The Uncomfortable Science Of Sex Differences - Steve Stewart-Williams - #1120

Where this was said

Why Sex Differences Are So Controversial

At 1:57 · chapter starts 0:00

The episode opens with Stewart-Williams reflecting on whether his new book could have been published six years ago — probably yes, but it would have landed far worse. Chris Williamson asks what makes sex differences so radioactive a topic, and Stewart-Williams traces the reaction back to science's historical misuse against women. He quotes Gustave Le Bon's remarkable 19th-century claim that intellectually accomplished women were roughly as rare as a two-headed gorilla, and notes how this legacy makes people instinctively recoil whenever evolved sex differences are discussed. Yet he insists the intuitive response has it backwards: modern science has systematically disproved those Victorian caricatures, not confirmed them. His central provocation — that science is the solution to early sexism, not a continuation of it — sets the tone for everything that follows.