victor davis hanson sunday, december 5 at noon eastern on "in depth" on booktv. before program visit c-span2.org to get your copies of his books. >> download c-span's new mobile app and stay up-to-date with live video coverage of the days biggest political events from live streams of the house and senate floor and key congressional hearings, white house events in supreme court oral arguments, even our live interactive morning program "washington journal" where we hear your voices every day. c-span now has you covered. download the app for free today. >> black friday, , the sale you been waiting for starts this friday c-span shopton road, c-span's online store. shop friday through sunday and save up to 30% on our latest collection of c-span's

whitchurch, hoodies, blankets and more. there's something for every c-span fan for the holidays and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. shop black friday deals friday through sunday at c-spanshop.or c-spanshop.org. >> all right, good evening, everyone. my name is e. r. anderson, and executive director of charis circle. we are located in decatur, georgia. we are gathered the seeking to help launch carole hooven and her book "t: the story of testosterone, the hormone that dominates and divides us" which publish in the united states today. she is joined conversation by barbara natterson-horowitz. she is a cardiologist and evolutionary biologist on the faculty of harvard medical school, harvard university department of human evolutionary biology and the ucla division of cardiology. she is the author of ubiquity as

well as wild hood. o she is the copresident of the international society for evolution, medicine and public health and is recently launched a research initiative female help across the tree of life which focuses on the interdependent health of women, animals and the planet we share. and, of course, we're here tonight what about the work of carole hooven. she's a lecture and codirector of undergraduate studies in the department of human evolutionary biology at harvard university. she earned her phd from harvard and studying testosterone and taught there ever since. she has received numerous teaching awards and was named one of the top ten tried-and-true. we are in sd and company this evening and i trust you're excited to dig into this book as i am. conversation. feminist institution is to

stay in heart and complex conversation. to assume and seek to provide clear information of choices about our bodies and our communities. the most marginalized among us. who possesses the power to shape narratives and therefore to shape the policies. we are living in an era of being actively recruited especially children, doctors, parents, teachers are trying to help them. this other times when science was recruited and often still is. justify further supremacy. the advocates teach us often a double edge sword for people who try to deviate from the standard line on the bell curve.

talk about power and human desire. she argues in her book is useful for all of us in our world. but we do with it is up to us. i'm personally invested in this conversation i'm a transgender man and a diabetic. i'm not on one but two life-sustaining to help me live a happy, healthy, and well-balanced life. they are respected by doctors and not regard the theoretical abstraction or problems to be solved. but rather as part of the biological universe. but i preached about doctor hoven's book this biology does not have to be destiny. consequences are obviously devastating for so many of us. we have a responsibility to understand biology in terms of our world and behavior it's

important to remember for all of us worried about how the data might be interpreted to do with harm. that division is hard, she acknowledges herself crucially important with the true diversity of human life and experience nursing the research is important for all people on healthier world. >> please welcome welcome. >> we that was a really moving i appreciate so much that really is what i was trying to do in my book, testosterone. i'm going to tell the audience

it is normal i found that really moving it may be emotional and i started to tear up. i might do that again, do not be alarmed. i'm so happy to be with my friend and colleague barb thank you so much. >> we had found the introduction to be inspiring. i cannot think of the last time and connection to interactions a thank you for that and having us here tonight. i just really want to start by

congratulating scientifically impeccable and important book. it's yesterday's wall street journal why he wrote this book shaken who we are pre- >> so little background and professional personal. i'm gonna start with that. ours sins are sometimes very nervous about how they're going to get where they want to go because of the bottom my

high school class. i'm certain to tear up again. did not have a lot of parental oversight and a bit of a hard time and a lot of different ways. that planted the seed there not to be true among some fellow academics took me a long time to get to where i am

a bunch of and turns in a whole other career decide ultimately to apply to the harvard graduate program. to look at wild chimpanzees and we did that there was this confluence of circumstances where this is in the late violence all around me, very severe disturbing violence and i was also following the chimps around and there was this really sort of what i

was struck by was the uncanny parallels but the tree and the behavior of chimps and behavior of humans in terms of sex differencesand i was nacve at that about evolutionary biology . i had different classes and reading but what i observed was that on average the nails were status obsessed and relatively aggressive and as such it's very clear when you're with chimps the sex differences and behavior and the females were taking care of their kids much more peaceful the males can also be peaceful and nurturing and females could also be quite aggressive but on average just like humans when there's overlap in behavior between males and females there was overlap in the chimps but these parallels were unmistakable and could not be explained byculture .

