Alice Roberts in The Times

Och naw , what's Lucy's said ? Thought she was sensible.

That makes it worse, really, doesn’t it? You know it has a detrimental impact on the rights, opportunity and very safety of women and girls. Yet you do a quisling statement.

She's a privileged arse, isn't she ?(I fully expext this post to be removed btw).

Yes, but you might have more than a good inkling that she is boxing clever over this stuff. Just like the NHSF personnel (some doctors no less) who waffled on about sex being so complicated. Mosaicism (I think caused by some cells from the donor) when receiving transplant etc. Then under questioning from SP’s side, admitted that doesn’t at all change you sex. So, they had been talking pure sh&te!

Some said they didn’t know what sex they were because they didn’t know what their chromosomes they had. Hmm.

However, I don't know why anybody would pay much attention to a TV presenter's views on contentious social issues. What next, Ant and Dec asked to advise on immigration? Claudia Winkelman on knife crime? The cult of celebrity has a lot to answer for.

To be fair, all sides of this debate seem to obsess about the pronouncements of an author of highly successful and enjoyable fiction, so this behaviour isn't entirely without precedent.

Another smart person pretending to be stupid for trendy points.

Well done, you've just summed up a puzzling and damaging social phenomenon in 10 words, Lottapianos!
It's stored away in my brain to be used next time some eejity celeb says something eejity about gender

Yes, it was incredibly unpleasant , and I also very much doubt that she would have done the same to any other religious group.
She used to get reasonable replies on Twitter, calm, rational argument from other women, but she would tweet that she was being bullied and would flounce off . She is oddly unintelligent in her argument for someone so well educated. I think she may be one of those people who is good at exams, good at remembering large amounts of information and repeating it, but not a flexible or truly intelligent thinker.

You're right Errol but at least I've got the clownfish song stuck in my head. Right, work...

Zombie thread, I don’t think she’s said anything of note recently?

Oh that is why the clownfish came from! Oh dear...

That’s the world these days it seems. Alice was brought up in a very oppressive religious household. I can understand why she’s wary of religion. If you read her interviews about her mother , I can see why she felt she could t see her anymore.

I don’t agree with her views on biological sex,
but I can still admire her work and programmes.

I think she is bloody amazing so intelligent I thought she might have aspergers or some-it..I'm a dislexic athiest with a chainsaw addiction.I only watch her becasue the wife does and I have an old mans crush on her, one question did the vikings know about the chinese and what did they wipe their arses with.

YetAnotherSpartacus

I think this honour should go to the late Mick Aston, or, if not to Phil Harding, Carenza Lewis or Helen Geake.

It should definitely go to Mick Aston! He made the subject come alive, and is much missed.

TBF a PhD in palaeopathology does kind of qualify you as an archaeologist of sorts - it’s part of the archaeobiology subdivision.

But I’d still think of people like Mick Aston as an archaeologist, rather than someone with a very specialised set of skills like Roberts.

I went to a talk of hers a few years ago, about her life and career. It all started when she joined her archaeologist boyfriend on digs, then she was on Time Team, and it grew from there.

As for who becomes "poster girl", it's a wide range of things, isn't it?

I'm a fan, by the way, and hoping for her to get past the gender stuff!

She isn't an archaeologist, so why she should be the poster girl for archaeology beats me

Now be fair, she does pick up a trowel and do a bit of scraping on Digging for Britain.

Yes, it's rubbish, I agree. It's fair enough if they have a new discovery, or a novel interpretation, but that should be explicit.

There is a trend in modern history writing for authors to “discover” details about the past which have been well-known and discussed for decades (or, with Yersinia Pestis, for over a century) and then write well-publicised books explaining their discoveries to the world. I know that this is partly the fault of publishers and publicists, but I wish they would stop…

Because once someone is so obviously wrong about something - and blocks you on Twitter - it's pretty hard to care what else they say!

Absolute bullshit. Ideas adamant that my kids would not go to a religious school and hence we did not buy in an area where they would have been necessary. She's not stupid. They could have chosen to live elsewhere if it mattered as much to her as she says..

I do know the area and there is a nearby non church school but I don’t know where she lived or what the catchments were like when hers were at primary. Both schools were popular but one was considered more arty/alternative and one more academic (the church school).

And of course if she felt that strongly she could have definitely got a place somewhere in the city that wasn’t religious.

She says they had no choice because there were no state-funded schools able to offer places except the church school(s). Do you know differently?

We were fortunate to be able to avoid that dilemma in London, but she lives in a rural area where I can well believe there is effectively very little choice. OK, they could have moved or paid school fees to avoid the church school, but that's extreme.

She sent her children to a church school despite being so against religion which is an extremely odd choice (except it isn’t because middle class parents will always push principles to the kerb when it come to getting into the best schools).

I bet AR wouldn't lean too far out of an upstairs window no matter how imperfect our understanding of gravity is. Brilliant@Igneococcus!😂

Yes it is complicated to know who's an archaeologist. Hence we should accept self identification and effectively abolish any meaning of the statement 'I'm an archeaologist'.