Alice Dreger: Medical Ethics and Sexuality

Alice Dreger is a bioethicist, historian, activist, and author. She’s well known as a powerful public voice in support of rights people born with atypical sex characteristics, such as intersex.

In this conversation, Alice and Matt explore the science, philosophy, and history sex, gender, intersex, and similar topics.

Topics:

* Biological and social determinants of sex and gender

* Medical treatment of people born with atypical sex characteristics

* Ethics of sex and gender affirming medical interventions, especially in the case of children and adolescents

* Conflicts that often arise between science and activists on matters relating to individual identity

… and other topics.

Alice’s links:

* Website: https://alicedreger.com/

* Books: https://alicedreger.com/books/

* Twitter: https://twitter.com/AliceDreger

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PODCAST INFO:

- Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3IVDF2W

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- YouTube: https://bit.ly/paradigm-on-youtube

- RSS: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/1656558/s/65176.rss

Chapters:

0:00:00 Intro

0:02:20 Alice’s path to studying intersex

0:04:05 What are sex and gender?

0:08:20 Are sex and gender biologically determined?

0:10:14 Is intersex a “problem”?

0:13:00 Sexual orientation vs gender identity

0:16:34 How common is intersex?

0:22:24 Medical treatment of intersex people

0:30:23 Experience of people with intersex

0:41:21 Intersex in children and adolescents

0:44:32 Scientists vs activists

0:55:54 Galileo’s Middle Finger

0:58:21 Book recommendations

1:01:20 Advice for aspiring activists