Debra Soh holds a PhD from York University in Toronto. Her webpage says that she is “a neuroscientist who specializes in gender, sex, and sexual orientation.” In her new book, The End of Gender, she explains that she has left academic life and moved to science journalism. She has been active, working as a columnist and “resident sex scientist” for Playboy.com, and she has written for many newspapers and magazines, including The Globe and Mail and Scientific American. 

Soh has defended views that have been controversial, which isn’t surprising since she writes about gender differences, transgender issues, and sexually unusual behavior. She describes herself as a liberal, but her Twitter feed also describes her book as “anti-woke.” She argues that those on the left have become science deniers when it comes to sex, gender and sexuality. One of the people Soh thanks in her acknowledgements is Glenn Beck, the right wing commentator and conspiracy theorist. 

Soh’s writing style feels rooted in social media. She has clearly thought about the issues for a long time, but she writes frequently in generalities, and does not refer to specifics. There are many pages of footnotes to scientific literature, but often her opponents are not referred to by name. One often gets the impression that the book is a condensation of debates Soh has had on Twitter. Of course, a popular work is not meant to be scholarly, and it is difficult to maintain a balance between readability and rigor, but this work feels a bit rushed. 

Soh’s general position on the science of sex, gender and sexuality is fairly straightforward. It is that true science is independent of any political view, and that it has determined truths that she shares with her readers. She argues that the demands of political correctness have meant that many researchers are unwilling to risk their careers by doing research or defending views in public that could get them into trouble. Having moved out of academic life, Soh is not subject to the same career worries. Indeed, her career may be advanced by getting into fights on social media. The endorsements she has for her book are from figures more on the right, those labels may not be so useful when used for thinkers such as Steven Pinker. 

In her article “Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender,” for the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy, Mari Mikkola explains that the distinction between sex and gender was emphasized by feminists precisely to emphasize that biology is not destiny and that women do not be restricted to their own realm, denied the opportunities that men have. Soh defends a position that could be described as both feminist and also biological determinist. She argues that there are 2 sexes, male and female, and that the central psychological differences between men and women are fundamentally innate biological traits. Soh denies that gender is “socially constructed,” a phrase whose meaning is often unclear. Here “social construction” seems to mean that it is a product of childhood experience and conditioning. She says that gender is a product of biological determinism, but as the title of her book suggests, she might equally say that there is no real distinction between sex and gender. She does not want to do away with gender talk and she wants to make sense of it, and she wants to correct what she sees as confusions in recent trends around gender talk.

Soh’s main idea is that gender is a binary. But she does not mean that everyone is either 100% male or 100% female. She is ready to accept that people can have some mixture of male and female, even if the distribution of traits is bimodal. She is not saying that all men are the same or that all women are the same, but she is saying that we don’t need to invoke any other genders other than male and female. These differences are neurological, she argues. 

This is certainly not particularly friendly to many recent trends in society with a multiplication of gender identities. But Soh is not saying that men need to be men and women need to be women: she is entirely sympathetic to anyone who wants to break out of traditional gender roles. What she is against is the claim that questioning gender roles means we have to question biology. Most people are male or female, and a small percentage are intersex. So Soh’s position is a fairly standard liberal one that people should have the freedom to do whatever they like without judgment, but she is sceptical about any talk about the social construction of gender, since it goes against her understanding of what the science says.

Often when reading The End of Gender, one gets the sense that Soh is spoiling for a fight. She is highly suspicious of non-scientists and scientists she disagrees with. She sticks with her own meaning of gender and seems somewhat oblivious about how contested a term it is. It may be that some meanings of gender or gender identity do not conflict with the neuroscience that Soh holds so dear. In the article by Mikkola referred to above, there is a good deal of discussion of different approaches to gender and their relation to science, and it gets complicated. Maybe it is possible to generate a concept of gender that is a free floating one not reducible to character traits. At one point Soh does write, “The way that nonbinary people describe their gender is as though it is a mythical creature.” But maybe gender is a sort of creation. Why should we automatically declare that to be an illegitimate form of self-conception because it can’t be reduced to biology? To be fair, Soh is not (very) judgmental about this. She writes, “I see nothing wrong with letting young people experiment with their identity by adopting these labels” (i.e. non-binary gender labels). Nevertheless, she does make clear that she sees it as something that people should grow out of, and that the law should not take too seriously. 

