Trouble with Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions is out with Polity Press in the UK (October 27, 2023), and was released in the US at the beginning of January. You can order it here (UK) or here (US).
Some advance bouquets and brickbats:
A 'banger'.
Grace Lavery, Associate Professor of English, UC Berkeley, and author of Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis.
‘Current academic discussions of sex and gender are dominated by advocates, dogmatists, poseurs, and obscurantists. Trouble with Gender offers a lucid, rigorous and judicious guide to the perplexed. It’s an antidote to irrationality and also a pleasure to read.’
Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism? and The War Against Boys
‘Alex Byrne masterfully does what philosophers are supposed to do: clarify words and concepts, identify which ideas follows from which other ones, and distinguish what is from what ought to be. And despite the now incendiary subject matter, he accomplishes all this with a light touch and an appealing voice.’
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Rationality
‘Alex Byrne's Trouble with Gender is an admirably clear and rigorous book that outlines the major parameters of what is often an off-kilter discussion. Combining philosophy and science with an eye for how issues of sex and gender are discussed in the media, Byrne gives the reader a lesson not only in how to think about these specific issues but also in how to think at all.’
Nina Power, author of One Dimensional Woman and What Do Men Want?
‘Everyone with opinions, or questions, about matters of sex and gender should read this book. It carefully and incisively unravels the tangled mass of ideas that cluster under the umbrella of gender. It does not engage in politics, or question the extent of human variability, or deny the reality of anyone’s experience, but it does claim that there is no escape from the concept of sex as binary, and that the prevailing orthodoxy, which treats sex as socially constructed and an infinitely malleable continuum, is “tragically wrong”. I challenge anyone who accepts that orthodoxy to explain in detail where the arguments presented here go wrong.’
Janet Radcliffe Richards, author of The Sceptical Feminist and Human Nature after Darwin
'A refreshingly clarifying and forthright take on the philosophy of gender activism, cutting through the noise with incisiveness and wit. Anyone interested in the gender wars needs to read it.'
Kathleen Stock, author of Material Girls.
'It's a really terrible book that will be harmful to the publisher's reputation. His academic work on this topic seriously misunderstands the arguments of those that he discusses and is therefore viewed as extremely poor by those who know the field. It shouldn't be published.'
Anonymous reviewer, specialist in the philosophy of sex and gender
'Of course he has never done anything to show that he should have been invited to submit a book on gender in the first place.'
Matt Weiner, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Vermont
A 'banger'.
Grace Lavery, Associate Professor of English, UC Berkeley, and author of Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis.
‘Current academic discussions of sex and gender are dominated by advocates, dogmatists, poseurs, and obscurantists. Trouble with Gender offers a lucid, rigorous and judicious guide to the perplexed. It’s an antidote to irrationality and also a pleasure to read.’
Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism? and The War Against Boys
‘Alex Byrne masterfully does what philosophers are supposed to do: clarify words and concepts, identify which ideas follows from which other ones, and distinguish what is from what ought to be. And despite the now incendiary subject matter, he accomplishes all this with a light touch and an appealing voice.’
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Rationality
‘Alex Byrne's Trouble with Gender is an admirably clear and rigorous book that outlines the major parameters of what is often an off-kilter discussion. Combining philosophy and science with an eye for how issues of sex and gender are discussed in the media, Byrne gives the reader a lesson not only in how to think about these specific issues but also in how to think at all.’
Nina Power, author of One Dimensional Woman and What Do Men Want?
‘Everyone with opinions, or questions, about matters of sex and gender should read this book. It carefully and incisively unravels the tangled mass of ideas that cluster under the umbrella of gender. It does not engage in politics, or question the extent of human variability, or deny the reality of anyone’s experience, but it does claim that there is no escape from the concept of sex as binary, and that the prevailing orthodoxy, which treats sex as socially constructed and an infinitely malleable continuum, is “tragically wrong”. I challenge anyone who accepts that orthodoxy to explain in detail where the arguments presented here go wrong.’
Janet Radcliffe Richards, author of The Sceptical Feminist and Human Nature after Darwin
'A refreshingly clarifying and forthright take on the philosophy of gender activism, cutting through the noise with incisiveness and wit. Anyone interested in the gender wars needs to read it.'
Kathleen Stock, author of Material Girls.
'It's a really terrible book that will be harmful to the publisher's reputation. His academic work on this topic seriously misunderstands the arguments of those that he discusses and is therefore viewed as extremely poor by those who know the field. It shouldn't be published.'
Anonymous reviewer, specialist in the philosophy of sex and gender
'Of course he has never done anything to show that he should have been invited to submit a book on gender in the first place.'
Matt Weiner, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Vermont
