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:
-
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 |