In this 120th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we discuss the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.

This week, we discuss the definition of woman. What are women? Adult human females. What are adults, and humans, and females? Are we suffering a plague of sophistry? (Yes.) Must we turn this around? (Yes.) Are humans ever hermaphroditic? (No.) What about banana slugs? (Yes. What about them?) And clown fish? (Also yes—again, so? They’re clown fish, not humans.) We discuss the evolution of sex and sex roles (aka gender). We talk about Genetic Sex Determination and Environmental Sex Determination. We discuss anisogamy and monoecious and dioecious plants, and it’s interesting and not full of uninterpretable words. We do not discuss the paired hemipenes of snakes and lizards. Our apologies.

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Our book, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, is available everywhere books are sold, and signed copies are available here: https://darvillsbookstore.indielite.org

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Find more from us on Bret’s website (https://bretweinstein.net) or Heather’s website (http://heatherheying.com).

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Theme Music: Thank you to Martin Molin of Wintergatan for providing us the rights to use their excellent music.

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Q&A Link: https://youtu.be/ilHD18Bqnkw

Mentioned in this episode:

Digital Public Square – bringing a plug-and-play experience to the decentralized web: https://www.samizdapp.com/

Akira the Don, Dr. Seuss, and Bret Weinstein: https://youtu.be/1pJhF2GjwDM

Ketanji Brown Jackson, nominee to the Supreme Court of the U.S., is asked what a woman is: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ketanji-brown-jackson-says-she-can-t-define-woman-because-i-m-not-a-biologist/ar-AAVnX6b

Dictionary.com definition of woman: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/woman

(also see: the Oxford English Dictionary, and also A Dictionary of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics (2nd ed, Lincoln, Boxshall and Clark), for a definition of “female”)

Daly and Wilson 1983. Sex, Evolution and Behavior. https://books.google.com/books/about/Sex_Evolution_and_Behavior.html?id=VodHAAAAMAAJ

Leshem 2016. 

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