Speaker 1: Men do take more physical risks than women, but it's
Speaker 1: not all negative. It's not all risks like killing each
Speaker 1: other or behaving violently. Like you said, those risks are
Speaker 1: also to save the lives of others. Hello and welcome
Speaker 1: to the Psychology Podcast. The following episode is part of
Speaker 1: the Making Sense of Sex and Gender series on this podcast.
Speaker 1: In this series, we try to make sense of the
Speaker 1: distinction between sex and gender and cover trans issues in
Speaker 1: a very thoughtful and nuanced fashion. We have balanced discussions
Speaker 1: from multiple perspectives, including scientists, activists, and a leading feminism scholar.
Speaker 1: This series will hopefully expand your mind and help you
Speaker 1: make sense of the current heated debates surrounding the distinctions
Speaker 1: between sex and gender as well as transgender issues. The
Speaker 1: aim is to turn down the temperature on this very
Speaker 1: heated topic and increase understanding and integrate truth with love.
Speaker 1: I hope you will listen to this entire series with
Speaker 1: an open mind, in an open heart, and as always
Speaker 1: we look forward to hearing your feedback and comments on
Speaker 1: our website and on the YouTube channel so that further
Speaker 1: ado I bring you this episode within the Making Sense
Speaker 1: of Sex and Gender series. Today, we welcome doctor Carol
Speaker 1: Hooven on the show. For the past six years, Doctor
Speaker 1: Hooven has served as a lecturer and co director of
Speaker 1: undergraduate studies at Harvard's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. She
Speaker 1: has received numerous teaching awards, and her popular Hormones and
Speaker 1: Behavior class was named one of the Harvard Crimson's Top
Speaker 1: ten Tried and True. Currently, doctor Hooven has moved to
Speaker 1: the Psychology Department, where she works as an associate at
Speaker 1: Stephen Pinker's lab. Her latest book is called t The
Speaker 1: Story of Testosterone, The Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us.
Speaker 1: In this episode, I talk to doctor Carol Hooven about
Speaker 1: the science of testosterone. Why do males have higher rates
Speaker 1: of physical violence, take on more risk, and desire more
Speaker 1: sexual partners. Doctor Hooven's research points to testosterone as the answer.
Speaker 1: Although sex differences may stem from biology, she also points
Speaker 1: out that variations and behavior may be better explained by
Speaker 1: genetics interacting with culture. We also touch on the topics
Speaker 1: of evolutionary biology, gender dys for you, gender affirming care,
Speaker 1: and academic freedom. So that further Ado, I bring you
Speaker 1: Doctor Carol Hooven. Doctor Carol Hooven, the Harvard evolutionary biologist.
Speaker 1: How you doing. I'm okay, it's a little stressful morning,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna get into his zen mode, I think,
Speaker 1: and thank you for being so patient with me. Oh
Speaker 1: my pleasure. And once you start getting into your scientific passion,
Speaker 1: you'll get into the flow state. I'm sure, yes, you
Speaker 1: know you study testosterone, but you but more broadly evolutionary biology.
Speaker 1: My gosh, can you explain to our audience a little
Speaker 1: bit about what that field is and how you got
Speaker 1: into it? Wow? Okay, that's a big question. So I
Speaker 1: think I can start with how I got into it,
Speaker 1: and it was I'd say organically. It's easier to understand.
Speaker 1: I think in retrospect, just thinking back on my own
Speaker 1: interests and how they developed. I think I've always been
Speaker 1: interested in people, and you know that's to me that
Speaker 1: just sounds so obvious. Of course people are interesting, but
Speaker 1: like I'm married to someone, for instance, who really doesn't
Speaker 1: share my interest in human psychology and just kind of
Speaker 1: figuring out why people behave the way that they behave.
Speaker 1: You know, that's just always been natural for me. But
Speaker 1: really not everyone, as you I'm sure no shares that interest.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are more interested in things or
Speaker 1: numbers or something like that. So I just realized that
Speaker 1: I've always been interested in how people work. And in college,
Speaker 1: I majored in psychology, and it wasn't until my senior
Speaker 1: year in college when I learned for the you know,
Speaker 1: I learned for the first time. I'll start crying at
Speaker 1: some point, Like talking about this always makes me tear
Speaker 1: up because it was so so exciting for me to
Speaker 1: learn about the brain and to learn about neurot transmitters.
Speaker 1: You know, it's so funny that I get emotional talking
Speaker 1: about it, but I'll never forget that moment. And I
Speaker 1: wrote about that in my book, that moment and how
Speaker 1: transformative it was for me, because this was in my
Speaker 1: senior year. I had taken psychology. I had found it interesting,
Speaker 1: but I hadn't realized what I was missing until I
Speaker 1: learned about the brain. Until I learned about neurochemistry and
Speaker 1: like neurons and how they worked, and drugs that can
Speaker 1: affect behavior. And that is when I really became passionate
Speaker 1: about learning more. You know, I was a senior, but
Speaker 1: I took a lot of classes and read a lot
Speaker 1: of books after I graduated. That's when I became passionate
Speaker 1: about really trying to understand the biological basis of human behavior,
Speaker 1: and sort of then I took I traveled, I read
Speaker 1: a lot of books, I took a lot of classes.
Speaker 1: And I hadn't taken molecular biology before, I hadn't taken genetics,
Speaker 1: so I took those classes and traveled all over the world.
Speaker 1: So it was this combination of learning about evolution and
Speaker 1: genes and mutations and seeing so many different ecological and
Speaker 1: cultural environments across the globe that got me really curious
Speaker 1: about the commonalities between humans, what we all share, These
Speaker 1: like deep commonalities like sociality and trust and competition and
Speaker 1: aggression and sexuality. But then all these differences across cultures,
Speaker 1: like difference and religions and rights of women in different countries.
Speaker 1: And that is what ultimately got me interested in sort
Speaker 1: of hooked on evolution and understanding how evolutionary pressures over
Speaker 1: time have shaped human nature in a sense, not just humans,
Speaker 1: but non human animals too, And I became really interested
Speaker 1: in that how evolution shapes these sort of common behaviors
Speaker 1: between humans and between humans and non human animals, and
Speaker 1: then also what accounts for the differences ultimately just quit
Speaker 1: my job and applied to Harvard to graduate school to
Speaker 1: study something about the evolution of human behavior. And I
Speaker 1: got rejected, and I persisted, and I had no right
Speaker 1: to persist because I didn't really have the qualifications, and
Speaker 1: I eventually got offered a job to work in Uganda
Speaker 1: studying chimps and running this chimpanzee field research site in
Speaker 1: western Uganda and in the jungle. Basically, that is what
Speaker 1: got me interested in sex differences and understand the biological
Speaker 1: basis of sex differences, because I was with the chimps
Speaker 1: that don't have human culture, and I was really struck
Speaker 1: at that point by you know, I had obviously noticed
Speaker 1: human sex differences, but to see very similar differences in
Speaker 1: chimps in the jungle with no human culture, that really
Speaker 1: got me more focused curiosity on what we share with
Speaker 1: non human animals that can help explain male female differences.
Speaker 1: And that's what got me hooked on testosterone. So and
Speaker 1: that really, to me is what evolutionary biology is about.
Speaker 1: It's understanding how evolutionary processes can help to explain the phenotype,
Speaker 1: that is the physical and behavioral aspects of organisms. And
Speaker 1: in this case, you know, mammals and then humans in particular,
Speaker 1: and then just throw in human culture. That's a whole,
Speaker 1: big piece of the human environment that makes us really
Speaker 1: fascinating and different from other animals in important ways. But
Speaker 1: it's a it's a framework that we can use to
Speaker 1: understand why we are the way we are, not just
Speaker 1: how we work. Like what's going on in the brain.
Speaker 1: Why do I like good and plenty, which no one
Speaker 1: seems to know what that is anymore anyway? Why do
Speaker 1: I like certain kinds? Why do I like candy? You know,
Speaker 1: because it tastes good? Right, There are receptors on my
Speaker 1: tongue that communicate with my brain and make me motivated
Speaker 1: to get more. Right, So that's one kind of an explanation.
