WEBVTT 00:00:00.658 --> 00:00:05.320 I want you to imagine two couples in the middle of 1979 00:00:05.344 --> 00:00:08.613 on the exact same day, at the exact same moment, 00:00:08.637 --> 00:00:10.919 each conceiving a baby, OK? 00:00:10.943 --> 00:00:13.197 So two couples each conceiving one baby. 00:00:13.221 --> 00:00:16.487 Now I don't want you to spend too much time imagining the conception, 00:00:16.511 --> 00:00:19.367 because if you do, you're not going to listen to me, 00:00:19.391 --> 00:00:21.202 so just imagine that for a moment. 00:00:21.226 --> 00:00:25.400 And in this scenario, I want to imagine that, in one case, 00:00:25.424 --> 00:00:27.592 the sperm is carrying a Y chromosome, 00:00:27.616 --> 00:00:29.647 meeting that X chromosome of the egg. 00:00:29.671 --> 00:00:32.843 And in the other case, the sperm is carrying an X chromosome, 00:00:32.867 --> 00:00:35.134 meeting the X chromosome of the egg. 00:00:35.158 --> 00:00:37.209 Both are viable; both take off. 00:00:37.747 --> 00:00:39.795 We'll come back to these people later. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:39.819 --> 00:00:43.222 So I wear two hats in most of what I do. 00:00:43.874 --> 00:00:47.073 As the one hat, I do history of anatomy. 00:00:47.097 --> 00:00:50.976 I'm a historian by training, and what I study in that case 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:53.586 is the way that people have dealt with anatomy -- 00:00:53.610 --> 00:00:56.240 meaning human bodies, animal bodies -- 00:00:56.264 --> 00:00:58.976 how they dealt with bodily fluids, concepts of bodies; 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:00.976 how have they thought about bodies. 00:01:01.733 --> 00:01:05.689 The other hat that I've worn in my work is as an activist, 00:01:05.713 --> 00:01:07.569 as a patient advocate -- 00:01:07.593 --> 00:01:09.976 or, as I sometimes say, as an impatient advocate -- 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:12.237 for people who are patients of doctors. 00:01:12.261 --> 00:01:15.976 In that case, what I've worked with is people who have body types 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:17.915 that challenge social norms. 00:01:17.939 --> 00:01:20.096 So some of what I've worked on, for example, 00:01:20.120 --> 00:01:22.167 is people who are conjoined twins -- 00:01:22.191 --> 00:01:23.694 two people within one body. 00:01:24.240 --> 00:01:26.960 Some of what I've worked on is people who have dwarfism -- 00:01:26.984 --> 00:01:29.268 so people who are much shorter than typical. 00:01:29.292 --> 00:01:33.314 And a lot of what I've worked on is people who have atypical sex -- 00:01:33.338 --> 00:01:37.366 so people who don't have the standard male or the standard female body types. 00:01:37.390 --> 00:01:40.976 And as a general term, we can use the term "intersex" for this. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:43.538 Intersex comes in a lot of different forms. 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 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:49.333 that isn't standard for male or female. 00:01:49.357 --> 00:01:50.976 So in one instance, 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:54.436 you can have somebody who has an XY chromosomal basis, 00:01:54.460 --> 00:01:56.976 and that SRY gene on the Y chromosome 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:00.404 tells the proto-gonads, which we all have in the fetal life, 00:02:00.428 --> 00:02:01.612 to become testes. 00:02:01.636 --> 00:02:04.758 So in the fetal life, those testes are pumping out testosterone. 00:02:04.782 --> 00:02:09.965 But because this individual lacks receptors to hear that testosterone, 00:02:09.989 --> 00:02:12.069 the body doesn't react to the testosterone. 00:02:12.093 --> 00:02:15.153 And this is a syndrome called androgen insensitivity syndrome. 