1 00:00:00,658 --> 00:00:05,320 I want you to imagine two couples in the middle of 1979 2 00:00:05,344 --> 00:00:08,613 on the exact same day, at the exact same moment, 3 00:00:08,637 --> 00:00:10,919 each conceiving a baby, OK? 4 00:00:10,943 --> 00:00:13,197 So two couples each conceiving one baby. 5 00:00:13,221 --> 00:00:16,487 Now I don't want you to spend too much time imagining the conception, 6 00:00:16,511 --> 00:00:19,367 because if you do, you're not going to listen to me, 7 00:00:19,391 --> 00:00:21,202 so just imagine that for a moment. 8 00:00:21,226 --> 00:00:25,400 And in this scenario, I want to imagine that, in one case, 9 00:00:25,424 --> 00:00:27,592 the sperm is carrying a Y chromosome, 10 00:00:27,616 --> 00:00:29,647 meeting that X chromosome of the egg. 11 00:00:29,671 --> 00:00:32,843 And in the other case, the sperm is carrying an X chromosome, 12 00:00:32,867 --> 00:00:35,134 meeting the X chromosome of the egg. 13 00:00:35,158 --> 00:00:37,209 Both are viable; both take off. 14 00:00:37,747 --> 00:00:39,795 We'll come back to these people later. 15 00:00:39,819 --> 00:00:43,222 So I wear two hats in most of what I do. 16 00:00:43,874 --> 00:00:47,073 As the one hat, I do history of anatomy. 17 00:00:47,097 --> 00:00:50,976 I'm a historian by training, and what I study in that case 18 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:53,586 is the way that people have dealt with anatomy -- 19 00:00:53,610 --> 00:00:56,240 meaning human bodies, animal bodies -- 20 00:00:56,264 --> 00:00:58,976 how they dealt with bodily fluids, concepts of bodies; 21 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:00,976 how have they thought about bodies. 22 00:01:01,733 --> 00:01:05,689 The other hat that I've worn in my work is as an activist, 23 00:01:05,713 --> 00:01:07,569 as a patient advocate -- 24 00:01:07,593 --> 00:01:09,976 or, as I sometimes say, as an impatient advocate -- 25 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:12,237 for people who are patients of doctors. 26 00:01:12,261 --> 00:01:15,976 In that case, what I've worked with is people who have body types 27 00:01:16,000 --> 00:01:17,915 that challenge social norms. 28 00:01:17,939 --> 00:01:20,096 So some of what I've worked on, for example, 29 00:01:20,120 --> 00:01:22,167 is people who are conjoined twins -- 30 00:01:22,191 --> 00:01:23,694 two people within one body. 31 00:01:24,240 --> 00:01:26,960 Some of what I've worked on is people who have dwarfism -- 32 00:01:26,984 --> 00:01:29,268 so people who are much shorter than typical. 33 00:01:29,292 --> 00:01:33,314 And a lot of what I've worked on is people who have atypical sex -- 34 00:01:33,338 --> 00:01:37,366 so people who don't have the standard male or the standard female body types. 35 00:01:37,390 --> 00:01:40,976 And as a general term, we can use the term "intersex" for this. 36 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:43,538 Intersex comes in a lot of different forms. 37 00:01:43,562 --> 00:01:46,976 I'll just give you a few examples of the types of ways you can have sex 38 00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:49,333 that isn't standard for male or female. 39 00:01:49,357 --> 00:01:50,976 So in one instance, 40 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:54,436 you can have somebody who has an XY chromosomal basis, 41 00:01:54,460 --> 00:01:56,976 and that SRY gene on the Y chromosome 42 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:00,404 tells the proto-gonads, which we all have in the fetal life, 43 00:02:00,428 --> 00:02:01,612 to become testes. 44 00:02:01,636 --> 00:02:04,758 So in the fetal life, those testes are pumping out testosterone. 45 00:02:04,782 --> 00:02:09,965 But because this individual lacks receptors to hear that testosterone, 46 00:02:09,989 --> 00:02:12,069 the body doesn't react to the testosterone. 47 00:02:12,093 --> 00:02:15,153 And this is a syndrome called androgen insensitivity syndrome. 