Is anatomy destiny? | Alice Dreger | TEDxNorthwesternU
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0:12 - 0:14Okay, so to start,
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0:14 - 0:18I want you to imagine two couples
in the middle of 1979 -
0:18 - 0:22on the exact same day,
at the exact same moment, -
0:22 - 0:24each conceiving a baby, OK?
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0:24 - 0:26So two couples each conceiving one baby.
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0:26 - 0:29Now I don't want you to spend too
much time imagining the conception, -
0:30 - 0:32because if you do,
you're not going to listen to me, -
0:32 - 0:34so just imagine that for a moment.
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0:34 - 0:38And in this scenario,
I want to imagine that, in one case, -
0:38 - 0:41the sperm is carrying a Y chromosome,
-
0:41 - 0:43meeting that X chromosome of the egg.
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0:43 - 0:46And in the other case,
the sperm is carrying an X chromosome, -
0:46 - 0:48meeting the X chromosome of the egg.
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0:48 - 0:50Both are viable; both take off.
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0:51 - 0:53We'll come back to these people later.
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0:53 - 0:56So I wear two hats in most of what I do.
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0:57 - 1:00And I also sometimes wear
metaphorical scarves, -
1:00 - 1:02and great shoes,
-
1:02 - 1:05but in this case I want to tell you
about the two hats I wear. -
1:05 - 1:08As the one hat, I do history of anatomy.
-
1:08 - 1:12I'm a historian by training,
and what I study in that case -
1:12 - 1:14is the way that people
have dealt with anatomy... -
1:15 - 1:18Meaning human bodies, animal bodies...
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1:18 - 1:20How they dealt with bodily fluids,
concepts of bodies; -
1:20 - 1:22how have they thought about bodies.
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1:23 - 1:27The other hat that I've worn
in my work is as an activist, -
1:27 - 1:29as a patient advocate...
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1:29 - 1:31Or, as I sometimes say,
as an impatient advocate... -
1:31 - 1:34For people who are patients of doctors.
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1:34 - 1:37In that case, what I've worked with
is people who have body types -
1:37 - 1:39that challenge social norms.
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1:39 - 1:41So some of what
I've worked on, for example, -
1:41 - 1:43is people who are conjoined twins...
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1:43 - 1:45Two people within one body.
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1:46 - 1:48Some of what I've worked on
is people who have dwarfism... -
1:48 - 1:51So people who are much
shorter than typical. -
1:51 - 1:55And a lot of what I've worked on
is people who have atypical sex... -
1:55 - 1:59So people who don't have the standard male
or the standard female body types. -
1:59 - 2:02And as a general term,
we can use the term "intersex" for this. -
2:02 - 2:05Intersex comes
in a lot of different forms. -
2:05 - 2:08I'll just give you a few examples
of the types of ways you can have sex -
2:08 - 2:11that isn't standard for male or female.
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2:11 - 2:12So in one instance,
-
2:12 - 2:16you can have somebody
who has an XY chromosomal basis, -
2:16 - 2:18and that SRY gene on the Y chromosome
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2:18 - 2:22tells the proto-gonads,
which we all have in the fetal life, -
2:22 - 2:23to become testes.
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2:23 - 2:26So in the fetal life,
those testes are pumping out testosterone. -
2:27 - 2:32But because this individual
lacks receptors to hear that testosterone, -
2:32 - 2:34the body doesn't react
to the testosterone. -
2:34 - 2:37And this is a syndrome called
androgen insensitivity syndrome. -
2:38 - 2:41So lots of levels of testosterone,
but no reaction to it. -
2:41 - 2:45As a consequence, the body develops
more along the female typical path. -
2:45 - 2:47When the child is born,
she looks like a girl. -
2:47 - 2:50She is a girl, she is raised as a girl.
