Carole Hooven is an American anthropologist and sex segregationist whose work focuses on sexual differentiation. She 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.
Background
Carole K. Hooven was born February 18, 1966. Hooven earned a bachelors degree in psychology from Antioch College in 1988. She earned a doctorate in biological anthropology in 2004.
Hooven married Alex Byrne (born 1960) and has one son, Griffin. Byrne has also weighed in on current understandings of sexual dimorphism as they relate to trans rights.
She co-authored the 2013 book Meta-Emotion: How Families Communicate Emotionally. She 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.
- Joe Rogan Experience with Joe Rogan
- Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
- Honestly with Bari Weiss
- Savage Lovecast with Dan Savage
- Michael Shermer Show with Michael Shermer
- Blocked and Reported with Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog
- Femsplainers with Danielle Crittenden
- Calmversations with Benjamin Boyce
- Gender: a Wider Lens with Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad
- Unsupervised Learning with Razib Khan
- Transparency with Aaron Kimberly and Aaron Terrell
- Heterodorx with Nina Paley and Corinna Cohn
- The Spark with Helen Lewis
Additional appearances include:
- The Dissenter with Ricardo Lopez
- ManTalks with Connor Beaton
- Richard Reeves Show with Richard Reeves
- Mindpump
- Standard Issue
- Deseret News
- Converging Dialogues,
- Sex and Psychology,
- The Same Drugs
- Andy Rowe Show with Andy Rowe
- Sigma Nutrition
- Converging Dialogues
- Rewired Soul
- Keep Talking with Dan Riley
- Art of Manliness
- Harvard Museums of Science and Culture
- Minding the Brain
- Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea
- Session with Tom Swarbrick
- Reason with Science
Her 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
Byrne, Alex (November 1, 2018). Is Sex Binary? Arc Digital https://medium.com/arc-digital/is-sex-binary-16bec97d161e
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)