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.

Additional appearances include:

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)