3 | Alice Dreger on Sexuality, Truth, and Justice

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll

Physics, Science

4.7 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2018

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The human mind loves nothing more than to build mental boxes -- categories -- and put things into them, then refuse to accept it when something doesn't fit. Nowhere is this more clear than in the idea that there are men, and there are women, and that's it. Alice Dreger is an historian of science, specializing in intersexuality and the relationship between bodies and identities. She is also a successful activist, working to change the way that doctors deal with newborn children who are born intersex. We talk about human sexuality and a number of other hot-button topics, and ruminate on the challenges of being both an intellectual (devoted to truth) and an activist (seeking justice). [smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/seancarroll/alice-dreger.mp3" social_gplus="false" social_email="true" hashtag="mindscapepodcast" ] Alice Dreger received her Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University. She has worked as a faculty member at Michigan State University and Northwestern University. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and was the Founding Board Chair of the Intersex Society of North America. She is the author of a number of books, including Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar's Search for Justice, and most recently The Talk: Helping Your Kids Navigate Sex in the Real World. Home page Wikipedia page Publications TED Talk: Is Anatomy Destiny? Twitter

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll, and today we'll be talking about truth and justice.
0:07.6	It's very hard to say that phrase without thinking of Superman, right? Truth, justice, and the American way.
0:13.2	The American way part never quite made sense. Superman was from a different planet, after all. He came from Krypton.
0:19.2	He should be about truth and justice for everybody.
0:21.6	In fact, the American way was tacked on when Superman radio serial was being broadcast during World War II,
0:28.4	and people thought it was really important that the superheroes be on America's side in this conflict.
0:33.7	It was later dropped and then it was picked up again when we entered the Cold War,
0:37.3	and ever since then, Superman has for some reason or another thought that America was the best country.
0:42.6	But today's guest, Dr. Ellis Drager, is all about the truth and the justice parts of this motto.
0:48.4	And that's a non-trivial thing to say because truth and justice, although both virtues, are two different things.
0:55.3	It may happen in the course of human events that the search for truth and the search for justice come into conflict,
1:01.9	either apparent conflict or real honest to goodness conflict.
1:06.0	And Dr. Drager's specialty as a historian and author is in human gender and sexuality,
1:12.0	and more generally how our bodies relate to ourselves. As you might imagine,
1:17.2	this is a set of hot button issues when it comes to humanity, bodies, and sexuality.
1:22.9	So perhaps it's not surprising that Dr. Drager has been involved in all number of academic controversies.
1:29.4	Her controversies and her research involve things like intersexuality, transgendarism,
1:35.4	academic censorship, and so on. Dr. Drager is the author of a wonderful book called Gala Leo's
1:41.2	Middle Finger, Heretics, Activists, and One Scholars Search for Justice. As we'll talk about in the
1:47.8	podcast, Gala Leo's actual honest to goodness finger is on display in a museum. In Florence, you can
1:54.4	go see it, well worth it at the Gala Leo Museum. While everyone else just look at the art, you can go
1:59.2	see the Gala Leo relics there. But it's also a symbol. Gala Leo was an ordinary kind of person who fought for
	...

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