That raises issues of public policy: if Soh is right about the science, what does that mean for rules that relate to sex and gender? Her assumption is that we should stick to biological conceptions of sex in the law and public policy. But that needs argument. Soh’s expertise is in neuroscience, not public policy. She may have something useful to say when it comes to the assumptions about biology in public policy, but many categories we use, including race and ethnicity, are not reducible to biology. 

Previously, I asked what it would mean if Soh is right about the science. But there is a prior question, whether she is right. I’m not a biologist or a neuroscientist, and I don’t have a complete grip of the current scientific literature. I am familiar with debates in psychiatry and the psychological sciences more generally. One finds that there is often a great deal of debate about fairly basic findings. Soh gives the impression that she is in a “real” science and is dismissive of areas like “Sexuality Studies.” Who knows? Maybe she is right, but it isn’t clear from the outside that she has better science than her opponents. While she likes to insist that science is just science and is free of points of view and politics, that seems naive. Maybe the “scientific truth” is politically neutral in that way, the actual science produced by humans is very much subject to all sorts of bias and is motivated by various goals. It is clear that there are very few hard facts in the psychological sciences: all results are subject to interpretation and dispute. Soh seems to think that because she is in neuroscience she is immune from the problems of fads and fashions in science. The history of theories in psychiatry show that there’s no more reason to think that neuroscience has a direct link to  the truth than behaviorism or consciousness-studies. Some theories are better established than others, and it is helpful to get a sense of which theories and claims are more controversial than others. Unfortunately, Soh seems to just assume that she knows the truth because she is a scientist, and other scientists with different views must be mistaken. So she does not provide much sense of perspective. She just sets out a point of view that has some scientific backing. We might well look to Cordelia Fine’s excellent book Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (2011) as an antidote to the strong claims made by Soh. 

Similar comments to Soh’s discussion of transgender issues. She is clear that sex is binary and she accepts that for some people with gender dysphoria, their gender does not match their sex. Soh is liberal in her approach, certainly to the extent that she believes people should be called by whatever name they want, and should be free to dress as they want. However, there are limits to how much freedom she endorses. She is clear that biological sex is not changeable and it is a primary category. She is willing to countenance that the brains of trans people could be different from the brains of others, and showing some characteristics of the gender they identify with, but she says that does not change one’s biological sex. 

Soh is highly critical of a lot of treatment by the medical profession of young people who exhibit gender dysphoria. She argues that the treatment can be harmful and a lot of the youngsters will grow out of their dysphoria if given the chance. She argues that much of the treatment of children who are treated by gender disorder clinics is medical malpractice. 

She also argues that a proportion of biological males who identify as female have a very different condition related to sexuality. To put it simplistically, they are aroused by the identification. This theory has been proposed and defended by Ray Blanchard, who gives the condition the name autogynephilia. Naturally, this is a theory that has attracted a good deal of criticism from some trans advocates. A quick internet search will reveal many different opinions about the proposal. The theory has been published in peer reviewed journals and is accepted by some in the sexology field. Again, the question is which scientists should people who are outside the field believe?

Much of The End of Gender is about the political pressures that scientists face in publishing work that does not fit with current ideas set out by trans advocacy and other “politically correct” groups. Soh argues that it is very difficult to get funding for unpopular work and scientists who make political mistakes will be ostracized by their communities. This is part of a wider debate about cancel culture, and while her discussion is mostly anecdotal, it is extremely concerning. 

Soh’s book is a mixed bag, then. It is didactic in places, but it also sets out a good deal of scientific information. Her claims about the scientific superiority of sexology are a bit hard to swallow, given the track record of the field, but it is still worth taking seriously and waiting for results to be corroborated, refined or falsified in the long term. If one is interested in the science and politics of sexuality, The End of Gender has a good deal of material for contemplation. While Soh is deliberately provocative, she raises important questions. 

Christian Perring is editor of Metapsychology. He lives in Suffolk County of Long Island, NY. He is Full Adjunct Professor at St John’s University, Vice President of AAPP and is an APPA Certified Philosophical Counselor.