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

But sex isn't that complicated. She must know that. She talked about the tyranny of natural childbirth ideology when she was having her first baby. She knows perfectly well that only females can give birth.

I don't have any patience with her now. It's interesting that when Andrew Billen (who isn't by any stretch of the imagination a Terf) put a logical objection to her she fell silent. Why? Because she obviously hadn't thought about it up to then. Every single person who has put logical objections to her on Twitter has been blocked. She deals with the logical flaws by refusing to think about them. She couldn't block Billen so had to come up with an answer. And not a very good one.

There was an excellent post below the interview:

"It may be true that the observable features of male and female brains do not differ greatly, but the way in which the endocrine system works in their bodies seems to be markedly different. Hence in order to bring about a ‘transition’ we have to artificially pump human beings full of hormones and even surgically remove certain glands - so the parallel with the clownfish does not quite work.
Also even with clownfish as well as with human beings, the notion of transitioning is hardly possible without the normative fixed goalposts of the male and female versions. Without them how do you know what you have transitioned from or to, or when you have arrived?

More generally why do trans activists urge us to support trans people ‘because they have no choice’ (an appeal to biological determinism), but are happy to disparage women who claim their identity is bound up with their sex, because ‘sex is only a social construct’. Which is it? You can’t have it both ways"

I thought it deeply sad that she did not even attend her mother's funeral. She cut her family out, it seems, because of a disagreement about the influence of Christianity in schools.

In other articles I've seen, her mother seems entirely rational and capable of intelligent discussion. She was not a fanatic; though there certainly seems an element of intolerant fanaticism in Alice herself.

Alice's mother Wendy wrote in her letter:

'Some humanists complaining about, and campaigning against, the 'indoctrination' of children in our church schools seem to be unaware that they are doing almost exactly that about which they are objecting.'

Oh no what's Lucy worsey done 😱 I like her.
Like Mary beard
Weirdly I've never liked Alice Roberts but can't pinpoint why.

And we’ve had decades of feminism where we’ve been trying to get away from women being reduced to their genitalia.

This is just regurgitated TRA-speak with no thought to what she actually means. I’ve been a feminist for decades and never felt that what I was fighting was “being reduced to my genitalia” - what a weird concept. Being female, or male, is far from just being about genitals. Our bodies are different and those differences enable the subjugation and sidelining of women.

”reducing people to genitalia” is the argument TRAs use to oppose people being able to have a sex they prefer/exclusively wish to have sex with. It’s got nothing to do with feminism. And I find this a giveaway, that somewhere in Alice’s brain, her education and logical thinking ability have been suppressed in favour of parroting what she has unthinkingly swallowed as what “lefty progressive cool people” think, because she has a need to be seen that way. I find it bizarre as she must be, or must have been at one point, someone who can think things through.

And as PPs say, how do you know a clownfish has changed sex? It’s sure as hell not their dress, lipstick, hormone pills, heels, handbag or pronouns. It’s because they functionally change sex in a way that is understood scientifically on the basis of gametes. It’s such a non-argument.

Is it cos she's a massive anti woman bigot?

And yes how can you complain about religions while espousing another completely non-evidence-based dogma? I wish Alice would just stop and have an actual think for 5 minutes.

Religious beliefs are not for me either, but they mainly can’t actually be proven wrong, unlike gender woo.

Am actually shocked....I didn't realise Alice Roberts held those views. she is meant to be an educated woman. This is probably why I don't like her 🤣 I must have subconsciously known what an idiot she is

You can be very clever and adept at manipulating language, but that is not the same as being able to construct rational arguments; or being able to differentiate between one type of thing and another when drawing conclusions.

Lots of people are 'educated' and have degrees and even higher degrees - but that does not necessarily make them intellectual. Many people process information primarily through emotional channels ( we all do to an extent and on occasion).

In so vehemently rejecting the faith of her parents, Roberts has replaced it with another unanalysed doctrine of faith - for reasons of emotional security.

Wow, some of the vitriol on here.
Why is it no longer possible to disagree -vehemently- even violently- with another person’s viewpoint, without deriding and denigrating, and refusing to ever read a word written by that person ever again ( even someone you used to enjoy)?

Really interesting to read about her issues with her parents in the light of how she acts on social media- I've never understood why someone claiming to be a humanist would deliberately goad and upset religious people as she does but now I know the background it makes a lot more sense.

Her first degree is in medicine/anatomy, and she has a PhD in paleopathology.

Apparently, one Good Friday she tweeted that " Dead people don't come back to life".

I do enjoy her work, and wouldn't shun her because she doesn't share my views.

I disagree with adult DD over my terfy opinions but she would be shocked and horrified at the thought of missing my funeral over it!

Surely there is more going on with Alice/her Mum than a mere difference of opinion. I feel very sad for her.

The Humanists are pretty captured - as an organisation it opposes defining sex in the EA as biological sex, and the US bunch threw out Richard Dawkins because he drew parallels between men thinking that they are women and Rachel Dolezal.

I was going to post the same.

The level of the 'discussion' is dreadful.

So she can recognise material reality in one context but not in another.

Anyway, never mind the sensitivities, I don't know to what extent Christ counts as "people" if you're religious or have even just read the mythology. Part human, part supernatural being

Although, in that Times article it seems that Roberts knows what a woman is when it directly affects her:

But after more than a decade [teaching at a university], she was still not getting promoted.

“I think for quite a few years I had my head firmly pressed up against a glass ceiling and I was getting a bit of a crick in my neck.”

Because she was a woman or because she was too young?

“I think it was because I was a woman. Absolutely. I mean, there was me and a couple of female friends and we just saw men being promoted around us and we seemed to be kind of stuck in one place and it was a bit odd.”

I wonder what she would do if a transwoman were promoted ahead of her.

And let's face it, Bristol would do it, if any university would.

She'd have to smile and applaud this victory for women, knowing that the person in question would almost certainly have previously benefitted from male privilege

The TW would still be benefitting from male privilege.

Oh not according to people like her. oppression of epic proportions. Apparently.

I'll happily read a lot of people I disagree with, but once you feel contempt for someone it's hard to get beyond that. For the past few years, a group of committed women has been fighting back against an assault on our rights by predatory and aggressive men. It's been tough, but it's a fight we could have won by now if women in the public eye, women with power and influence, had joined us. Instead, very many of those women have sided with the men attacking. I don't think I can even begin to convey to you the contempt I feel for those women. Roberts is one of them.

She's an engaging presenter, and I'm not going to stop watching her programmes, not least because my husband loves Digging for Britain. However, I don't know why anybody would pay much attention to a TV presenter's views on contentious social issues. What next, Ant and Dec asked to advise on immigration? Claudia Winkelman on knife crime? The cult of celebrity has a lot to answer for.

I'm not going to criticise her for having a difficult relationship with her parents. There could be anything going on there. You only have to dip into a few threads on MN to see how fraught some family relationships are, in ways that aren't always easy for outsiders to grasp.

And yes how can you complain about religions while espousing another completely non-evidence-based dogma?

This happens when people who have been brought up with one dogma, which they reject, don’t understand that they have been conditioned to belief as well as doctrine, so can’t do without it, and espouse some diametrically different doctrine - often becoming quite evangelical about it.