00:02:15.692 --> 00:02:18.554 So lots of levels of testosterone, but no reaction to it. 00:02:18.578 --> 00:02:22.480 As a consequence, the body develops more along the female typical path. 00:02:22.504 --> 00:02:24.782 When the child is born, she looks like a girl. 00:02:24.806 --> 00:02:27.904 She is a girl, she is raised as a girl. 00:02:27.928 --> 00:02:32.474 And it's often not until she hits puberty and she's growing and developing breasts, 00:02:32.498 --> 00:02:34.077 but she's not getting her period, 00:02:34.101 --> 00:02:36.265 that somebody figures out something's up here. 00:02:36.289 --> 00:02:38.058 And they do some tests and figure out 00:02:38.082 --> 00:02:40.559 that, instead of having ovaries inside and a uterus, 00:02:40.583 --> 00:02:43.029 she has testes inside, and she has a Y chromosome. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:43.053 --> 00:02:44.744 Now what's important to understand 00:02:44.768 --> 00:02:47.256 is you may think of this person as really being male, 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:48.508 but they're really not. 00:02:48.532 --> 00:02:50.596 Females, like males, 00:02:50.620 --> 00:02:53.275 have in our bodies something called the adrenal glands. 00:02:53.299 --> 00:02:54.856 They're in the back of our body. 00:02:54.880 --> 00:02:58.310 And the adrenal glands make androgens, which are a masculinizing hormone. 00:02:58.334 --> 00:03:01.435 Most females like me -- I believe myself to be a typical female -- 00:03:01.459 --> 00:03:03.618 I don't actually know my chromosomal make-up, 00:03:03.642 --> 00:03:05.327 but I think I'm probably typical -- 00:03:05.351 --> 00:03:07.833 most females like me are actually androgen-sensitive. 00:03:07.857 --> 00:03:10.578 We're making androgen, and we're responding to androgens. 00:03:10.602 --> 00:03:12.691 The consequence is that somebody like me 00:03:12.715 --> 00:03:15.734 has actually had a brain exposed to more androgens 00:03:15.758 --> 00:03:19.140 than the woman born with testes who has androgen insensitivity syndrome. 00:03:19.164 --> 00:03:20.686 So sex is really complicated -- 00:03:20.710 --> 00:03:22.354 it's not just that intersex people 00:03:22.378 --> 00:03:24.455 are in the middle of all the sex spectrum -- 00:03:24.479 --> 00:03:26.576 in some ways, they can be all over the place. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:26.600 --> 00:03:27.758 Another example: 00:03:27.782 --> 00:03:30.687 a few years ago I got a call from a man who was 19 years old, 00:03:30.711 --> 00:03:32.574 who was born a boy, raised a boy, 00:03:32.598 --> 00:03:35.183 had a girlfriend, had sex with his girlfriend, 00:03:35.207 --> 00:03:36.879 had a life as a guy, 00:03:36.903 --> 00:03:40.000 and had just found out that he had ovaries and a uterus inside. 00:03:40.529 --> 00:03:42.281 What he had was an extreme form 00:03:42.305 --> 00:03:44.986 of a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia. 00:03:45.010 --> 00:03:46.936 He had XX chromosomes, 00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:50.699 and in the womb, his adrenal glands were in such high gear 00:03:50.723 --> 00:03:54.341 that it created, essentially, a masculine hormonal environment. 00:03:54.365 --> 00:03:56.903 And as a consequence, his genitals were masculinized, 00:03:56.927 --> 00:04:00.439 his brain was subject to the more typical masculine component of hormones. 00:04:00.463 --> 00:04:03.700 And he was born looking like a boy -- nobody suspected anything. 00:04:03.724 --> 00:04:06.435 And it was only when he had reached the age of 19 00:04:06.459 --> 00:04:10.050 that he began to have enough medical problems from menstruating internally, 00:04:10.074 --> 00:04:13.446 that doctors figured out that, in fact, he was female, internally. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:13.934 --> 00:04:17.468 OK, so just one more quick example of a way you can have intersex. 00:04:17.492 --> 00:04:21.371 Some people who have XX chromosomes develop what are called ovotestis, 00:04:21.395 --> 00:04:25.134 which is when you have ovarian tissue with testicular tissue wrapped around it. 00:04:25.158 --> 00:04:27.284 And we're not exactly sure why that happens. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:27.308 --> 00:04:30.131 So sex can come in lots of different varieties. 00:04:30.155 --> 00:04:35.002 The reason that children with these kinds of bodies -- 00:04:35.026 --> 00:04:37.793 whether it's dwarfism, or it's conjoined twinning, 00:04:37.817 --> 00:04:39.143 or it's an intersex type -- 00:04:39.167 --> 00:04:41.548 are often "normalized" by surgeons 00:04:41.572 --> 00:04:45.612 is not because it actually leaves them better off in terms of physical health. 