The Interactive Minds Centre (IMC) of Aarhus University, Denmark, invited Mads Ananda Lodahl to interview two groundbreaking gender researchers at the Women’s Museum in front of a non-academic (or a not-necessarily-academic) audience on March 17th 2015.
• Watch the talk in the video or listen to it as a podcast below
• The talk was part of a two day conference at Aarhus Univeristy called Active Queering. You can watch talks by Anne Fausto-Sterling, Julie A Nelson and lector Mikkel Wallentin from the conference plus lots of other videos on the subject here.
In the video:
DR. ANNE FAUSTO-STERLING is a Professor of Biology and Gender Studies in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Biochemistry at Brown University. She is a leading expert in biology and gender development and has achieved recognition for works that challenge entrenched scientific beliefs while engaging with the general public.
Using a groundbreaking new approach to understanding gender differences, Dr. Fausto-Sterling is shifting old assumptions about how humans develop particular traits. Dynamic systems theory permits one to understand how cultural difference becomes bodily difference. By applying a dynamic systems approach to the study of human development, Dr. Fausto-Sterling’s work exposes the flawed premise of the nature versus nurture debate.
• Follow Anne on twitter hereFind more resources on her homepage here
DR. JULIE A NELSON is a Professor at University of Massachusetts, Boston. She specializes in research on feminism and economics, with special interests in methodology and in implications for social and environmental policies. She is a feminist economist mostly known for her application of feminist theory to the discipline of economics. Her work focuses on gender and economics, philosophy and methodology of economics, ecological economics and quantitative methods. She was a founding board member of the International Association for Feminist Economics, and is among the most highly cited scholars in the field of feminist economics.
• Find more resources on Julie’s homepage here
MADS ANANDA LODAHL is a Danish writer and lecturer. He focuses on society’s expectations of men and women, and how those expectations limit everybody. Homosexuals, bisexuals and transgender people directly violate what he calls “the straight order.” In ways that are less direct but no less important, masculine women, feminine men, shy boys, and promiscuous girls also violate society’s gender expectations, and are discriminated against because of it.
This discrimination could be reduced by expanding the concept of gender normality to include a broader spectrum of people. However, Lodahl instead challenges the “normal” by making it visible, and therefore available for critique. He draws focus away from people that are marginalized from the norm, and focuses instead on the problems of the straight world order.
Quote from Lodahl: “I believe that 90% of all people are in trouble with the straight world order, but of course some conflict to a higher degree than others. In this way, most people stand to gain from a destruction of the straight world order. But again…some have more at stake than others.”
• Read more about Mads on his homepage here
Video and audio recordings were done by Lars Pallesen
Is the “gay bomb” possible?
Leaked documents from United States Air Force Research Laboratory (former Wright Laboratory) show that US Military by 1994 was trying to develop a non-lethal, chemical weapon by filling a bomb with female sex hormones, that would turn enemy troops gay and thus unable to fight battles. The Pentagon have confirmed the plans to develop this weapon. The project failed.
In the video above Mads Ananda Lodahl asks Anne Fausto-Sterling if it would be possible to create such a bomb. Below you can see news footage from CBS 5 about the so-called “gay bomb.” More info here