48 00:02:15,692 --> 00:02:18,554 So lots of levels of testosterone, but no reaction to it. 49 00:02:18,578 --> 00:02:22,480 As a consequence, the body develops more along the female typical path. 50 00:02:22,504 --> 00:02:24,782 When the child is born, she looks like a girl. 51 00:02:24,806 --> 00:02:27,904 She is a girl, she is raised as a girl. 52 00:02:27,928 --> 00:02:32,474 And it's often not until she hits puberty and she's growing and developing breasts, 53 00:02:32,498 --> 00:02:34,077 but she's not getting her period, 54 00:02:34,101 --> 00:02:36,265 that somebody figures out something's up here. 55 00:02:36,289 --> 00:02:38,058 And they do some tests and figure out 56 00:02:38,082 --> 00:02:40,559 that, instead of having ovaries inside and a uterus, 57 00:02:40,583 --> 00:02:43,029 she has testes inside, and she has a Y chromosome. 58 00:02:43,053 --> 00:02:44,744 Now what's important to understand 59 00:02:44,768 --> 00:02:47,256 is you may think of this person as really being male, 60 00:02:47,280 --> 00:02:48,508 but they're really not. 61 00:02:48,532 --> 00:02:50,596 Females, like males, 62 00:02:50,620 --> 00:02:53,275 have in our bodies something called the adrenal glands. 63 00:02:53,299 --> 00:02:54,856 They're in the back of our body. 64 00:02:54,880 --> 00:02:58,310 And the adrenal glands make androgens, which are a masculinizing hormone. 65 00:02:58,334 --> 00:03:01,435 Most females like me -- I believe myself to be a typical female -- 66 00:03:01,459 --> 00:03:03,618 I don't actually know my chromosomal make-up, 67 00:03:03,642 --> 00:03:05,327 but I think I'm probably typical -- 68 00:03:05,351 --> 00:03:07,833 most females like me are actually androgen-sensitive. 69 00:03:07,857 --> 00:03:10,578 We're making androgen, and we're responding to androgens. 70 00:03:10,602 --> 00:03:12,691 The consequence is that somebody like me 71 00:03:12,715 --> 00:03:15,734 has actually had a brain exposed to more androgens 72 00:03:15,758 --> 00:03:19,140 than the woman born with testes who has androgen insensitivity syndrome. 73 00:03:19,164 --> 00:03:20,686 So sex is really complicated -- 74 00:03:20,710 --> 00:03:22,354 it's not just that intersex people 75 00:03:22,378 --> 00:03:24,455 are in the middle of all the sex spectrum -- 76 00:03:24,479 --> 00:03:26,576 in some ways, they can be all over the place. 77 00:03:26,600 --> 00:03:27,758 Another example: 78 00:03:27,782 --> 00:03:30,687 a few years ago I got a call from a man who was 19 years old, 79 00:03:30,711 --> 00:03:32,574 who was born a boy, raised a boy, 80 00:03:32,598 --> 00:03:35,183 had a girlfriend, had sex with his girlfriend, 81 00:03:35,207 --> 00:03:36,879 had a life as a guy, 82 00:03:36,903 --> 00:03:40,000 and had just found out that he had ovaries and a uterus inside. 83 00:03:40,529 --> 00:03:42,281 What he had was an extreme form 84 00:03:42,305 --> 00:03:44,986 of a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia. 85 00:03:45,010 --> 00:03:46,936 He had XX chromosomes, 86 00:03:46,960 --> 00:03:50,699 and in the womb, his adrenal glands were in such high gear 87 00:03:50,723 --> 00:03:54,341 that it created, essentially, a masculine hormonal environment. 88 00:03:54,365 --> 00:03:56,903 And as a consequence, his genitals were masculinized, 89 00:03:56,927 --> 00:04:00,439 his brain was subject to the more typical masculine component of hormones. 90 00:04:00,463 --> 00:04:03,700 And he was born looking like a boy -- nobody suspected anything. 91 00:04:03,724 --> 00:04:06,435 And it was only when he had reached the age of 19 92 00:04:06,459 --> 00:04:10,050 that he began to have enough medical problems from menstruating internally, 93 00:04:10,074 --> 00:04:13,446 that doctors figured out that, in fact, he was female, internally. 94 00:04:13,934 --> 00:04:17,468 OK, so just one more quick example of a way you can have intersex. 95 00:04:17,492 --> 00:04:21,371 Some people who have XX chromosomes develop what are called ovotestis, 96 00:04:21,395 --> 00:04:25,134 which is when you have ovarian tissue with testicular tissue wrapped around it. 97 00:04:25,158 --> 00:04:27,284 And we're not exactly sure why that happens. 98 00:04:27,308 --> 00:04:30,131 So sex can come in lots of different varieties. 99 00:04:30,155 --> 00:04:35,002 The reason that children with these kinds of bodies -- 100 00:04:35,026 --> 00:04:37,793 whether it's dwarfism, or it's conjoined twinning, 101 00:04:37,817 --> 00:04:39,143 or it's an intersex type -- 102 00:04:39,167 --> 00:04:41,548 are often "normalized" by surgeons 103 00:04:41,572 --> 00:04:45,612 is not because it actually leaves them better off in terms of physical health. 