00:04:45.636 --> 00:04:48.618 In many cases, people are actually perfectly healthy. 00:04:48.642 --> 00:04:51.684 The reason they're often subject to various kinds of surgeries 00:04:51.708 --> 00:04:54.529 is because they threaten our social categories. 00:04:54.553 --> 00:04:57.322 Our system has been based typically on the idea 00:04:57.346 --> 00:05:00.676 that a particular kind of anatomy comes with a particular identity. 00:05:00.700 --> 00:05:03.303 So we have the concept that what it means to be a woman 00:05:03.327 --> 00:05:04.719 is to have a female identity; 00:05:04.743 --> 00:05:08.976 what it means to be a black person is, allegedly, to have an African anatomy 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:10.559 in terms of your history. 00:05:11.117 --> 00:05:14.896 And so we have this terribly simplistic idea. 00:05:14.920 --> 00:05:16.553 And when we're faced with a body 00:05:16.577 --> 00:05:19.511 that actually presents us something quite different, 00:05:19.535 --> 00:05:22.329 it startles us in terms of those categorizations. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:22.353 --> 00:05:26.294 So we have a lot of very romantic ideas in our culture about individualism. 00:05:26.318 --> 00:05:29.959 And our nation's really founded on a very romantic concept of individualism. 00:05:29.983 --> 00:05:31.888 You can imagine how startling then it is 00:05:31.912 --> 00:05:35.742 when you have children who are born who are two people inside of one body. 00:05:36.271 --> 00:05:40.274 Where I ran into the most heat from this most recently 00:05:40.298 --> 00:05:43.169 was last year when South African runner, Caster Semenya, 00:05:43.193 --> 00:05:46.748 had her sex called into question at the International Games in Berlin. 00:05:46.772 --> 00:05:49.596 I had a lot of journalists calling me, asking me, 00:05:49.620 --> 00:05:51.494 "Which is the test they're going to run 00:05:51.518 --> 00:05:54.976 that will tell us whether or not Caster Semenya is male or female?" 00:05:55.000 --> 00:05:58.293 And I had to explain to the journalists there isn't such a test. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:58.317 --> 00:06:02.168 In fact, we now know that sex is complicated enough 00:06:02.192 --> 00:06:03.926 that we have to admit: 00:06:03.950 --> 00:06:07.639 Nature doesn't draw the line for us between male and female, 00:06:07.663 --> 00:06:10.572 or between male and intersex and female and intersex; 00:06:10.596 --> 00:06:12.671 we actually draw that line on nature. 00:06:13.192 --> 00:06:17.859 So what we have is a sort of situation where the farther our science goes, 00:06:17.883 --> 00:06:20.819 the more we have to admit to ourselves that these categories 00:06:20.843 --> 00:06:23.530 that we thought of as stable anatomical categories, 00:06:23.554 --> 00:06:27.221 that mapped very simply to stable identity categories 00:06:27.245 --> 00:06:29.380 are a lot more fuzzy than we thought. 00:06:29.404 --> 00:06:31.357 And it's not just in terms of sex. 00:06:31.381 --> 00:06:32.976 It's also in terms of race, 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:35.416 which turns out to be vastly more complicated 00:06:35.440 --> 00:06:37.532 than our terminology has allowed. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:37.556 --> 00:06:40.648 As we look, we get into all sorts of uncomfortable areas. 00:06:40.672 --> 00:06:42.501 We look, for example, about the fact 00:06:42.525 --> 00:06:46.837 that we share at least 95 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees. 00:06:46.861 --> 00:06:48.561 What are we to make of the fact 00:06:48.585 --> 00:06:52.052 that we differ from them only, really, by a few nucleotides? 00:06:52.076 --> 00:06:54.519 And as we get farther and farther with our science, 00:06:54.543 --> 00:06:56.732 we get more and more into a discomforted zone, 00:06:56.756 --> 00:07:00.041 where we have to acknowledge that the simplistic categories we've had 00:07:00.065 --> 00:07:02.163 are probably overly simplistic. