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Alice Dreger vs. transgender people

Alice Dreger is an American historian and anti-transgender activist best known for exploiting minorities:

  • conjoined twins
  • little people
  • sex and gender minorities

Dreger is also known for disease mongering:

  • for people with differences in sex development
  • for sexual minorities
  • for gender diverse children
  • for transgender and gender diverse adults
  • for people in the kink community

Dreger’s anti-trans activism includes:

Dreger has been involved in a number of other controversies, including:

  • appearing on “TV exploitation gigs” as an expert who exploits minorities
  • sustained attacks on pediatrician Maria New via the site fetaldex.org [archive] and the book Galileo’s Middle Finger
  • local news site East Lansing Info
    • sustained attacks on local leaders and businesses
    • installing election denier Anne Hill as interim Executive Director
  • Writing a second work of fiction following the success of the first, Galileo’s Middle Finger, this time under the name Molly Macallen, titled The Index Case

Dreger was one of the first members named to the Intellectual Dark Web, described as a “gateway to the far right.” Dreger has tried to disavow the group since 2018, rebranding as an “academic freedom” crusader. Dreger has gone on to get money and attention by claiming to be oppressed or silenced by the minorities that Dreger exploits. Biologist Julia Serano describes this tactic as the “Dregerian narrative.” Dreger’s tactics are described by social scientists as DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender).

The “academic freedom” marketing ploy is a grift in Dreger’s case. Dreger does everything possible to shut down criticism at academic events. Dreger tried and failed to stop me from speaking at Northwestern University in 2006, which led to a multi-year obsession with me. Then Dreger tried and failed to shut down an entire 2008 panel at the National Women’s Studies Association conference. That panel was about Dreger’s earlier attempts to impinge on our academic freedom.

This will be updated shortly, but below is my exposé on Kenneth Zucker, the reparative therapist of gender diverse children who published Dreger’s defense of J. Michael Bailey. That defense was later republished in Galileo’s Middle Finger, but without Dreger’s unsupportable claims clearing Bailey of fabricating his Danny Ryan case report. Zucker was fired a few months after this exposé.

In 2019, the town where Dreger lives outlawed the anti-transgender “therapy” that Dreger and Zucker support.

Sexology’s war on transgender children (2015)


Dreger has promoted several academic hoaxes, including the “Danny Ryan” fabrication and many “Kiira Triea” fabrications.

The archival information below will be updated soon.


Background

monger (verb): To trade or deal in: said especially of unfair or illegal methods and dealings.

Alice Domurat Dreger is a self-styled “hermaphrodite monger” best known for diagnosing minorities with diseases that Dreger and friends create. The former tenured professor’s trade is writing and speaking about controversies surrounding marginalized populations, especially sex and gender minorities.

Dreger is most famous (if you can call it that) for pushing to abandon the term “intersex” in favor of the medicalized term DSD, for “disorders of sex development” (Dreger 2005). Though Dreger has claimed that “DSD isn’t terribly stigmatizing” (Dreger 2006a), activists and experts have objected to Dreger’s pathologizing disease model (e.g. OII 2006, Diamond 2006). Dreger leverages academic connections to suppress and discredit criticism.

Dreger’s academic influence had faded by 2006, however. Dreger claimed to be “exhausted” (Dreger 2006b), but what was really exhausted was the money Dreger had been paid to prepare promotional materials for the DSD Consortium (Dreger 2006c), a group from which Dreger was about to resign. What’s a part-time minor academic with no upcoming projects or funding to do?

Hack journalists want to be in their stories, and hack historians long to make themselves part of history. Alice Dreger craves the fame and attention that have largely eluded her, and her preferred methods and dealings include complaining, rumor-mongering, and trolling. I believe the record shows that Dreger instigated a personal feud with me in hopes of positioning herself as somewhat relevant again in academia, part of and attempt to rebrand as a bioethicist.

Normally, I don’t bother dealing with kooks and academic nobodies like Dreger. I’ve learned they’re just not worth the effort. I did not issue a public response to Dreger’s antics until August 2007, about 18 months after Dreger began fixating on me.