104 00:04:45,636 --> 00:04:48,618 In many cases, people are actually perfectly healthy. 105 00:04:48,642 --> 00:04:51,684 The reason they're often subject to various kinds of surgeries 106 00:04:51,708 --> 00:04:54,529 is because they threaten our social categories. 107 00:04:54,553 --> 00:04:57,322 Our system has been based typically on the idea 108 00:04:57,346 --> 00:05:00,676 that a particular kind of anatomy comes with a particular identity. 109 00:05:00,700 --> 00:05:03,303 So we have the concept that what it means to be a woman 110 00:05:03,327 --> 00:05:04,719 is to have a female identity; 111 00:05:04,743 --> 00:05:08,976 what it means to be a black person is, allegedly, to have an African anatomy 112 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:10,559 in terms of your history. 113 00:05:11,117 --> 00:05:14,896 And so we have this terribly simplistic idea. 114 00:05:14,920 --> 00:05:16,553 And when we're faced with a body 115 00:05:16,577 --> 00:05:19,511 that actually presents us something quite different, 116 00:05:19,535 --> 00:05:22,329 it startles us in terms of those categorizations. 117 00:05:22,353 --> 00:05:26,294 So we have a lot of very romantic ideas in our culture about individualism. 118 00:05:26,318 --> 00:05:29,959 And our nation's really founded on a very romantic concept of individualism. 119 00:05:29,983 --> 00:05:31,888 You can imagine how startling then it is 120 00:05:31,912 --> 00:05:35,742 when you have children who are born who are two people inside of one body. 121 00:05:36,271 --> 00:05:40,274 Where I ran into the most heat from this most recently 122 00:05:40,298 --> 00:05:43,169 was last year when South African runner, Caster Semenya, 123 00:05:43,193 --> 00:05:46,748 had her sex called into question at the International Games in Berlin. 124 00:05:46,772 --> 00:05:49,596 I had a lot of journalists calling me, asking me, 125 00:05:49,620 --> 00:05:51,494 "Which is the test they're going to run 126 00:05:51,518 --> 00:05:54,976 that will tell us whether or not Caster Semenya is male or female?" 127 00:05:55,000 --> 00:05:58,293 And I had to explain to the journalists there isn't such a test. 128 00:05:58,317 --> 00:06:02,168 In fact, we now know that sex is complicated enough 129 00:06:02,192 --> 00:06:03,926 that we have to admit: 130 00:06:03,950 --> 00:06:07,639 Nature doesn't draw the line for us between male and female, 131 00:06:07,663 --> 00:06:10,572 or between male and intersex and female and intersex; 132 00:06:10,596 --> 00:06:12,671 we actually draw that line on nature. 133 00:06:13,192 --> 00:06:17,859 So what we have is a sort of situation where the farther our science goes, 134 00:06:17,883 --> 00:06:20,819 the more we have to admit to ourselves that these categories 135 00:06:20,843 --> 00:06:23,530 that we thought of as stable anatomical categories, 136 00:06:23,554 --> 00:06:27,221 that mapped very simply to stable identity categories 137 00:06:27,245 --> 00:06:29,380 are a lot more fuzzy than we thought. 138 00:06:29,404 --> 00:06:31,357 And it's not just in terms of sex. 139 00:06:31,381 --> 00:06:32,976 It's also in terms of race, 140 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:35,416 which turns out to be vastly more complicated 141 00:06:35,440 --> 00:06:37,532 than our terminology has allowed. 142 00:06:37,556 --> 00:06:40,648 As we look, we get into all sorts of uncomfortable areas. 143 00:06:40,672 --> 00:06:42,501 We look, for example, about the fact 144 00:06:42,525 --> 00:06:46,837 that we share at least 95 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees. 145 00:06:46,861 --> 00:06:48,561 What are we to make of the fact 146 00:06:48,585 --> 00:06:52,052 that we differ from them only, really, by a few nucleotides? 147 00:06:52,076 --> 00:06:54,519 And as we get farther and farther with our science, 148 00:06:54,543 --> 00:06:56,732 we get more and more into a discomforted zone, 149 00:06:56,756 --> 00:07:00,041 where we have to acknowledge that the simplistic categories we've had 150 00:07:00,065 --> 00:07:02,163 are probably overly simplistic. 