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:02.663 --> 00:07:06.274 So we're seeing this in all sorts of places in human life. 00:07:06.298 --> 00:07:08.503 One of the places we're seeing it, for example, 00:07:08.527 --> 00:07:10.541 in our culture, in the United States today, 00:07:10.565 --> 00:07:13.344 is battles over the beginning of life and the end of life. 00:07:13.368 --> 00:07:14.976 We have difficult conversations 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:18.139 about at what point we decide a body becomes a human, 00:07:18.163 --> 00:07:21.128 such that it has a different right than a fetal life. 00:07:21.152 --> 00:07:23.676 We have very difficult conversations nowadays -- 00:07:23.700 --> 00:07:26.449 probably not out in the open as much as within medicine -- 00:07:26.473 --> 00:07:28.722 about the question of when somebody's dead. 00:07:28.746 --> 00:07:31.373 In the past, our ancestors never had to struggle so much 00:07:31.397 --> 00:07:33.499 with this question of when somebody was dead. 00:07:33.523 --> 00:07:35.915 At most, they'd stick a feather on somebody's nose, 00:07:35.939 --> 00:07:38.083 and if it twitched, they didn't bury them yet. 00:07:38.107 --> 00:07:39.966 If it stopped twitching, you bury them. 00:07:39.990 --> 00:07:41.426 But today, we have a situation 00:07:41.450 --> 00:07:43.761 where we want to take vital organs out of beings 00:07:43.785 --> 00:07:45.369 and give them to other beings. 00:07:45.393 --> 00:07:46.852 And as a consequence, 00:07:46.876 --> 00:07:49.480 we have to struggle with this really difficult question 00:07:49.504 --> 00:07:51.139 about who's dead, 00:07:51.163 --> 00:07:53.508 and this leads us to a really difficult situation 00:07:53.532 --> 00:07:56.508 where we don't have such simple categories as we've had before. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:56.532 --> 00:07:59.643 Now you might think that all this breaking-down of categories 00:07:59.667 --> 00:08:01.653 would make somebody like me really happy. 00:08:01.677 --> 00:08:04.729 I'm a political progressive, I defend people with unusual bodies, 00:08:04.753 --> 00:08:07.188 but I have to admit to you that it makes me nervous. 00:08:07.212 --> 00:08:08.902 Understanding that these categories 00:08:08.926 --> 00:08:12.019 are really much more unstable than we thought makes me tense. 00:08:12.043 --> 00:08:15.296 It makes me tense from the point of view of thinking about democracy. 00:08:15.320 --> 00:08:17.476 So in order to tell you about that tension, 00:08:17.500 --> 00:08:20.617 I have to first admit to you a huge fan of the Founding Fathers. 00:08:20.641 --> 00:08:23.250 I know they were racists, I know they were sexist, 00:08:23.274 --> 00:08:24.447 but they were great. 00:08:24.471 --> 00:08:29.585 I mean, they were so brave and so bold and so radical in what they did, 00:08:29.609 --> 00:08:34.079 that I find myself watching that cheesy musical "1776" every few years, 00:08:34.103 --> 00:08:37.107 and it's not because of the music, which is totally forgettable. 00:08:37.131 --> 00:08:40.469 It's because of what happened in 1776 with the Founding Fathers. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:40.493 --> 00:08:42.767 The Founding Fathers were, for my point of view, 00:08:42.791 --> 00:08:44.843 the original anatomical activists, 00:08:44.867 --> 00:08:46.472 and this is why. 00:08:46.496 --> 00:08:49.771 What they rejected was an anatomical concept 00:08:49.795 --> 00:08:51.331 and replaced it with another one 00:08:51.355 --> 00:08:54.684 that was radical and beautiful and held us for 200 years. 00:08:54.708 --> 00:08:56.430 So as you all recall, 00:08:56.454 --> 00:08:59.858 what our Founding Fathers were rejecting was a concept of monarchy, 00:08:59.882 --> 00:09:03.520 and the monarchy was basically based on a very simplistic concept of anatomy. 00:09:03.544 --> 00:09:07.183 The monarchs of the old world didn't have a concept of DNA, 00:09:07.207 --> 00:09:09.340 but they did have a concept of birthright. 00:09:09.364 --> 00:09:11.036 They had a concept of blue blood. 