I’m lactose intolerant; that I know. (I’ve repeatedly done the assay…out my ass.) Being lactose intolerant makes me statistically normal among the world’s adult human population. That’s right: about 85% of the world’s adult population is lactose intolerant, as are most other adult mammals. If only I lived where most people were normal like me….…
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The Phall-O-Meter
Reprinted with permission. To read about its history, click here and here.
Utne Reader Nov/Dec 2011
This is the full page ad my medical school was kind enough to take out in the Utne Reader issue in which I was named a “visionary.” This made me even happier than the “visionary” status!
A Brief History of Intersex
Alice Dreger, with Cheryl Chase, “A Brief History of Intersex”, in A Human Rights Investigation into the Medical “Normalization” of Intersex People, a Report of a Public Hearing by the Human Rights Commission, edited by Marcus de Maria Arana [City and County of San Francisco, 2005], chapter 2. This is pretty much the same as…
‘Ambiguous Sex’ or Ambivalent Medicine? Ethical Problems in the Treatment of Intersexuality
by Alice Domurat Dreger, in The Hastings Center Report, vol. 28, no. 3 [May/June 1998], pp. 24-35. This was for many years my most-cited and most-reprinted article, and one that still holds up well. It has had some good effect on medical practice, though not enough. Also see the 2011 update posted here. Reprinted in…
Jarring Bodies: Thoughts on the Display of Unusual Anatomies
Alice Domurat Dreger, “Jarring Bodies: Thoughts on the Display of Unusual Anatomies,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol. 43, no. 2 [Winter 2000], pp. 161-172. This article unpacks medical display and its implications for people born with what get labeled “birth defects”. It won the Dwight J. Ingle Memorial Award for Young Writers from Perspectives in Biology and…
Sex beyond the Karyotype
Alice Dreger, “Sex Beyond the Karyotype,” in Controversies in Science and Technology, volume 2: From Chromosomes to the Cosmos, edited by Daniel Lee Kleinman and Jo Handelsman (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc, 2007). Designed as a handy introduction to the nature of sex and gender, this is meant to be (and I think succeeds in being)…
Healthcare Professionals and Intersex Conditions
Joel Frader, MD, MA; Priscilla Alderson, PhD; Adrienne Asch, PhD; Cassandra Aspinall, MSW, ACSW; Dena Davis, JD, PhD; Alice Dreger, PhD; James Edwards, PhD; Ellen K. Feder, PhD; Arthur Frank, PhD; Lisa Abelow Hedley, JD; Eva Kittay, PhD; Jeffrey Marsh, MD; Paul Steven Miller, LLB; Wendy Mouradian, MD; Hilde Nelson, PhD; Erik Parens, PhD., “Health…
Nature is One Whole: Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s Traité de Tératologie
Alice Domurat Dreger, Nature is One Whole: Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s Traité de Tératologie [Master’s Thesis in History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, 1993]. My humble, little, 180-page master’s thesis….Pretty obscure, rarely read, rarely cited, but, I’ve been told, not bad for a summer’s work. And it won the Esther L. Kinsley Master’s Thesis Award…
Doubtful Sex: The Fate of the Hermaphrodite in Victorian Medicine
Alice Domurat Dreger, “Doubtful Sex: The Fate of the Hermaphrodite in Victorian Medicine,” Victorian Studies, vol. 38, no. 3 [Spring 1995], pp. 335-369. I think this is the only all-about-the-past article I’ve ever written. Shortly after this came out, my discussions with people living with intersex swept me into the intersex rights movement, and I…