Episode 88: How gender essentialism warped our view of science

Gender essentialism is the idea that there is something eternal and innate about people's gender identities, and nothing can change that. Popularized during the 1970s, it affected how science fiction stories represented gender -- and it spawned new academic disciplines devoted to scientific misogyny. We talk about all this, and do a deep dive on the "What Women Want" franchise.

Notes, citations, & etc.

Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano

Here’s the 2013 interview in The Atlantic where Serano defines gender essentialism

Plato’s notion of essences

Gender Trouble, by Judith Butler

Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin’s anti-porn crusade is explored in Wendy Kaminer’s article “Feminists Against the First Amendment,” from The Atlantic (1992)

Star Trek: TOS episode “Turnabout Intruder”

“Turnabout Intruder” drag version, performed live at SF Oasis

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

“Coming of Age in Karhide,” by Ursula K. LeGuin

You Just Don’t Understand, by Deborah Tannen

Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus, by John Gray

What Women Want, dir. Nancy Meyers (2000)

Shallow Hal, dir. Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly (2001)

“Beyond Mars and Venus: The role of gender essentialism in support for gender inequality and backlash,” PLoS One (2018)

Making Sex, by Thomas Laqueur

Kate Clancy’s research on menstruation and covid-19 vaccines, from the BBC

The Vagina Bible and The Menopause Manifesto, by Jen Gunter