00:09:11.060 --> 00:09:14.243 They had the idea that the people who would be in political power 00:09:14.267 --> 00:09:17.444 should be in political power because of the blood being passed down 00:09:17.468 --> 00:09:21.142 from grandfather to father to son and so forth. 00:09:21.794 --> 00:09:24.162 The Founding Fathers rejected that idea, 00:09:24.186 --> 00:09:26.837 and they replaced it with a new anatomical concept, 00:09:26.861 --> 00:09:30.694 and that concept was "all men are created equal." 00:09:30.718 --> 00:09:34.081 They leveled that playing field and decided the anatomy that mattered 00:09:34.105 --> 00:09:38.519 was the commonality of anatomy, not the difference in anatomy, 00:09:38.543 --> 00:09:41.087 and that was a really radical thing to do. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:41.560 --> 00:09:43.012 Now they were doing it in part 00:09:43.036 --> 00:09:45.328 because they were part of an Enlightenment system 00:09:45.352 --> 00:09:47.361 where two things were growing up together. 00:09:47.385 --> 00:09:49.653 And that was democracy growing up, 00:09:49.677 --> 00:09:52.742 but it was also science growing up at the same time. 00:09:52.766 --> 00:09:56.245 And it's really clear, if you look at the history of the Founding Fathers, 00:09:56.269 --> 00:09:58.555 a lot of them were very interested in science, 00:09:58.579 --> 00:10:01.607 and they were interested in the concept of a naturalistic world. 00:10:01.631 --> 00:10:04.117 They were moving away from supernatural explanations, 00:10:04.141 --> 00:10:07.378 and they were rejecting things like a supernatural concept of power, 00:10:07.402 --> 00:10:11.457 where it transmitted because of a very vague concept of birthright. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:11.481 --> 00:10:13.763 They were moving towards a naturalistic concept. 00:10:13.787 --> 00:10:16.842 And if you look, for example, in the Declaration of Independence, 00:10:16.866 --> 00:10:19.572 they talk about nature and nature's God. 00:10:19.596 --> 00:10:21.785 They don't talk about God and God's nature. 00:10:21.809 --> 00:10:25.712 They're talking about the power of nature to tell us who we are. 00:10:25.736 --> 00:10:28.976 So as part of that, they were coming to us with a concept 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:31.710 that was about anatomical commonality. 00:10:31.734 --> 00:10:34.863 And in doing so, they were really setting up in a beautiful way 00:10:34.887 --> 00:10:36.800 the Civil Rights Movement of the future. 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. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:40.389 --> 00:10:42.032 So what happened years afterwards? 00:10:42.056 --> 00:10:45.498 What happened was women, for example, who wanted the right to vote, 00:10:45.522 --> 00:10:48.884 took the Founding Fathers' concept of anatomical commonality 00:10:48.908 --> 00:10:51.115 being more important than anatomical difference 00:10:51.139 --> 00:10:53.673 and said, "The fact that we have a uterus and ovaries 00:10:53.697 --> 00:10:56.460 is not significant enough in terms of a difference 00:10:56.484 --> 00:10:58.773 to mean that we shouldn't have the right to vote, 00:10:58.797 --> 00:11:02.479 the right to full citizenship, the right to own property, etc." 00:11:02.503 --> 00:11:04.555 And women successfully argued that. 00:11:04.579 --> 00:11:06.976 Next came the successful Civil Rights Movement, 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:09.119 where we found people like Sojourner Truth 00:11:09.143 --> 00:11:11.412 talking about, "Ain't I a woman?" 00:11:11.436 --> 00:11:15.381 We find men on the marching lines of the Civil Rights Movement 00:11:15.405 --> 00:11:16.755 saying, "I am a man." 00:11:16.779 --> 00:11:21.176 Again, people of color appealing to a commonality of anatomy 00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:23.890 over a difference of anatomy, again, successfully. 00:11:23.914 --> 00:11:26.951 We see the same thing with the disability rights movement. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:27.292 --> 00:11:29.450 The problem is, of course, 00:11:29.474 --> 00:11:31.852 that, as we begin to look at all that commonality, 00:11:31.876 --> 00:11:35.301 we have to begin to question why we maintain certain divisions. 