151 00:07:02,663 --> 00:07:06,274 So we're seeing this in all sorts of places in human life. 152 00:07:06,298 --> 00:07:08,503 One of the places we're seeing it, for example, 153 00:07:08,527 --> 00:07:10,541 in our culture, in the United States today, 154 00:07:10,565 --> 00:07:13,344 is battles over the beginning of life and the end of life. 155 00:07:13,368 --> 00:07:14,976 We have difficult conversations 156 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:18,139 about at what point we decide a body becomes a human, 157 00:07:18,163 --> 00:07:21,128 such that it has a different right than a fetal life. 158 00:07:21,152 --> 00:07:23,676 We have very difficult conversations nowadays -- 159 00:07:23,700 --> 00:07:26,449 probably not out in the open as much as within medicine -- 160 00:07:26,473 --> 00:07:28,722 about the question of when somebody's dead. 161 00:07:28,746 --> 00:07:31,373 In the past, our ancestors never had to struggle so much 162 00:07:31,397 --> 00:07:33,499 with this question of when somebody was dead. 163 00:07:33,523 --> 00:07:35,915 At most, they'd stick a feather on somebody's nose, 164 00:07:35,939 --> 00:07:38,083 and if it twitched, they didn't bury them yet. 165 00:07:38,107 --> 00:07:39,966 If it stopped twitching, you bury them. 166 00:07:39,990 --> 00:07:41,426 But today, we have a situation 167 00:07:41,450 --> 00:07:43,761 where we want to take vital organs out of beings 168 00:07:43,785 --> 00:07:45,369 and give them to other beings. 169 00:07:45,393 --> 00:07:46,852 And as a consequence, 170 00:07:46,876 --> 00:07:49,480 we have to struggle with this really difficult question 171 00:07:49,504 --> 00:07:51,139 about who's dead, 172 00:07:51,163 --> 00:07:53,508 and this leads us to a really difficult situation 173 00:07:53,532 --> 00:07:56,508 where we don't have such simple categories as we've had before. 174 00:07:56,532 --> 00:07:59,643 Now you might think that all this breaking-down of categories 175 00:07:59,667 --> 00:08:01,653 would make somebody like me really happy. 176 00:08:01,677 --> 00:08:04,729 I'm a political progressive, I defend people with unusual bodies, 177 00:08:04,753 --> 00:08:07,188 but I have to admit to you that it makes me nervous. 178 00:08:07,212 --> 00:08:08,902 Understanding that these categories 179 00:08:08,926 --> 00:08:12,019 are really much more unstable than we thought makes me tense. 180 00:08:12,043 --> 00:08:15,296 It makes me tense from the point of view of thinking about democracy. 181 00:08:15,320 --> 00:08:17,476 So in order to tell you about that tension, 182 00:08:17,500 --> 00:08:20,617 I have to first admit to you a huge fan of the Founding Fathers. 183 00:08:20,641 --> 00:08:23,250 I know they were racists, I know they were sexist, 184 00:08:23,274 --> 00:08:24,447 but they were great. 185 00:08:24,471 --> 00:08:29,585 I mean, they were so brave and so bold and so radical in what they did, 186 00:08:29,609 --> 00:08:34,079 that I find myself watching that cheesy musical "1776" every few years, 187 00:08:34,103 --> 00:08:37,107 and it's not because of the music, which is totally forgettable. 188 00:08:37,131 --> 00:08:40,469 It's because of what happened in 1776 with the Founding Fathers. 189 00:08:40,493 --> 00:08:42,767 The Founding Fathers were, for my point of view, 190 00:08:42,791 --> 00:08:44,843 the original anatomical activists, 191 00:08:44,867 --> 00:08:46,472 and this is why. 192 00:08:46,496 --> 00:08:49,771 What they rejected was an anatomical concept 193 00:08:49,795 --> 00:08:51,331 and replaced it with another one 194 00:08:51,355 --> 00:08:54,684 that was radical and beautiful and held us for 200 years. 195 00:08:54,708 --> 00:08:56,430 So as you all recall, 196 00:08:56,454 --> 00:08:59,858 what our Founding Fathers were rejecting was a concept of monarchy, 197 00:08:59,882 --> 00:09:03,520 and the monarchy was basically based on a very simplistic concept of anatomy. 198 00:09:03,544 --> 00:09:07,183 The monarchs of the old world didn't have a concept of DNA, 199 00:09:07,207 --> 00:09:09,340 but they did have a concept of birthright. 200 00:09:09,364 --> 00:09:11,036 They had a concept of blue blood. 