Its 3014, and we have achieved gender equality…

[Thistledew]

Men and women are seen as true equals. They are equally represented in positions of power; there is no pay gap; there is no differentiation or stigma in terms of job roles, hobbies or in respect of domestic responsibilities. Men and women are seen as equally capable of and responsible for all aspects of child-raising (apart from breast feeding). The way people choose to dress and behave is completely fluid, with things like clothing, personal grooming and wearing of makeup seen as being solely the choice of the individual. Gender based violence is seen as primitive behaviour, beyond which the human race has now evolved.

Do we still have a need for gender designation?

The biological function of reproduction still throws up obvious gender differentials. Assuming that we still largely operate in a pair-bonding system, both expectant parents would have the same rights to take time off work to attend ante-natal appointments, to take time off after the birth to care for the post-natal care, and to flexibility in employment for care for children, the disabled and the elderly.

However, it does not make sense for all employment rights to be equal. For example, the right to be able to avoid heavy lifting, long hours standing up, exposure to chemicals etc only applies to those people who are actually pregnant with the child, and not the non-pregnant partner. Is it still therefore useful to designate people as ‘men’ and ‘women’, as a short hand to saying “women are entitled to additional pregnancy-related employment rights”, or would it be sufficient to say “these employment rights apply to anyone with medical proof of pregnancy”?

Could we do away with male/female designation altogether, on birth certificates, employment records and other official documents?

Is competitive sport the only time at which it would be unfair not to differentiate?

NB I’m not saying that doing away with gender designation would bring about proper equality, which I think has to come first before we can be truly gender neutral. This may be a completely pointless musing, but I thought it might be a fresh way to consider gender and what it actually is.

NB ii. It may be 3014, but we still don’t have hover boards. Sorry.

I suppose it could just be a one off. I find tastes have colours but they're usually related to the colour of the thing that tastes like that, so not very creative of me It could be some kind of association like that.

I thought with real synaesthesia there wasn't that sort of obvious association?

Yes, that's what I was saying in a really vague way (sorry!) That it could be an association e.g. from a childhood book where foods were numbered, or something that you've forgotten but still have the feeling "1-6 is sweet" etc.

Sorry to derail back to the OP but in the nirvana of 3014, why wouldn't we have a gender designation, if by "gender" you mean "sex", thistle ? Wouldn't it be a simple description of the two categories of human beings that bears no relevance to the way people are treated in society?

FloraFox - it's not a perfect comparison, but in the same way that race is becoming less of a means of distinguishing and categorising people because of multiculturalism and so many mixed-race people, surely as gender-based stereotypes die away and people all begin to express themselves along a spectrum of behaviours and preferences. I realise where my comparison falls flat is that you can't produce a mixed-sex person by breeding a man and a woman , and that most people will still categorically "belong" to one sex or the other based on chromosomes and/or sex organs. But there will always be people with chromosomal abnormalities or developmental disorders who don't fit into the binary. So why not just do away with it if it has no relevance to our new society?

Why would the existence of two sexes who reproduce to create a new person ever have no relevance in society? It would be very relevant. In fact, I think it would be impossible to achieve equality of the sexes / liberation of women from male oppression, without recognising the impact of child bearing on women. Once achieve, this continued recognition would be essential.

But the impact of childbearing on women only impacts women who have children - for many XX humans it's completely irrelevant.

And by 3014, hopefully the 'impact' - physical and psychological - would be far less problematical than it can be now; much of the inequality is more in the M/F expectations post-birth which we're presuming would have been equalised. A person might still choose to be defined by their parenthood but it wouldn't be so biologically and socially predetermined.

The potential impact of childbearing impacts all women and the actual impact of childbearing impacts only women. People don't currently choose to be defined by their parenthood so I can't imagine why anyone would choose that in a non-patriarchal society. People either are parents or they are not. How that affects their lives largely depends on how society treats people who are actual or potential mothers. I'm not talking about physical or psychological but societal treatment and how women are treated by society as potential mothers or actual mothers. To ensure women are not disadvantaged in society because of their actual or potential motherhood, it would be necessary to indentify and understand that fact.

So is this a society where nobody knows what gender anyone is? Hmm.

Gender would still be very relevant for many medical purposes. Illnesses/diseases present differently and have different risks between the genders. So medical personnel would need to know gender.

