"I don't know what i'm going to do next. There's a few directions i could go in, and i don't know," he says. "My friend jery diamond, you know, the author of guns, germs and steel, he e'e'. He's pretty big, but he's old school. He can barely operate a computer, and someone else checks his email." 'If we get enough of his will reverse the trend,' asks Helen sacley. "'We'll keep pushing back', that's how it works.' And they'll still kick you on your way down, right? Yes,'" she adds. ''They've worked out that its harder because
Biological sex is no longer accepted as a basic fact of life. It is forbidden to admit that female people sometimes need protection and privacy from male ones. In an analysis that is at once expert, sympathetic and urgent, Helen Joyce offers an antidote to the chaos and cancelling.
Shermer and Joyce discuss: What is a woman? What is a man? • conflicting rights: trans vs. women • sex vs. gender; who you identify as vs. who you are attracted to • cross-sex identification • gender dysphoria • social contagions • gender affirming care • puberty blockers, testosterone, hormone treatment • detransitioning • top surgery, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty • preferred pronouns: compelled speech ≠ free speech • trans sports • exclusive spaces, and more…
Helen Joyce is a senior staff journalist at The Economist, where she has held several positions, including Britain editor, Finance editor and International editor. Before joining The Economist in 2005 she edited Plus, an online magazine about mathematics published by the University of Cambridge. She has a PhD in mathematics from University College London. On Twitter, she is @HJoyceGender.