Carole Hooven is an American anthropologist and sex segregationist whose work focuses on sexual differentiation. Hooven also focuses on making people “comfortable in their own bodies,” a frequent dogwhistle used by critics of trans healthcare.
Hooven frequently defends and collaborates with other gender critical public figures, including spouse Alex Byrne, a philosopher and anti-trans activist.
Background
Carole K. Hooven was born February 18, 1966. Hooven earned a bachelor’s degree from Antioch College in 1988 and a doctorate in 2004.
Hooven married Alex Byrne and has one child, Griffin.
Hooven co-authored the 2013 book Meta-Emotion: How Families Communicate Emotionally.
Anti-transgender activism
Hooven is the author of the 2021 book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us.
Media
Hooven frequently appears on gender critical and anti-transgender shows to defend sex segregation and criticize refinement of value-neutral language in science.
- Joe Rogan Experience with Joe Rogan
- Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
- Honestly with Bari Weiss
- Savage Lovecast with Dan Savage
- Michael Shermer Show with Michael Shermer
- Blocked and Reported with Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog
- Femsplainers with Danielle Crittenden
- Calmversations with Benjamin Boyce
- Gender: a Wider Lens with Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad
- Unsupervised Learning with Razib Khan
- Transparency with Aaron Kimberly and Aaron Terrell
- Heterodorx with Nina Paley and Corinna Cohn
- The Spark with Helen Lewis
Additional appearances include:
- The Dissenter with Ricardo Lopez
- ManTalks with Connor Beaton
- Richard Reeves Show with Richard Reeves
- Mindpump
- Standard Issue
- Deseret News
- Converging Dialogues,
- Sex and Psychology,
- The Same Drugs
- Andy Rowe Show with Andy Rowe
- Sigma Nutrition
- Converging Dialogues
- Rewired Soul
- Keep Talking with Dan Riley
- Art of Manliness
- Harvard Museums of Science and Culture
- Minding the Brain
- Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea
- Session with Tom Swarbrick
- Reason with Science
Hooven’s work has been featured in outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New Statesman, Time Magazine, Slate Magazine, the Boston Globe, the New York Post, Stylist Magazine, the Australian, BBC, Talk Radio Europe, the Daily Telegraph, the Evening Standard, the Harvard Gazette, Oxford Academic, and Nature.
In 2022 Dartmouth political science professor Henry C. Clark arranged an event with Hooven, Jesse Singal, and Katie Herzog. After the event was cancelled, the event was moved to New York. An additional event with Singal was later arranged at MIT by Hooven’s spouse Alex Byrne.
References
Xu, Meimei (August 12, 2021). Biology Lecturer’s Comments on Biological Sex Draw Backlash. Harvard Crimson https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/8/11/biology-lecturer-gender-comments-backlash/
Coyne, Jerry (November 11, 2022). The cancellation of Carole Hooven. Why Evolution Is True https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/11/11/the-cancellation-of-carole-hooven/
Byrne, Alex (November 1, 2018). Is Sex Binary? Arc Digital https://medium.com/arc-digital/is-sex-binary-16bec97d161e
Herzog, Katie (2021). Med schools are now denying biological sex. Common Sense. Retrieved September 1, 2022 from https://www.commonsense.news/p/med-schools-are-now-denying-biological
Harvard lecturer takes heat for defending existence of biological sex on ‘Fox & Friends’. (2021). Fox News. Retrieved September 1, 2022 from https://www.foxnews.com/us/harvard-lecturer-blasted-by-colleague-for-defending-existence-of-biological-sex
Levine, J. (2021). Harvard lecturer blasted by colleague for defending existence of biological sex. New York Post. Retrieved September 1, 2022 from https://nypost.com/2021/07/31/harvard-lecturer-blasted-for-defending-existence-of-biological-sex/
Hooven, C.K. Academic Freedom Is Social Justice: Sex, Gender, and Cancel Culture on Campus. Arch Sex Behav (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-022-02467-5
Resources
Carole Hooven (carolehooven.com)
Harvard University Department of Human Evolutionary Biology (heb.fas.harvard.edu)
Twitter (twitter.com)
Reddit (reddit.com)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)