Speaker 1: But another kind of explanation is an ultimate explanation, is
Speaker 1: a evolutionary explanation. I am this way because it's been
Speaker 1: reproductively beneficial to my ancestors over human evolutionary history, and
Speaker 1: that's all answer. Yeah, that's evolutionary biology to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology. Yeah, either reproduction or survival sort of in
Speaker 1: the ultimate explanation point of view. But you know, psychology
Speaker 1: is so interested in the proximal, and you probably jump
Speaker 1: back and forth between different levels of analysis. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and hormones, you know, really are about what's going on
Speaker 1: in your body right now. But when I'm really I'm
Speaker 1: interested in both. If I'm fascinated by how that stem works,
Speaker 1: but then why it works the way it does. There's
Speaker 1: a lot in what you just said. Let me go
Speaker 1: back to your dissertation work. Did you were you in
Speaker 1: the Kabel Forest? Is that where you were in Uganda? Oh? Kibali? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that the Kibali National Park. But I thought you
Speaker 1: were going to. The dissertation was actually with Steve Costlin,
Speaker 1: And I noticed that you have worked with you were
Speaker 1: supervised by Sternberg, Is that correct? Yes? And Jeremy Gray
Speaker 1: and you know you're not making that up. You're not
Speaker 1: making that up. And Jeremy Gray and the neuroscience of intelligence. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So there's some overlap there because that my dissertation was
Speaker 1: really about was mental rotation. Oh my mental rotation into
Speaker 1: Scots grown and evolution. So I was very interested in
Speaker 1: his work in terms of problems how we solve idea
Speaker 1: that for multiple Costlin was very good friends with Jeremy Gray. Yeah,
Speaker 1: multiple steps and discrete processes that are involved in solving
Speaker 1: any complex problem. And when you have when you give
Speaker 1: someone a test, you get one outcome. You're good at
Speaker 1: this or you're bad at this. But what I really
Speaker 1: came to understand, partly due to your advisor's work, is that, well, no,
Speaker 1: you know what, if there's if there are a male
Speaker 1: female differences in test scores, that difference can derive from
Speaker 1: differences in any of the processes that are involved in
Speaker 1: complex problem solving. So we can't necessarily make a judgment that,
Speaker 1: you know, X group is better than why group unless
Speaker 1: we have unless we understand exactly what we're measuring. That's very,
Speaker 1: very interesting. There's a little known fact about me, and
Speaker 1: that's that my first ever peer reviewed published paper, scientific
Speaker 1: paper I wrote like a review that I believe was
Speaker 1: published first, But I mean, my first ever scientific paper
Speaker 1: was in the journal Intelligence and it was on sex
Speaker 1: differences in mental rotation ability, which I did. Oh what,
Speaker 1: that's my whole master's thesis at the University of Cambridge
Speaker 1: in the biology. I was in the biology the Department
Speaker 1: of Experimental Psychology at Cambridge University. Nicholas Macintosh was my
Speaker 1: advisor and he had studied this topic two thousand and six. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got my PhD in four which is which is
Speaker 1: probably why I didn't come across that. My whole master's
Speaker 1: thesis was accounting for this, yeah, three D mental rotation
Speaker 1: and trying to explain it through mediating variables, which I did.
Speaker 1: So can I just tell the audience what we're talking about? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Please do? I stumbled onto mental rotation. Initially I thought
Speaker 1: I would do something with chimps. Somehow I stumbled onto
Speaker 1: mental rotation because it is the largest sex difference in
Speaker 1: human cognition. So that means in the way that people
Speaker 1: think and solve problems and navigate their world. And I
Speaker 1: didn't know what mental rotation was, and it sounded totally boring,
Speaker 1: and in a lot of ways it is totally boring
Speaker 1: because I think we don't and I'll just say what
Speaker 1: it is. This is my hairskin and nails vitamin, which
Speaker 1: I have on my desk for some reason. But if
Speaker 1: I were to ask you to imagine what this looked
Speaker 1: like if I turned it upside down, why don't you
Speaker 1: go you people at home, go ahead and do that,
Speaker 1: those who are watching the YouTube video, what would these
Speaker 1: letters look like? Okay? If this bottle were upside down right.
Speaker 1: So in order to solve that problem, what's interesting is
Speaker 1: in your brain. Instead of just regenerating the image at
Speaker 1: this like this right upside down, instead of just creating
Speaker 1: a new image, what you probably all did is go
Speaker 1: boo boo boo boo boo boo boo boo boo boo
Speaker 1: boop one hundred and eighty degrees. You rotated it in
Speaker 1: your head. And when you rotated it, you relied on
Speaker 1: the same neural architecture that you would use to reach
Speaker 1: out and do what I just did. Boo boo boo
Speaker 1: boo boo boo boop. So there's this relationship between physical
Speaker 1: rotation of objects and mental rotation of objects. And you
Speaker 1: would take longer to answer a question about what this
Speaker 1: looked like at one hundred and eighty degrees than you
Speaker 1: would if I just ask you to imagine it like
Speaker 1: this right. And so the degrees that you have to
Speaker 1: rotate it predicts how long you would take to answer
Speaker 1: a question about what it would look like at a
Speaker 1: different angle. So this turns out to be a super
Speaker 1: important aspect of cognition, and we use it in all
Speaker 1: kinds of other problem solving areas. So this would be
Speaker 1: opposed to something like verbal verbal cognition or other ways
Speaker 1: of solving problems. About Scott, you give me you're the
Speaker 1: intelligence guy and this has been so long for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: give me some other kind of vocabulary? How would you explain?
Speaker 1: Of course, the you know a Nike you test is
Speaker 1: the Shmorgus sport of things include the vocabulary and now
Speaker 1: analogical thinking. You know, there's verbal things with verbal content,
Speaker 1: things nonverbal content. There's like within the spatial demean there's
Speaker 1: different kinds of tasks. It seems like on average, the
Speaker 1: sex difference is largest in three D mental rotation, having
Speaker 1: to mentally rotate like a three dimensional cube that you're
Speaker 1: looking at, as opposed to a two dimensional mental rotation.
Speaker 1: That's then that's what I wanted to really understand in
Speaker 1: my dissertation was why what is so? Yes, I wanted
Speaker 1: a double click on the largest sex difference and really
Speaker 1: understand what what's going on there? Now? Did you look
Speaker 1: at sex differences in your in your dissertation work? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what it was on entirely and and related to
Speaker 1: But we used the Shepherd and mets me too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I used the shep okay, so I would I want
Speaker 1: to say to everybody, and I think this is super
Speaker 1: important that this test of the largest sex difference there
Speaker 1: is in the way we think, which is in imagining
Speaker 1: rotating three dimensional objects. And you have to say, in
Speaker 1: this task, this cognitive task. You know people are always
Speaker 1: taking tests right with where you get one score, you're
Speaker 1: supposed to say, Okay, if I rotate two of these
Speaker 1: in different ways, can you imagine whether they're the same
Speaker 1: or different objects. I'm not doing a good job describing it,
Speaker 1: but you have to imagine rotating one object so that
Speaker 1: it would match another object, and then you have to
Speaker 1: say whether it's the same or different. And these are paper,
Speaker 1: usually paper and pencil tasks that psychology departments all over
Speaker 1: mostly the country but also the world hand out to
Speaker 1: hundreds of people and consistently boys and men blow away
Speaker 1: girls and women. For the most part. This is to
Speaker 1: say nothing about the cause of this difference. It could
Speaker 1: be the large environmental or cultural contributions to this difference.
Speaker 1: So there's this is where we find this huge difference.
Speaker 1: But if you give people any other kind of test,
Speaker 1: like the one where that's not just paper and a
Speaker 1: pencil test, but different tests of this aspect of cognition
Speaker 1: you typically get a lower sex different a smaller sex difference.
Speaker 1: Researchers want to get a big, interesting difference group difference
Speaker 1: so that they can publish their papers and they can say, look,
Speaker 1: we found that this. You know, we have replicated this
Speaker 1: large sex difference, and there's a big question about this.
Speaker 1: So this is an effect where people keep using the
Speaker 1: same test, the Shepherd and Mesler paper and pencil test,
Speaker 1: because it yields I think partly because it yields this
Speaker 1: large sex difference, but we used a more complex computerized
Speaker 1: test where you get you get the slope in addition
Speaker 1: to the interception. You can analyze them separately. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the point is when you hear a report of a
Speaker 1: large sex difference, you have no idea what where the
Speaker 1: difference is located. It could be that in the encoding
Speaker 1: of the objects, the sexes are different. Males might be
Speaker 1: better at encoding, males might be better in making a decision.
