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Original poster

Alice Roberts in The Times

168 replies

Igneococcus · 10/02/2024 07:05

Mostly plugging her new book but the interviews bring up the trans issue:

"I am not trying to propel Roberts back to a 2019 skirmish in the trans wars in which she tweeted that “biology is, quite simply, messier and more wonderful than some people like to believe” and advised doubters to “ask a clownfish” — a clownfish being a fish that starts life as male but becomes female. It does, however, strike me that if human female and male brains are the same, how can it ever be said that a baby possessing male genitalia was born into the wrong body.
There is quite a pause.
“I think that’s a very difficult philosophical question. It’s very difficult to pin it down, isn’t it? And we’ve had decades of feminism where we’ve been trying to get away from women being reduced to their genitalia. My own feeling is that you approach everybody as an individual.”

No Alice, it really isn't difficult to pin down, and it's not about genitalia, it's about gametes.

On a side note, it seems if it weren't for Alice we'd still be clueless about the causative agent of plague:
"Her chapter on the Black Death of the 14th and 15th centuries reveals its genesis as the Yersinia pestis bacterium,"

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/31f84383-e923-42d5-8011-64d0dd7c1ff9?shareToken=2d6448182015ccd30701f4cb6c84de9f

Alice Roberts: ‘I’ve been estranged from my family for years’

The country’s most famous archaeologist talks to Andrew Billen about her new book, a near-death experience, family rifts — and the power of pink hair

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/31f84383-e923-42d5-8011-64d0dd7c1ff9?shareToken=2d6448182015ccd30701f4cb6c84de9f

OP posts:
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HoneyButterPopcorn · 10/02/2024 09:37

And she is a smug atheist (under the guise of a humanist which is a joke really when you make horrible comments about/to religious people).

HoneyButterPopcorn · 10/02/2024 09:35

Chersfrozenface · 10/02/2024 09:22

thank god for Mary beard (please god she doesn’t out herself as an idiot)

I believe Mary Beard is of the "oh dear, it's all too hard for poor little me" persuasion.

And uses the term "cis women".

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4910270-mary-beard-in-the-herald

Bugger.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 10/02/2024 09:34

She isn’t an archaeologist, her specialism is anatomy, ironically.

Actually, I did know that but I thought she was an osteoarchaeologist.

BreatheAndFocus · 10/02/2024 09:31

I used to like AR but since the ridiculous crap she wrote about sex, I can’t bear to listen to her at all. She’s either pretending that it’s awfully complicated or she’s just thick and has misunderstood the arguments like so many doormats women that are falling over themselves to ‘be kind’.

FFS, Alice, saying that women are female isn’t ‘reducing them to their genitals’ 🙄 However, what you’re doing is reducing women to an outdated pile of sexist stereotypes. Arse-achingly old-fashioned and conservative!

literalviolence · 10/02/2024 09:30

Not reducing women to their genitalia is not the same as recognising that women have one set of genitalia and men have another.

Chersfrozenface · 10/02/2024 09:22

thank god for Mary beard (please god she doesn’t out herself as an idiot)

I believe Mary Beard is of the "oh dear, it's all too hard for poor little me" persuasion.

And uses the term "cis women".

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4910270-mary-beard-in-the-herald

Mary Beard in the Herald. | Mumsnet

[[https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23825192.mary-beard-scottish-independence-trans-rights-romans https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23825192.mary-...

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4910270-mary-beard-in-the-herald

BlueBrush · 10/02/2024 09:19

And we’ve had decades of feminism where we’ve been trying to get away from women being reduced to their genitalia. My own feeling is that you approach everybody as an individual.

We've had decades of feminism where we've we've been trying to get away from women being reduced to their sex. But that's not to say that we don't have a sex.

A disability rights campaigner might argue a person shouldn't be reduced to their disability, but that's not to say they don't have a disability, and that their disability has material consequences that need to be acknowledged and addressed.

And if disabled people wish to represent their interests as a group, is the rational response to just "approach everyone as an individual"?

There - it's not hard, Alice.

Lottapianos · 10/02/2024 09:19

'No Alice, it really isn't difficult to pin down, and it's not about genitalia, it's about gametes.'

And she knows that perfectly well. Another smart person pretending to be stupid for trendy points. Not a good look

CharlesChickens · 10/02/2024 09:15

YetAnotherSpartacus · 10/02/2024 07:25

Most famous archaeologist???

My fat menopausal arse.

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

Or potentially to someone who is not a media personality but who gets on with the job.

She isn’t an archaeologist, her specialism is anatomy, ironically.

HoneyButterPopcorn · 10/02/2024 09:11

I avoid her now and the goth historian. Shame because I do enjoy a good dig programme. Lucy Worsley is off my Christmas card list too.

thank god for Mary beard (please god she doesn’t out herself as an idiot)

Original poster
Igneococcus · 10/02/2024 08:15

Yes, @nauticant I bet AR wouldn't lean too far out of an upstairs window no matter how imperfect our understanding of gravity is.

The Y. pestis thing has reminded me of the scientist who died a few years back of the plague. He was working with a non-pathogenic lab strain, but it's non-pathogenicity was because of the strain's need of high iron levels, much higher than you usually find in humans. The scientist had undiagnosed hemachromatosis, he got infected and died of it. Not the point of this thread, I know, I just remembered.

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nauticant · 10/02/2024 07:52

I hate this argument that biology is messy and complicated. Yes, it's often complicated and maybe messy

Gravity in its underlying reality is complicated and might be messy if we ever get to the bottom of it. Doesn't mean that people find its real world manifestation so difficult to deal with. Doesn't mean that people can be gravity fluid and slip the surly bonds of Earth and dance the skies by the power of thought.

Original poster
Igneococcus · 10/02/2024 07:51

I hope it's just the interviewer's phrasing that makes it sound like Alice discovered Y. pestis.

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SidewaysOtter · 10/02/2024 07:48

On a side note, it seems if it weren't for Alice we'd still be clueless about the causative agent of plague:
"Her chapter on the Black Death of the 14th and 15th centuries reveals its genesis as the Yersinia pestis bacterium,"

Eh? That’s been known for years!

nauticant · 10/02/2024 07:47

"Her chapter on the Black Death of the 14th and 15th centuries reveals its genesis as the Yersinia pestis bacterium,"

An article in 1989 reporting on knowledge that was commonplace at the time:

"Black Death? "A form of plague caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis, a pandemic throughout Europe and much of Asia during the 14th Century, killing one-fourth of the population of Europe.""

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1989/mar/02/cover-billions-of-the-suckers/

Original poster
Igneococcus · 10/02/2024 07:38

I hate this argument that biology is messy and complicated. Yes, it's often complicated and maybe messy but that doesn't mean some things aren't undeniably true, sex being binary and immutable in mammals, for example. It's a cop out.

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YetAnotherSpartacus · 10/02/2024 07:25

Most famous archaeologist???

My fat menopausal arse.

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

Or potentially to someone who is not a media personality but who gets on with the job.

Rightsraptor · 10/02/2024 07:22

The concept of being born in the wrong body has passed into history, don't they know that? It strikes me that Alice could do with sitting down with a sex realist and actually listening to what we are saying, instead of thinking she knows. Clownfish and being reduced to genitals, indeed.

I used to admire Alice Roberts. I can't remember why now.