Dreger unsuccessfully tried to suppress a 2006 speech I was invited to give at Northwestern and twice tried to get me fired. Dreger’s obsessive anger following those failures led to spending a year on a magnum opus about Bailey’s 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen and the ensuing investigations (Conway 2003, Wilson 2004). Dreger calls this work a “partial history” (Dreger 2007), apparently missing the second meaning. It is certainly partial in both senses. This 53,000-word apologia epitomizes why I left academia. Sadly, this kind of sloppy, vindictive nonsense passes as scholarship today, especially at the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the house organ for Bailey and cronies (Springer 2007) associated with Toronto’s regressive CAMH Clarke Institute. It’s remarkable how much Dreger deliberately omitted despite rambling for over 60 pages.


Unfair methods: intellectual dishonesty and media manipulation

Though there are many, many more examples, I want to note at the onset one key instance of Alice Dreger’s intellectual dishonesty in service of her personal vendetta against me.

Dreger’s claims that I have made “explicit threats” against her are patent nonsense. I am well-known for my anti-violence activism. The all-transgender Vagina Monologues I co-produced in 2004 benefited the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women (now called Peace Over Violence). That event was historic enough to be made into a documentary (Aronson 2006). I’m featured in a book of anti-violence activists (Ensler 2005). I speak about stopping anti-trans violence in a documentary in which Dreger also appears (see side-by-side screenshots above) (Thomas 2005).

Her claim that she is “in fear” (Dreger 2006e) is obviously a disingenuous tactic. Dreger just needed a nemesis to inject herself into this faded controversy and to make her involvement more melodramatic. She also needed a pretext not to interview me for her “history.” My first emailed response to Dreger assumed her questions were in good faith, despite her petulant tone. Her response proved I was wrong about her intent. Dreger’s selective quoting in order to make me sound menacing is laughable when put back in context.

In response to Dreger’s ongoing personal vendetta against me, now masquerading as “scholarship,” I am releasing our seven private emails for the record, as well as related emails to others in which we mention each other. Dreger’s gossipy, partisan hit piece is certainly not newsworthy, but Dreger is pushing hard to get her media connections to cover this non-event. She explains how to manipulate reporters on her website:

… the best way to do it is the one-two punch: publish in a medical journal, and then make as big a media stink about it as you can, for example, by writing a national editorial about it, or by using relationships you’ve developed with reporters. (Dreger 2006d)

Bailey had developed a relationship with Benedict Carey at the New York Times, who wrote me on 2 August 2007 requesting comment about Alice Dreger’s unpublished paper (Carey 2007a). Carey didn’t think the Bailey investigation was newsworthy enough to mention in his 2005 “Straight, Gay, or Lying” piece about Bailey’s bisexuality “controversy” (Carey 2005). Carey was criticized by everyone from media watchdogs (FAIR 2005) to LGBT rights groups (GLAAD 2005, NGLTF 2005) for his reporting. In 2007, Bailey and Dreger fed him Dreger’s unpublished apologia in hopes of getting Carey to print a story just as the IASR annual sexology conference started. Carey’s bisexuality piece was similarly timed in 2005, but this time it appears his Times editors were aware of the appearance of impropriety and postponed it until after the conference (Carey 2007b). Since Carey and others apparently take Dreger seriously, I decided to defend myself from Dreger’s 18 months of escalating personal attacks.



References

Aronson J (2006). Beautiful Daughters. Logo.
http://www.logoonline.com/shows/dyn/beautiful_daughters/series.jhtml

Baechler M-N (2006). DSD – Silencing intersex voices – Switzerland Organisation Internationale des Intersexués.
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_52

Bailey JM (2003). The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. Joseph Henry Press.
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309084180
[online version removed in February 2006]

Carey B (2005). Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited. New York Times, 5 July 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/health/05sex.html

Carey B (2007a). Alice Dreger paper/NY Times questions. Personal email correspondence to the author, 2 August.