00:11:35.325 --> 00:11:38.054 Mind you, I want to maintain some divisions, 00:11:38.078 --> 00:11:39.745 anatomically, in our culture. 00:11:39.769 --> 00:11:43.449 For example, I don't want to give a fish the same rights as a human. 00:11:43.473 --> 00:11:46.058 I don't want to say we give up entirely on anatomy. 00:11:46.082 --> 00:11:47.749 I don't want to say a five-year-old 00:11:47.773 --> 00:11:50.404 should be allowed to consent to sex or consent to marry. 00:11:50.428 --> 00:11:52.395 So there are some anatomical divisions 00:11:52.419 --> 00:11:55.728 that make sense to me and that I think we should retain. 00:11:55.752 --> 00:11:58.645 But the challenge is trying to figure out which ones they are 00:11:58.669 --> 00:12:01.280 and why do we retain them, and do they have meaning. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:01.304 --> 00:12:05.094 So let's go back to those two beings conceived at the beginning of this talk. 00:12:05.118 --> 00:12:06.976 We have two beings, both conceived 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:10.491 in the middle of 1979 on the exact same day. 00:12:10.515 --> 00:12:14.265 Let's imagine one of them, Mary, is born three months prematurely, 00:12:14.289 --> 00:12:16.791 so she's born on June 1, 1980. 00:12:16.815 --> 00:12:20.988 Henry, by contrast, is born at term, so he's born on March 1, 1980. 00:12:21.586 --> 00:12:23.378 Simply by virtue of the fact 00:12:23.402 --> 00:12:25.860 that Mary was born prematurely three months, 00:12:25.884 --> 00:12:30.126 she comes into all sorts of rights three months earlier than Henry does -- 00:12:30.150 --> 00:12:34.365 the right to consent to sex, the right to vote, the right to drink. 00:12:34.389 --> 00:12:36.022 Henry has to wait for all of that, 00:12:36.046 --> 00:12:39.060 not because he's actually any different in age, biologically, 00:12:39.084 --> 00:12:41.349 except in terms of when he was born. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:41.989 --> 00:12:45.149 We find other kinds of weirdness in terms of what their rights are. 00:12:45.173 --> 00:12:47.366 Henry, by virtue of being assumed to be male -- 00:12:47.390 --> 00:12:49.781 although I haven't told you that he's the XY one -- 00:12:49.805 --> 00:12:53.976 by virtue of being assumed to be male is now liable to be drafted, 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:55.940 which Mary does not need to worry about. 00:12:55.964 --> 00:12:59.737 Mary, meanwhile, cannot in all the states have the same right 00:12:59.761 --> 00:13:01.361 that Henry has in all the states, 00:13:01.385 --> 00:13:02.867 namely, the right to marry. 00:13:02.891 --> 00:13:05.655 Henry can marry, in every state, a woman, 00:13:05.679 --> 00:13:08.687 but Mary can only marry today in a few states, a woman. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:09.219 --> 00:13:12.112 So we have these anatomical categories that persist, 00:13:12.136 --> 00:13:15.885 that are in many ways problematic and questionable. 00:13:15.909 --> 00:13:17.630 And the question to me becomes: 00:13:17.654 --> 00:13:23.642 What do we do, as our science gets to be so good in looking at anatomy, 00:13:23.666 --> 00:13:26.236 that we reach the point where we have to admit 00:13:26.260 --> 00:13:29.137 that a democracy that's been based on anatomy 00:13:29.161 --> 00:13:30.593 might start falling apart? 00:13:31.880 --> 00:13:34.604 I don't want to give up the science, but at the same time, 00:13:34.628 --> 00:13:37.776 it feels sometimes like the science is coming out from under us. 00:13:37.800 --> 00:13:38.976 So where do we go? 00:13:39.829 --> 00:13:43.910 It seems like what happens in our culture is a sort of pragmatic attitude: 00:13:43.934 --> 00:13:47.372 "We have to draw the line somewhere, so we will draw the line somewhere." 00:13:47.396 --> 00:13:50.082 But a lot of people get stuck in a very strange position. NOTE Paragraph 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 00:13:55.000 --> 00:13:57.395 is to mean that you don't have a Y chromosome, 00:13:57.419 --> 00:14:00.489 and what it means to marry a woman means you have a Y chromosome. 00:14:00.513 --> 00:14:03.235 In practice they don't test people for their chromosomes. 