Gender differences become taboo 

Peggy Sastre and Leonardo Orlando denounce the academic and media omerta that today surrounds the differences between men and women. Drawing on decades of scientific research, they call for a return to fact-based debate.

«Biology and Darwin's theory of evolution have become taboo subjects in universities, institutions and the media as soon as it comes to discussing the differences between men and women.» From the introduction of Sexe, science et censure. Les vérités taboues de la guerre du genre («Sex, science and censorship. The taboo truths of the gender war»), published in October, Peggy Sastre, a journalist with the Point and a doctorate in the philosophy of science, and Leonardo Orlando, a doctorate in political science and a master's degree in philosophy, set the tone for the 300 accessible and fascinating pages they set out to break the omerta. 

Without a doubt, this is a landmark book, as it provides an excellent summary of the undeniable sexual differences established by science over the decades in terms of hormones, the brain, psychology and behavior. You'll learn why girls tend to prefer dolls to trucks, why chess champions are almost exclusively male, or why women are more jealous of sentimental than sexual infidelities, and men the opposite.

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One of the most important points to emerge from the research is that the same average statistical asymmetries between men and women occur in all eras and societies. However, as the two authors argue, these results should not lead us to think of ourselves as slaves to our evolutionary past, and thus to deny individual freedom or the importance of the cultural factor in explaining our thoughts and actions. By making us more lucid about ourselves, more aware of our inclinations, this understanding of human nature enables us to play it better. Without this data, medicine is also less suitable. In short, the study of inequalities between men and women serves their equal opportunities. 

«An intellectual fraud».» 

So why the silence? The main reason, argue the authors, «is that contemporary academia has sacrificed reality and science on the altar of ideology. Entire disciplines of the social sciences have become an intellectual fraud: mere militant enterprises dedicated to promoting a belief system that denies the natural sciences.» 

This was already the analysis of biologist Robert Trivers in 1976, as Peggy Sastre and Leonardo Orlando point out. Things have got worse since then. With the rise of «gender studies» and other «all-culture» approaches, contemptuous critics of biology and evolutionary theory have multiplied and acquired academic credibility by quoting each other. Meanwhile, other researchers remained silent in the face of this obscurantist vision, out of social comfort, or even put water in their wine. 

Thus, write the authors, «recent publications on the biological causes of behavioral differences between men and women offer a striking contrast with the work published in 1970 and 1980. Back then, these publications were clear and assertive, drawing all the scientific conclusions from the data, without fear of offending sensitivities. Today's academic literature, despite the monumental mass of data accumulated over the decades and unavailable at the time, is far more cautious in the way it presents this research.» 

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Peggy Sastre and Leonardo Orlando remind us of an essential requirement: no serious statement should contradict rigorous empirical and theoretical research. It's one thing to assert that science doesn't tell the whole story of the world; it's quite another to want to discredit what she says. 

Moreover, these taboos on evolutionary psychology or biology are all the more absurd in that they are held by adherents of the so-called «social sciences» – disciplines whose validation criteria are far less clear than those of the more «hard» sciences they tackle. Jealousy explains many strange cases in this world. Could this be one of them? 

Philosopher by training and journalist by profession, Jonas Follonier is the editor-in-chief of Regard Libre. Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com.

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Peggy Sastre and Leonardo Orlando
Sexe, science et censure. Les vérités taboues de la guerre du genre («Sex, science and censorship. The taboo truths of the gender war»)
Editions de l'Observatoire
October 2025
300 pages

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