Carey B (2007b). Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege, New York Times, 21 August 2007. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/health/psychology/21gender.html

Conway L (2003 ff.). An investigation into the publication of J. Michael Bailey’s book on transsexualism by the National Academies. lynnconway.com 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/LynnsReviewOfBaileysBook.html

Costich J, Hinkle C (2006). Talking About What Matters? A response to Alice Dreger. 
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html

Diamond M (2006). Variations of Sex Development Instead of Disorders of Sex Development. 
http://adc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/91/7/554#2460
Replying to Hughes IA et al. Consensus statement on management of intersex disorders. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 2006; 91: 554-563
http://adc.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/91/7/554?rss=1Dreger A (1994). What is the deal? bionet.women-in-bio, 24 May

The Hermaphrodite Monger ADREGER at UCS.INDIANA.EDU
http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/womenbio/1994-May/001107.html

See also Dreger A (1994). Unsubscribing. bionet.women-in-bio,  27 September
“From: ADREGER@UCS.INDIANA.EDU (‘Alice Dreger, Hermaphrodite Monger’).”
http://groups.google.com/group/bionet.women-in-bio/browse_frm/thread/79acf72940b72074/58c9a3fa4b6a7424

Dreger AD, Chase C, Sousa A, Gruppuso PA, Frader, J (2005). Changing the nomenclature/taxonomy for intersex: a scientific and clinical rationale. Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology & Metabolism, 18. 729-733. Dreger’s original proposal was “disorders of sex differentiation,” later revised to “disorders of sex development.”

Dreger A (2006a). What are Disorders of Sex Development? Quoted by April Herndon on ISNA.org blog, 14 March 2006.

See citation at Brömdal A (2006). Intersex – A challenge for human rights and citizenship rights (PDF), p. 109. 
http://www.isna.org/node/1028 
[now removed, copy preserved at Fact Sheet on DSD activism (with footnotes) at OII]
http://www.intersexualite.org/DSD_Activists.html#anchor_5

We realize, of course, that any terminology including the word “disorder” can be construed as pejorative. We’d also like to emphasize that we use the abbreviated form of DSD whenever possible. Explaining why this is important, Alice Dreger writes, “we find that, when accompanied by an explanation of what we mean, DSD isn’t terribly stigmatizing. And an important point: the acronym DSD is very useful—and thus, the acronym should be favored over the spelled-out term— because as an abbreviation we don’t focus on ‘disorder’.” We explain what we mean, and then use the term “DSDs.” Thus, we recognize that this is not a perfect term, but we hope ISNA’s supporters and allies will understand that it’s helping us enact real change in medical care.

Dreger A (2006b). Talking about what matters. 
http://www.alicedreger.com/dsd.html

Dreger A (2006c). Consortium on Disorders of Sex Development.
http://www.dsdguidelines.org/
http://www.dsdguidelines.org/files/parents.pdf

Dreger A (2006d).  Get thee to a hospital. alicedreger.com 14 August 2006 
http://www.alicedreger.com/get_thee.html

Dreger A (2006e). The blog I write in fear. alicedreger.com 13 May 2006
http://www.alicedreger.com/in_fear.html

Dreger A (2006f). A follow-up on my encounter with Andrea James. alicedreger.com 7 June 2006
http://www.alicedreger.com/in_fear.html

Dreger A (2006g) DSD terminology. 1 October 2006. Full letter at Appendix 2.

Dreger A (2007, in press) The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age. Archives of Sexual Behavior.
http://www.bioethics.northwestern.edu/faculty/work/dreger/controversy_tmwwbq.pdf

Ensler E, Tennyson J (2005). Vagina Warriors. Bulfinch Press.
http://www.amazon.com/Vagina-Warriors-Eve-Ensler/dp/0821261835

FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (2005). New York Times Suggests Bisexuals Are “Lying:” Paper fails to disclose study author’s controversial history. 8 July 2005. 
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2573

GLAAD: Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (2005). New York Times Promotes Bisexual Stereotypes in “Straight, Gay or Lying?”
http://www.glaad.org/action/write_now_detail.php?id=3827&PHPSESSID=0b9e8b63af283601f7dc071e1a4c4568

Guillot V (2006). We in France are deeply concerned about the DSD guidelines and the very terminology. Organisation Internationale des Intersexués.
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_51

Hinkle C (2006). Personal email correspondence to the author, 27 May 2006.

James A (1998). Personal email correspondence to Anne Lawrence. 9 November 1998. Full letter at Appendix 1.