Speaker 1: And that's what I came to believe that it's that
Speaker 1: wasn't I didn't find evidence for the cognitive skill in
Speaker 1: terms of the actual rotation, but I did find evidence
Speaker 1: for men being faster and more accurate in terms of
Speaker 1: decide making a decision about difference, that they're more apt
Speaker 1: to say these two things are different. Women are more
Speaker 1: apt to say these two things are the same. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that men aren't better at this, It's just
Speaker 1: that I didn't find it in my research, and I
Speaker 1: think there are interesting reasons why. On this particular test
Speaker 1: that everybody uses, which is the basis of this claim
Speaker 1: that men are so much better than women at this test,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 1: the test itself, wow, rather than some basic inherent difference,
Speaker 1: which there may very well be one. I think there
Speaker 1: probably is, but I don't think that this test is
Speaker 1: totally capturing the actual rotation difference and ability to rotate objects,
Speaker 1: which I'll just give an example in case people are
Speaker 1: still wondering why we're talking about this. If you go
Speaker 1: to pack your trunk and you have suitcases, and you know,
Speaker 1: square ones, rectangular ones, and you have to figure you
Speaker 1: have to look at the objects and figure out how
Speaker 1: to move them. You imagine how you can pack them
Speaker 1: efficiently into your trunk, and you might not even know
Speaker 1: that you're doing that. You might not even know that
Speaker 1: you are looking at your luggage and imagining how to
Speaker 1: move it and turn things so that it most efficiently
Speaker 1: and neatly fits into your truck. That's mental rotation. And
Speaker 1: so these are skills that we use all the time
Speaker 1: that we don't even recognize, but they help us survive. Ultimately, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to pack your truck to survive, but
Speaker 1: that's an example that people kind of relate to you.
Speaker 1: I do want to use this as a segue to
Speaker 1: talk about testosterone. Now. I do remember when I was
Speaker 1: I did my literature review back in two thousand and
Speaker 1: five for my master's thesis on this, I had a
Speaker 1: whole section on the role of testosterone, especially prenatal testosterone,
Speaker 1: on this three D mental ability. You know, you said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, no one's saying anything about the cause. It
Speaker 1: could be environmental, but we do have data showing that
Speaker 1: there is a pretty strong contribution of even prenatal testosterone
Speaker 1: on this sex difference. Let's zoom out for a second
Speaker 1: now and just talk a little bit about what is testosterone. Well,
Speaker 1: it is testosterone in what ways? Does it matter? How
Speaker 1: far reaching is this are we talking here? We just
Speaker 1: talking three D mental rotation or are we talking other
Speaker 1: things as well. I'm glad you actually brought up the
Speaker 1: idea that it might be related to cognition. So even
Speaker 1: though I did my dissertation on sex differences, testosterone and cognition,
Speaker 1: I left that out of my book, which is on
Speaker 1: testosterone and sex differences. The reason I left that out
Speaker 1: is because I don't think the evidence in that domain
Speaker 1: is as convincing as the evidence for testosterones effects on
Speaker 1: sexual competitive and aggressive behavior. So if that's where I
Speaker 1: think the really strong evidence is for an impact of
Speaker 1: like you said, pre and directly postnatal testosterone and then
Speaker 1: pubertal and beyond, and how that explains some of the
Speaker 1: sex differences that we see many many of the sex
Speaker 1: differences that we see in human So and then we
Speaker 1: can come back to that. But the part of the
Speaker 1: reason that the relationship to cognition I think is more tenuous,
Speaker 1: at least in the literature in the research that we
Speaker 1: have available, is because it's just not obvious how say testosterone,
Speaker 1: If testosterone increased mental rotation ability, what is the mechanism
Speaker 1: through which that would have provided a reproductive advantage for males.
Speaker 1: So that's a little bit difficult. You can come up
Speaker 1: with a story, but I'm not convinced by really any
Speaker 1: of those stories in terms of direct and strong reproductive
Speaker 1: advantages like you have for male male aggression. So the
Speaker 1: reason this matters is because testosterone is a reproductive hormone.
Speaker 1: And I'm just gonna back up just so everyone has
Speaker 1: an idea what a hormone is. Okay, here I am
Speaker 1: with my keembucha, which I love. There's some carbohydrates in that,
Speaker 1: and in order for my body to be able to
Speaker 1: process and use the glucose from the carbohydrates, I just
Speaker 1: drink so very soon the fact that I just ingested
Speaker 1: carbohydrates which will be converted into glucose, that glucose is
Speaker 1: going to signal my pancreas and tell it that there
Speaker 1: is now glucose coming into my blood and that will
Speaker 1: need to be taken up by cells. So I don't
Speaker 1: have high blood sugar, which can cause problems, but also
Speaker 1: my cells might need some glucose to keep running, which
Speaker 1: they do. They run on glucose largely. So in response,
Speaker 1: my pancreas is going to secrete insulin. That is a hormone.
Speaker 1: It's a protein hormone, and Insulin will then go around
Speaker 1: to the cells that need glucose signal to those cells
Speaker 1: that glucose is available and should be taken up by
Speaker 1: those cells. And it does that signaling by interacting with
Speaker 1: a receptor that is present in this case for protein
Speaker 1: hormones on the cell surface. So insulin's going to tell
Speaker 1: those cells that glucose is in my blood. It's going
Speaker 1: to open up a little portal, and then glucose can
Speaker 1: flow into cells to be stored or used for energy.
Speaker 1: So that is a hormone that helps us survive, It
Speaker 1: helps us run our bodies, and it regulates energy availability. Essentially,
Speaker 1: Insulin is incredibly important hormone and it goes everywhere in
Speaker 1: the blood. Okay. So all hormones are broadcast from cells
Speaker 1: that produce them or glands that have lots of cells
Speaker 1: that produce them produce them, like the pancreas or the
Speaker 1: testes or the gonads or the adrenal gland or the thyroid.
Speaker 1: All the hormones go everywhere in the blood, but they
Speaker 1: only affect cells that have receptor for them, Okay. So
Speaker 1: insulin is about energy regulation. It does all this stuff
Speaker 1: in the body, but it also goes into the brain,
Speaker 1: and it does something very different in the brain. It
Speaker 1: signals about what the energyergy situation is in the rest
Speaker 1: of the body. Why does it do that because you
Speaker 1: have to know how to behave when blood sugar is low.
Speaker 1: How does that work? You're hungry or you're irritable because
Speaker 1: you need sugar and you have that like sugar low.
Speaker 1: And so the same hormone that controls some really important
Speaker 1: physiological processes also communicates to the brain to tell it
Speaker 1: what the energy situation is to affect behavior in ways
Speaker 1: that we don't really appreciate. But that's what Hunger is
Speaker 1: a response to hormonal signals. So that same hormone is
Speaker 1: coordinating physical energy with behaviors needed to also regulate energy
Speaker 1: like get more or go spend it by looking for
Speaker 1: a mate or playing or whatever. Okay, So then we
Speaker 1: have hormones that are not about survival but are about reproduction,
Speaker 1: getting us to reproduce, and those are the steroid hormones,
Speaker 1: particularly estrogen and testosterone, made mostly from the ovaries and
Speaker 1: the testes, and their whole job is much sort of
Speaker 1: longer term. So like neurotransmitters and hormones like insulin work
Speaker 1: much more quickly, right, They have acts sort of on
Speaker 1: off actions. Especially neurotransmitters are like that. Protein hormones are
Speaker 1: a little bit slower, but steroid hormones can coordinate puberty,
Speaker 1: you know, so they can have really long term actions
Speaker 1: on growth, on sperm and egg production, and like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: in utero, they have incredibly important functions in developing the
Speaker 1: reproductive system. Right, So the whole all of our reproductive
Speaker 1: apparatus is set down essentially in utero. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, testosterone is active in the brain in the
Speaker 1: same kind of way that insulin affects the brain and body.
Speaker 1: Testosterone and estrogen, but estrogen not so much in utero.
