intersex

In this 213th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we talk about the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.

In this episode, we discuss sex, gender, and plants. First up: sex is binary, gender is downstream of sex, and rare Disorders of Sexual Development do not put the lie to the sex binary. Then: Duke University is deep-sixing its world class herbarium. We discuss the value of natural history museums, and of libraries, and defend the liberal arts and sciences as fundamental not just to human inquiry, but to human flourishing.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Colin Wright on Eric Weinstein’s appearance on Modern Wisdom: https://x.com/SwipeWright/status/1759718664369050058
 
Me, She, He, They: Reality vs Identity in the 21st Century (Heather on sex and gender):https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/meshehethey

Duke plans to close its Herbarium, “A tragic mistake”: https://www.science.org/content/article/tragic-mistake-decision-close-duke-university-s-herbarium-triggers-furor
 
Herman, S.G., 2002. Wildlife biology and natural history: time for a reunion. The Journal of wildlife management66(4): 933-946. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3802927

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the ruling class got together at the Met Gala last night to celebrate their wealth. AOC was on the scene in a “Tax the Rich” dress. Was it a courageous and rebellious display by the congresswoman, or rank, shameless hypocrisy? We’ll discuss. Also, a new poll shows that an increasing number of vaccinated Americans are cutting off ties with unvaccinated friends. Plus, Secretary of State Blinken admits that many of those SIV applicant Afghans we’re admitting into the country are not actually SIV applicants. And, a male MMA fighter enters the ring with a female fighter and beats her into submission. This is being celebrated as a brave and beautiful moment in sports history, but I have a different take. All of that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show. 

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“Nature doesn’t care about our desire to have these clean political categories for legal purposes.” — Alice Dreger

Today I’m really excited to have Dr. Alice Dreger on the podcast. Dr. Dreger is a historian, bioethicist, author, and former professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. Dreger is widely known for her academic work and activism in support of people at the edge of anatomy, such as conjoined twins and those with atypical sex characteristics. In her observations, it’s often a fuzzy line between “male” and “female”, among other anatomical distinctions. A key question guiding a lot of Dr. Dreger’s work (and which was the topic of her TEDx talk) is “Why do we let our anatomy determine our fate?” Dr. Dreger is the author of multiple books, including “One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal” and “Galieleo’s Middle Finger Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science.”

In this episode, we discuss a wide range of topics, including:

• How Dr. Dreger got involved in the “Intersex Rights Movement” in the mid-90s
• The difference between anatomy and gender identity
• The relationship between our bodies and our personal and social identities and the role of science and medicine in determining this relationship
• Who gets to tell your body what it means
• How the mind isn’t the only place where identity exists, and how our identities also exist in the minds of others
• The future of gender pronouns
• How we should treat those who do not fit traditional notions of sex, such as the fascinating cases of “androgen sensitivity syndrome” and “congenital adrenal hyperplasia”
• How we can see more value in variation in anatomy
• The need for a more reality-based government
• Why the phrase “identity politics” is distracting and only part of a larger problem
• The benefits and disadvantages of the “Intellectual Dark Web”
• The increasing difficulty of being able to tell what is true and what is false in the media
• Why we spend so much of our energy on tribal politics and avoid the real humanitarian problems in the world
• Why tribal life is so compelling
• The need to balance male and female ways of being
• What an “Intellectual Light Web” might look like

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