Mick Hartley

Et tu, New Scientist? Octavia Sheepshanks at The Critic:

New Scientist is no longer the safe haven it once was. I did not realise how much of my sanity relied on its recognition of the existence and importance of two sexes in humans until articles began to appear which seemed to deny this entirely.

The first of these stated, “menstrual cycles may be 1.6 days longer in people who identify as Asian and 0.7 days longer in those who identify as Hispanic compared with their white non-Hispanic counterparts.” It defined a period as “when a person bleeds from the vagina” and did not use the words “female” or “women” once. Once I’d finished grumbling to myself about how I wished I could “identify as Asian” for an extra 1.6 pain-free days each month, I rationalised that if that was how scientific papers were now being written, then there was not much New Scientist could do about it. It probably finds it hard, too, I thought.

For several months, I assumed that New Scientist was doing what it had always done: synthesising and disseminating research findings in a way that was easy to understand, situating them in the context of the real world. It describes itself as “a trusted, impartial source of information about what is going on in the world, in a time where facts are in short supply”, and I had believed this without reservation. It was the voice of reason in my life. After reading one article in which miscarried male foetuses were given a sex (“boys”) but the women who had suffered miscarriages were not (“pregnant people”) I wrote a long and passionate letter to the editor about how it had made me feel (not good). I received no reply, and I began to wonder if my strong belief in the significance of sexual dimorphism in humans was inaccurate and hateful after all. This was the most popular weekly science publication in the world, and it was reporting science as it was. I must be the problem.

Then I encountered the most befuddling article yet. A new form of contraception “for people” had been discovered. After a minor brain adjustment, I established from the sentence “a gel that is applied inside the vagina has been shown to block sperm injected into female sheep”, that this was a new contraception for women. The article was so strange to read that I sought out the original journal article to witness this bizarre wording in situ. When I read the first sentence of the abstract, “Many women would prefer a nonhormonal, on-demand contraceptive that does not have the side effects of existing methods”, I was astonished. Science had not changed; New Scientist had. It had lied to me. (Gaslighting is an overused accusation but resonates here. I intend to avoid one-sided love affairs with magazines in future.)

I looked back at all the New Scientist articles that had confused me and found the original publications. They had been altered, too: every time only women or men (i.e., males or females) were being referenced, they said so, in stark contrast to New Scientist’s interpretation.

Essentially, New Scientist is blithely misreporting published research to remove any implication of two sexes in humans.

It's astonishing. It's like a Soviet journal carefully editing out and altering any material that might contradict a Marxist-Leninist worldview.

And it matters, beyond the erasure of women – just as Lysenko mattered beyond the Stalinisation of evolutionary theory. This kind of manipulation has real-world consequences.

The alteration of scientific studies to avoid naming the demographic previously known as “women” has serious consequences for anyone female. Returning to the example of the new form of contraception for women, New Scientist’s wilful misinterpretation ignores the positive consequences of the study for women globally, because it cannot name the group it is discussing. These consequences — social and economic liberation through reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies — are discussed in the original paper, which I found fascinating and enjoyed reading. Meanwhile, New Scientist contents itself with informing us that researchers “inserted the gel towards the backs of the vaginas of sheep, which are similar to those in humans”. New Scientist was founded in 1956 for “all those interested in scientific discovery and its social consequences”. Now, female readers interested in studies affecting themselves must read the original academic papers to gain a full picture.

When the same approach is used with studies concerning only men, women are still adversely affected. In a lengthy article on urinals, New Scientist indulges in blatantly false statements such as “for the average human the magic splash-reducing angle is 30 degrees”. The original patent application, of course, discusses the “male’s urine stream”. The real-world consequences are still discussed in New Scientist, but in a way that falsely implies every human is affected. The article reads as if we have openly regressed to when the only “human” studied in science was male….

And trans, of course. That's what this is all about.

I look forward to a day when I have a place to read about the physical and social implications of research into women’s bodies and health, without limitation. In the meantime, I note that New Scientist remains happy to acknowledge gonochorism in other animals; it recently rejoiced over a study of female robins that discredited the sexist theory that only male robins sing. Maybe I’ll support the liberation of female songbirds until I can read about my own species. In fact, if there’s a rally for feminist robins, I’ll be there with a placard the size of my thumbnail, desperately seeking a new safe haven of sanity.

[Gonochorism: a sexual system where there are only two sexes and each individual organism is either male or female]