Talking Sexes | Zach Elliot

Sciencentric

In this episode, we’re delving into some controversial topics. In fact, I really couldn’t think of more controversial topics than sex and gender and how the two relate.

Much like religion or politics, how we understand sex and gender are fundamental to how we operate in the world and inspire a whole range of opinions--often in conflict with each other.

But in the last five years or so, I’ve noticed some rather unusual ideas taking root.

Number one is that distinct biological sexes don’t exist; sex categories like male and female are arbitrary and socially constructed and sex exists on some kind of “spectrum”,

Number two is that gender is completely divorced from biology. Meaning that the gender you identify with and your outward expression of it, aren’t influenced by the sex you were born with.

In my mind, denying these biological realities around sex and gender is to engage in science denialism. Most troubling is that these ideas are finding a mainstream voice in scientists who also moonlight as gender activists, giving them scientific credibility.

And, unfortunately, denying science that’s inconvenient to ideology makes it impossible to reach any kind of consensus on public policy issues, particularly thorny ones like transgender rights or gender disparities in certain career fields.

Diving headfirst into these issues is our guest Zach Elliot. Zach isn’t a scientist or a professional journalist, but rather an architecture student who sees himself as an educator. Zach has written a short book on sex and gender called the Gender Paradox. And he has also started producing videos about these subjects for YouTube. I actually first became aware of him on Twitter because of his activity debunking misinformation about intersex conditions, also known as Disorders of Sexual Development.

Zach and I spoke about how he got interested in this topic as a non-scientist, how intersex conditions are misused in discussions of transgender rights, and his step-by-step guide for writing an article that muddies the water around these controversial topics.

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**DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE**

The Paradox Institute
https://www.theparadoxinstitute.com/pi.html
Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes (Lehtonen & Parker)
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990

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