so that really solidified my interest in understanding the origins of human sex differences and i k-9 that from observing wild chimps and i became interested in the role of testosterone because it's one of the biggest differences between males and females in factors of evolution and how those forces shape to we are and how those biological forces interact with our human environmentand our culture . and explain who we are and how our culture and expression of sex differences differs across culture and how culture can shape our expression of our human nature's . i think that's a little bit of a longer story of how i got to harvard with focusing on my phd research on testosterone and sex differences and i ended up not having a lab and doing research but focusing on teaching. i love teaching.

that's really where my passion is and i just gave at harvard and that's sort of my trajectory here. >> one of the things you do so well is you can communicate complicated, really often complex scientific content in a way that is easy for students and others to metabolize. i want to start of start with a difficult question in a sense which is you describe making these observations about the role of testosterone and other hormones and other biological characteristics in shaping behavior and you work in some terms resistant or ppushback over objections of the relationship here so i wonder if you could describe what that rejection is and what the landscape looks like in terms of how people have been

thinking about the world and behavior and maybe offer some understanding about why there is concern about connecting this to behavior. >> that's an important question and i can just pick up where i left off . when i started this research and started to find some results about how testosterone shapes sex differences and cognition, the way we solve the world so there are sex differences in cognition. we don't understand why, culture has something to do with it but biology also has something to do with it. how these forces interact and i was nacve when i first started out. i didn't understand how c seated and controversial these topics are and what my particular perspective was. i knew coming out of the jungle i was consumed with

the biological perspective and when i started out i didn't have an appreciation for the importance and intensity of the interaction between biology and culture. that took some time for me to appreciate and understand and that's an ongoing project. to learn more and more about how those or sis interact to produce human nature or the behavior of any animal there's always an interaction between genes and culture. so when i started to feel pushback to the research that i was doing and some of the, my interpretation of my own data which is that this hormone is incredibly important and the sex differences and levels of testosterone and the evolutionary pressures, natural and sexual selection particularly sexual selection backed differently on male and female animals to facilitate reproduction in

different ways in males and females we have different problems we have to solve to reproduce . where female mammals have internal gestation and it's energetically expensive.we need more fat and we're going to be smaller animals reon average. and males do not have internal gestation and they typically need to compete to some degree for female mating opportunities so they need to have more muscle and less fat to produce their maximum amount of offspring so the differences in sex hormones helps to facilitate those adaptations. more fat and potentially more nurturing behavior, less physical aggression or human females and then females of other species and for males, something like orlarger body size, less fat and more muscle mass and more aggression and more obsession with status on average. so these are not saying all

females are like this, all males are like that. that's not the case. there's a lot of overlap we're talking about. to me, this was such a satisfying and powerful way to understand human behavior and the patterns of human behavior but i had done a whole lot of traveling, mostly by myself with a backpack to all kinds of different cultures and one of the , i become sort of obsessed with explaining the differences in human behavior but also the commonalities and how they connected to what i had seen in nonhuman animals. but what was happening is i was meeting resistance and i did an effort to understand whereirthis was coming from . how many people seemed to have this almost innate preference for cultural explanation and hostility towards biological explanation because i felt so empowered scientists had changed so much it helped me understand myself and my own

traumas. what i had observed in the jungleetc. . and i, that was an indication for me and of course. >> you're talking about formations that are singularly cultural . it's information that are offering kind of the combination of both . >> so there's a continuum of resistance. there's people who are serious dollars, who are very smart to completely reject biological explanation. for sex differences in behavior. sometimes even for bodies which is confusing to me. but so there are people who really just want to assert that sex difference and behavior in humans by the results of cultural influences but then there's of course nfthe movement that gets more attention and is taken more seriously is an effort to really consistently downplay biological