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2:50 - 2:55And it's often not until she hits puberty
and she's growing and developing breasts, -
2:55 - 2:57but she's not getting her period,
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2:57 - 2:59that somebody figures
out something's up here. -
2:59 - 3:01And they do some tests and figure out
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3:01 - 3:03that, instead of having
ovaries inside and a uterus, -
3:03 - 3:06she has testes inside,
and she has a Y chromosome. -
3:06 - 3:07Now what's important to understand
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3:07 - 3:10is you may think of this
person as really being male, -
3:10 - 3:11but they're really not.
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3:11 - 3:13Females, like males,
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3:13 - 3:16have in our bodies something
called the adrenal glands. -
3:16 - 3:17They're in the back of our body.
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3:17 - 3:21And the adrenal glands make androgens,
which are a masculinizing hormone. -
3:21 - 3:24Most females like me...
I believe myself to be a typical female... -
3:24 - 3:26I don't actually know
my chromosomal make-up, -
3:26 - 3:28but I think I'm probably typical...
-
3:28 - 3:30Most females like me
are actually androgen-sensitive. -
3:30 - 3:33We're making androgen,
and we're responding to androgens. -
3:33 - 3:35The consequence is that somebody like me
-
3:36 - 3:39has actually had a brain
exposed to more androgens -
3:39 - 3:42than the woman born with testes
who has androgen insensitivity syndrome. -
3:42 - 3:43So sex is really complicated...
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3:44 - 3:45It's not just that intersex people
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3:45 - 3:47are in the middle
of all the sex spectrum... -
3:47 - 3:49In some ways,
they can be all over the place. -
3:49 - 3:51Another example:
-
3:51 - 3:53a few years ago I got a call
from a man who was 19 years old, -
3:54 - 3:55who was born a boy, raised a boy,
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3:55 - 3:58had a girlfriend,
had sex with his girlfriend, -
3:58 - 4:00had a life as a guy,
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4:00 - 4:03and had just found out
that he had ovaries and a uterus inside. -
4:03 - 4:05What he had was an extreme form
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4:05 - 4:08of a condition called
congenital adrenal hyperplasia. -
4:08 - 4:10He had XX chromosomes,
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4:10 - 4:13and in the womb, his adrenal glands
were in such high gear -
4:14 - 4:17that it created, essentially,
a masculine hormonal environment. -
4:17 - 4:20And as a consequence,
his genitals were masculinized, -
4:20 - 4:23his brain was subject to the more typical
masculine component of hormones. -
4:23 - 4:26And he was born looking like a boy...
Nobody suspected anything. -
4:27 - 4:29And it was only when he had
reached the age of 19 -
4:29 - 4:33that he began to have enough medical
problems from menstruating internally, -
4:33 - 4:36that doctors figured out that, in fact,
he was female, internally. -
4:37 - 4:40OK, so just one more quick example
of a way you can have intersex. -
4:41 - 4:44Some people who have XX chromosomes
develop what are called ovotestis, -
4:44 - 4:48which is when you have ovarian tissue
with testicular tissue wrapped around it. -
4:48 - 4:50And we're not exactly sure
why that happens. -
4:50 - 4:53So sex can come
in lots of different varieties. -
4:54 - 4:59The reason that children
with these kinds of bodies... -
4:59 - 5:02Whether it's dwarfism,
or it's conjoined twinning, -
5:02 - 5:03or it's an intersex type...
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5:03 - 5:05Are often "normalized" by surgeons
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5:05 - 5:10is not because it actually leaves them
better off in terms of physical health. -
5:10 - 5:13In many cases, people are actually
perfectly healthy. -
5:13 - 5:16The reason they're often subject
to various kinds of surgeries -
5:16 - 5:19is because they threaten
our social categories. -
5:19 - 5:22Our system has been based
typically on the idea -
5:22 - 5:25that a particular kind of anatomy
comes with a particular identity. -
5:25 - 5:28So we have the concept
that what it means to be a woman -
5:28 - 5:29is to have a female identity;
-
5:29 - 5:34what it means to be a black person
is, allegedly, to have an African anatomy -
5:34 - 5:35in terms of your history.
