Attenborough on gender

[wejammin]

I was just watching Newsnight and Evan Davis asked David Attenborough a question about "gender", but DD woke at that exact moment and I'm now getting her back to sleep. Did anyone catch what the discussion was?

Sorry!
Bump as that sounds interesting

Found it! At 10min 45sec m.youtube.com/watch?v=pRETT1L-aZQ#menu

Basically saying that physiological differences remain relevant to humans in the modern age (obviously Evan didn’t push the issue, but it does feel a bit like Sir Attenborough might not go with the TWAW argument)

unfortunately I think his point is too subtle for the gender essentialists- of course we can't ignore physiology (what feminists are saying) but you could easily take what he is saying to mean brains (physiology) are sexed
the whole point is we are not living in prehistory as he says

Atbo is my hero and I want to be him when I grow up
well, a female version that is

He has previously been supportive of not us

Charliethefeminist Sir David surely doesn't believe TWAW?

And looking at Evan Davies's face as he flails around trying to ask that question without really asking it, I don't think Evan believes TWAW either

I am sure he doesn't really believe TWAW.
But I was expecting read that he was going along with the ideology when I clicked this link.... I have a lot of respect for Attenborough, but many intelligent progressive people who have not thought about the issue too deeply relexively adopt what they see as the "kind " position when first asked for their opinion.

Interesting and pleasing to see that Attenborough is not one of those. He has always come across as a kind person who tries to show respect towards other people. This (admirable) instinct can occasionally come into conflict with critical thinking.

SarahJ, Richard Dawkins is an atheist & evolutionary biologist and totally on board with TWAW. Sadly they're not mutually exclusive stances. I can't get my head round the cognitive dissonance, but there you go

Richard Dawkins is an atheist & evolutionary biologist and totally on board with TWAW.

Is he? I saw some nonsense on the RD website, whatever it's called but hadn't seen any views from RD himself. That would be disappointing for someone who should be rational and understand what sex is!

He seems to acknowledge underlying biology, but goes along with self ID (tweet from 2015)... he got shot down by the transactivists who tried to use the "advanced biology" gotcha.

His foundation certainly are on board and have the TG symbol in their twitter handle and support the rights of trans students over other stakeholders. Not sure how autonomous his foundation is from his views.

<a class="break-all" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rTBSoxIT5WcJ:www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/10/27/richard-dawkins-taught-a-lesson-by-trans-women-_n_8397344.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rTBSoxIT5WcJ:www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/10/27/richard-dawkins-taught-a-lesson-by-trans-women-_n_8397344.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

The way he shuts his eyes for a sec as Evan says "gender". That's the reaction of a man sick to his back teeth of the question - it reminds me of Germaine Greer's reaction last time she was on QT, I think it was.

Iirc Dawkins has come out with some particularly sexist claptrap in the past. I would not be surprised if he took the TWAW side just to be contrary.

"Animal imperatives" and "explain but not justify" makes it pretty clear it's about about sexism, #MeToo and sexual violence.