Speaker 1: It's mainly testosterone that affects the brain and body in
Speaker 1: boys in utero, coordinating the development of the brain with
Speaker 1: the development of a male reproductive system, which means sperm
Speaker 1: are going to be coming online in puberty, and organisms
Speaker 1: that produce sperm have to do different things to reproduce
Speaker 1: than organisms that produce eggs. And is testosterone that coordinates
Speaker 1: the physical end behavioral traits that enable male animals to reproduce,
Speaker 1: and that happens in utero, and that's very important. Those
Speaker 1: in utero effects on the brain are permanent. They can
Speaker 1: shape various behaviors in adulthood, even if that animal doesn't
Speaker 1: go through mail puberty. But those animals are you know,
Speaker 1: we can just talk about mammals for now. We'll go
Speaker 1: through a male puberty when testosterone rises again, and that's
Speaker 1: when testosterone further develops the reproductive system and acts on
Speaker 1: the brain to upregulate status, consciousness, competitiveness, aggression, eventually libido.
Speaker 1: That all comes online later and especially sperms start being made.
Speaker 1: So that's what testosterone does. And in the same way,
Speaker 1: it acts on the body and you know secondary sex
Speaker 1: characteristics like a deep voice or larger body size, enhanced
Speaker 1: muscle mass. That's all because males over evolutionary history compared
Speaker 1: to females, benefit more from male from competition for mates
Speaker 1: because they produce sperm. And that's on average. Everything I
Speaker 1: say about sex differences is on average, meaning there's plenty
Speaker 1: of overlap in these grates. Wonderful. Thank you for that
Speaker 1: wonderful primer. For people who miss biology classes, I think
Speaker 1: that that will be really helpful for them. Let's have
Speaker 1: a conversation, you know, more of like you know, back
Speaker 1: and forth because This is so fascinating to me. I
Speaker 1: have so many questions. It's so cool, and we should
Speaker 1: make clear as you said, uh, you know, we're talking
Speaker 1: about on average, and there's also other things that are
Speaker 1: important to recognize, Like these things can fluctually throughout the day,
Speaker 1: within a there's within person variability as well. There's across
Speaker 1: the life span. You know, as as as people get older,
Speaker 1: testosterone levels tend to decrease, especially you know among male narcissists.
Speaker 1: Research I've shown that to be the case that it
Speaker 1: actually tracks reduced reductions and narcisism tracks reductions intotosterone is
Speaker 1: male's age. I think that's really interesting. What's also super
Speaker 1: interesting about this is that there are other There are
Speaker 1: other hormones, there are other neurochemicals, and interactions are fascinating, right,
Speaker 1: So like you know, how does testosterone like interact with
Speaker 1: the cuddle hormone? Right? You know, the yeah, how do
Speaker 1: these things interact? Because you can have really like high
Speaker 1: t men and women who also are super compassionate, right
Speaker 1: and want to and uh and want to reduce the suffering.
Speaker 1: We could fire firemen, you know, like you know, they're
Speaker 1: probably wild have jacked up on just austereroone, but they
Speaker 1: want to go in and save lives. So interactions between
Speaker 1: these various things are so interesting too, right, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned that. So men do take more
Speaker 1: physical risks than women, but it's not all negative. It's
Speaker 1: not all risks like killing each other or you know,
Speaker 1: behaving violently. Like you said, those risks are also to
Speaker 1: save the lives of others, So men are you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's I want to make clear that women
Speaker 1: also do this. Women also risk their lives to save
Speaker 1: the lives of others, but it's much more often their
Speaker 1: own family, their own children. Men are much more likely
Speaker 1: to die saving strangers. You know. There's an incredible amount
Speaker 1: of heroism that physical heroism. And yes, women have babies
Speaker 1: and that is physically risky and dangerous, but I sort
Speaker 1: of it's not the same kind of physical risk taking
Speaker 1: that is sort of totally by choice in order to
Speaker 1: save someone else. So I just want to emphasize how
Speaker 1: important that is because testosterone gets a lot of press,
Speaker 1: partly because, as I do argue in my book, I
Speaker 1: do think it's it's largely responsible for the extremes that
Speaker 1: are really problematic of male violence. Which you know, there's
Speaker 1: very low rates of that type of violence in women,
Speaker 1: but there's higher rates in men. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: most men are very violent. It means that most extreme
Speaker 1: violence is committed by men, and that needs to be addressed.
Speaker 1: So that is why that gets a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: What gets less attention are the positive aspects of what
Speaker 1: testosterone I think can do for men interacting of course
Speaker 1: with our culture. This is all culture gene hormone interactions.
Speaker 1: That's incredibly important, and I'm just going to throw out that.
Speaker 1: You know, some cultures have very low rates of male
Speaker 1: violence relatively, and some have very high and that's because
Speaker 1: of culture, not because of differences in genes or testosterone level.
Speaker 1: You said, any sort of cultural differences are explained entirely
Speaker 1: based on culture, not on testosterone differences on average. Is
Speaker 1: that is that one hundred percent true? Maybe one hundred
Speaker 1: percent true. It's not a hundred It has not it's
Speaker 1: not one hundred percent proven, because I think what you're
Speaker 1: getting at is the fact that different populations do have
Speaker 1: differences in both testosterone level, but more importantly, the activity
Speaker 1: of the testosterone receptor. So, like I was saying before,
Speaker 1: in order for a hormone to work, it has to
Speaker 1: interact with a receptor. The receptor is a protein, and
Speaker 1: there is a gene for all hormone receptor. There's different
Speaker 1: genes that code for all of the hormone receptors. So
Speaker 1: the androgen receptor is coded for by the androgen receptor gene.
Speaker 1: And we can look across populations and it's very clear
Speaker 1: now these are basically racial slash ethnic differences in the
Speaker 1: gene that codes for the androgen receptors. Are there differences, yes,
Speaker 1: so there are differences, wow, where so there are differences,
Speaker 1: But the cultural differences, in my view, cannot all the
Speaker 1: cultural differences cannot be a product of genetic differences, because
Speaker 1: you can have different laws and cultural norms and religions
Speaker 1: in very geographically closely related areas, and you see the
Speaker 1: cultural norms apparently having an effect on rates of male violence.
Speaker 1: So if you have very strict rape laws in one
Speaker 1: country and very loose, say rape laws or norms in another,
Speaker 1: and those countries are geographically very closely related, where you
Speaker 1: would not expect there to be any you know, it's
Speaker 1: basically two Asian countries. Say, you will see differences in
Speaker 1: the degree of a sex difference, say in violence, because
Speaker 1: if a sex difference in violence is narrow, it's because
Speaker 1: males are doing less, it's not because females are doing more.
Speaker 1: So all the variation, pretty much in the sex differences
Speaker 1: in aggression or anything else that has to do with
Speaker 1: physical that kind of physical risk taking is due to
Speaker 1: male variation, which is, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: a function of cultural norms for the most part. If
Speaker 1: you want to look in different continents, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure you could make that same claim. But that's
Speaker 1: an area I don't even want really to venture into,
Speaker 1: because you know, it's dangerous. Like I don't think the
Speaker 1: bang for the buck in terms of what we learn
Speaker 1: is worth it, right, And we obviously do not need
Speaker 1: to harp on this. It is a very very explosive topic.
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine the topic of the same the same
Speaker 1: discussion in terms of intelligence. Right. It seems like you're
Speaker 1: also saying there just doesn't even seem to be a
Speaker 1: lot of It's just like that scientific knowledge doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be something that would be worth doing or conducting
Speaker 1: or or well. No, I wouldn't say I don't I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that what I am saying is that most
Speaker 1: of the variation in male violence, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, is best explained by cultural norms. Those cultural
Speaker 1: norms may be a product to some degree or related
Speaker 1: to those genetic differences. Those genetic differences, Yeah, that's possible. However,
Speaker 1: we have the power to change the cultural norms regardless
Speaker 1: of the genetic contribution. I understand that that that's what
Speaker 1: you want to that's the point you want to highlight,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a very very important point. Yes,
Speaker 1: I do think that's a very very important point. And
Speaker 1: culture seems to be at pretty much everything because I
Speaker 1: don't think those differences are big enough to explain the
Speaker 1: the huge differences we have in male violence across societies. So, yes,
Speaker 1: I hear everything you're saying, but it just stuff gets
Speaker 1: so tricky when we start talking about like should trans
Speaker 1: women be able to compete in certain sports men's sports.