-
5:36 - 5:40And so we have
this terribly simplistic idea. -
5:40 - 5:42And when we're faced with a body
-
5:42 - 5:45that actually presents us
something quite different, -
5:45 - 5:48it startles us in terms
of those categorizations. -
5:48 - 5:52So we have a lot of very romantic ideas
in our culture about individualism. -
5:52 - 5:55And our nation's really founded on
a very romantic concept of individualism. -
5:55 - 5:57You can imagine how startling then it is
-
5:58 - 6:01when you have children who are born
who are two people inside of one body. -
6:03 - 6:07Where I ran into the most heat
from this most recently -
6:07 - 6:10was last year when South African runner,
Caster Semenya, -
6:10 - 6:13had her sex called into question
at the International Games in Berlin. -
6:13 - 6:16I had a lot of journalists
calling me, asking me, -
6:16 - 6:18"Which is the test they're going to run
-
6:18 - 6:22that will tell us whether or not
Caster Semenya is male or female?" -
6:22 - 6:25And I had to explain to the journalists
there isn't such a test. -
6:25 - 6:29In fact, we now know
that sex is complicated enough -
6:29 - 6:31that we have to admit:
-
6:31 - 6:34Nature doesn't draw the line
for us between male and female, -
6:34 - 6:37or between male and intersex
and female and intersex; -
6:37 - 6:39we actually draw that line on nature.
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6:40 - 6:45So what we have is a sort of situation
where the farther our science goes, -
6:45 - 6:48the more we have to admit to ourselves
that these categories -
6:48 - 6:50that we thought of as stable
anatomical categories, -
6:50 - 6:55that mapped very simply
to stable identity categories -
6:55 - 6:57are a lot more fuzzy than we thought.
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6:57 - 6:59And it's not just in terms of sex.
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6:59 - 7:01It's also in terms of race,
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7:01 - 7:03which turns out to be
vastly more complicated -
7:03 - 7:05than our terminology has allowed.
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7:05 - 7:08As we look, we get into all sorts
of uncomfortable areas. -
7:08 - 7:10We look, for example, about the fact
-
7:10 - 7:14that we share at least 95 percent
of our DNA with chimpanzees. -
7:14 - 7:16What are we to make of the fact
-
7:16 - 7:20that we differ from them
only, really, by a few nucleotides? -
7:20 - 7:22And as we get farther
and farther with our science, -
7:22 - 7:24we get more and more
into a discomforted zone, -
7:25 - 7:28where we have to acknowledge
that the simplistic categories we've had -
7:28 - 7:30are probably overly simplistic.
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7:31 - 7:35So we're seeing this
in all sorts of places in human life. -
7:35 - 7:37One of the places
we're seeing it, for example, -
7:37 - 7:39in our culture,
in the United States today, -
7:39 - 7:42is battles over the beginning
of life and the end of life. -
7:42 - 7:43We have difficult conversations
-
7:44 - 7:47about at what point we decide
a body becomes a human, -
7:47 - 7:50such that it has a different
right than a fetal life. -
7:50 - 7:52We have very difficult
conversations nowadays... -
7:52 - 7:55Probably not out in the open
as much as within medicine... -
7:55 - 7:57About the question
of when somebody's dead. -
7:57 - 8:00In the past, our ancestors
never had to struggle so much -
8:00 - 8:02with this question
of when somebody was dead. -
8:02 - 8:04At most, they'd stick
a feather on somebody's nose, -
8:04 - 8:07and if it twitched,
they didn't bury them yet. -
8:07 - 8:08If it stopped twitching, you bury them.
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8:08 - 8:10But today, we have a situation
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8:10 - 8:12where we want to take
vital organs out of beings -
8:12 - 8:14and give them to other beings.
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8:14 - 8:15And as a consequence,
-
8:15 - 8:18we have to struggle
with this really difficult question -
8:18 - 8:20about who's dead,
-
8:20 - 8:22and this leads us
to a really difficult situation -
8:22 - 8:25where we don't have such simple
categories as we've had before. -
8:25 - 8:28Now you might think that all this
breaking-down of categories -
8:28 - 8:30would make somebody like me really happy.
