Are Sex Differences Compatible with Feminism?
My second appearance on The Dissenter
I recently made my second appearance on Ricardo Lopes’ Dissenter podcast to discuss my new book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences. We had a fun, wide-ranging conversation about the science of sex differences, human nature, and some of the most contentious debates in contemporary psychology. Here are some of the topics we covered:
Why I’m skeptical of the sex-gender distinction
Whether parents shape sex differences
Whether the science of sex differences is compatible with feminism
The largest psychological sex differences in our species
What drives the evolution of sex differences (hint: It’s not that sperm are cheaper than eggs)
Sex differences in career-related interests
Sex differences in cognitive abilities
The trans phenomenon from an evolutionary perspective
Three approaches to dealing with sex differences: gender-role traditionalism, gender-role progressivism, and gender-role individualism
Here’s a clip from the episode, where I discuss trans and nonbinary identification:
And here’s a clip where I discuss the three main approaches to dealing with sex differences, both as individuals and as a society:
The full episode is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s also available on Ricardo’s Dissenter YouTube channel.
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Steve Stewart-Williams
Related Reading from the Archive
12 Things Everyone Should Know About Evolutionary Psychology
This is the latest post in my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” series. You can access the full collection here.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences
I recently gave a professorial lecture at my university, focused on some of my theoretical work on the evolution of human sex differences. The following is a lightly edited transcript of the lecture.
The Second Law of Behavior Genetics
This is the second part of my five-part series on the Four Laws of Behavior Genetics. You can access the full collection here.
Hi prof Stewart Williams. I did a metaphorical double take at the point where you said there was no obvious evolutionary biology explanation for the “things vs people explanation”. I went to my other favourite evolutionary biologist (ChatGPT 😏) and it came up with a few albeit with the usual caveats that these are contested and their relative weight undetermined. One being division of labour in our ancestral environments. Am I missing something?