The abrupt “No” drew guffaws of laughter from the audience at the University of Pittsburgh. Professor Gabby Yearwood, an anthropologist, was responding to a question posed by one Riley Gaines, a former female collegiate swimmer and outspoken defender of the sex binary. Gaines asked, “If you were to dig up a human – two humans – a hundred years from now, both a man and a woman, could you tell the difference strictly off of bones?”
It is unclear when the video was shot, but the tweet that sent it viral has now been viewed more than 1.4 million times. A variety of commentators have chimed in, many of them challenging Yearwood for the refusal to acknowledge biological sex differences and a lack of nuance. Some criticised the academic for making claims of credentialism to silence opposition. At one point during the video, the lecturer in the Department of Anthropology declared, “I have a PhD!”
Read more: Woke to the Bones? Pittsburgh Prof Denies Differences Between Male and Female Skeletons
