I'm going to a talk by Alice Roberts tomorrow, what should I ask her?

[Destinysdaughter]

She's speaking at the British Science Festival tomorrow at Warwick University, I got myself a ticket only because there's been some controversy about things she's written/shared on Twitter. If there is an opportunity to ask her some questions after her talk ( which is about the perfect body, ironically), what do you think I should ask her? TBH I feel like standing up and asking her if I'm a woman, just to see what she says...

Does anyone have any good links to anything she has specifically said? Rather than stuff she has just retweeted?

The Perfect Body ...

Does she think it possible to be born in the 'Wrong Body', and what does that mean?

Camper
She's told Martina Navratilova she thinks sports is a very special case where tw might not be fully women

Oh dear
I would suggest sport isn't a very special case at all.

Sport is just one of the many things women and girls do.

Sport isn't a special case, it is one area where mediocre men can win medals and financially benefit.

Women in science have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. People like Alice make it harder for all women to progress. If she wants to peddle bad science, she should re-brand herself as a philosopher.

Sport is just the most glaringly, obviously unfair and wrong.

I'm with Branleuse.

Not to mention that other people will have paid for their ticket to actually listen to her talk, and will absolutely resent the Q&A segment being highjacked by someone who's only bought a ticket to harangue her about the trans agenda.

Actually, the tickets are free!

I've just been looking at her tweets. She says she is not interested in ideology, just science but she has retweeted one of those dreadful Vice articles on the unholy alliance between right wing fundamentalists and gender critical women (and gender critical is not used in a complimentary way). I don't think she can have it both ways.

Whether she obtained her PhD from the same place as Yaniv...

Ask her if she thinks 'being kind' is the answer to all the world's problems. She annoyed me last time around but today she has reached new heights of ridiculousness. She's a joke and she should be someone we respect.

She has no idea what she's talking about because she's very ill-informed about the debate. I'm so angry that left wing, long time feminist activists can be called far right by someone who should have more sense.

Religious believers: We've had a few millennia of believing in fantastical things with little and sometimes flat out contradictory evidence about the human condition, and those who don't believe in divine beings aren't really able to understand what it's like to know about physical reality but believe that something may be provably one thing but actually, mysteriously, be something else entirely.

Humanists: Hold my beer...

I’d ask her about whether she agreed that our plastic surgery culture is damaging children by encouraging them to adapt their bodies rather than accepting their biological reality.

I’d ask her if she agrees that the major victims of the prevailing culture are girls whose bodies don’t conform to female beauty norms.

I think she hasn’t got a strong feminist grounding and she needs to discover it for herself. I’d get her thinking about female oppression in pursuit of the perfect body.

Yeah shit. God forbid a scientist would ever be asked to defend their public statements by being asked questions!

No need for that kind of nonsense. Just be nice why can't you?

I would ask a question relevant to the subject - the pursuit of perfect bodies.

It may be worth watching the recent and I think related discussion between a radical feminist, a cosmetic surgeon and one of the men claiming womanhood for some ideas.

Whether she thinks that the oppression of women throughout human history has resulted from their female biology - comparative size, strength & speed, endurance levels, periods, pregnancy, childbirth, lactating, etc.

And whether she thinks the stereotypical female role - ie femininity- may reflect the millennia of subordination and submission women have experienced in consequence of that biology.

If she used her public persona to spout flat earth nonsense or anti vaccination bullshit she’d be understandably asked about that. This is the same. The only reason people may not want you to ask her about gc issues is that - although obviously she’ll dismiss whatever you say- some people in the audience will notice it and think wtf is going on with all this men can be women stuff? You’ll be doing it for the members of the audience who go away and wonder about it.

I like Knewmee’s idea of asking questions that get the audience questioning female oppression. I’d try and bring in questions about the perfect body though as that is what the debate is about.

It’s about asking questions that make people get to the answer on their own..

Great questions 🤣

I seen her on twitter. If she is saying this stuff then she has to be able to answer the questions with ease

Fuck niceness

Ask her if she thinks that "everyone should just be nice" but sports are the only exception, how nice does she think lesbians should be to transwomen?

Why don't women in developing countries who face child marriage/FGM/sex trafficking etc just identify as men?

If its not a talk about trans issues, then I just think its shitty.

Stuff and nonsense.

This woman is one of the country's most prominent science communicators. She's sharing anti-science woo on social media and behaving like a spoiled child when this is pointed out to her.

She's in a position of trust and is well paid for it - often by public institutions. With this comes a significant degree of public accountability.

So if the debate is about conforming to society's version of the perfect body and presumably she is against that then maybe try and tie-in why she feels that somebody who feels like they are trapped in the wrong body should be encouraged to have cosmetic surgery to alter it. When presumably she wouldn't recommend somebody who feels like they are trapped in an inferior body should have cosmetic surgery to bring it up to the required standard imposed by society.

AR has just posted a link to this thread.

On Twitter.