Anne Fausto-Sterling - Feminist Biologist

[MalagaNights]

Has anyone listened to this discussion between Scott Barry Kaufman (psychologist) & Anne Fausto-Sterling (a feminist biologist and gender studies professor.)?

It confused me. She seems to be arguing from a biologists position that gender is socially constructed (even the biological aspects are culturally influenced and defined) and that everyone goes through a gender identity development to establish where they are on the sexgender (she uses it as one word) spectrum.

She believes we are defined by how we socially present in the world rather than our genitals.

Anyone come across her before? I found it so hard to follow. I was really surprised a feminist biologist was taking this position.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/044nrzEOPAERfIvEg70bik?si=BtshLgZoS9mzEnUCzje48Q&dd=1

identifying as a feminist biologist

She is the woman who originally came up with the idea that there are five sexes. So she's not a very reliable source.

Five sexes!

She is wrong. Quite simply. A privileged person using the language of academia to obfuscate.

Plenty of us have IRL examples of abusive males not stopping to check out innermost thoughts about our identities before assaulting us. Plenty of women get assaulted despite wearing masculine clothing, having short hair. Plenty of women decide their careers will flourish, unlike their old-fashioned mother's did, but find the workplace discriminates against them nonetheless.

Fausto-Sterling is also the idiot who claimed there were as many people with DSDs as redheads.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/

And then recalculated, but was still out by more than an order of magnitude IIRC?

She is the woman who originally came up with the idea that there are five sexes. So she's not a very reliable source.

After she allowed this to inform much of the anti-science that sprung up over the following decade or so, she then gave an interview suggesting that her earlier position was some kind of joke on her part.

A strange and damaging individual.

https://twitter.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1230128097376243720

Think of her as a pioneer on genderist anti-science and then as a pioneer on how to disingenuously slope away from the mess they've made.

Are the sexes of animals and plants socially and "even the biological aspects are culturally influenced and defined"?

Is she an embryologist? My colleagues inform me that they tend to be weird 😁

She’s responsible for a lot of the gender idiocy out there. Absolutely batshit and her ridiculous ideas are easily shot down. She’s neither a biologist nor a feminist.

She said she suggested five sexes thinking she was having a laugh, if I remember correctly. She never expected anyone to take it seriously.

What she has said about DSD has been very harmful and that bit about sexual partners was disgusting.

She seems to be wedded to spreading falsehoods and probably thinks she is actually progressing the needs of the rare minority.

She said she suggested five sexes thinking she was having a laugh, if I remember correctly. She never expected anyone to take it seriously.

She just popped up in the latest piece by Colin Wright - it's currently paywalled, but that particular exchange is recalled above the line.

https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/responding-to-a-fabulous-takedown

Thanks Necessary. I will be very interested when that analysis comes out from behind the paywall.

It really is ridiculous that Fausto Sterling has no remorse about what she has written being considered seriously.

She also counts conditions such as PCOS as "intersex".

Thing that worries me is that she has serious academic credentials: Professor Emerita of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University.

This is a mainstream podcast with a well known psychologist.

We can easily poo poo her views here, but we mustn't underestimate how deeply this is entrenched in the universities and academia, and how it is presented by people highly credentialed in those institutions.

Thing that worries me is that she has serious academic credentials: Professor Emerita of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University.

Except that's not a serious title, is it? It's like "Astronomy and Astrology Studies".

It's a bizarre association in the first place, but then I fear she takes it even further by quietly diassociating the "Studies" so she thinks she can do "Biology Studies" in the same sort of hand-wavey make-anything-up way as you can do for "Gender".

Why is it not a serious title?

Gender Studies has been offered and recognised for decades at prestigious universities.

She is combining this with biology to study the degree to which gender is linked to biology. Inspired in this area as a feminist in the 70s.

You can disagree with her position and view it as dangerous nonsense, as I do, but to suggest she can be easily dismissed non entity, is to overlook how embedded this nonsense is across academia.

As I said, this is a recent podcast with her talking to a very prominent psychologist.

The basic point - that there are differences in the typical ways males and females behave, and these differences exist on a spectrum - is valid, I think.

Where TRAs go wrong is in the bizarre conclusions they draw from this point. For example, that because these behavioural differences exist, the purely physical differences aren't really worth mention. Or that a male who behaves in a largely male-typical way is a woman just because he says so.

The basic point - that there are differences in the typical ways males and females behave, and these differences exist on a spectrum - is valid, I think.

Where TRAs go wrong is in the bizarre conclusions they draw from this point.

That's a large part of Colin Wright's article above- there are a whole bunch of "these things are on a spectrum" papers, many talking about how behaviour is spread across the two sexes - but as he points out, all those papers are totally relying on there being two sexes and knowing what sex people (or animals) are (based on gametes), otherwise they wouldn't be able to analyse how the behaviour is distributed in each sex, or identify atypical behaviour.

Eg:

Importantly, the authors of this paper clearly understand that sex is rooted in gamete size. This is evident because of their ability to track instances of “conventional” verses “reversed” sex roles across species. If sex were not defined according to gametes, then “conventional” and “reversed” sex roles would be impossible to identify.

This paper unequivocally affirms the sex binary.

And there have to actually be defined sexes for you to even start talking about "gender". The sexes underpinning the concept are the only thing that stops it just being "personality".

OMG I've listened to some more: he asks her about TERFS, and she says they are feminists stuck in a static definition of woman as biological.

She says all categories should be self defined.

What I'm shocked about is how the very mainstream psychologist accepts all this as if it makes sense.

I think I spend too much time on here where we all agree, and start to think the only people promoting this are TRAs. But no it's academics and practicing psychologists.

It is about language then isn’t it? No biologist could say sex can be self defined (how does a courgette do that?).

She's a biologist.
A professor.
And she says sex is 'contextual' and should be self defined.

And the prominent academic psychologist nods along.

She calls herself a biologist.