What’s the Real Difference Between the Sexes?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2018
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In late December 2017, one of the world’s leading neurobiologists died of pancreatic cancer. His name was Ben Barres. He was an extraordinary scientist, advancing our understanding of how the brain works, in particular how certain cells in the brain may contribute to degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
He had also lived the last 20 years of his life as a transgender man. He used his unique perspective of having ‘lived in the shoes of a woman and…the shoes of a man’ to become an outspoken opponent of gender bias.
As the voice of the transgender community continues to grow in influence, what can wider society learn from people who’ve been in this rare position of living life as both a perceived man and woman? What does their experience tell us about the nature of gender bias? And does it help us fix it?
(Photo: People hold a giant transgender flag at a gay parade. Credit: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me Marianne Seacart. |
| 0:05.3 | Each week we bring you four expert witnesses answering one pressing question from the news. |
| 0:19.0 | Barbara was a gifted young mathematician. One day her professor at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 0:23.8 | set the class five math's questions. |
| 0:26.3 | The fifth was incredibly hard, but Barbara still managed to solve it. |
| 0:31.9 | When her professor handed back the papers he said no one could finish the |
| 0:35.5 | test so he was only giving scores on the first four questions. Afterwards she |
| 0:40.3 | protested that she had answered question five. |
| 0:43.0 | The professor looked at her disdainfully and said, |
| 0:45.6 | your boyfriend must have solved that for you. |
| 0:48.0 | He simply couldn't accept that a girl could be that good at maths. |
| 1:01.0 | In 1997 Barbara became Ben and how different his life was. His main observation, I've had the thought a million times I'm being taken more |
| 1:06.3 | seriously. By far the biggest difference I have noticed is that people who do not |
| 1:10.3 | know that I was a woman treat me with far more respect. |
| 1:14.4 | Some people even think that my research is better. |
| 1:16.9 | And not just his written work. |
| 1:18.8 | Shortly after I changed sex, a faculty member was hurt to say, Ben Barris gave a great seminar seminar today but then his work is much better than his sister's work. |
| 1:26.0 | They were of course the same person. |
| 1:28.0 | Barris who died a few months ago was a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University in California when he |
| 1:35.1 | transitioned. |
| 1:36.1 | As a result of being transgender, I've lived life as the same person in two different genders, |
| 1:40.5 | first female and then male. |
... |
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