201 00:09:11,060 --> 00:09:14,243 They had the idea that the people who would be in political power 202 00:09:14,267 --> 00:09:17,444 should be in political power because of the blood being passed down 203 00:09:17,468 --> 00:09:21,142 from grandfather to father to son and so forth. 204 00:09:21,794 --> 00:09:24,162 The Founding Fathers rejected that idea, 205 00:09:24,186 --> 00:09:26,837 and they replaced it with a new anatomical concept, 206 00:09:26,861 --> 00:09:30,694 and that concept was "all men are created equal." 207 00:09:30,718 --> 00:09:34,081 They leveled that playing field and decided the anatomy that mattered 208 00:09:34,105 --> 00:09:38,519 was the commonality of anatomy, not the difference in anatomy, 209 00:09:38,543 --> 00:09:41,087 and that was a really radical thing to do. 210 00:09:41,560 --> 00:09:43,012 Now they were doing it in part 211 00:09:43,036 --> 00:09:45,328 because they were part of an Enlightenment system 212 00:09:45,352 --> 00:09:47,361 where two things were growing up together. 213 00:09:47,385 --> 00:09:49,653 And that was democracy growing up, 214 00:09:49,677 --> 00:09:52,742 but it was also science growing up at the same time. 215 00:09:52,766 --> 00:09:56,245 And it's really clear, if you look at the history of the Founding Fathers, 216 00:09:56,269 --> 00:09:58,555 a lot of them were very interested in science, 217 00:09:58,579 --> 00:10:01,607 and they were interested in the concept of a naturalistic world. 218 00:10:01,631 --> 00:10:04,117 They were moving away from supernatural explanations, 219 00:10:04,141 --> 00:10:07,378 and they were rejecting things like a supernatural concept of power, 220 00:10:07,402 --> 00:10:11,457 where it transmitted because of a very vague concept of birthright. 221 00:10:11,481 --> 00:10:13,763 They were moving towards a naturalistic concept. 222 00:10:13,787 --> 00:10:16,842 And if you look, for example, in the Declaration of Independence, 223 00:10:16,866 --> 00:10:19,572 they talk about nature and nature's God. 224 00:10:19,596 --> 00:10:21,785 They don't talk about God and God's nature. 225 00:10:21,809 --> 00:10:25,712 They're talking about the power of nature to tell us who we are. 226 00:10:25,736 --> 00:10:28,976 So as part of that, they were coming to us with a concept 227 00:10:29,000 --> 00:10:31,710 that was about anatomical commonality. 228 00:10:31,734 --> 00:10:34,863 And in doing so, they were really setting up in a beautiful way 229 00:10:34,887 --> 00:10:36,800 the Civil Rights Movement of the future. 230 00:10:36,824 --> 00:10:40,365 They didn't think of it that way, but they did it for us, and it was great. 231 00:10:40,389 --> 00:10:42,032 So what happened years afterwards? 232 00:10:42,056 --> 00:10:45,498 What happened was women, for example, who wanted the right to vote, 233 00:10:45,522 --> 00:10:48,884 took the Founding Fathers' concept of anatomical commonality 234 00:10:48,908 --> 00:10:51,115 being more important than anatomical difference 235 00:10:51,139 --> 00:10:53,673 and said, "The fact that we have a uterus and ovaries 236 00:10:53,697 --> 00:10:56,460 is not significant enough in terms of a difference 237 00:10:56,484 --> 00:10:58,773 to mean that we shouldn't have the right to vote, 238 00:10:58,797 --> 00:11:02,479 the right to full citizenship, the right to own property, etc." 239 00:11:02,503 --> 00:11:04,555 And women successfully argued that. 240 00:11:04,579 --> 00:11:06,976 Next came the successful Civil Rights Movement, 241 00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:09,119 where we found people like Sojourner Truth 242 00:11:09,143 --> 00:11:11,412 talking about, "Ain't I a woman?" 243 00:11:11,436 --> 00:11:15,381 We find men on the marching lines of the Civil Rights Movement 244 00:11:15,405 --> 00:11:16,755 saying, "I am a man." 245 00:11:16,779 --> 00:11:21,176 Again, people of color appealing to a commonality of anatomy 246 00:11:21,200 --> 00:11:23,890 over a difference of anatomy, again, successfully. 247 00:11:23,914 --> 00:11:26,951 We see the same thing with the disability rights movement. 248 00:11:27,292 --> 00:11:29,450 The problem is, of course, 249 00:11:29,474 --> 00:11:31,852 that, as we begin to look at all that commonality, 250 00:11:31,876 --> 00:11:35,301 we have to begin to question why we maintain certain divisions. 