James A (2003). The Anne Who Would Be Queen. tsroadmap.com
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/lawrence/anne-lawrence.html

James A (2004). A defining moment in our history: Examining disease models of gender identity. Transgender Tapestry, Fall 2006, 110:pp. 18-23. Originally published September 2004.
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/gender-identity.html

Lamarre C (2006). Grosses bises solidaires! Organisation Internationale des Intersexués.
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_51

Laramée J-C (2006). The title of Dreger’s blog entry says it all: Talking about What Matters. Organisation Internationale des Intersexués
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_48

Lawrence (1998). “Men trapped in men’s bodies:” An Introduction to the Concept of Autogynephilia. annelawrence. com 
http://home.swipnet.se/~w-13968/autogynephilia.html
[original now removed]

Nagant E (2006). We are not “disorders” ! Organisation Internationale des Intersexués
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_51

NGLTF: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (2005). Task Force denounces New York Times story promoting bisexual stereotypes. 11 July 2005 
http://thetaskforce.org/press/releases/pr848_071105
http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/NYTBisexualityFactSheet.pdf

O’Brien M (2006) Commentary. Organisation Internationale des Intersexués
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_46

OII: Organisation Internationale des Intersexués (2006). Alice Dreger: Disorders of Sex Development.
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html

Roughgarden, J. (2003, April 25). Psychology lecture lacks sensitivity to sexual orientation. The Stanford Daily.
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2003/04/25/psychology-lecture-lacks-sensitivity-to-sexual-orientation/

Siedlberg S (2006). The Genuine Question. Organisation Internationale des Intersexués
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_46

Springer (2007) Archives of Sexual Behavior Editorial Board
http://tinyurl.com/2pskjo

State of Washington Department of Health (1997). Documentation in Anne A. Lawrence investigation, Case Number 97-05-0042MD. 
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/lawrence/anne-a-lawrence.pdf

Thomas A (2005). Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She. HBO.
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/middlesexes/index.html

Wilson R (2004, Dec. 10). Northwestern U. will not reveal results of investigation into sex researcher. The Chronicle of Higher Education, p. 10.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i16/16a01001.htm


Appendix 1: 1998 letter from me to Anne Lawrence

Since her first letter to me on May 16, 2006, Dreger has been keen to label me an “autogynophile” [sic]. Though I explained her misreading to her in my detailed response that day, she continues to distort a phrase from a 1998 letter in order to make that assertion.

Parts in purple were quoted by Dreger (Dreger 2007). Section in bold is where Dreger selectively quotes and paraphrases in order to avoid using my appositional term “autoandrophobia” as explained in my detailed response. See additional information below the text of the letter.

Note also that by ending the first quotation where she does, Dreger implies I’m saying the paper backs up my own experiences, rather than backs up my experiences reading letters from correspondents.

From: <jokestress@aol.com>
To: <alawrence@mindspring.com>
Sent: Monday, November 09, 1998 6:26 PM
Subject: Excellent paper!

Hi Anne–

I have a couple of more weeks to recover at home from my 10/28 labiaplasty and implant repositioning, and my 11/2 chin revision. It’s given me some time to look at sites I haven’t seen in a while, and to work on my own.

I just read your autogynephilia paper and found it to be excellent, as expected. I’m sure you’ve gotten quite an array of responses, since TSs are extremely reluctant to be categorized and defined by others. A definition is inherently inclusive or exclusive, and there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t feel they belong in or out of a definition.

I got body slammed by the usual suspects in 1996 for recommending a Blanchard book. Sure, he’s pretty much the Antichrist to the surgery-on-demand folks, and I’ve heard some horror stories about the institute he runs that justify the nickname “Jurassic Clarke.” However, I found many of his observations to be quite valid, even brilliant, especially in distinguishing early- and late- transitioning TS patterns of thought and behavior. I don’t buy into all of Freud, either, but that certainly doesn’t invalidate his many brilliant insights.

Now that I have received a lot of letters from TSs, I have found that your paper backs up my own experiences. One correspondent used a phrase I found most interesting. She had been lamenting her inability to pass in public and asked for advice. When I gave her a number of tips, she had excuses for why none would work. Normally, I write these people off as a waste of my time, but in this case I pressed her about what would really make her happy, and what she meant by passing.