-
8:30 - 8:34I'm a political progressive,
I defend people with unusual bodies, -
8:34 - 8:36but I have to admit to you
that it makes me nervous. -
8:36 - 8:38Understanding that these categories
-
8:38 - 8:41are really much more unstable
than we thought makes me tense. -
8:41 - 8:44It makes me tense from the point of view
of thinking about democracy. -
8:45 - 8:47So in order to tell you
about that tension, -
8:47 - 8:50I have to first admit to you
a huge fan of the Founding Fathers. -
8:50 - 8:53I know they were racists,
I know they were sexist, -
8:53 - 8:54but they were great.
-
8:54 - 8:59I mean, they were so brave and so bold
and so radical in what they did, -
8:59 - 9:03that I find myself watching that cheesy
musical "1776" every few years, -
9:04 - 9:07and it's not because of the music,
which is totally forgettable. -
9:07 - 9:10It's because of what happened in 1776
with the Founding Fathers. -
9:10 - 9:12The Founding Fathers were,
for my point of view, -
9:12 - 9:14the original anatomical activists,
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9:14 - 9:16and this is why.
-
9:16 - 9:19What they rejected
was an anatomical concept -
9:19 - 9:21and replaced it with another one
-
9:21 - 9:24that was radical and beautiful
and held us for 200 years. -
9:24 - 9:26So as you all recall,
-
9:26 - 9:30what our Founding Fathers were
rejecting was a concept of monarchy, -
9:30 - 9:33and the monarchy was basically based
on a very simplistic concept of anatomy. -
9:33 - 9:37The monarchs of the old world
didn't have a concept of DNA, -
9:37 - 9:39but they did have a concept of birthright.
-
9:39 - 9:41They had a concept of blue blood.
-
9:41 - 9:44They had the idea that the people
who would be in political power -
9:44 - 9:47should be in political power
because of the blood being passed down -
9:47 - 9:51from grandfather to father
to son and so forth. -
9:51 - 9:54The Founding Fathers rejected that idea,
-
9:54 - 9:57and they replaced it
with a new anatomical concept, -
9:57 - 10:00and that concept
was "all men are created equal." -
10:00 - 10:04They leveled that playing field
and decided the anatomy that mattered -
10:04 - 10:08was the commonality of anatomy,
not the difference in anatomy, -
10:08 - 10:11and that was a really radical thing to do.
-
10:11 - 10:13Now they were doing it in part
-
10:13 - 10:15because they were part
of an Enlightenment system -
10:15 - 10:17where two things were growing up together.
-
10:17 - 10:19And that was democracy growing up,
-
10:19 - 10:22but it was also science
growing up at the same time. -
10:22 - 10:26And it's really clear, if you look
at the history of the Founding Fathers, -
10:26 - 10:28a lot of them were very
interested in science, -
10:28 - 10:31and they were interested
in the concept of a naturalistic world. -
10:31 - 10:34They were moving away
from supernatural explanations, -
10:34 - 10:37and they were rejecting things
like a supernatural concept of power, -
10:37 - 10:41where it transmitted because
of a very vague concept of birthright. -
10:41 - 10:43They were moving
towards a naturalistic concept. -
10:43 - 10:47And if you look, for example,
in the Declaration of Independence, -
10:47 - 10:49they talk about nature and nature's God.
-
10:49 - 10:51They don't talk about God
and God's nature. -
10:52 - 10:55They're talking about the power of nature
to tell us who we are. -
10:55 - 10:59So as part of that,
they were coming to us with a concept -
10:59 - 11:01that was about anatomical commonality.
-
11:02 - 11:05And in doing so, they were really
setting up in a beautiful way -
11:05 - 11:07the Civil Rights Movement of the future.
-
11:07 - 11:11They didn't think of it that way,
but they did it for us, and it was great. -
11:11 - 11:12So what happened years afterwards?