251 00:11:35,325 --> 00:11:38,054 Mind you, I want to maintain some divisions, 252 00:11:38,078 --> 00:11:39,745 anatomically, in our culture. 253 00:11:39,769 --> 00:11:43,449 For example, I don't want to give a fish the same rights as a human. 254 00:11:43,473 --> 00:11:46,058 I don't want to say we give up entirely on anatomy. 255 00:11:46,082 --> 00:11:47,749 I don't want to say a five-year-old 256 00:11:47,773 --> 00:11:50,404 should be allowed to consent to sex or consent to marry. 257 00:11:50,428 --> 00:11:52,395 So there are some anatomical divisions 258 00:11:52,419 --> 00:11:55,728 that make sense to me and that I think we should retain. 259 00:11:55,752 --> 00:11:58,645 But the challenge is trying to figure out which ones they are 260 00:11:58,669 --> 00:12:01,280 and why do we retain them, and do they have meaning. 261 00:12:01,304 --> 00:12:05,094 So let's go back to those two beings conceived at the beginning of this talk. 262 00:12:05,118 --> 00:12:06,976 We have two beings, both conceived 263 00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:10,491 in the middle of 1979 on the exact same day. 264 00:12:10,515 --> 00:12:14,265 Let's imagine one of them, Mary, is born three months prematurely, 265 00:12:14,289 --> 00:12:16,791 so she's born on June 1, 1980. 266 00:12:16,815 --> 00:12:20,988 Henry, by contrast, is born at term, so he's born on March 1, 1980. 267 00:12:21,586 --> 00:12:23,378 Simply by virtue of the fact 268 00:12:23,402 --> 00:12:25,860 that Mary was born prematurely three months, 269 00:12:25,884 --> 00:12:30,126 she comes into all sorts of rights three months earlier than Henry does -- 270 00:12:30,150 --> 00:12:34,365 the right to consent to sex, the right to vote, the right to drink. 271 00:12:34,389 --> 00:12:36,022 Henry has to wait for all of that, 272 00:12:36,046 --> 00:12:39,060 not because he's actually any different in age, biologically, 273 00:12:39,084 --> 00:12:41,349 except in terms of when he was born. 274 00:12:41,989 --> 00:12:45,149 We find other kinds of weirdness in terms of what their rights are. 275 00:12:45,173 --> 00:12:47,366 Henry, by virtue of being assumed to be male -- 276 00:12:47,390 --> 00:12:49,781 although I haven't told you that he's the XY one -- 277 00:12:49,805 --> 00:12:53,976 by virtue of being assumed to be male is now liable to be drafted, 278 00:12:54,000 --> 00:12:55,940 which Mary does not need to worry about. 279 00:12:55,964 --> 00:12:59,737 Mary, meanwhile, cannot in all the states have the same right 280 00:12:59,761 --> 00:13:01,361 that Henry has in all the states, 281 00:13:01,385 --> 00:13:02,867 namely, the right to marry. 282 00:13:02,891 --> 00:13:05,655 Henry can marry, in every state, a woman, 283 00:13:05,679 --> 00:13:08,687 but Mary can only marry today in a few states, a woman. 284 00:13:09,219 --> 00:13:12,112 So we have these anatomical categories that persist, 285 00:13:12,136 --> 00:13:15,885 that are in many ways problematic and questionable. 286 00:13:15,909 --> 00:13:17,630 And the question to me becomes: 287 00:13:17,654 --> 00:13:23,642 What do we do, as our science gets to be so good in looking at anatomy, 288 00:13:23,666 --> 00:13:26,236 that we reach the point where we have to admit 289 00:13:26,260 --> 00:13:29,137 that a democracy that's been based on anatomy 290 00:13:29,161 --> 00:13:30,593 might start falling apart? 291 00:13:31,880 --> 00:13:34,604 I don't want to give up the science, but at the same time, 292 00:13:34,628 --> 00:13:37,776 it feels sometimes like the science is coming out from under us. 293 00:13:37,800 --> 00:13:38,976 So where do we go? 294 00:13:39,829 --> 00:13:43,910 It seems like what happens in our culture is a sort of pragmatic attitude: 295 00:13:43,934 --> 00:13:47,372 "We have to draw the line somewhere, so we will draw the line somewhere." 296 00:13:47,396 --> 00:13:50,082 But a lot of people get stuck in a very strange position. 297 00:13:50,106 --> 00:13:54,976 So for example, Texas has at one point decided that what it means to marry a man 298 00:13:55,000 --> 00:13:57,395 is to mean that you don't have a Y chromosome, 299 00:13:57,419 --> 00:14:00,489 and what it means to marry a woman means you have a Y chromosome. 