Speaker 1: So these are really tricky questions because in some ways
Speaker 1: you are saying, regardless of culture, like are holding culture constant,
Speaker 1: there are real effects of testosterone, especially if you're a
Speaker 1: natal male, right and you lived your whole life, you know,
Speaker 1: went through puberty naturally, and that there are real effects
Speaker 1: of testosterone that no matter what you do with cult,
Speaker 1: I'm kind playing Devil's advocate with you for a second
Speaker 1: if you see what I'm saying, because it's almost like
Speaker 1: there's the issue of trans women in sports and the
Speaker 1: degree to which the physical advantages that natal males have
Speaker 1: over natal females translate into a cultural In this case,
Speaker 1: it's a you know, sports like, well, it's not entirely
Speaker 1: a cultural advantage, but would translate into some serious, physical,
Speaker 1: meaningful difference that plays out in culture in a formalized competition. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to make the link between the previous
Speaker 1: conversation and this conversation. So there are real physical differences
Speaker 1: that matter. That's my questions. Are stronger and faster and
Speaker 1: larger than women, like, no question, and that is all
Speaker 1: due to testosterone. Like even if there weren't, even if
Speaker 1: men didn't you know, spend more time lifting weights in
Speaker 1: the gym, they would still be bigger, stronger, and faster.
Speaker 1: I'm bigger, stronger, and faster than some males. So this
Speaker 1: is again, this is on average, and in elite sports
Speaker 1: that's where this really plays out because everybody is working
Speaker 1: out as hard as they can, even with say, in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: where I live, most men are bigger and stronger than
Speaker 1: most women. If the law in Cambridge we're so severe
Speaker 1: that you know, if there was if there were evidence
Speaker 1: of sexual assault, if the man is going to go
Speaker 1: to jail, you know, for twenty years, then you would
Speaker 1: very quickly see that that physical advantage would become much
Speaker 1: less meaningful. Right, So it's the interaction of the genes,
Speaker 1: the hormones, and the culture that is extremely important there.
Speaker 1: So I would just argue that culture holds the key
Speaker 1: to leveling out those differences when they disadvantage people socially.
Speaker 1: But in sports, the whole point is to have an
Speaker 1: advantage over other people, and that is downed and that
Speaker 1: is encouraged. That's what everybody's trying to do. And that's
Speaker 1: where then we have to determine, well, what exactly is
Speaker 1: the source of the advantage. Is there anything we can
Speaker 1: do about it to accommodate trans women in particular, source
Speaker 1: of the advantage I believe is clear or that's testosterone,
Speaker 1: But people argue about that. I don't know why. It's
Speaker 1: totally obvious if you look at the science. So the
Speaker 1: question then is what do you do about it culturally,
Speaker 1: So it's the same kind of question. Do you have
Speaker 1: an answer? Like, do you have do you do? What
Speaker 1: do you think is the most reasonable thing to do
Speaker 1: as a society? Have you do you have a stance
Speaker 1: on it? I do, Okay, I'd love to hear yeah.
Speaker 1: I have a strong, strong stance, and I get very
Speaker 1: emotional about this. I'd love to hear it. The stance is,
Speaker 1: let sorry, I have like a personal situation. It puts
Speaker 1: some personal involvement in this situation because this is so controversial.
Speaker 1: My stance is, let people do the research they need
Speaker 1: to do, publish the relevant research, give people grants for
Speaker 1: the relevant research, stop stigmatizing people for trying to talk
Speaker 1: about the evidence and weigh the evidence. Promote academic freedom
Speaker 1: and freedom of speech, and let people have the facts
Speaker 1: and let them discuss their points of view without shame
Speaker 1: or censor. That's my I almost don't and people will
Speaker 1: get mad at me for this. I don't really care
Speaker 1: that much about the actual outcome and sports. What I
Speaker 1: care about is that in a democracy, people have the
Speaker 1: right to weigh in on these policy decisions in a
Speaker 1: way that gives everybody a voice and access to the facts.
Speaker 1: And we do not have that now. So it's hard
Speaker 1: to come up with a solution because people are afraid
Speaker 1: to speak, you know, people are afraid their careers are
Speaker 1: going to be ruined, they'll be socially ostracized. So while
Speaker 1: I am firm and clear that trans women have an
Speaker 1: advantage over natal women on average because they went through
Speaker 1: male puberty, they are still bigger and stronger even after
Speaker 1: they block testosterone and start taking estrogen after one year,
Speaker 1: after two years, they still have significantly increased muscle mass.
Speaker 1: They still have increased body size, longer arms, they have,
Speaker 1: the height, they have, the larger heart, larger lungs. Hemoglobin
Speaker 1: does go down and that makes a difference, and their
Speaker 1: performance will decline, you know, after blocking testosterone, but not
Speaker 1: enough to remove the advantages that they gained from going
Speaker 1: through mail puberty. What you do about that, I have
Speaker 1: no expertise there. I have the expertise in the fact
Speaker 1: and the scientific facts. Some people think there should be
Speaker 1: an open category for there should be an open category
Speaker 1: where anyone can compete, So that would basically be the
Speaker 1: women's category. Sorry sorry, that would be what we had
Speaker 1: thought of as the men's category, and that the female
Speaker 1: category would be protected to include only natal females who
Speaker 1: had gone through their natal puberty, and that that would
Speaker 1: be the protected category, and then everyone else can compete
Speaker 1: in an open category. It was like an all all
Speaker 1: gender category like bathrooms. Yeah. Yeah, however you identify whatever hormones,
Speaker 1: there's an open category. But then there's a protected category
Speaker 1: for natal females because they are a relative physical disadvantage
Speaker 1: relative to the other categories. But the point is people
Speaker 1: need to be able to have the conversations and be heard.
Speaker 1: Everyone you know has different and I think very valid
Speaker 1: experiences and needs and perspectives, and we should respect people's
Speaker 1: perspectives and try to understand them and have a conversation,
Speaker 1: have conversations, and then everyone else can figure out what
Speaker 1: to do. But they need the fact, they need the facts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I love that you're taking a very scientific approach
Speaker 1: to this and trying to just at least have that
Speaker 1: inform the discussion. I really do appreciate that. So, just
Speaker 1: so people are very clear, you have found very clearly
Speaker 1: that all other things being equal, people who have experienced
Speaker 1: male typical levels of testosteronen during puberty will have an
Speaker 1: athletic advantage over those who did not for much of
Speaker 1: their adult lives. I mean, that's a scientific fact, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is not my original research. This is research
Speaker 1: other people have done, like Emma Hilton, Tommy Lundberg, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who are getting into this now.
Speaker 1: But that's the evidence we have. We just have no
Speaker 1: you know, and you can question that evidence, but we
Speaker 1: have no evidence showing that that initial advantage is lost.
Speaker 1: We have tons of evidence that shows exactly why men
Speaker 1: outperform women. What we need more of is evidence that
Speaker 1: shows exactly what happens when you block testosterone. And that's
Speaker 1: what trans women would do. For those of those who
Speaker 1: want to transition with hormones, they would block testosterone and
Speaker 1: take estrogen, and you would expect that there'd be some
Speaker 1: decline in performance, and there is some decline, but we
Speaker 1: need more research there, and we need some research. I
Speaker 1: think if people wanted to argue that trans women should
Speaker 1: compete in the female category, and they would argue that
Speaker 1: that should be fair in terms of physical ability, then
Speaker 1: we would need research that shows that the typical male
Speaker 1: advantage is lost, and that we don't have and we
Speaker 1: will never have. In my view, this stuff is even
Speaker 1: further complicated by the unknowns. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: unknowns I think admitting that you know, in science on
Speaker 1: this topic, a lot more research needs to be done. Additionally,
Speaker 1: on the potential adverse side effects of taking testosterone blockers.