explanation in favor of cultural ones. there's a whole bunch of reasons that i now understand about why there is that effort. but my point of view is that what we should be concerned with is the truth and how to discover the truth. but like on so wonderfully articulated power is always a part of science so there is a value to being critical about the methods that we use in science . but there's also power that really where i think it really comes into play is how you the facts of science for the can be used to support certain conclusions or different kind of social agendas or potentially what could be perceived as for actually nefarious purposes so we need to be careful of course inhow we produce the science . and in my view we should be

stripped from social agendas. we if we want to understand how the world works. boston is in thinking about the implications of the science that we boproduce. and how, what the limitations are and how we can think clearly about those implications and logical ways and not for instance assume that it's some sex difference in some cognitive ability as a relationship routed to some degree in biology but that means it's immutable or if males are more aggressive on average because of testosterone that doesn't mean that it's right for that it can'tchange . there's no evidence to support that. we know that like diabetes. that is something that is genetic. type i and type to have strong genetic basis. some people are much more prone to diabetes. but we know that the environment plays a huge role

. so that's just an analogy there. in the same way withbehavior . men have a higher predisposition than women for certain types of behavior but it's the environment that's really molds the expression of that behavior. so what we want to be concerned with is the behavior itself and the consequences of that behavior and focus our judgment on the behavior and its consequences, not on the causes . the causes we should be concerned with understanding behavior and using that to address intentionally problematic behavior and do what we can to improve it and improve our social circumstance and equality for everybody. >> you're describing that that should be directed at the misapplication of the science in the service of aggressive agendas. there were 20th century biologists that showed so much evidence of how that was taken and used and in many

many areas so but i do think it's really a love letter to an evidence-based approach to understanding the role of hormones and biological features and the behavior and here we are and i wonder if you can just give us a kind of a primary 101 on the role of testosterone from conception really lets say to validity in terms of development and biological development and see if we can get on the same page. i should say that and i alluded to this before but the sex hormones are steroids for small. that's important. and some hormones like insulin are proteins and some hormones are steroids. the cool thing about steroids is that their liposome. that means they can cross

memories, cross the blood stream barrier. tthe testosterone progesterone, this is all into our brains so we produce them mostly in our ovaries and in our testes. some in our four women the adrenal gland is an important piece of androgen production but those hormones are getting into our brain and shaping behavior and that's clear in humans and nonhuman animals. so they have important effects on the body and on behavior and ultimately those are moans are there not because they help us survive, let's say in regulating blood sugar and i just want to use insulin as an example quickly because that's a hormone that ypacks in the body to regulate energy. and regulate blood sugar. but what it does is it four minutes behavior with the energetic needs of the body so it's signals to the brain. it can get into the brain but it's a different active

transport.they have to expend energy to get into the brain. it gets into the brain and tells the brain essentially what the energy needs of the body are and in effect under andmotivation to go get up and find food . or to not get up and find food because you have enough blood sugar in your body. so there's a coordination between energetic needs of the body and the behaviors that the body has to engage and to stay alive and make maintain energy levels. sothese sex hormones do something similar but for reproduction , not for maintaining energy but for ma producing and coordinating the availability of eggs and sperm with the motivation and ability to make and to care for in mammals for the female our offspring.and for males, the motivation is more likely to be to compete for

mating opportunities so we have to physically hormones coordinate the availability of the eggs and sperm. the physical traits we need to engage in the behaviors of nursing and competition . and actually in the brain to motivate the individuals to use those traits. in order to have muscles, it's no good to have lactation if you don't have motivation to use those muscles or to use the breasts say to feed your offspring so the hormones do all of these things by affecting how the oway that energy is spent in the body on muscle or fat or egg production etc. then at that all starts from males in utero. the females don't actually need their ovaries to be producing estrogen to develop their reproductive anatomy. or to do anything special to their brain. but so males typically in

humans nand in other animals have very high testes in utero produced in humans and other animals, very high levels of testosterone that masks those reproductive structures and grow the. [bleep] and the associated internal plumbing is set in utero during that same period testosterone acts in the brain to masculinized certain structures but for instance young male animals including boys engage in higher rates of rough and tumble play and that seems to be practice that males engage in like humans and chimpanzees and rats and so many other animals, the male animals es play more roughly than the girl animals. it seems to be practice for status competition and scientists have determined

how testosterone levels in utero can shape the brain to promote that kind of mail typical behavior in utero. so it joins it starts in utero when cast off the road shakes the body and the brain for male reproduction. then safter birth tester of testosterone goes up again, it stays high for three months and then it stays low until prior to puberty and then it goes up again and you know a lot about that because that's what your most recent book was about . and a lot of changes that happen of course in the body and again in the brain during puberty that sort of conference a little boy into a reproductively viable adult and it's the same thing for some women during adolescence . it helps them to become reproductively mature.

