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