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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Prof Alice Roberts attacks Dr Emma Hilton on Twitter

148 replies

CaveMum · 11/12/2019 15:00

Another low blow from Prof Alice - attempting to dismiss Dr Hilton’s credentials as a signatory to a letter to the Times on biological sex.

Twitter thread here: twitter.com/fondofbeetles/status/1204763423013244929

OP posts:
KatvonHostileExtremist · 11/12/2019 16:37

What nasty behaviour.

Where is the actual scientific proof mammals aren't binary in terms of sex. Where?

I thought Dr Emma's letter was excellent

Prof Alice Roberts attacks Dr Emma Hilton on Twitter
ScrimshawTheSecond · 11/12/2019 16:43

That's a really useful (if quite complex to a non-scientist) link, CaveMum, thank you.

RoyalCorgi · 11/12/2019 16:46

I was lucky enough to hear Dr Emma Hilton speak at the Woman's Place/Fair Play for Women meeting on sport earlier this year. She was excellent. I'm sure Alice could learn a lot from her.

Alice Roberts turns out to be neither very bright nor very pleasant. It doesn't bode well if she wants to improve the public understanding of science.

KatvonHostileExtremist · 11/12/2019 16:51

The other professor sub tweeting someone for only having a level biology, was the height of snobbery actually. Fight it out on an academic level.

Have they changed the biology text books?

SonicVersusGynaephobia · 11/12/2019 17:00

And this is the woman who told women we should "be kind".

Kindness is important in our interactions with boundary-trampling men. But not when Professor Clownfish is interacting with her female science peers, it seems.

What a thoroughly awful person.

CaveMum · 11/12/2019 17:00

You’re welcome Scrimshaw, since being peaked I’ve got into the habit of saving any useful/informative links I come across, as well as bookmarking interesting tweets.

OP posts:
ScrimshawTheSecond · 11/12/2019 17:02

Kind to the people who matter, Sonic, I suppose is how she's seeing it. Reducing it to this type of playground attack is really not edifying for anyone. Certainly not doing much for women in STEM, either.

KatvonHostileExtremist · 11/12/2019 17:07

I just can't believe this whole thing

CaveMum · 11/12/2019 17:08

An offer to debate in a polite and intelligent fashion from one of the co-authors of the letter.

twitter.com/swipewright/status/1204760746808270848

OP posts:
SecondRow · 11/12/2019 17:10

Yes, Kat, that’s what I thought. Talk about punching down. Ho, ho, see the lay people thinking there are only two sexes. But I won’t actually post a rebuttal Hmm

ElluesPichulobu · 11/12/2019 17:10

it's a sad day when the vast majority of the general public understand a lot more about science than someone with a job title about the public understanding of science.

there is nothing wrong with having a deep and abiding faith in the mysticism of gender feelings, but it is important to be able to recognise and name it as a faith position not a scientific one.

scientists can and do hold to faith positions as well as their scientific understanding and there has been a lot of writing about how to be faithful to what you believe without compromising the scientific method. AR should do a bit more reading.

SnuggyBuggy · 11/12/2019 17:14

That's a wanky sentence if I ever saw one. Parklife is the only suitable response.

RoyalCorgi · 11/12/2019 17:15

Kindness is important in our interactions with boundary-trampling men. But not when Professor Clownfish is interacting with her female science peers, it seems.

Indeed. And it doesn't take a lot, does it, to engage in polite and friendly discussion with people? You don't have to insult people who disagree with you. Least of all if your very job role is about engaging with people to improve understanding of science.

It's all very strange.

Floisme · 11/12/2019 17:15

Classy response from Dr Hilton.
Watch and learn Dr Roberts, watch and learn.

merrymouse · 11/12/2019 17:16

Let's hope that they are all engaging in polite discussion away from twitter.

BarbaraStrozzi · 11/12/2019 17:31

Colin Wright's response is spot on, and I'd be interested to read more.