>> what about female brains questions denmark as their shaping temperament, aggressiveness. there are studies that looked at girls, i love to look at i spend a lot of time on the whole range of other species and female females that have more androgen at birth and females who are gestating in an environment, in a maternal environment highlighting mothers, they have more androgen and their temperaments are goingto be different . so it's all androgen. >> but so that's totally correct about the spotted hyenas. i don't know about the ground squirrels. i thought the males dispersed in germany. >> there in experimental conditions increase.

anyway, but the point is that a female brain, the female brain is hacked by androgens in ways that she. >> it can be impacted by androgens but generally it's extremely low androgen or i'm just saying testosterone instead of androgen. other derivatives of testosterone that might be active like the hd which we can talk about later. but in humans and most other mammals, the testosterone level in females in utero are very low and keep the female brain and body extremely sensitive to elevations in androgens and there's a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia in which the adrenal gland is missing a killer enzyme. that is to produce cortisol. and if it doesn't have the enzyme and it can produce cortisol it's kind of overstimulatedand produces a lot of androgen .

with androgen acts on the female brain in utero in ways that emresults in higher levels of mail typical hater and preferences and that's true in humans and nonhumans animals. so we've known that androgens in utero are extremely important for differentiating behavior in humans and in nonhumans. but what's interesting is that the typical female f behavior and i know i'm saying that there's these typical behaviors and a lot of that is from nonhuman animals and we've got research on nonhuman animals where something like sexual behavior and aggressive behavior is very poorly differentiated . much more ffstrongly than it is in humans . so the research is not the same in humans because our behavior is notas strongly differentiated . we have so much overlap in sexual aggressive behavior but we do know from the

conditions in which the androgen exposure in females deviates from what is typical and is increased that we have some masculinization of behavior that's persistent through adulthood even though the condition is corrected at birth . the testosterone levels are normalized atbirth . and i should just mention that the reproductive anatomy can also be masculinized so that these goals can be born with something like an enlarged clearance that can sometimes resemble a. [bleep] . there is an argument that it is the genitalia and the knowledge of the existence of the masculinized genitalia that is responsible for the masculinization of the behavior so that counterargument to the idea that it's acting directly on the brain but that runs counter to all the other evidence that we see in nonhuman animals and also we don't have a good explanation for why especially when girls

have surgery to change their clearance into something that's more typical and there is no value judgment there becausethere's , we it's a big controversy about whether you should vertically alter genitaliathat are atypical . but even with those who have that surgery the argument is there's so much attention paid to their genitalia that their behaviorbecomes masculinized . but barring the simplest way to understand evidence is because we have all this other evidence that shows very clearly that increased androgens in utero do masculinized behavior but as females if they typically don't have androgens in utero they will express typical female when exposed to estrogen and adolescence. and males will show typical

male behavior need to have that really androgen exposure and need to have the exposure to high levels of testosterone to show typical male behavior. >> do what extent does engaging in rough and tumble or typically male behavior, to what extent does that create a hormonal response or testosterone response? >> that's an interesting question. in kids there's probably no effect because the testosterone levels are so low at that point and they're not responsible to what's going on behaviorally but the question becomes it illustrates that really important relationships that we see during and after adolescence and really the only see this in males. it's not just that testosterone is molding

behavior. it's that the behavior and social environment in potently altered testosterone levels. but generally in the moment so in this phase of correct for competition which could be considered in some sense mating competition. so there is some fairly robust evidence that when men compete, the reaction to the competition can predict whether testosterone goes up or testosterone goes down and those changes need to predict and sort of condition future behavior which are adapted for the individual in a given environment and given personality given social na system . >> says were talking about developmental behavior with hormones and brains, missing a conversation about maybe puberty blockers.

