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...

"Ask her why so many women and men (anti trans anti-social weirdos) who profess to care about women in stem are abusing her like rabid lunatics, and dismissing her obvious intelligence, ask her that."

@theyputagpinthewater citation needed.

Have any GC feminists told her to "die in a grease fire"? Have any tweeted her pictures of knives, bats, bloody clothing? Have any GC feminists sent her porn as an act of aggression? Or have they just challenged her on the evidence, which is what happens in science?

I am absolutely sure, @theyputagpinthewater, that you go on other forums to tell off "rabid lunatic" TRAs who post all the above, plus rape threats and death threats, to women who have a different opinion to them. And if you don't, why not?

AR has just posted a link to this thread.

Bit covert passive aggressive there, Alice!

AR has just posted a link to this thread.

Oh good, she can do a MN Chat then and respond to all the questions here.

Unless she's just a coward who doesn't want to use science, to explain her blantantly non scientific beliefs, whilst she tries to pass them off as science simply by shouting 'bigot' instead.

Either the science holds up, or it does not.

Oh good, since you're reading, Alice, please can you tell me what people mean when they say sex is a spectrum? Thanks.

Also what relevance intersex conditions have to trans issues, when most trans people appear to be genotypically and phenotypically normal members of their birth sex, and (in the case of late transitioning male born trans people) often seem to have managed to father several children quite successfully before transitioning.

(and what do you think about the penguin).

Our new friend is a multiple PBP - only ever comes on to goad and troll. Usually aimed at one long-term mumsnetter whom they seem to have a fixation with. It's a bit embarrassing for them (the troll, that is), really. Just sayin'.

If you can tell from a skeleton a hundred years old whether that person was male or female why isn't that enough to decide whether a living person is male or female?

None of that proves that someone is 'in the wrong body'.

All it says is that some people have discomfort with their bodies. Which we haven't got to the bottom of the question of 'why'.

It certainly does not prove that people can change sex. They still are either male or female.

The treatment for dsyphoria is just pro-cosmetic surgery, and there a hell of a lot of bad science and propaganda around that for financial reasons.

We've also got an absence of information about the long term success of medical intervention for people who transition as children. We have an absence of information about ROGD and whether that is the same as late transitioning.

Thats just a very quick think off the top of my head.

Honestly, you'd think that everyone had forgotten that one of the fundamental rules of researching is to explore weaknesses in studies in terms of methodology, look for gaps in understanding and knowledge and seek to explore them and to understand the pitfuls of ideological bias.

Good, I'm glad Alice has seen this. The sad thing is that before all this, many of us were fans, but there's nothing like an evidence-free statement calling you far-right to put you off a person.

I hope Alice reads the Trans Widows Threads...

Ask her if the suffragettes should have been nicer.

Another question I would have is why encourage people to cosmetically change their bodies in this era when one of the major concerns from medicine is the antibiotic resistance is growing. Soon we may get to the point where even essential operations cannot be had so to encourage people to surgically alter themselves to try and resemble the opposite sex seems cruel and unthinking.

As Alice might be reading:

I'm a left-leaning MSc mother. Not right wing. Not a bigot.

None of that proves that someone is 'in the wrong body'.

All it says is that some people have discomfort with their bodies. Which we haven't got to the bottom of the question of 'why'.

That's the crux of it, isn't it, Red. I'm always reminded of the neuroscientist who identified the region of the brain that seems to be active during religious experiences. He was very careful to say "this doesn't say anything at all one way or the other about whether there is a god."

If you were an atheist, you'd point to that region and say "aha, that shows the region that's active during delusions"; if you were a theist you'd say "this is the region of the brain that enables us to experience the presence of the divine." The philosophical interpretation is bolted on after the fact.

Likewise even if someone were to identify a "brain region" associated with gender dysphoria, it would be just that, a brain region associated with dysphoria. It wouldn't tell you that this meant that this was a "woman's brain" in a "man's body" or vice versa. (Incidentally, the paper everyone on the TRA side points to as establishing that there is such a region is a pile of crap - tiny sample size, distinctly dodgy looking completely absent quality control on the data - at least 2 of the data points look like they were sample errors, and another is such an outlier that it left me wondering if they'd calculated their statistical significance correctly...)

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

Great point XXcstatic. One of the things that really irritates me when Sally Hines says it is so old fashioned to differentiate between sex and gender is that there are still so many countries in the world where it is only about sex. I don’t think a man who said he identified as a woman would be married off, deprived of property etc.

Ask her why, asking questions about gaps in scientific knowledge is a bad thing that should be discouraged and whether it is important that we explore the ethics of medicalisation properly?

I saw the tweet earlier with the framing of feminists as far right, and I thought it exposed how she hasn’t read up on this at all. The women organising talks like Women’s Place, are life long left leaning women who have championed equality, been involved in the trade unions, fought for women’s rights and for gay and lesbian rights.
The use of “right wing bigot” against women like this is self-centred and lazy. It is intellectually shabby, surely she is experienced at research ? It takes a staggering lack of empathy to not understand why women want and need single sex spaces. Why for many of us, a male in those spaces would be stressful enough that we wouldn’t be able to use them. Does AR think women in prison, almost all of whom will have suffered abuse by men, should be sitting targets for male sex offenders ?
Last time she was tweeting crap like this, she flounced after being politely challenged, and framed it as “abuse”. I thought then that she is a woman who has been a golden girl, who is not at all used to being disagreed with. She can’t politely debate the point, she can’t answer the questions, she can only shout “right wing” ...
She is clearly not dim, so I find this baffling.

Hi Alice
I hear you block women who try to engage you on this topic.
This article by Hacsi Horvath may be of interest to you:
The Theatre of the Body: A detransitioned epidemiologist examines suicidality, affirmation, and transgender identity

Oh Alice.

Was it ‘nice’ of people to go into schools and online and stir up so much angst in girls who were previously cheery tomboys that they have had mastectomies at 18?

Don’t tell me it hasn’t happened. I’ve spent part of this summer with one such teenager and her rather devastated grandparents.

But hey, it’s not ‘nice’ to mention that major cosmetic surgery doesn’t really make a girl into a boy.

Do we have male and female brains, Alice?

I'm just amazed and so disappointed in Alice Roberts. I used to absolutely adore her too

I wonder if she's just frightened of the TRAs? She knows we won't do anything awful - unless you count "challenging a scientist to show their workings" as awful - but she knows that if she shows the slightest hint of suggesting that more research might be a good thing, instead of unquestioning slavish obedience to everything the trans cult demands, the TRAs will pour a tide of filth and threats all over her timeline.

Alice, I promise you, there's a lot of us that have cleared the path for you. We survived. You will too.

(But yeah, stop retweeting bullshit smearing people who disagree with you as "far right". It's not a good look.)