Alice Roberts in The Times

[Igneococcus]

Mostly plugging her new book but the interviews bring up the trans issue:

"I am not trying to propel Roberts back to a 2019 skirmish in the trans wars in which she tweeted that “biology is, quite simply, messier and more wonderful than some people like to believe” and advised doubters to “ask a clownfish” — a clownfish being a fish that starts life as male but becomes female. It does, however, strike me that if human female and male brains are the same, how can it ever be said that a baby possessing male genitalia was born into the wrong body.
There is quite a pause.
“I think that’s a very difficult philosophical question. It’s very difficult to pin it down, isn’t it? And we’ve had decades of feminism where we’ve been trying to get away from women being reduced to their genitalia. My own feeling is that you approach everybody as an individual.”

No Alice, it really isn't difficult to pin down, and it's not about genitalia, it's about gametes.

On a side note, it seems if it weren't for Alice we'd still be clueless about the causative agent of plague:
"Her chapter on the Black Death of the 14th and 15th centuries reveals its genesis as the Yersinia pestis bacterium,"

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/31f84383-e923-42d5-8011-64d0dd7c1ff9?shareToken=2d6448182015ccd30701f4cb6c84de9f

The concept of being born in the wrong body has passed into history, don't they know that? It strikes me that Alice could do with sitting down with a sex realist and actually listening to what we are saying, instead of thinking she knows. Clownfish and being reduced to genitals, indeed.

I used to admire Alice Roberts. I can't remember why now.

Most famous archaeologist???

My fat menopausal arse.

I think this honour should go to the late Mick Aston, or, if not to Phil Harding, Carenza Lewis or Helen Geake.

Or potentially to someone who is not a media personality but who gets on with the job.

I hate this argument that biology is messy and complicated. Yes, it's often complicated and maybe messy but that doesn't mean some things aren't undeniably true, sex being binary and immutable in mammals, for example. It's a cop out.

"Her chapter on the Black Death of the 14th and 15th centuries reveals its genesis as the Yersinia pestis bacterium,"

An article in 1989 reporting on knowledge that was commonplace at the time:

"Black Death? "A form of plague caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis, a pandemic throughout Europe and much of Asia during the 14th Century, killing one-fourth of the population of Europe.""

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1989/mar/02/cover-billions-of-the-suckers/

On a side note, it seems if it weren't for Alice we'd still be clueless about the causative agent of plague:
"Her chapter on the Black Death of the 14th and 15th centuries reveals its genesis as the Yersinia pestis bacterium,"

Eh? That’s been known for years!

I hope it's just the interviewer's phrasing that makes it sound like Alice discovered Y. pestis.

I hate this argument that biology is messy and complicated. Yes, it's often complicated and maybe messy

Gravity in its underlying reality is complicated and might be messy if we ever get to the bottom of it. Doesn't mean that people find its real world manifestation so difficult to deal with. Doesn't mean that people can be gravity fluid and slip the surly bonds of Earth and dance the skies by the power of thought.

Yes, @nauticant I bet AR wouldn't lean too far out of an upstairs window no matter how imperfect our understanding of gravity is.

The Y. pestis thing has reminded me of the scientist who died a few years back of the plague. He was working with a non-pathogenic lab strain, but it's non-pathogenicity was because of the strain's need of high iron levels, much higher than you usually find in humans. The scientist had undiagnosed hemachromatosis, he got infected and died of it. Not the point of this thread, I know, I just remembered.

I avoid her now and the goth historian. Shame because I do enjoy a good dig programme. Lucy Worsley is off my Christmas card list too.

thank god for Mary beard (please god she doesn’t out herself as an idiot)

She isn’t an archaeologist, her specialism is anatomy, ironically.

'No Alice, it really isn't difficult to pin down, and it's not about genitalia, it's about gametes.'

And she knows that perfectly well. Another smart person pretending to be stupid for trendy points. Not a good look

And we’ve had decades of feminism where we’ve been trying to get away from women being reduced to their genitalia. My own feeling is that you approach everybody as an individual.

We've had decades of feminism where we've we've been trying to get away from women being reduced to their sex. But that's not to say that we don't have a sex.

A disability rights campaigner might argue a person shouldn't be reduced to their disability, but that's not to say they don't have a disability, and that their disability has material consequences that need to be acknowledged and addressed.

And if disabled people wish to represent their interests as a group, is the rational response to just "approach everyone as an individual"?

There - it's not hard, Alice.

thank god for Mary beard (please god she doesn’t out herself as an idiot)

I believe Mary Beard is of the "oh dear, it's all too hard for poor little me" persuasion.

And uses the term "cis women".

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4910270-mary-beard-in-the-herald

Not reducing women to their genitalia is not the same as recognising that women have one set of genitalia and men have another.

I used to like AR but since the ridiculous crap she wrote about sex, I can’t bear to listen to her at all. She’s either pretending that it’s awfully complicated or she’s just thick and has misunderstood the arguments like so many doormats women that are falling over themselves to ‘be kind’.

FFS, Alice, saying that women are female isn’t ‘reducing them to their genitals’ 🙄 However, what you’re doing is reducing women to an outdated pile of sexist stereotypes. Arse-achingly old-fashioned and conservative!

She isn’t an archaeologist, her specialism is anatomy, ironically.

Actually, I did know that but I thought she was an osteoarchaeologist.

Bugger.

And she is a smug atheist (under the guise of a humanist which is a joke really when you make horrible comments about/to religious people).

She’s just popped up on my newsfeed with an article in the times.

Something about why her family doesn’t talk to her. I have a few ideas…

I used to like AR, but her dogmatic views on religion and religious people, and quite unhinged tirades about them finished her for me, along with the trans thing. She isn't an archaeologist, so why she should be the poster girl for archaeology beats me. I used to follow her on Twitter, but her self-satisfied self promotion got very wearing and I unfollowed.

Wasn’t she on Time Team? Famous for having pink hair or something.

Yes, she used to handle human bones at digs and confidently assert that it was the pelvis of a woman, or of a man. She seems not to know that any more….

….Or actually she does, because I’ve definitely heard her saying it on ‘Digging for Britain', but apparently it’s all very complicated so it doesn’t always apply. Or something. Because clownfish. 🤡

HoneyButterPopcorn · Today 09:37

And she is a smug atheist (under the guise of a humanist which is a joke really when you make horrible comments about/to religious people).

Actually no, she is a new ager, she does yoga and she said that the birth of her children was something very spiritual

She is basically a concocted mind, so sad, I really liked her also

Most likely she is a Glastonbury witch in disguise

Isn’t she a spokesperson for the humanist society? I seem to remember some nasty posts with digs at religious people which I thought was unnecessary.