Late Night Edition of Saturday's Douchebag You Should Know About: Alex Byrne, "Philosophy Professor at M.I.T."

Let’s be clear: Byrne’s Trouble With Gender is not a book on philosophy. He has co-edited a few anthologies on/of Philosophy, and maybe that is how he advanced to full professor at MIT. His interest in gender is first apparent in 2019, when he publishes a rebuke to “Why Sex Is Not Binary.”, a New York Times article written by Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor of biology and gender studies at Brown University.

Alex Byrne does not agree. His argument is that “sex is binary.” He has a lot to say, but what it really comes down to is he doesn’t agree, he thinks pronouns are ridiculous, and he’s read a lot of articles about trans issues. It seems, however, he has not spoken with trans people. Perhaps he does not know any. So, basically, his book is a sort of academic tome that I must confess not only seems muddy to me, but also puts me to sleep.

This douchebag feature is not supposed to take up much of my time. That’s why I run it on Saturdays. But then I come upon someone like this. I have no idea why he is invested in the issue. Byrne will say at points that he is not against trans people all the while arguing that their existence is not possible, biologically and philosophically. It really is, don’t you thing, bizarre and arrogant for a so-called “philosopher” to take on this topic? To write a whole book?

Apparently, Oxford University Press accepted his proposal for the book. Upon receiving the manuscript, they declined to publish it, stating that “the book did not treat the subject 'in a sufficiently serious and respectful way.” Read Byrne’s outrage in the Daily Mail. The irony veritably cancels itself out here.

And then I noticed something else. HIS WIFE, Caroline Hooven, wrote T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us which also argues that sex is biological and binary. Hooven was a lecturer at Harvard. Read about her “troubles” here if you care to. Alas!

And so we have another two-for-one Douchebag feature.