Speaker 1: Is it true that there could be some potential long
Speaker 1: term adverse consequences that people are not they're not thinking,
Speaker 1: They're only thinking about it from an athletic perspective, But
Speaker 1: then they realize some day they're they're sterile, right, or
Speaker 1: they realize some day aren't. Aren't there certain things that
Speaker 1: could it could lead to that would cause someone to
Speaker 1: maybe regret making some of those decisions. So this is
Speaker 1: a really big issue, really important issue right now. So
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people, a lot of families,
Speaker 1: a lot of young people who have gender dysphoria, who
Speaker 1: are very uncomfortable in their sex to bodies, and there
Speaker 1: are good reasons for that. You know, we live in
Speaker 1: a very gendered culture and gender nonconformity, which is just
Speaker 1: behaving in a way sometimes since you were little, in
Speaker 1: a way that is not consistent with the expected norms
Speaker 1: for your society, for your gender. This can be very
Speaker 1: uncomfortable for people who feel that they want that their
Speaker 1: behavior is more consistent with the opposite. So that can
Speaker 1: lead to something like gender dysphoria. And now what a
Speaker 1: lot is happening with increasing frequency, dramatically increasing frequency, is
Speaker 1: people are identifying as transgender people who have gender dysphoria
Speaker 1: instead of progressing through their natal puberty, which to many
Speaker 1: of those people is a horrifying prospect. Like if you
Speaker 1: are male but you feel somehow that you identify more
Speaker 1: with females, if you start getting a deep voice and
Speaker 1: growing a beard, that can be really really distressing. Puberty
Speaker 1: blockers are a drug essentially that blocks the signal from
Speaker 1: the brain that stimulates hormone production from the testes and
Speaker 1: ovaries and prevents puberty from commencing. So for more and
Speaker 1: more people with gender dysphoria, they're identifying as trans and
Speaker 1: they are being put on puberty blockers because the narrative
Speaker 1: here in this country, and this is changing now in Europe,
Speaker 1: especially like Sweden and Finland and the UK. It's a
Speaker 1: different situation there now they realize that puberty blockers have
Speaker 1: a lot of very serious and irreversible effects. And this
Speaker 1: is for children we're talking about, so before eighteen or
Speaker 1: even before puberty has started. But here the narrative is
Speaker 1: that you can just go on puberty blockers and prevent
Speaker 1: this painful process that you anticipate, and that's going to
Speaker 1: give you time to work out your gender identity. But
Speaker 1: the evidence shows that almost everybody who goes on to puberty,
Speaker 1: who goes on puberty blockers, and this would be at
Speaker 1: the start of puberty around eleven, twelve thirteen, almost everyone
Speaker 1: who goes on to puberty blockers, like almost one hundred percent,
Speaker 1: ninety five to one hundred percent of those people continue
Speaker 1: on to going to cross sex hormones, meaning if they're male,
Speaker 1: they will block testosterone and take estrogen and go through
Speaker 1: an estrogenic puberty, and if they're female, they would take
Speaker 1: testosterone and develop male some male secondary sex characteristics. But
Speaker 1: doing that prevents the development of the reproductive system, so
Speaker 1: that the eggs and sper will never be produced and
Speaker 1: those people will be infertile for the rest of their forever. Wait,
Speaker 1: they're definitely going to be infertile. You take sperm, if
Speaker 1: you don't go through male puberty, you can't make eggs.
Speaker 1: If you don't go through female puberty, neither can you
Speaker 1: have full sexual function. Many, if not most, are an orgasmic.
Speaker 1: That means they won't have orgasms, they won't have kids.
Speaker 1: But these people who are making the decision have never
Speaker 1: had an orgasm, don't you know, They're in pain, like
Speaker 1: they are making a decision out of feeling sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: extremely depressed and scared. But we also have evidence that
Speaker 1: shows that if people are allowed to progress through their
Speaker 1: natal puberty, they most of them discover they're gay. And
Speaker 1: these are you know, if they've been gender atypical since childhood,
Speaker 1: most of those will discover that they're gay, and this
Speaker 1: may be a painful process, especially if they're in a
Speaker 1: region of the world or the country that's homophobic. Some
Speaker 1: parents actually would prefer to have to transition their kid
Speaker 1: then have a gay kid. So this is really really
Speaker 1: complex and what needs to happen again, just like the
Speaker 1: trans women and sports thing, is that the evidence, like,
Speaker 1: we can't have conversations that are open and clear about
Speaker 1: this either, because the narrative is that if you don't affirm,
Speaker 1: it's even called gender affirming care, right, that's not really
Speaker 1: an evidence based way of thinking about this. They're kid's gender.
Speaker 1: We don't even know what gender really is. Exactly, and
Speaker 1: people's sexuality and sense of their own gender changes over
Speaker 1: time and changes through puberty, so if you block that,
Speaker 1: you don't ever allow a child to have the change
Speaker 1: in their psychology. Also, that comes with discovering their sexual
Speaker 1: human being who might be attracted to their own sex.
Speaker 1: So it's extremely complicated. Parents are scared because the narrative
Speaker 1: is that your kid will commit suicide if you don't
Speaker 1: affirm their gender. There isn't good evidence for that at all,
Speaker 1: and it's highly politicized unfortunately, like one view, you know,
Speaker 1: it's progressive, and one view is conservative, and that's too
Speaker 1: bad because what we need is an evidence based view. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: evidence informed view. I definitely am on board with. I
Speaker 1: don't think it can one hundred percent make the decisions
Speaker 1: for individuals, but to be informed by that. I was
Speaker 1: under the impression that gender affirming care is a wide
Speaker 1: range of services. It's like just like you go in
Speaker 1: and you're like, let's explore what's going on here, and
Speaker 1: let's figure out as a team what might be the
Speaker 1: best solution. It doesn't. It's not equivalent to you're going
Speaker 1: to take purerity blockers, right. It could be psychological aspects
Speaker 1: like even so, for instance, maybe just changing your pronoun
Speaker 1: might actually be very psychologically beneficial to some of these people.
Speaker 1: Well it has been shown in their personal experience. Yes, no,
Speaker 1: and that's that's true, that these short term outcomes can
Speaker 1: be positive. But changing changing pronouns and identifying socially as
Speaker 1: the opposite sex and starting to wear the clothes of
Speaker 1: the opposite sex leads to purity blockers and transition. So
Speaker 1: because you sort of can't go back, it's difficult to
Speaker 1: go back on socially you've come out as I am
Speaker 1: trans So what you're saying is pronouns are a gateway drug. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I wish we could live in a society
Speaker 1: where you have your own pronouns that reflect your sex,
Speaker 1: but that there are the you know in this who
Speaker 1: knows where we're going. But if I, for instance, could
Speaker 1: just wear a tie and a baseball cap or you
Speaker 1: know whatever and have a very male masculine social role,
Speaker 1: or that you could wear makeup and just do express
Speaker 1: your gender however you want. I wish that's where we're going.
Speaker 1: And maybe we are going there because a lifetime of
Speaker 1: surgery and drugs and complications, which is what we have,
Speaker 1: you know, it's age people I don't think understand quite
Speaker 1: what they're signing up for. That doesn't mean it isn't
Speaker 1: right for some people. I think it definitely, you know,
Speaker 1: transitioning definitely is. I think that we need more caution.
Speaker 1: Some people argue we have the right amount of caution.
Speaker 1: Some people think that we have nowhere near enough. But again,
Speaker 1: I think we need more research and discussion. We definitely
Speaker 1: need more research, and I appreciate you bringing in the research.
Speaker 1: I think we need less moral panics as well. I
Speaker 1: think that you see it on all sides though. You know, again,
Speaker 1: it's been my understanding with jenniferming Care from what I've
Speaker 1: understood so far is that there are actually a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of hoops you have to jump through in
Speaker 1: order to actually go to the level of taking like
Speaker 1: purity blockers or so. That's that's my impression. That's what
Speaker 1: I hear from trans people. It's very variables. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are really responsible clinics, and there are clinics where
Speaker 1: you can really yeah, and there's surgeries, you know, there's
Speaker 1: st ectomies that easily can be done even without parental consent. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it varies varies a lot, so the United States
Speaker 1: is now somewhat behind Europe in terms of the laws
Speaker 1: around this and the evidence. That's the sort of there's
Speaker 1: much more caution around puberty blockers now in a lot
Speaker 1: of places in Europe because they have now been because
Speaker 1: they have more public healthcare system that are now more
Speaker 1: evidence based. We have a for profit healthcare you know,
Speaker 1: entirely for profit health care, largely for profit healthcare system.