-
11:12 - 11:16What happened was women, for example,
who wanted the right to vote, -
11:16 - 11:19took the Founding Fathers' concept
of anatomical commonality -
11:19 - 11:21being more important
than anatomical difference -
11:21 - 11:24and said, "The fact that we have
a uterus and ovaries -
11:24 - 11:27is not significant enough
in terms of a difference -
11:27 - 11:29to mean that we shouldn't
have the right to vote, -
11:29 - 11:33the right to full citizenship,
the right to own property, etc." -
11:33 - 11:35And women successfully argued that.
-
11:35 - 11:37Next came the successful
Civil Rights Movement, -
11:37 - 11:39where we found people like Sojourner Truth
-
11:39 - 11:42talking about, "Ain't I a woman?"
-
11:42 - 11:46We find men on the marching lines
of the Civil Rights Movement -
11:46 - 11:47saying, "I am a man."
-
11:47 - 11:51Again, people of color
appealing to a commonality of anatomy -
11:51 - 11:54over a difference of anatomy,
again, successfully. -
11:54 - 11:57We see the same thing
with the disability rights movement. -
11:57 - 12:00The problem is, of course,
-
12:00 - 12:02that, as we begin to look
at all that commonality, -
12:02 - 12:06we have to begin to question
why we maintain certain divisions. -
12:06 - 12:08Mind you, I want to maintain
some divisions, -
12:08 - 12:10anatomically, in our culture.
-
12:10 - 12:14For example, I don't want to give a fish
the same rights as a human. -
12:14 - 12:16I don't want to say
we give up entirely on anatomy. -
12:16 - 12:18I don't want to say a five-year-old
-
12:18 - 12:21should be allowed to consent
to sex or consent to marry. -
12:21 - 12:23So there are some anatomical divisions
-
12:23 - 12:26that make sense to me
and that I think we should retain. -
12:26 - 12:29But the challenge is trying
to figure out which ones they are -
12:29 - 12:31and why do we retain them,
and do they have meaning. -
12:32 - 12:35So let's go back to those two beings
conceived at the beginning of this talk. -
12:35 - 12:37We have two beings, both conceived
-
12:37 - 12:41in the middle of 1979
on the exact same day. -
12:41 - 12:44Let's imagine one of them, Mary,
is born three months prematurely, -
12:44 - 12:47so she's born on June 1, 1980.
-
12:47 - 12:51Henry, by contrast, is born at term,
so he's born on March 1, 1980. -
12:52 - 12:54Simply by virtue of the fact
-
12:54 - 12:56that Mary was born
prematurely three months, -
12:56 - 13:00she comes into all sorts of rights
three months earlier than Henry does... -
13:00 - 13:05The right to consent to sex,
the right to vote, the right to drink. -
13:05 - 13:06Henry has to wait for all of that,
-
13:06 - 13:09not because he's actually
any different in age, biologically, -
13:09 - 13:12except in terms of when he was born.
-
13:12 - 13:15We find other kinds of weirdness
in terms of what their rights are. -
13:15 - 13:18Henry, by virtue of being
assumed to be male... -
13:18 - 13:20Although I haven't told you
that he's the XY one... -
13:20 - 13:24By virtue of being assumed to be male
is now liable to be drafted, -
13:24 - 13:26which Mary does not need to worry about.
-
13:26 - 13:30Mary, meanwhile, cannot in all the states
have the same right -
13:30 - 13:32that Henry has in all the states,
-
13:32 - 13:33namely, the right to marry.
-
13:33 - 13:36Henry can marry, in every state, a woman,
-
13:36 - 13:39but Mary can only marry today
in a few states, a woman. -
13:39 - 13:42So we have these anatomical
categories that persist, -
13:42 - 13:46that are in many ways
problematic and questionable. -
13:46 - 13:48And the question to me becomes:
-
13:48 - 13:54What do we do, as our science
gets to be so good in looking at anatomy, -
13:54 - 13:56that we reach the point
where we have to admit -
13:56 - 13:59that a democracy
that's been based on anatomy -
13:59 - 14:01might start falling apart?
