Judi Herring’s talk “Gender Bound” was given at TEDxJacksonville, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Rejecting the present conception of gender as a value reduced to a single variable — the presence or absence of a penis —Herring calls us to move beyond gender labels (that too often serve as the primary reference point for how we relate to one another). Rather than enforce conformity to an either/or standard, we need to embrace the reality of gender diversity and find value in “unknowing” gender. Since time immemorial, humans have been labeled as either male or female, but in this engrossing talk, urologic surgeon Dr. Judi Herring argues that the reality of gender is far more complex. Each year, one in 2,000 babies are born with ambiguous genitalia (statistically, more common than cystic fibrosis). The common prescription for such “intersex” children is a lengthy and painful process of surgical correction that Herring believes is both cruel and arbitrary.

Tweetable: Development of gender is more complex than the development of our  fingerprint. Each of us have a unique “gender print.” @TEDxJAX

Author: Becka Lee Gruber