Speaker 1: They are different standards for evidence, and I think that's important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just more cautious, I would say, Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: a good point too. So there's a huge variability and
Speaker 1: just how many hoops and how well thought through it is,
Speaker 1: how well as a team of medical doctors, parents, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone trying and the child at triangulating the decision. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the problem here is that medical
Speaker 1: professionals who disagree with the current treatment model are very
Speaker 1: hesitant to say so publicly that we vilified. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: they're really lammed and their careers can be ruined. So
Speaker 1: I don't think we have an environment that facilitates really
Speaker 1: the production and discussion of really high quality evidence around
Speaker 1: all this stuff. And we just don't have enough research
Speaker 1: that's interesting, the complementary perspectives between the evolutionary biology perspective
Speaker 1: and the psychology perspective. It's almost like evolutionary biology is
Speaker 1: really important in explaining the sex binary, which I know
Speaker 1: is that's controversial too, is sex and the sex binary?
Speaker 1: Dare I say, am I allowed to say from an
Speaker 1: evolutionary point of view? Of course it has to be
Speaker 1: or else none of us would exist. That's very controversy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. And of course intersex intersex people
Speaker 1: do exist, but they usually they can be classified. You know,
Speaker 1: it's either male or female, right, yeah, I mean intersex
Speaker 1: is it is a tough term. Some people don't like
Speaker 1: that term. They like disorder or difference of sexual development.
Speaker 1: That are you know, as a male condition or a
Speaker 1: female condition. Where there's so just to be clear, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's male and female. But then everything else pretty much
Speaker 1: is on a spectrum, even you know, chromosomes and genitalia
Speaker 1: and behavior obviously, so something like gender, all the behaviors,
Speaker 1: but also even the physical traits are you know, can
Speaker 1: be on a spectrum. Those are important aspects of sex.
Speaker 1: Those are traits associated with sex, but that's different from
Speaker 1: sex male and female and that's all there is. So
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. From that, there's there are different
Speaker 1: levels of analysis. So from from an evolution of biology perspective,
Speaker 1: that focus on sex is makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: And reproduction, I mean, obviously from an evolutionary point of view,
Speaker 1: reproduction is important. But from the psychology perspective, and I'm
Speaker 1: really trying to understand gender, right like, I'm not an
Speaker 1: evolutionary biologist, you know, a psychologist trying to understand this
Speaker 1: fascinating cultural phenomenon of such a we're seeing an interesting
Speaker 1: flip There used to be mostly it was transgender men
Speaker 1: cross stressors, right like, and now trans women. I'm time
Speaker 1: getting confusing. Yeah, please help me over here. Okay, more men,
Speaker 1: say for males who identified as trans than females. Now
Speaker 1: we have a huge flip rise in females who are
Speaker 1: not have not had evidence of any gender atypical behavior
Speaker 1: or feelings until they got close to puberty. That's the
Speaker 1: population we're really seeing now, which is escalating and asking
Speaker 1: for puberty blockers and hormones. Males are too, and most
Speaker 1: of them are probably we're going to be gay. This
Speaker 1: is what's interesting is that there are multiple pathways to
Speaker 1: trans there's not a single unitary mechanism, and people don't know.
Speaker 1: I know, it gets very confusing. This is why when
Speaker 1: you lump it all together, you know, because you have
Speaker 1: like middle aged men, you know, like Caitlyn Jenner or not?
Speaker 1: Is that? Who was what Jener? Was it Caitlyn Jenner.
Speaker 1: You can have middle aged men decide just that they're
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna be changed their pronouns. But you can
Speaker 1: have pre pubescent children now who it seems to be
Speaker 1: mostly young girls. But so these all can't be explained
Speaker 1: by the same mechanism. Yes, can I just pause for
Speaker 1: one second because what you're saying is so so important
Speaker 1: because people have this idea that we just have to
Speaker 1: identify those kids who are trans and those are the
Speaker 1: ones we have to give the treatment to. I don't
Speaker 1: think there is a trans one trans phenotype, and that
Speaker 1: it's not the case that then that kid is the
Speaker 1: one who has to be transitioned. It's about gender dysphoria.
Speaker 1: It's about that really complicated feeling of not like not
Speaker 1: wanting to be in your gendered body, not wanting it,
Speaker 1: not wanting to grow into a man or a woman,
Speaker 1: fearing you know, not wanting to be behave and the
Speaker 1: way that you think the social your social expectations are
Speaker 1: for your gender, just feeling so uncomfortable. So that's not
Speaker 1: the same as trans. So I'm just really glad that
Speaker 1: you made that distinction. Most people do not. Yeah, why
Speaker 1: do most people like in this debate, they're like sometimes
Speaker 1: they talk past each other. I mean sometimes I look
Speaker 1: at and watch some of these debates on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: no one's listening to each other, like trans people who
Speaker 1: feel frustrated that their experience are not being listened to.
Speaker 1: And then you also have those who are called turfs,
Speaker 1: those are labeled they're labeled turfs, But are there are
Speaker 1: their experiences being listened to by the trans people? No?
Speaker 1: I mean I think there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are listening to each other. I know some trans
Speaker 1: people who agree with the turfs, and I know some
Speaker 1: trans people who disagree with them, and they're able to
Speaker 1: have conversations. But then there's like this vocal minority on
Speaker 1: both sides who are dominating you know, these conversations in
Speaker 1: kind of ugly ways. Is that because they're high in testosterone?
Speaker 1: I can help myself, But no, no no, no, no, you
Speaker 1: are there is something to that because this is controversial,
Speaker 1: but I believe that the prenatal exposure to testosterone, well
Speaker 1: I know one hundred percent that it does. It has
Speaker 1: lasting effects not just on the body but also on
Speaker 1: the brain. And you can't you don't undo that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some extremely outspoken trans women and trans men,
Speaker 1: but you don't really hear from the transmit it's it's
Speaker 1: I mean, you do, but it's really trans women. A
Speaker 1: small minority of trans women, mostly trans women, who are
Speaker 1: can be extremely enthusiastic. You know who Buck Angel is.
Speaker 1: Of course, Yes, he's going to be on my podcast
Speaker 1: soon with two other evolutions, two other scientists, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to have a coming on with Marco del Gus
Speaker 1: who's a good friend of mine. Science studies, the science
Speaker 1: sex and Debra. So yeah, but he's a kind of
Speaker 1: a minority voice in that space. Yeah, I mean he
Speaker 1: is interesting because he says, I'm female, you know, he
Speaker 1: has no problem and he's a huge he's a huge,
Speaker 1: macho guy, like cigar smoking, tattooed, Harry, you know the works,
Speaker 1: which I think it's great that he is just able
Speaker 1: to not sort of require other people to endorse what
Speaker 1: he says would be a fiction. You know that he
Speaker 1: is in fact a man, and I have no problem
Speaker 1: with that socially, Like, I think that's the right thing
Speaker 1: to do, is to for me, you know, use people's
Speaker 1: preferred pronouns. And I know a lot of trans people,
Speaker 1: and I know how heartbreaking it is for them when
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen. But Buck happens to be different. He's
Speaker 1: comfortable with that, and I think it's different for trans men.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes trans women have a greater need to
Speaker 1: have people acknowledge their you know, womanhood. And I think
Speaker 1: as long as we can do that without anyone else
Speaker 1: paying a cost for that, I think we should. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm all about letting listening to different people's
Speaker 1: lived experiences. I mean, that's that's Uh. It costs very
Speaker 1: little to say that you're going to listen to someone's
Speaker 1: lived experiences. That costs very little. It costs more to
Speaker 1: fight it and to be aggressive to human who when
Speaker 1: who's trying to tell you what it's like to be
Speaker 1: who they are. I love it. I just said love
Speaker 1: what you're saying. I love. I love my spirit. That's
Speaker 1: my spirit costs very costs very little, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're getting teary eyed about it, but yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: we need to do. It's just you're right, it costs nothing.
Speaker 1: I love, I love putting it that way. I just
Speaker 1: wish we could all listen to each other more, and
Speaker 1: you know, with my yes en attitude listening each other's
Speaker 1: a live experiences more and be allowed to bring in
Speaker 1: some objective objectivity. Are we allowed to do that at all?