00:14:03.259 --> 00:14:04.742 But this is also very bizarre, 00:14:04.766 --> 00:14:07.086 because of the story I told you at the beginning 00:14:07.110 --> 00:14:08.920 about androgen insensitivity syndrome. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:08.944 --> 00:14:12.476 If we look at one of the Founding Fathers of modern democracy, 00:14:12.500 --> 00:14:13.680 Dr. Martin Luther King, 00:14:13.704 --> 00:14:16.907 he offers us something of a solution in his "I have a dream" speech. 00:14:16.931 --> 00:14:20.198 He says we should judge people "based not on the color of their skin, 00:14:20.222 --> 00:14:22.093 but on the content of their character," 00:14:22.117 --> 00:14:23.639 moving beyond anatomy. 00:14:23.663 --> 00:14:26.642 And I want to say, "Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea." 00:14:26.666 --> 00:14:28.322 But in practice, how do you do it? 00:14:28.346 --> 00:14:31.296 How do you judge people based on the content of character? 00:14:31.833 --> 00:14:32.985 I also want to point out 00:14:33.009 --> 00:14:36.820 that I'm not sure that is how we should distribute rights in terms of humans, 00:14:36.844 --> 00:14:40.147 because, I have to admit, that there are some golden retrievers I know 00:14:40.171 --> 00:14:43.748 that are probably more deserving of social services than some humans I know. 00:14:43.772 --> 00:14:47.367 I also want to say there are probably also some yellow Labradors that I know 00:14:47.391 --> 00:14:50.414 that are more capable of informed, intelligent, mature decisions 00:14:50.438 --> 00:14:53.160 about sexual relations than some 40-year-olds that I know. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:53.184 --> 00:14:57.362 So how do we operationalize the question of content of character? 00:14:57.386 --> 00:14:59.311 It turns out to be really difficult. 00:14:59.335 --> 00:15:00.816 And part of me also wonders, 00:15:00.840 --> 00:15:02.712 what if content of character 00:15:02.736 --> 00:15:05.976 turns out to be something that's scannable in the future -- 00:15:06.721 --> 00:15:09.030 able to be seen with an fMRI? 00:15:09.054 --> 00:15:10.665 Do we really want to go there? 00:15:11.100 --> 00:15:12.436 I'm not sure where we go. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:12.460 --> 00:15:15.011 What I do know is that it seems to be really important 00:15:15.035 --> 00:15:17.978 to think about the idea of the United States being in the lead 00:15:18.002 --> 00:15:20.006 of thinking about this issue of democracy. 00:15:20.030 --> 00:15:22.741 We've done a really good job struggling with democracy, 00:15:22.765 --> 00:15:25.099 and I think we would do a good job in the future. 00:15:25.123 --> 00:15:27.726 We don't have a situation that Iran has, for example, 00:15:27.750 --> 00:15:30.043 where a man who's sexually attracted to other men 00:15:30.067 --> 00:15:31.264 is liable to be murdered, 00:15:31.288 --> 00:15:33.459 unless he's willing to submit to a sex change, 00:15:33.483 --> 00:15:35.370 in which case he's allowed to live. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:35.908 --> 00:15:37.699 We don't have that kind of situation. 00:15:37.723 --> 00:15:41.022 I'm glad to say we don't have the kind of situation with -- 00:15:41.046 --> 00:15:43.029 a surgeon I talked to a few years ago 00:15:43.053 --> 00:15:45.489 who had brought over a set of conjoined twins 00:15:45.513 --> 00:15:48.424 in order to separate them, partly to make a name for himself. 00:15:48.448 --> 00:15:51.898 But when I was on the phone with him, asking why he'll do this surgery -- 00:15:51.922 --> 00:15:55.648 this was a very high-risk surgery -- his answer was that, in this other nation, 00:15:55.672 --> 00:15:59.305 these children were going to be treated very badly, and so he had to do this. 00:15:59.329 --> 00:16:02.481 My response to him was, "Well, have you considered political asylum 00:16:02.505 --> 00:16:04.112 instead of a separation surgery?" 00:16:04.136 --> 00:16:06.585 The United States has offered tremendous possibility 00:16:06.609 --> 00:16:08.976 for allowing people to be the way they are, 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:12.698 without having them have to be changed for the sake of the state. 