we know people are going to the non-buyers are taking puberty blockers and it's a complicated area and i wonder if you can share your thoughts about it. >> i'm happy to. w in the book, i really go into the scientific literature on the blockers and on the effect of altering testosterone levels as part of a gender transition. so i have, i know what the scientific literature says but i also interviewed a male to female transgender person. a female to male transgender person. a young nonminority person whohad just started taking puberty blockers . and someone who had the transition, a female to male

back to female so i use their words to describe their experience and interestingly their experiences were very consistent with what the scientific literature had to say. the puberty blockers is so controversial right now and just heated but my perspective on it is that we need way more research so we should just say that the three, if you exclude that the transition are, the transgender people and non-binary person were very happy. very veryhappy with their transitions py. not male to female transgender person went through and it's a good example because she went through a male puberty. she's six foot four she's a large woman . but because she went through a typical male puberty with

high levels of testosterone she i think wishes perhaps she worked quite so tall. it's hard to be a six foot four trans-woman with a deep voice. that's something that is difficult for her. she's doing voice therapy. ithink she would prefer not to have that natural sounding voice when she had the female identity . so the issue with you blockers to me is completely understandable that someone who has gender dysphoria who wishes to transition gwould not, sort of the worst thing that can happen is to develop the physical and perhaps even psychological traits of this, of your natal sex because that's not the sex you feel yourself to be. i want to start out by saying it makes i understand the intense desire to put a halt to that. my concern is that we don't have enough really good

science on what the long-term outcomes are. physically and emotionally. and it's a controversial area because people want to be validated but some of the li people who want to be validated are young kids and it is true that gender can be fluent. gendercan be fluid at that age . and you pretty is a time when a lot of young people come to discover who they are sexually. they change their identities in various ways so you're blocking the opportunity and i'm not placing a value judgment on their but i do know the evidence and i do know that that is an opportunity sometimes for people to come to terms with the fact that they might be gay and that is why they have felt so intensely uncomfortable in their bodies because i haven't, they felt very different from the other

kids of their same natal sex. but then again like i said, it's completely i think valid and understandable for people to want to block that phase and i think that is right for some people. i don't know how we figure out who those people are that can be the right choice but i wish we had more evidence on the long-term outcomes and i wish that like a 12-year-old kid can say i'm fine with using losing my fertility. that's my biggest really is ythat that's a long-term irreversible consequences that if you don't allow your own reproductive system to sexually mature you lose the ability to have kids in the future t. that's a huge decision for a young person up to make the same time it can be tremendously painful for their puberty but i don't have the answers there. i just think there should be a lot more attention paid to the long-term outcomes and

benefits. >> and what you wrote about this is again there was kind of going back to the data and clearly laying out a basic understanding. this is really the primer for understanding from a scientific perspective and you do really alert her to the perils of what can happen scientific how scientific information can be used again in the service of someone nefarious for with an agenda but the point is we should be very frightened of that and not frightened of itself my goal is to give all the people the evidence available so that they have all the evidence that is available to make, help them make these difficult decisions and that is what i think is important.

is to not shield people from the truth or from the science but to give them what they need and allow them to make those decisions. >> i know we're a few minutes after the hour but since we have olympics coming up in a few weeks we can spend a few minutes talking about these differences and. >> let's move from one totally noncontroversialtopic to another one . >> so give us a little extension of about this topic and talking about it and having conversations that are rooted in science and really regenerative. >> this is an area that i do get very difficult to talk about because people like lowell hubbard who is a trans-woman who is competing in the olympics and powerlifting is not breaking any rules. she is i'm sorry, i find this very painful.

