Dr. Carole Hooven is a lecturer who teaches about hormones and the differences between the two sexes at Harvard, where she’s worked since 2006.
According to her website, Hooven “has received numerous teaching awards, and her Hormones and Behavior class was named one of the Harvard Crimson’s “top ten tried and true.” In addition to that, she recently released a book titled “Testosterone: The Story of the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us,” which she’s been promoting in various interviews and podcasts.
Last week, Hooven was quoted in a piece written by podcaster Katie Herzog on how professors were increasingly being called on to apologize for using the “he” and “she” pronouns as well as gendered terms like and “breastfeed” and “pregnant woman” – sometimes by students who allegedly burst into tears upon hearing the terms.
Hooven, Herzog noted, was bothered a great deal by such stories. Here’s what Hooven told her:
“Today’s students will go on to hold professional positions that give them a great deal of power over others’ bodies and minds. These young people are our future doctors, educators, researchers, statisticians, psychologists. To ignore or downplay the reality of sex and sex-based differences is to perversely handicap our understanding and our ability to increase human health and thriving.”
Hooven’s views have earned her some attention from former NY Times opinion writer Bari Weiss, who has been an increasingly outspoken voice in the transgender rights debate. She interviewed Hooven for her Thursday podcast, where they talked about her new book:
Hooven also appeared on Fox News last week where she was asked to discuss her quote in Herzog’s article as well as to expand on her opinion. Hooven told host Brian Kilmeade that “the facts are that there are in fact two sexes — there are male and female — and those sexes are designated by the kind of gametes we produce.” She also talked about how it absolutely should be okay to use the gendered terms and pronouns that were triggering college students.
Watch:
Her appearance on Fox News greatly upset a Harvard colleague of hers named Laura Simone Lewis, who describes herself as the “Director of the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force” for the human evolutionary biology department they both work in. After boasting of her creds, Lewis went on a mini-rant on Twitter talking about how offensive and “transphobic” Hooven’s comments, which were based on science, supposedly were:
Hooven got wind of Lewis’ tweets and tried to start a dialogue with her:
While Lewis did agree to have an in-person discussion with Hooven, she also proceeded to play the victim card by retweeting tweets like this one:
In addition to that, Lewis tried to diminish Hooven’s accomplishments and credibility on the subject by posting an “important note” on how she was “not tenured” and was a lecturer, not a professor:
If we’re going to play the “titles” = “credibility” game here, I would say “lecturer” is quite a few steps above “PhD candidate,” which is what’s listed on Lewis’ Harvard bio, just for the record.
In any event, the good news here is that they’ve agreed to have a one on one conversation on the issue. While minds are unlikely to be changed, this development is much better than how these things usually turn out when someone is put on blast for being unafraid to share views that don’t line up perfectly with the left-wing dogma that is so pervasive in higher ed institutions across America.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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