-
14:02 - 14:05I don't want to give up the science,
but at the same time, -
14:05 - 14:08it feels sometimes like the science
is coming out from under us. -
14:08 - 14:09So where do we go?
-
14:10 - 14:14It seems like what happens in our culture
is a sort of pragmatic attitude: -
14:14 - 14:18"We have to draw the line somewhere,
so we will draw the line somewhere." -
14:18 - 14:20But a lot of people get stuck
in a very strange position. -
14:20 - 14:25So for example, Texas has at one point
decided that what it means to marry a man -
14:25 - 14:28is to mean that you don't have
a Y chromosome, -
14:28 - 14:31and what it means to marry a woman
means you have a Y chromosome. -
14:31 - 14:33In practice they don't test people
for their chromosomes. -
14:33 - 14:35But this is also very bizarre,
-
14:35 - 14:37because of the story I told you
at the beginning -
14:37 - 14:39about androgen insensitivity syndrome.
-
14:39 - 14:43If we look at one of the Founding Fathers
of modern democracy, -
14:43 - 14:44Dr. Martin Luther King,
-
14:44 - 14:47he offers us something of a solution
in his "I have a dream" speech. -
14:47 - 14:50He says we should judge people
"based not on the color of their skin, -
14:50 - 14:52but on the content of their character,"
-
14:52 - 14:54moving beyond anatomy.
-
14:54 - 14:57And I want to say, "Yeah, that sounds
like a really good idea." -
14:57 - 14:59But in practice, how do you do it?
-
14:59 - 15:01How do you judge people based
on the content of character? -
15:02 - 15:03I also want to point out
-
15:03 - 15:07that I'm not sure that is how we should
distribute rights in terms of humans, -
15:07 - 15:10because, I have to admit, that there
are some golden retrievers I know -
15:10 - 15:14that are probably more deserving of social
services than some humans I know. -
15:14 - 15:18I also want to say there are probably
also some yellow Labradors that I know -
15:18 - 15:21that are more capable of informed,
intelligent, mature decisions -
15:21 - 15:23about sexual relations
than some 40-year-olds that I know. -
15:23 - 15:28So how do we operationalize
the question of content of character? -
15:28 - 15:30It turns out to be really difficult.
-
15:30 - 15:31And part of me also wonders,
-
15:31 - 15:33what if content of character
-
15:33 - 15:36turns out to be something
that's scannable in the future... -
15:37 - 15:39Able to be seen with an fMRI?
-
15:39 - 15:41Do we really want to go there?
-
15:41 - 15:43I'm not sure where we go.
-
15:43 - 15:45What I do know is that it seems
to be really important -
15:45 - 15:48to think about the idea
of the United States being in the lead -
15:48 - 15:50of thinking about this issue of democracy.
-
15:50 - 15:53We've done a really good job
struggling with democracy, -
15:53 - 15:55and I think we would do
a good job in the future. -
15:55 - 15:58We don't have a situation
that Iran has, for example, -
15:58 - 16:00where a man who's sexually
attracted to other men -
16:00 - 16:01is liable to be murdered,
-
16:01 - 16:04unless he's willing
to submit to a sex change, -
16:04 - 16:06in which case he's allowed to live.
-
16:06 - 16:08We don't have that kind of situation.
-
16:08 - 16:11I'm glad to say we don't have
the kind of situation with... -
16:11 - 16:13A surgeon I talked to a few years ago
-
16:13 - 16:16who had brought over a set
of conjoined twins -
16:16 - 16:19in order to separate them,
partly to make a name for himself. -
16:19 - 16:22But when I was on the phone with him,
asking why he'll do this surgery... -
16:22 - 16:26This was a very high-risk surgery...
His answer was that, in this other nation, -
16:26 - 16:30these children were going to be treated
very badly, and so he had to do this. -
16:30 - 16:33My response to him was, "Well,
have you considered political asylum -
16:33 - 16:34instead of a separation surgery?"
