..trans men and women will often report a small (usually low single figure cms) change in height - was 3 cms for me.

Some have speculated that those later changes may be due to changes in soft tissue bought about by HRT..though whatever the mechanism, it was gladly received.

And me, although in the mean time it does make for interesting thinking.

I wonder how much work has been done this? I can't imagine there's been that many skeletons they could do these sort of observations and tests on though.

Unfortunately i don't think it's going to take to long, with the numbers of people on blockers and wrong sex hormones ballooning, before they start to have enough skeletons to start making some interesting observations about what effects of playing with your natural hormone levels/type had in your body,

Me, too.

PriamFarri - this does raise some interesting questions, which I'd like to ask her about. The most obvious is that if a boy goes on puberty blockers, and never goes through male puberty, but then starts taking cross-sex hormones in his late teens, does he end up with something resembling a female skeleton? I'd love to know the answer to that.

What I’m trying to say is that it was very well worded to please everyone and offend no one.

I watched them, and really enjoyed them.

But, I notice that when she talked about the differences in male and female skeletons she spoke about how the changes were brought about by testosterone and oestrogen during puberty. Now I think that was quite interesting. It’s saying that the changes are something that happens due hormones, not because that person is male or female. I know that a person with a penis is going to be the one who creates testosterone and ends up with a male skeleton but if I was of that mind set to think a different way I could say that someone who was a woman but has a lot of testosterone could develop what would look like a male skeleton.

I’m in Scotland and a number of years ago, and over an couple of years, I attended a number of public lectures she gave and have met and talked to her as a result of my job at the time. She was very passionate about getting young people esp girls into STEM. I worried that she might have drunk the twaw cool aid ( like some other scientists on TV) and did notice the change in language she used from male/ female to masculine/feminine but she (and everyone else) knows biology is fact and that someone with a male skeleton cannot change it to a female skeleton just by wishing. She should be an inspiration to us all.

I've now watched the first episode and really enjoyed it. I thought it was odd that she said "masculine" and "feminine" when she meant "male" and "female" but am prepared to overlook it.

And it's incredibly cheering to see these lectures presented by a woman, and to have her bring on other experts who are female. When I was a child, you almost never saw a female scientist on tv and if you did, it would be heralded as this kind of remarkable and amazing thing. Now it's completely normal and no one even comments on it. Some things have changed for the better.

Sue Black's memoir 'All That Remains' is a very good read.

That Sunday Times article includes a moving (maybe upsetting) description of her experience of rape as a 9 year old.

This is the section about 'gender':

'Identity — and how to figure out who a person used to be — will be one of the main topics in her lectures. While forensic pathologists focus on the cause and manner of death, forensic anthropologists like Black are more interested in who the person was when they were alive.
...
And the assumptions we have about identity are changing fast. Identifying someone’s gender based on their skeleton is increasingly difficult, as hormones and surgery physically change anatomy. Indeed, bodies are no longer classed as male or female but masculine or feminine. “It’s not a straightforward process and it’s an awareness that society is much more fluid and flexible than it’s ever been. In the past we would have said ‘male’ or ‘female’ — now we are less specific. It reflects changes in society.”'

Seems a bit of an isolated quote, I'd like to see more context around what she was saying at the time.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sue-black-ive-seen-pure-evil-up-close-but-its-fine-by-me-if-you-cant-resist-true-crime-lbb9hwpc8

Yes, that was a brilliant episode.

Ooh having woken minus headache ish this morning I've just watched episode 1

Thanks @missingthewinchesterboys for posting as i would have missed this.

It's fascinating so far I have to say.

Bet the kids watching this are going to have some interesting discussions during inclusion and you can be any sex you want to be lessons at school.

"But miss, it was on the BBC. Your sex is possible to determine when you are just bones dead over 1000 years."

such fun.

There’s an online quiz/challenge and various resources as well:

www.dundee.ac.uk/projects/christmas-lectures-royal-institution

Watched it last night and as others have said she used perfectly accurate terms in a logical and scientific manner to try and identify the age, sex, height and cause of death of a skeleton in front of an audience of youngsters.
As soon as she mentioned the word 'sex', I could well imagine hoards of keyboard warriors firing off their comments and messages of complaints.

I've not seen the lectures yet but I've seen some other shows and read her first book. I think, iirc, she was involved in setting up something with the female author, Val McDermid(?), who is twaw and they're good friends so I feared the worst. She might still be twaw but at least she's not butchering science as well.