As you say, employers would need to know gender if a person was actually pregnant. Not otherwise.

So, with these exceptions, it's not necessary to know gender and there is no reason to use he/she or have gender recorded on official docs.

But.

Humans have a strong mating instinct. Most people are heterosexual (I presume this is still true in 3014). Most hetero people instinctively want to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex. For pretty much all species, including humans, making oneself attractive to the opposite sex involves emphasising biological differences or at least visibly demonstrating one's gender in some way. I doubt those instincts will have gone by 3014.

What this means is that even if there is no he/she pronoun, and even if fashion is theoretically fluid, I suspect that many men and women (at least of mating age) would choose to emphasise/demonstrate their gender by their presentation. (If only by not strapping down their boobs!) So you'd still be able to tell from looking at most people what sex they are.

That would mean that the dropping of he/she and the dropping of gender from records would not make much difference. Women/men would still be identifiable and women would therefore be subject to potential prejudice as potential mothers.

Considering what a proportionally tiny part of my life was taken up with carrying and giving birth to children, I would prefer not to be defined by this ability for my entire life, assuming that excellent 31st century medical care was available and post-natal childcare/work balance was expected by society to be equally shared by me and my partner. We have equality, so I still don't see why sex needs to be relevant in defining me as a person. Surely that only opens the door for discrimination?

minpie - assuming advances have been made in medical science so that mating for the purpose of procreation doesn't need to be a m/f pairing any more, do you think your theory still stands?

Yes, because I think the instinct to attract the opposite sex will survive a long long time, even if medical advances have made it unnecessary for procreation.

yes i think there is always going to be an element of seeking sexual pleasure for a good proportion of the population

how that sexual pleasure is sought and defined would be different - genuine, enthusiastic mutual consent paramount and PIV not seen as the end goal for the majority

and without an outward influence of what is "normal" in terms of sexual attraction then in terms of appearance it would be less defined and i expect there might be fewer people only interested in sexual encounters with members of hte opposite sex

but i still think that there would need to be a way to say, for example, "person with vagina seeks person with penis for mutual sexual pleasure"

yes i agree

the other thing is that even in a "perfectly equal" society as described above in 1000 years' time, it's hard to know what socialised / social structure hangovers might still remain, which may be unrelated to equality of the sexes but influence infrastructure etc

have those things also been completed razed to the ground and rebuilt, or adapted from current structures?

it's a different scenario to trying to imagine what things would be like if the patriarchy had never existed, but equally impossible to fully imagine due to our own deeply ingrained socialisation

sorry, that's me going off topic again

We have equality, so I still don't see why sex needs to be relevant in defining me as a person.

I'm not saying it defines you if you mean that in some existential sense. Our sex exists in a very simple, observable sense (for the vast majority of people). It doesn't "define" us but it certainly impacts us and it would continue to do so.

Buffy do you mean "gender would be obsolete" as in sex-roles would be obsolete or sex would be obsolete. I'd agree with the former but not the latter. In that situation, M/F would be a simple description, necessary for some purposes, but largely lacking in impact in our lives.

Say, hypothetically, blue eyes were linked with a higher chance of developing a medical condition. In the same way that being female is linked with a higher chance of having a baby . So doctors would need to know that I have blue eyes and a uterus, as and when it was medically necessary for them to know. But otherwise, I would hope that my breasts being visible in public (under clothes, I imagine!) would be no more relevant to anyone's perceptions of my skills, abilities, personality and preferences than my blue eyes. And if someone was sexually attracted to people with breasts or blue eyes, then that's fine too, and they may or may not decide to try to pick me up dependent on my displaying those characteristics.

Buffy I would agree with that. I feel some discomfort with this thread but I think it is because I have a sense (probably unjustified) that it heads into the realm thinking that removing M/F designations now would help us get to this 3014 nirvana.

kulam I agree generally however I don't see it as a "need to know" piece of information so much as a "so what" piece of information. Maybe that's just a different emphasis.

Oh, no, Flora, we definitely need equality first before any M/F designations can be cast aside. Because, as I suspect your worry is, then anyone can turn around and tell us that discrimination against women doesn't exist because there's no such thing as a women anyway.

Yes Kulam that's exactly it.