Alice Dreger Quotes

I think it is fine to have sports divided into men's and women's, just as it is fine to say a fifteen-year-old is incapable of consenting to sex. But we should recognize these are social distinctions based on biology, and not categories foisted upon us by nature.
If we are going to have to worry all the time that we might offend some students' sensibilities, we are not going to be able to teach in a way that actually matters. We're not going to be able to teach about sex, gender, race, religion, or violence.
If we have a situation where a man is particularly graceful in a sport that rewards grace - say, for example, figure skating - why is it that we don't say to the man, 'Well, you're too feminine to compete?'... I don't understand why we don't find it offensive also to say to a women who's very strong, 'You're too masculine to compete.'
Instead of constantly enhancing the norm - forever upping the ante of the 'normal' with new technologies - we should work on enhancing the concept of normal by broadening appreciation of anatomical variation.
Ironically, when I've asked my straight friends to join me in hanging a rainbow flag, they answer, 'But someone might think we're gay,' not realizing that is exactly the point. To be mistaken for the oppressed is to momentarily become the oppressed.
Many medical students, like most American patients, confuse science and technology. They think that what it means to be a scientific doctor is to bring to bear the maximum amount of technology on any given patient. And this makes them dangerous.
My mother has told so many times the unbelievable story of how, as a toddler, I would demand raw onions and eat them like apples, I think that, at this juncture, it is a story that just has to be believed.
No matter how little we think anatomy should matter to one's social and political rights, surely we can't pretend biology doesn't matter in sports. Surely there's a reason we don't let adults play in the t-ball leagues, and a reason most women athletes want their own leagues.
Ok, here goes: I'm going to see how many people I can offend by suggesting that maybe many little gay boys, like many little girls, are made up of sugar and spice and everything nice.
Perhaps it is because I'm a writer trained in history that I've always assumed I would make mistakes in my drafts. Historians know how faulty human memory can be.
Purposefully exposing young people to increased risks of major brain problems - even death - for sport is surely even more ethically complicated than sending young people into this same neurological danger zone as soldiers.
Regardless of the cultural system, social pressure to appear straight seems to be fairly intense cross-culturally. Indeed, one is inclined to wonder, if being straight is just natural, why does it require quite so much policing?
So many times I've heard people say that the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples won't really change anything other than some legal and financial stuff. It's a dumb argument: those legal and financial effects matter.
Surely, sport is not fundamentally about the safety of athletes. If it were, we'd probably have to ban professional football, right after boxing.
The funny thing is, when I ask people with dark skin if they would change their color, they tell me no, and when I ask women if they would rather be men, they tell me no, and I get the same response when I ask people with unusual anatomies if they would take a magic pill to erase their unusual features.
The safety argument against steroids may be a good one, but let's be honest. It isn't the one that motivates most officials and fans to frown on steroids. Steroid use does not just seem risky or unnatural, it seems to disrupt the level playing field.
To be perfectly honest, I follow football the way I follow television. I read about it.
Using medicine in the service of cosmesis is generally bad for patients, bad for doctors, and bad for democracy. The only exceptions are when we know the intervention will actually reduce suffering, as with a primary cleft lip repair.
Want to be a well-paid bioethicist, with one, two, or even three university appointments? Just get yourself a two-piece navy polyester suit and follow these three simple rules: (1) Never name names. (2) Screw principles; just follow procedures. (3) Bury the money.
We don't really know where human sexual orientations come from yet. What we do know is that the evidence we have that sexual orientation includes an innate component doesn't seem to point to the existence of simple 'gay genes' and 'straight genes.'
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Alice Dreger
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