Her response was “I want to be able to pass in the nude after surgery.”  I wrote, “Passing in the nude is great and everything– I certainly want that, too. But the opportunities for nudity in my life are extremely rare– about .1% of the time.”

I pressed further and realized what she seemed to mean. She did not really care about passing in public as much as she did passing in private. She seemed to want to admire herself in the mirror as female. This was her definition of passing. To her, she could look past all the other unpassable parts and zero in on her notion of what true passing meant– having a vagina. She could stare at her vagina and the rest wouldn’t matter. Classic anatomic autogynephilia, no?

She knew that her masculinity would be a barrier to standard intimate nude situations– say, a locker room or a sexual relationship. That wasn’t what it was about to her. It was about admiring herself, the way crossdressers masturbate while looking at themselves in a mirror.

You might say she desired passing in the pubic sphere instead of the public one… 😉

—–

Now, I’d like to throw out a thought for you to ponder. I am obsessed with my appearance, and I characterized it to you as similar to the way an anorexic sees herself as fat. I still am horrified and dismayed to see traces of masculinity when I look at images of myself.

Would this be “autoandrophobia,” perhaps?

I have noticed in most TSs, and in “surgery addicts” especially, a certain sort of self-loathing, a drive to efface every shred of masculinity. While I readily admit to my own autogynephilia, I would contend that my own drives toward feminization seem to have a component pushing me from the opposite direction as well.

Now, if you think you’ve caught a lot of shit about autogynephilia, just imagine what would happen if I used “TS” and “self-loathing” in the same sentence! Nonetheless, I see my own transsexual feelings paralleled in the words of people with other body dysphorias. Obviously, I’d need to think this through pretty seriously before I’d say anything for all to read, but your paper helped me form a word for that part of my own drive toward feminization.

—–

Finally, I have decided that my true contribution to the collected body of TG knowledge is to concentrate on the oft-neglected topic of consumer issues. To that end, I will be putting up what I believe will be the definitive resource on financing transition in a week or two. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

Again, excellent thinking, and I look forward to reading more.

Take care,
Andrea

Below, I have reproduced one passage as Dreger altered it for her upcoming paper.


Dreger alters this with italics for emphasis. Dreger inserts this bracketed paraphrase 
to avoid my term “autoandrophobia” 
from just before the passage she uses. 
Distorting decontextualized comments 
is a favorite tactic of this self-styled 
“hermaphrodite monger.”

Dreger uses every trick in her book to distort and obfuscate, despite my lengthy explanation. This is part of the “gotcha” mentality of professional trolls like Dreger, a mindset which emerged from USENET and blogs and is now infecting academic discourse.


Appendix 2: 2006 letter from Alice Dreger to intersex activists

From: “Alice Dreger, Ph.D.”
Subject: DSD terminology
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 09:58:56 -0400

Folks,

I hope your intersex rights work is going well as I write. As always, I personally appreciate what you’re doing to help build a better world for intersex children and adults.

I see that Curtis Hinkle is up to his usual behavior, this time attacking me personally about the DSD terminology. I want you to know one thing, and then to make a suggestion.

The thing I want you to know is that I pissed off trans activist Andrea James (see http://www.alicedreger.com/in_fear), and as a result she decided she would try to attack me via attacking the DSD terminology. She told me this explicitly in an email on June 1, 2006. I quote: “I could care less about your kid and your sense of breeder entitlement. I am, however, going to do what I can to discredit your lame-ass DSD model. At least you got that part right.”

I also quote here from her email of May 27, 2006: “DSD is going to be your merm and ferm. You have made a spectacular misstep with this disease model, though still not as inept as Bailey’s. Can’t wait till you and DSD are discredited by intersex activists (e.g., the world outside ISNA) and top-tier ethicists (e.g., not you) looking at the bigger picture. Your one-issue advocacy is selling out a larger movement for the sake of expediency. Bad move, mommy.”

So besides sending me threats about my son, James has opted to team up with Curtis to achieve her aims. Hence her links to Curtis’s work on her general-attack site.

I want you to know this because I think a lot of intersex people are in danger of having their progressive energies sucked up by an offshoot of James’s attempts to irritate and discredit me, which are offshoots of her attempts to ruin other people.

That said, I do think it is definitely worth having productive discussions about the DSD terminology and when it is worth using, and I’m glad people are taking about it.