because people are calling her a cheater. she's not acheater so i want to make that clear . it's not cheating that she happens, the evidence suggests that she does have a physical advantage and that's because she went through a typical male puberty with high testosterone but we can on average i don't know if she herself has an advantage but trans-women who went through male puberty will tend to be stronger even if they suppress their testosterone up to eight years is the data that we have. they tend not to lose the size and strength and of course the dsize benefits just in terms of height and bone strength in particular don't diminish. muscle mass goes down but it doesn't go down to anywhere near the typical for a natal female. there are other physical advantages however, like

first of all i think that there's an important human rights issue here. that deserves to be heard and it's extremely important sorry. i'm just this is really emotional because i see the science is providing one set of information but what's upsetting his people are not listening to the, we have to understand where these trans women are coming from and what it's like to identify as a woman, love your support and not be allowed to play in a women's category and be called a cheater. that's just wrong. i do get annoyed when people try to twist the science to use, to push the agenda that people like laura hubbard

should be able to compete on the women's team because it closes , it causes people who might otherwise listen to your case, it causes them to kind of shut down and feel like we're not telling the truth and i know you're up to something and you're twisting the science and trying to pull one over on the area and i don't think that's a good strategy. i think the strategy is to say we can grant that the science points that there is on average an advantage but let's now focus on our energy compassionately and with respect to the case of women who trans women who have been given the right to compete for now on the female category. what do we do about that and if thereis a physical advantage on average , is there a way for us to somehow equalize that or we need to

have the conversation. and d not stigmatized trans women who want to do what they love. it bothers me so much it's painful for a lot of people. i'm not happy at how that conversation is going or not going as the case may be. sorry. >> it is topical and there is an bias there's so much heterogeneity in terms of physicality that also in the individual ability depending on how the sports are the idea of deciding kind of handpicking by sex it's complicated and there's a contradiction in the world of sports . what is what is a merit-based conduct and it doesn't even exist ? >> we're all born, we are. there's a reason there are male and female categories but within that there's a huge amount of variation not

dueto hard work . >> in thinking about going back to your work as a teacher and someone who spends a lot iof time with young people who are themselves, we both teach students who are 18 and 22. they are sexual beginners. they are figuring out who they are in all kinds of ways and i wonder how you think we can talk to them without shaping their behavior as parents and as human beings. >> i have a 12-year-old son, griffin. he's sick of hearing about testosterone and but i feel strongly that he should understand what it is going to be doing to his body and to his brain and the things

he might be feeling or wanting and that this is where i think the information is tremendously useful because he might assume that girls are young women i don't know what they're called in a couple of years will be feeling the same things that he is and they're probably not. on average and they have different desires and needson average. and i think it's important to understand how that works . if not just because of culture, it's part of our natures and i want him to be sensitive to that and be aware of what he's feeling and where it's coming from and how to be a great respectful person which everybody shows you can bebut testosterone will change it in ways that i want him to be prepared for . so what was the other part of your. >> both your son and basically the adolescents that were teaching who are, who turned to you.

>> that's easy because they are awesome. therefiguring out the world . there figuring up themselves. they're so curious. and i just open with them. i will do with them kind of what i'm doing here and if they disagree i love it. i want them to disagree and then we want to figure out why and we want to look at the evidence together and maybethey will agree with my interpretation of the evidence . let's dig into it . it is so satisfying and i learned so much. they learn so much. the big thing for me is critical thinking as much as me telling them how the world is. it's me saying here's the evidence and what do you think and where what are you bringing to me and how does that bear on how we understand this and let's do the best job we can using the tools of science to understand the world but also what the implications are and how tothink about . what does it mean for our lives.

and they love that and they have the journey throughout my classes and i have a journey with them and i know that you have similar experiences. they are just so open-minded and curious and wonderful. i feel so incredibly lucky. >> at the beginning you are so open about your own journey as a student and there's a class where you were hearing this information . it was toxic in a sense. it felt like bad evolutionary psychology. that it was disturbing, it was about sexual coercion. and the professor whoever your professor was in that class you were changing him and he gave you a piece of advice which is the

foundation of your book which is look at the evidence, go to the data.and that is where that answer will be. there may be something because they're incomplete but what you're describing. >> can i tell about that? i just think it will be helpful because i know what it's like to want something to be true. i know what it's like for a certainscientific explanation to feel in validating so i write about this in the book . i think it was my second year in graduate school. i had a major and i still do an imposter syndrome and i gave a graduate student seminar and id reading a paper and discussing it on the evolution of rape and the scorpion fly. i can't even say this with a straight face because the implication that was stated explicitly by the author is that males evolve larger in