Speaker 1: You know? And I know that you have probably sometimes
Speaker 1: been frustrated that you haven't really been able to bring
Speaker 1: in some facts that you have found. What's the climate
Speaker 1: like at Harvard these days? Is it? You know? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't EO. Wilson in your department. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm in Human evolutionary biology, and I should say
Speaker 1: that I'm on leave right now, so I don't know,
Speaker 1: I haven't been there all semester. But EO. Wilson was
Speaker 1: in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, which isn't like right across
Speaker 1: from my department, which is human evolutionary biology. But he yeah,
Speaker 1: he had water thrown on him for saying you know,
Speaker 1: he was usually controversialgu yeah, he was realified. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was very controversial but of course everything he said was basically,
Speaker 1: you know, basically right. But it's threatening to people to
Speaker 1: assert that there's a biological basis for behavior human behavior,
Speaker 1: because then people think that means that it's that we
Speaker 1: think it's right, or that we can't changeable and multi those. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: So what's your personal experience like being an evolutionary biologist
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. Is it different than being an
Speaker 1: evolutionary biologist in like two thousand and one? Maybe not,
Speaker 1: maybe not. It's a human it's the human evolutionary biology piece,
Speaker 1: and particularly so I teach about the stuff we're talking about.
Speaker 1: And my undergrads are awesome. Do any of them? Do
Speaker 1: any of them like protest or no? They I've had
Speaker 1: like one person, one person a few years ago complained
Speaker 1: that I used the wrong pronouns to talk. I was
Speaker 1: talking about somebody with a disorder of sexual development who
Speaker 1: is female, and I called her she even though she
Speaker 1: had some she had body hair and looked male and
Speaker 1: I called her she. And this person wrote a letter.
Speaker 1: But really, my undergrads, sorry, I love them. We have
Speaker 1: great discussions. We disagree all the time. They disagree with
Speaker 1: each other, they disagree with me. We always learn from
Speaker 1: each other. We we hear each other, and I have
Speaker 1: there that's been like incredible. Teaching undergrads at Harvard has
Speaker 1: been incredible. However, I never changed anything I said or
Speaker 1: taught pretty much in any way to accommodate the people
Speaker 1: who I thought would try to attack me or call
Speaker 1: me names or transphobic or whatever. I never adopted you know,
Speaker 1: what they wanted me to say, or the language they
Speaker 1: wanted me to use, which is to say like sex
Speaker 1: isn't binary, it's on a spectrum, or I don't know
Speaker 1: what else I was expected to say, but it was uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: It became extremely uncomfortable in my department. There's an article
Speaker 1: in the Harvard Crimson yesterday. You can just go look
Speaker 1: at that article on academic freedom, and it links to
Speaker 1: another Crimson article which described what happened to me when
Speaker 1: I went on TV and said there are two sexes.
Speaker 1: It was all very bad, and other bad things happened
Speaker 1: that made it very difficult for me to do my job.
Speaker 1: That's really unfortunate. I really wish that we could just
Speaker 1: be really clear in all these kinds of discussions that
Speaker 1: they're yes, we acknowledge the's are difference between sex and
Speaker 1: gender identity. First of all, when people just say sex,
Speaker 1: they may think that's equivalent to gender, like in every
Speaker 1: case in the world, and gender identity is more of
Speaker 1: a psychological thing, you know, it's like there's we're still
Speaker 1: understanding exactly what it is, but it's certainly certainly people
Speaker 1: differ in what they identify with. That's undeniable. And it's
Speaker 1: so I wish just first of all, people to make
Speaker 1: those differences. And I just I suppose maybe you say
Speaker 1: you've said things and then people do a lot of inference.
Speaker 1: They connect a lot of dots in terms of what
Speaker 1: you must think or what you must believe personally. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't even think that's the case. They just don't
Speaker 1: want me to say that sex they've been clear. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it's clear that usual to say that sex is
Speaker 1: on a spectrum was not okay, or you know, I
Speaker 1: don't say this, But you can't change your sex, right,
Speaker 1: you can change a lot of other things, because I
Speaker 1: don't think people have to go around saying that, right,
Speaker 1: But that would be another thing that you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to say. So it's not connecting the dots, it's having
Speaker 1: someone in my position say something like that that seems
Speaker 1: to undermine transgender rights. And to me, we've got to
Speaker 1: have the science and the facts and then talk about
Speaker 1: what are the implications for people's rights and policies, and
Speaker 1: we have to have compassionate and open discussions and listen
Speaker 1: to people. I so strongly agree with you. If we
Speaker 1: have all this division and this suppression of science, people
Speaker 1: aren't going to open their hearts and minds to people
Speaker 1: who are suffering who they think are opposing them, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's all the science is getting all caught up
Speaker 1: in all this ideological stuff that is a disaster. The political, social,
Speaker 1: and ideological stuff has to grapple with the science, and
Speaker 1: we have to do it in is compassionate and open
Speaker 1: a way as possible with the facts. It's not just me,
Speaker 1: many people in my field are saying that they feel
Speaker 1: they cannot even publish the research that they want to
Speaker 1: do that they are doing. They can't get grants, they
Speaker 1: can't say what they want to say, they can't teach
Speaker 1: what they want to teach. Do you think someday, like
Speaker 1: with crisper technologies, will be able to actually modify like
Speaker 1: our chromosomes, you know, like let's delete an next there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know will you ever be able
Speaker 1: to get to a point do you think where we
Speaker 1: can actually go in at that level and change our sex.
Speaker 1: You'd have to change the chromosomes in every single cell
Speaker 1: to be So it's interesting because I think that it's
Speaker 1: really not the chromosome, it's what the chromosomes lead to,
Speaker 1: which is testosterone versus estrogen. I think that's what really
Speaker 1: has the impact on everything related to sex. So we
Speaker 1: have good evidence for that in people who have complete
Speaker 1: androgen and sensitivity syndrome, who have xy sex chromosomes and
Speaker 1: all of their cells they even have internal testes that
Speaker 1: produce testosterone. However, they can't receive the testosterone. Their androgen
Speaker 1: receptors don't work. And these people are extremely feminine typically,
Speaker 1: and research shows that they score lower in three dimensional
Speaker 1: rotation tasks. I summarize that in my master's thesis, and
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. So I would think if you can stop
Speaker 1: the production of testosterone in utero, it has to be
Speaker 1: from the get go, from the first few weeks, because
Speaker 1: that's what's changing, that changes the brain. And you also
Speaker 1: want to stop the physical development because even if you
Speaker 1: didn't have testosterone. If you just had the body, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have changes in psychology because of social roles, so
Speaker 1: you might Yeah, I think maybe that could happen, but
Speaker 1: not via you know, necessarily manipulating the chromosomes. We just
Speaker 1: don't know how important the genetic differences are that you know,
Speaker 1: apart from the effects of testosterone, it appears not super
Speaker 1: but there's more research to be done there. Yeah, fair enough,
Speaker 1: fair enough. Yeah, Look, I just really appreciate you coming
Speaker 1: to my podcast today and all the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I can say that testosterone is such a fascinating, fascinating hormone.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I wake up with the most loving feeling in
Speaker 1: the world and I want to just tweet out, may
Speaker 1: everyone cuddle today, and then I'll go to the gym
Speaker 1: and have a really great weightlifting session, and then all
Speaker 1: I want to do is dominate everyone that I see.
Speaker 1: So I know testosterol matters. I just got my book out.
Speaker 1: This is the British this is the British cover, but
Speaker 1: it's the test Aser. I just want to give my
Speaker 1: book a place, very nice, very nice, thank you everyone
Speaker 1: by Carol Hooven's book. So for people who can't see
Speaker 1: the YouTube they're listening to it audio. The book is
Speaker 1: called Testostere. The book in the United States is called
Speaker 1: t The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and
Speaker 1: Divides Us, and you can get a link to it
Speaker 1: on Carolhoven dot com or Amazon and Carol has an
Speaker 1: e on the end, which is a pain but great. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being on my show today. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this and I
Speaker 1: love your whole perspective on all of this. You're just
Speaker 1: so so compassionate and sensible, and I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That means a lot. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
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