So my suggestion is this: When you’re engaged in discussions about this, PLEASE do not waste time discussing what I think or what I have said or anything else about me. Focus on what matters — intersex people and their well-being. It doesn’t matter what I think or say, except insofar as perhaps some people wish to know how I see the debate. What matters is how well people with intersex are.

So please try to keep the discussion focused on what really matters, and that way James won’t be harming the intersex community the way she has so tragically harmed the transgender community. (You won’t know about a lot of that harm, but I do, because since I spoke up, many trans people have written to me to tell me what she’s done to them. They are much too afraid–for obvious reasons–to speak publicly about what she’s done to them.)

As I talked about in my recent blog on the terminology (http://www.alicedreger.com/dsd), I would really like to see people try to direct their writing, speaking, and thinking energies towards engagement with those with real power. That is not Curtis Hinkle, or for that matter most other intersex activists, including me. That is the doctors and the parents who need our help understanding how to make things better and better. That’s why I spend the vast majority of my energy doing that kind of engagement and I encourage you to do the same, even as people whack at you (or your friends and allies) and try to distract you from your real work that I know you do so incredibly well–peer-support work, human rights work, educational work, medical reform work.

Please feel free to share this email with whomever you wish. I also welcome those of you who have my DSD resignation letter to go ahead and leak the rest of it; there’s nothing in there or any of the rest of my work that I’m not proud of. Indeed, I’ll attach the letter here so you all have the whole of it.

It has been my great privilege and honor to be so well advised and supported and led by you and your colleagues.

Best wishes,
Alice

Alice Dreger, Ph.D.
Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program
Feinberg School of Medicine
Northwestern University

International responses to Dreger’s rumor-mongering (e.g. Siedlberg 2006, O’Brien 2006, Laramée 2006, Guillot 2006, Lamarre 2006, Nagant 2006, Baechler 2006) suggest that her attempt to blame me for this controversy is being ignored. Dreger’s attempts to push her promotional materials and “consensus statements” about DSD are going to be challenged by farsighted activists who are finally speaking for themselves.

References

Todd Heywood (July 21, 2022). East Lansing Info installs election denier as interim executive director. Lansing City Pulse https://lansingcitypulse.com/stories/east-lansing-info-installs-election-denier-as-interim-executive-director,21777

ELi Board of Directors (July 21, 2022). Following Deliberations, ELi’s Board Takes Action on Leadership Concern. East Lansing Info https://eastlansinginfo.news/following-deliberations-elis-board-takes-action-on-leadership-concern/

Berl Schwartz and Todd Heywood (July 22, 2022). East Lansing Info kicks election denier off board. Lansing City Pulse https://www.lansingcitypulse.com/stories/east-lansing-info-kicks-election-denier-off-board,21861

Media by Dreger

Exploitation of people with differences of sex development

Alice Dreger, Hermaphrodite Monger (September 27, 1994). unsubscribing. bionet.women-in-bio https://groups.google.com/g/bionet.women-in-bio/c/eaz3KUC3IHQ?pli=1

Little people exploitation

Dreger A (March 25, 2008). Lavish dwarf entertainment. The Hastings Center https://www.thehastingscenter.org/lavish-dwarf-entertainment/

At the time, I was writing a book about conjoined twins and had decided to open with amusing bar stories from people born with body types that mess with ideas of normal.

Conjoined twin exploitation

Dreger AD (May 26, 2011). Dr. Oz Can’t Afford Me: Why I’m through hawking conjoined twins on daytime TV. Fetishes I Don’t Get. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fetishes-i-dont-get/201105/dr-oz-cant-afford-me

Resources

Alice Dreger (alicedreger.com) [archive]

Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)

Twitter (twitter.com)

East Lansing Info (eastlansinginfo.news)

TED (ted.com)

Quillette (quillette.com)

LinkedIn (linkedin.com)

Psychology Today (psychologytoday.com)

IMDb (imdb.com)

The Atlantic (theatlantic.com)

Intersex Society of North America (isna.org)

  • active 1998–2008
  • Alice Dreger [archive]

Fetal Dex (fetaldex.org) [archive]

  • Created to attack Dr. Maria New, active 2010-2022