00:16:12.722 --> 00:16:14.900 So I think we have to be in the lead. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:14.924 --> 00:16:17.381 Well, just to close, I want to suggest to you 00:16:17.405 --> 00:16:19.936 that I've been talking a lot about the Fathers. 00:16:19.960 --> 00:16:21.976 And I want to think about the possibilities 00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:24.905 of what democracy might look like, or might have looked like, 00:16:24.929 --> 00:16:26.802 if we had more involved the mothers. 00:16:27.385 --> 00:16:30.423 And I want to say something a little bit radical for a feminist, 00:16:30.447 --> 00:16:34.292 and that is that I think that there may be different kinds of insights 00:16:34.316 --> 00:16:36.565 that can come from different kinds of anatomies, 00:16:36.589 --> 00:16:39.211 particularly when we have people thinking in groups. 00:16:39.235 --> 00:16:41.742 For years, because I've been interested in intersex, 00:16:41.766 --> 00:16:44.243 I've also been interested in sex-difference research. 00:16:44.267 --> 00:16:46.620 And one of the things that I've been interested in 00:16:46.644 --> 00:16:49.246 is looking at the differences between males and females 00:16:49.270 --> 00:16:51.909 in terms of the way they think and operate in the world. 00:16:51.933 --> 00:16:54.006 And what we know from cross-cultural studies 00:16:54.030 --> 00:16:55.870 is that females, on average -- 00:16:55.894 --> 00:16:57.976 not everyone, but on average -- 00:16:58.000 --> 00:17:02.891 are more inclined to be very attentive to complex social relations 00:17:02.915 --> 00:17:04.493 and to taking care of people 00:17:04.517 --> 00:17:06.793 who are, basically, vulnerable within the group. 00:17:07.519 --> 00:17:09.726 And so if we think about that, 00:17:09.750 --> 00:17:11.751 we have an interesting situation in hands. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:11.775 --> 00:17:13.741 Years ago, when I was in graduate school, 00:17:13.765 --> 00:17:16.962 one of my graduate advisors who knew I was interested in feminism -- 00:17:16.986 --> 00:17:19.222 I considered myself a feminist, as I still do, 00:17:19.246 --> 00:17:20.795 asked a really strange question. 00:17:20.819 --> 00:17:23.728 He said, "Tell me what's feminine about feminism." 00:17:23.752 --> 00:17:26.923 And I thought, "Well, that's the dumbest question I've ever heard. 00:17:26.947 --> 00:17:29.521 Feminism is all about undoing stereotypes about gender, 00:17:29.545 --> 00:17:31.607 so there's nothing feminine about feminism." 00:17:31.631 --> 00:17:33.656 But the more I thought about his question, 00:17:33.680 --> 00:17:36.898 the more I thought there might be something feminine about feminism. 00:17:36.922 --> 00:17:39.631 That is to say, there might be something, on average, 00:17:39.655 --> 00:17:42.527 different about female brains from male brains 00:17:42.551 --> 00:17:47.615 that makes us more attentive to deeply complex social relationships, 00:17:47.639 --> 00:17:50.472 and more attentive to taking care of the vulnerable. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:50.496 --> 00:17:52.999 So whereas the Fathers were extremely attentive 00:17:53.023 --> 00:17:56.834 to figuring out how to protect individuals from the state, 00:17:56.858 --> 00:18:00.703 it's possible that if we injected more mothers into this concept, 00:18:00.727 --> 00:18:04.333 what we would have is more of a concept of not just how to protect, 00:18:04.357 --> 00:18:06.677 but how to care for each other. 00:18:06.701 --> 00:18:09.274 And maybe that's where we need to go in the future, 00:18:09.298 --> 00:18:11.505 when we take democracy beyond anatomy, 00:18:11.529 --> 00:18:15.064 is to think less about the individual body in terms of the identity, 00:18:15.088 --> 00:18:17.438 and think more about those relationships. 00:18:17.462 --> 00:18:20.927 So that as we the people try to create a more perfect union, 00:18:20.951 --> 00:18:23.844 we're thinking about what we do for each other. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:23.868 --> 00:18:25.019 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:25.043 --> 00:18:27.817 (Applause)