300 00:14:00,513 --> 00:14:03,235 In practice they don't test people for their chromosomes. 301 00:14:03,259 --> 00:14:04,742 But this is also very bizarre, 302 00:14:04,766 --> 00:14:07,086 because of the story I told you at the beginning 303 00:14:07,110 --> 00:14:08,920 about androgen insensitivity syndrome. 304 00:14:08,944 --> 00:14:12,476 If we look at one of the Founding Fathers of modern democracy, 305 00:14:12,500 --> 00:14:13,680 Dr. Martin Luther King, 306 00:14:13,704 --> 00:14:16,907 he offers us something of a solution in his "I have a dream" speech. 307 00:14:16,931 --> 00:14:20,198 He says we should judge people "based not on the color of their skin, 308 00:14:20,222 --> 00:14:22,093 but on the content of their character," 309 00:14:22,117 --> 00:14:23,639 moving beyond anatomy. 310 00:14:23,663 --> 00:14:26,642 And I want to say, "Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea." 311 00:14:26,666 --> 00:14:28,322 But in practice, how do you do it? 312 00:14:28,346 --> 00:14:31,296 How do you judge people based on the content of character? 313 00:14:31,833 --> 00:14:32,985 I also want to point out 314 00:14:33,009 --> 00:14:36,820 that I'm not sure that is how we should distribute rights in terms of humans, 315 00:14:36,844 --> 00:14:40,147 because, I have to admit, that there are some golden retrievers I know 316 00:14:40,171 --> 00:14:43,748 that are probably more deserving of social services than some humans I know. 317 00:14:43,772 --> 00:14:47,367 I also want to say there are probably also some yellow Labradors that I know 318 00:14:47,391 --> 00:14:50,414 that are more capable of informed, intelligent, mature decisions 319 00:14:50,438 --> 00:14:53,160 about sexual relations than some 40-year-olds that I know. 320 00:14:53,184 --> 00:14:57,362 So how do we operationalize the question of content of character? 321 00:14:57,386 --> 00:14:59,311 It turns out to be really difficult. 322 00:14:59,335 --> 00:15:00,816 And part of me also wonders, 323 00:15:00,840 --> 00:15:02,712 what if content of character 324 00:15:02,736 --> 00:15:05,976 turns out to be something that's scannable in the future -- 325 00:15:06,721 --> 00:15:09,030 able to be seen with an fMRI? 326 00:15:09,054 --> 00:15:10,665 Do we really want to go there? 327 00:15:11,100 --> 00:15:12,436 I'm not sure where we go. 328 00:15:12,460 --> 00:15:15,011 What I do know is that it seems to be really important 329 00:15:15,035 --> 00:15:17,978 to think about the idea of the United States being in the lead 330 00:15:18,002 --> 00:15:20,006 of thinking about this issue of democracy. 331 00:15:20,030 --> 00:15:22,741 We've done a really good job struggling with democracy, 332 00:15:22,765 --> 00:15:25,099 and I think we would do a good job in the future. 333 00:15:25,123 --> 00:15:27,726 We don't have a situation that Iran has, for example, 334 00:15:27,750 --> 00:15:30,043 where a man who's sexually attracted to other men 335 00:15:30,067 --> 00:15:31,264 is liable to be murdered, 336 00:15:31,288 --> 00:15:33,459 unless he's willing to submit to a sex change, 337 00:15:33,483 --> 00:15:35,370 in which case he's allowed to live. 338 00:15:35,908 --> 00:15:37,699 We don't have that kind of situation. 339 00:15:37,723 --> 00:15:41,022 I'm glad to say we don't have the kind of situation with -- 340 00:15:41,046 --> 00:15:43,029 a surgeon I talked to a few years ago 341 00:15:43,053 --> 00:15:45,489 who had brought over a set of conjoined twins 342 00:15:45,513 --> 00:15:48,424 in order to separate them, partly to make a name for himself. 343 00:15:48,448 --> 00:15:51,898 But when I was on the phone with him, asking why he'll do this surgery -- 344 00:15:51,922 --> 00:15:55,648 this was a very high-risk surgery -- his answer was that, in this other nation, 345 00:15:55,672 --> 00:15:59,305 these children were going to be treated very badly, and so he had to do this. 346 00:15:59,329 --> 00:16:02,481 My response to him was, "Well, have you considered political asylum 347 00:16:02,505 --> 00:16:04,112 instead of a separation surgery?" 348 00:16:04,136 --> 00:16:06,585 The United States has offered tremendous possibility 349 00:16:06,609 --> 00:16:08,976 for allowing people to be the way they are, 350 00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:12,698 without having them have to be changed for the sake of the state. 