Gender, Science, and Justice (feat. Dr. Troy Reopke)

Gender, Science, and Justice (feat. Dr. Troy Reopke)

What can we learn from those who have battled addiction to rigid ideas about sex and gender? This episode of Lobes and Robes brings together neuroscience, endocrinology, and law to unpack how scientific language shapes real people’s lives, especially trans people and cis women. Professor Colin Saldania and Dr. Gustavo Ribeiro chat with Dr. Troy Roepke from Rutgers University, whose research on hormones and the brain sits alongside decades of lived experience as an openly queer scientist. Dr.

Roepke explains how terms like “biological sex” and binary categories of male and female have been baked into science and then picked up by lawmakers in ways that harm people. As they put it bluntly, “Queer people are not a model for hormone work, like for endocrinology.

If you're going to do the work, do it to our benefit.” You’ll hear a clear breakdown of gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT), including puberty blockers, estradiol, and testosterone, and what current studies suggest about their effects on brain structure and mood. Dr. Roepke stresses that GAHT has been used for decades and is often “mental health medicine for a lot of people,” linking body changes to reductions in depression and suicidal thoughts.

The conversation also tackles sex as a biological variable (SABV), why so much historical research excluded females, and how that bias led to unsafe dosing in drugs like Ambien. Dr. Roepke argues that treating sex as a simple binary creates “a lack of precision” in science and worse health outcomes for everyone.

For anyone interested in fair healthcare, evidence-based policy, or how bias in research ripples into justice systems, this is a sharp, accessible listen that keeps circling back to one core issue: if science has the nuance, why isn’t that nuance reaching the people making the rules? And what happens to vulnerable communities until it does?