9th Annual Korenman Lecture: Alice Dreger
Why Have Intersex Rights Been So Hard to Secure in America?
Location
Library and Gallery, Albin O. Kuhn : Library Gallery
Date & Time
February 24, 2016, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Description
9TH ANNUAL KORENMAN LECTURE
Why Have Intersex Rights Been So Hard to Secure in America?
Alice Dreger, historian of science and medicine
For 25 years, people born with intersex (that is, body types that aren’t standard male or standard female) and their allies have been fighting for basic patient rights, including the right to full access to their medical histories and the right to decide for themselves about optional genital surgeries. Yet, although the public is today much more educated about intersex and intersex rights than 25 years ago, American pediatric medical care for intersex still involves invasive attempts to sex “normalize” boys and girls born intersex and still lacks adequate psychosocial care. Even while the United Nations has recently declared intersex genital surgeries to constitute human rights violations, American medicine treats unusual forms of sex as automatic pathologies in need of surgical “repair.” This talk explores why much more progress has been made abroad than in America, and in doing so, pays particular attention to tensions existing between the pursuit of justice and the pursuit of truth in America today.
Sponsored by the Gender and Women’s Studies Department; the Dresher Center for the Humanities; the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; the Office of the Provost; the Office of the Vice President for Research; Women Involved in Learning and Leadership; and the Psychology Department.