“When scientific theory says something’s wrong with so many people, perhaps the theory is wrong, not the people.”

Joan was born in 1946 in New Jersey. She received her bachelor’s in biology and philosophy from the University of Rochester in 1968, and a PhD from Harvard in biology from Harvard in 1971. She worked as a professor at UMass Boston until 1972, where she then went to Stanford as a full professor. Her work helped develop competition theory, including helping to synthesize contrasting effects seen in barnacle populations. In 1998, Joan came out as transgender on her 52^nd birthday. Around this time, she analyzed how biology can influence human sexuality and gender identity, noting species that differ from sexual selection theory. She offered a social selection theory, arguing that offspring survival through variable traits determines survival of the species. This was published in a Science paper that received heavy criticism, and still remains a controversial topic in biological research.