-
16:34 - 16:37The United States has offered
tremendous possibility -
16:37 - 16:39for allowing people
to be the way they are, -
16:39 - 16:43without having them have
to be changed for the sake of the state. -
16:43 - 16:45So I think we have to be in the lead.
-
16:45 - 16:48Well, just to close,
I want to suggest to you -
16:48 - 16:50that I've been talking
a lot about the Fathers. -
16:50 - 16:52And I want to think
about the possibilities -
16:52 - 16:55of what democracy might look like,
or might have looked like, -
16:55 - 16:57if we had more involved the mothers.
-
16:58 - 17:01And I want to say something
a little bit radical for a feminist, -
17:01 - 17:04and that is that I think that there may be
different kinds of insights -
17:05 - 17:07that can come from different
kinds of anatomies, -
17:07 - 17:09particularly when we have
people thinking in groups. -
17:09 - 17:12For years, because
I've been interested in intersex, -
17:12 - 17:14I've also been interested
in sex-difference research. -
17:14 - 17:17And one of the things
that I've been interested in -
17:17 - 17:19is looking at the differences
between males and females -
17:19 - 17:22in terms of the way they think
and operate in the world. -
17:22 - 17:24And what we know
from cross-cultural studies -
17:24 - 17:26is that females, on average...
-
17:26 - 17:28Not everyone, but on average...
-
17:28 - 17:33Are more inclined to be very attentive
to complex social relations -
17:33 - 17:35and to taking care of people
-
17:35 - 17:37who are, basically,
vulnerable within the group. -
17:38 - 17:40And so if we think about that,
-
17:40 - 17:42we have an interesting situation in hands.
-
17:42 - 17:44Years ago, when I was in graduate school,
-
17:44 - 17:47one of my graduate advisors
who knew I was interested in feminism... -
17:47 - 17:50I considered myself
a feminist, as I still do, -
17:50 - 17:51asked a really strange question.
-
17:51 - 17:54He said, "Tell me what's feminine
about feminism." -
17:54 - 17:57And I thought, "Well, that's the dumbest
question I've ever heard. -
17:57 - 18:00Feminism is all about undoing
stereotypes about gender, -
18:00 - 18:02so there's nothing
feminine about feminism." -
18:02 - 18:04But the more I thought about his question,
-
18:04 - 18:07the more I thought there might be
something feminine about feminism. -
18:07 - 18:10That is to say, there might be
something, on average, -
18:10 - 18:13different about female
brains from male brains -
18:13 - 18:18that makes us more attentive
to deeply complex social relationships, -
18:18 - 18:21and more attentive
to taking care of the vulnerable. -
18:21 - 18:24So whereas the Fathers
were extremely attentive -
18:24 - 18:28to figuring out how to protect
individuals from the state, -
18:28 - 18:31it's possible that if we injected
more mothers into this concept, -
18:31 - 18:35what we would have is more of a concept
of not just how to protect, -
18:35 - 18:37but how to care for each other.
-
18:37 - 18:40And maybe that's where
we need to go in the future, -
18:40 - 18:42when we take democracy beyond anatomy,
-
18:42 - 18:46is to think less about the individual body
in terms of the identity, -
18:46 - 18:48and think more about those relationships.
-
18:48 - 18:52So that as we the people
try to create a more perfect union, -
18:52 - 18:55we're thinking about what we do
for each other. -
18:55 - 18:56Thank you.
-
18:56 - 18:59(Applause)
- Title:
- Is anatomy destiny? | Alice Dreger | TEDxNorthwesternU
- Description:
-
Alice Dreger works with people at the edge of anatomy, such as conjoined twins and intersexed people. In her observation, it's often a fuzzy line between male and female, among other anatomical distinctions. Which brings up a huge question: Why do we let our anatomy determine our fate?
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 19:11
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for TEDxNorthwesternU - Alice Dreger - Democracy After Anatomy | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for TEDxNorthwesternU - Alice Dreger - Democracy After Anatomy | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for TEDxNorthwesternU - Alice Dreger - Democracy After Anatomy |