females than humans so that if they couldn't attain the resources they needed to attract a female they would just pin them down and raped them like a scorpion fly does and i had a history with sexual assault and i was doing exactly what i'm doing right now in the class. and i was shaking and i was hurt and felt small and i was angry. and when i turned to talk there was a male instructor. and i said this guy is in acyl. because of course this can be true, he's in acyl for even writing this paper . and the point is that first of all the professor just told me to focus on the argument. look at the data, focus on the argument and i was like what are you doing, this is crazy. how are you assigning this paper but i realized that that's what i was supposed to do as a scientist and eventually i did and i did find that really empowering

that i could analyze this hypothesis. it could be right. the guy could be in acyl but that's a separate point. the hypothesis could be correct and if so i really want to know about it . i really want to understand so i realized i got to be able to put what i want to be the case for what seems right as i am emotional active, that those somewhere else. i needto engage my science brain to try to understand the world because i need that information . it's empowering. and we can argue about the guy like whether he should have written the paper as he did later that is a lesson that i share with my students every year and i tried to remember when i feel that this has got to be wrong, but i've got to put thataside. and evaluate the evidence . >> just the fact that sexual

coercion is described in his point is not necessarily generalizable. and kind of how broadly can be an aside, it's an essentialist air and there's sexual coercion in the way in which its male sexual assault,that's partly productive . so there are all of these this information so that scientific error, it's not the science. it's the misapplication and overgeneralization. in a moment i'm going to pass that forward but it's really what you're describing again is that there is an opportunity for us to use biology and use evolution to him and responsible way and in a thoughtful way and a careful way and it's all this

past scientific misuses of science arand there is a hypothesis possible and it's been 1000 conversations with you where we are, we recognize e the abuses that happen and in other kinds of areas. >> there's 1000 conversations you and i have had about that exact moment, trust us. >> your science is impeccable and it is rooted in evidence but i know that your role here is to open up and turn the lights on and to promote excellent thinking and a positive agenda but congratulations again on this book and i'm going to toss it up to you.

>> thank you. >> i want to let folks know that doctor matteson that we referenced earlier there's also a book in the chat so if you're interested in the connection between human and animal adolescents check that out.e it's a very cool book . her other book is currently active order that's that just means it's popular so keep trying and we will go back in soon. it's available via the button at the bottom of your screen. it really does help us a lot by buying books from us so keep that. mand i wanted to see if there are any other projects or things that you want to promote for want to talk about upcoming in other parts of your tour or anything like that that you'd like folks

know about . >> is theretime for questions ? >> there is but so far we've had a very chill audience. >> i'm happy to take any questions and i think barb is to . >> did you have any questions ? >> i have tons of questions but i don't want to be a hard here. >> my main question always comes back to the michael phelps of it all. but human variation in sports and how sports in particular designs for genetic freaks. we really celebrate people who are at the very end of the curve of distribution. like because that's how we win. yet when it comes to trans-and intersex people who have variations, they are often punished for the things that it seems like other

people are awarded for and that's why what i'm trying to get my head around. so i'm wondering if you could say a little bit more about that. because it seems to me particularly as a person who is a woman with an intersex condition who has a higher level of testosterone than typical for a woman, that feel like that's a difference in nature. much like michael phelps giant flipper hands are different in nature. i think that's something that often i struggle with. >> part of the problem i think in thinking through some of these issues is that the way the scientists communicate via journalism is not responsible in my view. it's super biased and i think that laypeople are not getting the correct information for one thing and of course there's so many different views on whether

sports should even be sex segregated in the first place . my only real contribution here is first of all the changes that happen in male puberty and how those strength changes first of all if you just look at males and females there's no contest. in most sports, the females would never have a chance at the elite level in almost every sport not counting golfing andarchery some other things . auto racing for instance females , the lead females even in the olympics can be beaten by the best high school boy so there's just no, it's not about variation in arms stand. it's on a totally different level. that's just thinking about sex differences.