351 00:16:12,722 --> 00:16:14,900 So I think we have to be in the lead. 352 00:16:14,924 --> 00:16:17,381 Well, just to close, I want to suggest to you 353 00:16:17,405 --> 00:16:19,936 that I've been talking a lot about the Fathers. 354 00:16:19,960 --> 00:16:21,976 And I want to think about the possibilities 355 00:16:22,000 --> 00:16:24,905 of what democracy might look like, or might have looked like, 356 00:16:24,929 --> 00:16:26,802 if we had more involved the mothers. 357 00:16:27,385 --> 00:16:30,423 And I want to say something a little bit radical for a feminist, 358 00:16:30,447 --> 00:16:34,292 and that is that I think that there may be different kinds of insights 359 00:16:34,316 --> 00:16:36,565 that can come from different kinds of anatomies, 360 00:16:36,589 --> 00:16:39,211 particularly when we have people thinking in groups. 361 00:16:39,235 --> 00:16:41,742 For years, because I've been interested in intersex, 362 00:16:41,766 --> 00:16:44,243 I've also been interested in sex-difference research. 363 00:16:44,267 --> 00:16:46,620 And one of the things that I've been interested in 364 00:16:46,644 --> 00:16:49,246 is looking at the differences between males and females 365 00:16:49,270 --> 00:16:51,909 in terms of the way they think and operate in the world. 366 00:16:51,933 --> 00:16:54,006 And what we know from cross-cultural studies 367 00:16:54,030 --> 00:16:55,870 is that females, on average -- 368 00:16:55,894 --> 00:16:57,976 not everyone, but on average -- 369 00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:02,891 are more inclined to be very attentive to complex social relations 370 00:17:02,915 --> 00:17:04,493 and to taking care of people 371 00:17:04,517 --> 00:17:06,793 who are, basically, vulnerable within the group. 372 00:17:07,519 --> 00:17:09,726 And so if we think about that, 373 00:17:09,750 --> 00:17:11,751 we have an interesting situation in hands. 374 00:17:11,775 --> 00:17:13,741 Years ago, when I was in graduate school, 375 00:17:13,765 --> 00:17:16,962 one of my graduate advisors who knew I was interested in feminism -- 376 00:17:16,986 --> 00:17:19,222 I considered myself a feminist, as I still do, 377 00:17:19,246 --> 00:17:20,795 asked a really strange question. 378 00:17:20,819 --> 00:17:23,728 He said, "Tell me what's feminine about feminism." 379 00:17:23,752 --> 00:17:26,923 And I thought, "Well, that's the dumbest question I've ever heard. 380 00:17:26,947 --> 00:17:29,521 Feminism is all about undoing stereotypes about gender, 381 00:17:29,545 --> 00:17:31,607 so there's nothing feminine about feminism." 382 00:17:31,631 --> 00:17:33,656 But the more I thought about his question, 383 00:17:33,680 --> 00:17:36,898 the more I thought there might be something feminine about feminism. 384 00:17:36,922 --> 00:17:39,631 That is to say, there might be something, on average, 385 00:17:39,655 --> 00:17:42,527 different about female brains from male brains 386 00:17:42,551 --> 00:17:47,615 that makes us more attentive to deeply complex social relationships, 387 00:17:47,639 --> 00:17:50,472 and more attentive to taking care of the vulnerable. 388 00:17:50,496 --> 00:17:52,999 So whereas the Fathers were extremely attentive 389 00:17:53,023 --> 00:17:56,834 to figuring out how to protect individuals from the state, 390 00:17:56,858 --> 00:18:00,703 it's possible that if we injected more mothers into this concept, 391 00:18:00,727 --> 00:18:04,333 what we would have is more of a concept of not just how to protect, 392 00:18:04,357 --> 00:18:06,677 but how to care for each other. 393 00:18:06,701 --> 00:18:09,274 And maybe that's where we need to go in the future, 394 00:18:09,298 --> 00:18:11,505 when we take democracy beyond anatomy, 395 00:18:11,529 --> 00:18:15,064 is to think less about the individual body in terms of the identity, 396 00:18:15,088 --> 00:18:17,438 and think more about those relationships. 397 00:18:17,462 --> 00:18:20,927 So that as we the people try to create a more perfect union, 398 00:18:20,951 --> 00:18:23,844 we're thinking about what we do for each other. 399 00:18:23,868 --> 00:18:25,019 Thank you. 400 00:18:25,043 --> 00:18:27,817 (Applause)