The "your understanding is high school from 37 years ago" response is so misleading. I don't think anyone who works at the cutting edge of developmental biology or in research into differences of sexual development would say there's been a "paradigm shift" (completely new conceptual framework which replaces what's gone before - like Newtonian mechanics to relativity theory, or Dalton's understanding of chemistry to, say, modern quantum chemistry, or the kinetic theory of heat replacing caloric theory). They'd say that we're still working (for mammalian reproduction) with two sexes, an X chromosome and a Y chromosome which mostly come in pairs of XX or XY, but sometimes throw up unusual trisomies (XXY - Kleinfelter's) or singletons (X - Turner's syndrome).

Over the last 37 years, no doubt we've learned a hell of a lot about endocrine development, development of the foetus in utero, which bits of which chromosomes code for what, etc. But that's all icing on the cake of "99% plus of human reproductive biology is down to there being two sexes, female, with large immobile gametes and XX chromosomes, who gestate young, and male, with small, mobile gametes and XY chromosomes." It's not a whole new different cake with a completely different recipe and three (or four, or a multiplicity of layers) instead of two.

And appeal to authority/putting the boot into people on the basis of them being lower down the academic hierarchy than you is really shit behaviour and extremely bad science.

DrMoonshine · 11/12/2019 17:43

I don't want to bore the tits off everyone, but ...

Multi-dimensional space is normally a concept in multi-variate statistics used by archaeological scientists working with a lot of 'unknown unknown' variables.

Particularly in the 'processual' years of the 1970s/1980s, when many were playing around with assigning 'values' to the observed (by them) attributes of artefacts, burials, deposits, settlement morphologies etc, in order to try and theorise about the meanings of those archaeological data, it was supposed to be a big paradigm shift.

It wasn't.

It's now long been accepted by actual archaeologists of all ranks that while these analyses were interesting and useful they nevertheless inevitably incorporated their own subjective biases about what's considered worthy of being measured or assigned value in the first place.

These are subjective, ideological biases that no use of 'scientific' approach can eradicate within the very interpretive field of archaeology - decent archaeologists acknowledge this, and spell out their thought processes and methodologies and make them available for open public discussion. This has been the norm in all fields and periods of archaeology since the 1990s.

I don't understand Alice Roberts' behaviour.

PlanDeRaccordement · 11/12/2019 17:50

Alice Roberts seems hypocritical. If people self identify their sex, then why did I just watch her on BBC iplayer determining with authority the sex of a couple skulls based on morphology? If she really believed sex is not biological, she would have told BBC that you can’t tell the sex of human bones because the person is dead and unable to tell you what sex they identify as.

Ibloodylovewomen · 11/12/2019 17:58

I would love to know what Brian Cox thinks about all this stuff.

ScrimshawTheSecond · 11/12/2019 18:01

I think that's fascinating, Dr Moonshine. Smile

BovaryX · 11/12/2019 18:02

they nevertheless inevitably incorporated their own subjective biases about what's considered worthy of being measured or assigned value in the first place

That’s interesting. Considering the entire trans ideology is based on subjective feelings about gender which can’t be falsified because they are not scientific. As opposed to biological sex which exists in external reality.

Clymene · 11/12/2019 18:06

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Roberts

How can someone with a career like this believe this woo?

Not much that is either rational or kind here.

ErrolTheDragon · 11/12/2019 18:08

Sex is a binary, but actually I agree that 'gender' should be 'conceptualised in multidimensional space'. I've said similar on here before.

Essentially, if you think of all the things which are stereotyped as 'masculine' or 'feminine', then someone might have (to take a random selection off the top of my head) a masculine haircut, like somewhat feminine clothes, have a 'masculine' job, have a mix of masculine/ feminine hobbies etc etc. You can plot any two of those on a normal graph, any 3 in 3D - and all of them in 'multidimensional space', but you can only do that in maths, don't try to visualise it!Grin
Anyway, we all have our own unique set of characteristics.

I don't see how this understanding is remotely compatible with the notion of being 'transgender'.

ThemoonisanAmericanism · 11/12/2019 18:09

‘How can someone with a career like this believe this woo?’

Because that’s what celebrity does to people. It’s just depressing.

Melroses · 11/12/2019 18:11

The response to Emmad does not show the Professor in a good light

It wouldn't matter if Emma was a bog cleaner. What she writes is clear, well communicated, and scientifically literate (and also well researched by someone with a respected track record.)

(And there is nothing wrong with being a bog cleaner. Good honest job)