Prospect Mag "What is a Woman?" Jul 21

[catsnoozing]

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/what-is-a-woman
open access at the moment, not sure how long for. By Angela Saini. She flips between sex and gender and quotes Sarah Richardson (GenderSci Lab) amongst others. For example, she talks about the difference in average heights for men and women in this country and goes on to say that "the average man in South Asia is currently around the same height as the average woman in the UK."

Anyway, lecanard noir does a good critique of the article on twitter:
twitter.com/lecanardnoir/status/1417009473324044291

It's also on Prospect's twitter: twitter.com/prospect_uk

I do find Prospect exasperatingly patronising on the whole subject of sex and gender.

Oh and for good measure you may want to take a look at their top 50 thinkers..............
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-worlds-top-50-thinkers-2021

She's a science journalist. It's shocking. Why on earth would a scientist who presumably has some idea of how Darwin's theory of evolution works write an article that undermines science in favour of postmodernist wiff-waff?

She is an engineer rather than a scientist. She has a book, “How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story”
Published 2017 and I’d not heard of it.

God, what a shocking article - worse than I was expecting. Conflating sex and gender, linking GC with racism 🙄 , bringing in intersex, bigging up non-binary (which IMO has about as much relevance to the debate as being a Goth) and just the usual mish-mash of random words and examples because there’s no coherent argument.

Even the header annoyed me. No, there’s nothing “hazy” about Sex 🙄

As for this patronising crap: “We find it hard to accept what we’ve never seen. For those who have grown up as (or with) people who are openly non-binary, intersex or transgender, what is “obvious” about sex and gender is very different than for those who haven’t” - stop mixing up identities with medical conditions! I am sick to fk of people with DSDs being used like this. Stop assuming everyone who’s GC must be some kind of backward troglodyte! It’s you that are the regressive one!

There - I feel better now I got that off my chest! 😁

As someone in the replies asks: when is their planned "What is a man?" article? Twelfth of Never?

My partner subscribes to Prospect and I enjoy reading every month. Until this one... Am drafting my letter to the editor. I remember a maxim along the lines of 'all journalism is true apart from the journalism about subjects you know something about'. It makes me doubt all of the other articles I've read in Prospect.

Top 50 thinkers with no mention of little OJ? It’s an outrage!

We need a bingo card -

confusing the terms 'sex' and 'gender'...tick!
those who are gender critical are right wing nut jobs....tick!
linking GC beliefs with being a white supremacist...tick!
Using DSD as whataboutery.....tick!

I read Prospect from it's very beginning but slowly got more and more fed up with it's hectoring tone.

The final straw was a huge rant from the editor about how vile the UK and everyone who voted leave was. I cancelled my subscription. Overstepped the mark.
It went from being an interesting magazine to a browbeating bore.

What a mess.

I read the top 50 thinkers but got stuck when I came across the professor of anatomy called Roger Kneebone. How do any of his colleagues keep a straight face?

Published 2017 and I’d not heard of it.

She did. It was good. I'm embarrassed for her.