then there's this fuzzy area about trans women and to what extent are those advantages lost with off the road. the evidence suggests not a lot. and there's still if you've gone through the typical male puberty you're going to retain a lot of those very significant advantages and it's to a much larger extent than differences in arms stand which are on a spectrum basically, not on a real qualitative kind of difference like the difference between nasal males and females. the case of people with differences in sex development is controversial and the language becomes important. here i wanted to step into it because i don't want to appear to define. i want to respect the way that people self identify but in most of these cases in the cases that come up in the news, the people who are

described as women with naturally high testosterone are people who typically have ex-wife sex chromosomes and testes and have gone through a high testosterone male puberty. typical male puberty. that complicates that issue and i think that the popular press describes it in a different way that's confusing . my theory is it's tough because you want to respect people's identity but then you're making policies that should be informed by science , not decided by science but this should be part of the conversation we are dealing with . the laypeople are just reading the new york times or the guardian think this is just like michael phelps. a woman who happens to have high testosterone. it's not quite that simple. i wouldn't want to wait in here on what to do other than say i do think if were going to be rsation should be informed, should be done with sensitivity and

compassion but with facts. >> if people are really interested in this and want to find good data themselves, where do you recommend people go? [laughter] >> my book. [laughter] >> very up-to-date about all of this stuff. >> the bibliography in your citations are current and robust. these are the notes. it is a very well cited welton research rigorous also with stories. it is a narrative. on the my own personal stories. is my goal one of the facts here and how can we work with the facts but be as sensitive

and caring as possible. i am super passionate about the goals i think you probably are. which is reducing suffering especially for people who are suffering the most. that is the ultimate goal and that is my goal. the way to do that is through knowledge to use knowledge. i think it is never a good idea to misrepresent the facts and it is disrespectful to people in my view. >> we do have an audience question. would you have any suggestions or rules of thumb for sexual relationships? relationships across gender perhaps between men and women? >> i do and i just wrote about this actually for a uk magazine i talked about in the

boston globe. this was tough. i described being married and you can see of already cried three times, i am very emotional. that is hard for me actually it's embarrassing but i cannot control it. my husband is a british philosopher barb knows, he is very, very stable. you don't know what's going on, he does not know it's going on, the just not stuff going on in there according to him. i'm constantly pestering him what is wrong with you? because you are british what are you thinking? think about philosophy and think about nothing right now what are you even talking about? we had therapy it did not change. i changed after writing this book the big thing was the

transit people i interviewed. they change their emotional expression. i don't know if you had the same experience here. you went from someone who is really in touch with your emotions to someone who does not have the same range of emotions. that is what i learned. that helped her marriage. some feminist viewpoint i guess, he is a great person. i was not accepting i thought he should be more like me. what is the matter with you? >> i was a part of the reason

i am more open to science now is because i experienced changes. i am very clear that my brain operates very differently than it did before and after i medically transition. >> different now? >> my brain with estrogen dominant i can hold 20 threads of information all at once. [laughter] women tend to be more anxious. and now my brain is more like a two lane road. i feel less smart. you do the thing in front of you than do the next thing and the next thing. capacity to hold multiple threads for me really shifted very. >> cute do more short-term goal oriented? >> yes.

i'm an emotional and thoughtful person. the way my brain organize information literally took information in has shifted. that communication style shifted. that has been the biggest shift to me. i would also recommend i'll put in the chat called the crying book. >> i've been looking and looking in one end of the continuing therapy this just not a lot of literature and being really extreme.

>> it is a memoir but it -- is called the book of tears. it is about being a woman who has a lot of shame of being what she considers a hyper crier. you should read it. >> thank you. >> definitely recommend it. i just want to make sure if you have any other rules about cross communication. [inaudible] [laughter] >> i think it is so fascinating when i was practicing medicine when patients were on blockers for example it was a decade ago.

i was not hearing it in the context of this conversation was fascinating. it makes so much sense. again i think about the ways in which hormone in the brain that relationship with the press people surgeons and after us and all of that. that was a non- scientific progressive piece of history. snow in are doing is having different kind of conversation. >> we can and on that note. >> again, please buy this book we get the link at the bottom of your screen print thank you so much, really appreciate your candor and the thought

behind the book. i wish you both well and help the rest of your tour is great. >> thank you so much as a great pleasure to meet you, thank you to your audience this is great. thank you barb. >> this is great yes. it is a fantastic book i am so impressed and it is important. i'm teaching harvard summer school was talking all about your book. >> thank you so much

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