Hypothetical perfect sex change

[pop91]

Hypothetical:

Say there was a perfect sex change in the future where every single cell could be recoded as male for a trans man, would you then accept transmen as men? or would they need to be born male even if their entire physicality and biology were changed?

(To be clear this sex change would hypothetically naturally dissolve breasts and naturally create a penis as well as ALL other physical changes)

It would make no difference if I "preferred to be a man", it's not possible for me to be one.

I think part of the reasons sex changes don’t work at present is the sexist socialisation that goes with sex. As long as that persists, we’ll still have sexism culturally.
I think that’s really important and is a separate issue to whether people might pass or don’t as the opposite sex, due to whatever technique being used.

(In fact, I would love to plonk some young transmen down in my very male dominated workplace and have them just watch the men - of all ages - for a few weeks. Because so much of this fantasy around maleness is based on a kind of teenage boyband/anime image of men and masculinity; and bears almost no resemblance to what male culture and male socialisation is actually like.)

@nightwakingmoon

(In fact, I would love to plonk some young transmen down in my very male dominated workplace and have them just watch the men - of all ages - for a few weeks. Because so much of this fantasy around maleness is based on a kind of teenage boyband/anime image of men and masculinity; and bears almost no resemblance to what male culture and male socialisation is actually like.)

And the other way round, too. Transwomen who's idea of 'living as a woman' is posting pictures of their pushup bra and heels on fashion groups, or teenage girls having pillow fights. It's never trying to juggle work and the school pickup, or dealing with bleeding through their trousers in the office.

Which is why I say the whole premise of the OP is nuts. If we could actually switch sex down to the DNA, then our concepts of what sex and gender are would be radically different, both on a societal and an individual level. How society works would be fundamentally different. That might mean an elite caste where only the wealthy can 'opt in' to the desired sex; it might be a dissolving of sex-based social roles; or it might mean people taking different sexes at different stages of life (so a male, active, earning and striving young adulthood, followed by a female, nurturing middle age caring for all the children of the group). I have science fiction books on my shelves that play with all those ideas.

What it wouldn't be is just like now but with a few transpeople making a better transition. If you change one of the fundamentals of life (sex is binary and immutable) you inevitably change the whole shebang.

@pop91
then someone what are womanly behaviours that trans men do that cis men don't?

I would say that a 'womanly' behaviour is posting on Mumsnet. A 'cis' man would be asking the question on Pisonheads.

With respect, we are busy thinking with real life issues, such as 98% of sexual crime being perpetrated by males, the effect of allowing males to compete in female sports, kids being injected with powerful drugs that could permanently harm them forever, so we don't really have the time to navel gaze about science fiction fantasy.

Like a super-advanced future version of CRISPR

There are some complex ethical issues around CRISP, with one Dr Jiankui in jail for breaching international law around gene editing.

www.geneticsandsociety.org/press-statement/civil-society-calls-international-summit-human-genome-editing-condemn-gene-edited

I have no issue discussing this by the way, I wouldn't personally accept a man who had a physical body of a woman, as a woman, if it was some kind of 'Freaky Friday' version.

His brain and the experience of being male would still inform all his thoughts and feelings and actions. The more women see the protests for us speaking about our rights, the less I have any interest in making life any more comfortable for those who want to embody, silence, rename or delete us.

My brain tells me that I was meant to have a flat chest and dick but I didn't have those so that caused me distress and gender dysphoria.

I guess I find it impossible to believe that dysphoria is anything other than either a) a mental health disorder which manifests as a strong desire to be something you are not or b) an extreme reaction to not liking the stereotypes associated with the sex you were born, and perhaps to feeling unable to be openly 'gender-non-conforming' as a child or young person for fear of the reactions of your family or peers.

The idea that your brain tells you what body parts you ought to have seems like a narrative or a way of rationalising those feelings (which you might have had from avery young age) as though they were an inherent part of you rather than something which has come about due to trauma, mental health issues or feeling you don't fit with society's expectations of how a person of your biological sex 'should' be. Your brain is a part of your body, the only body you can have, it's not a separate, independent entity that gets placed in one body or another.

Incidentally, I wouldn't prefer to be a man. I think I'd be very freaked out by suddenly being a man. Not because of any internal gender identity as such. Just because I'm used to being me, and I'm a woman. I've had my body for 50 years.

My brain tells me that I was meant to have a flat chest and dick but I didn't have those so that caused me distress and gender dysphoria.

A far easier solution to this would be for science/medical research to develop a one-time pill that could alleviate the distress and gender dysphoria. Surely that's preferable?

Just because I'm used to being me, and I'm a woman. I've had my body for 50 years.

Yes, which would be the same whether you woke up in a man's body or the body of Jennifer Aniston or someone.

Which is why I don't think dysphoria would be the right word here. It would just be a perfectly natural reaction to magic in a world without magic.

I'm pretty sure if I developed super powers I'd go through very much the same thing. I mean, the whole canon of 'heros journey' usually begins with some kind of freak out/rejection of super hero powers.

@GoldenGorilla

Ok, I’ll bite.

If a medical procedure could take a woman, change every cell, bone structure, organ size, musculature, dissolve some organs, grow other organs, so that physically and biologically that woman became indistinguishable from a man?

Then that person would biologically be a man.

However they still would not have been raised as a boy, socialised as a boy, treated as a boy/young man by the wider world, had the experiences of a boy who enters puberty, etc etc.

They would never be the same as a man who was born a man and raised as a man, and they should never try to tell men what “being a man” involves or is like or that all other men must immediately and unquestioningly accept them into their male spaces, groups designed specifically to support men, male friendship groups etc.

Compelled speech or requiring people to pretend that this person was always a man would also still be wrong.

So they’d be a biological man, for day to day purposes could live life “as a man” without most people noticing/caring that they have a different background.

But they still couldn’t and shouldn’t get away with all the shit that the TRAs are advocating for.

Also please stop imagining that you understand what the phrase “gender critical” means, you clearly don’t.

I was about to make these points, so thanks for saving me (and many others) the time, Golden.

@GoldenGorilla yes, perfectly explained.

[quote PurgatoryOfPotholes]Instead of arguing with people on the internet by telling them what they think, read this discussion between two people

letter.wiki/conversation/1232[/quote]
Thanks for the link. For anyone who hasn't clicked on it, it's an exchange between Andy Lewis (@lecanardnoir on twitter) and someone called Aaron, who is an American philosopher.

Aaron can't define woman, but we have a new nonsense definition from him of a 'floating signifier'.

Hypothetical experiments, thought experiments, same old misogyny in another form.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3420810-Donna-Zuckerberg-Social-media-has-elevated-misogyny-to-new-levels-of-violence

What’s the difference between an “effeminate gay man” and a “normal man”? @pop91

As on your other thread, you’re sounding more and more homophobic as you go on.

pop91 : My brain tells me that I was meant to have a flat chest and dick but I didn't have those so that caused me distress and gender dysphoria.

This may seem an odd question, pop91 , but who or what is this 'me' that apparently owns your ('my') brain and is told such things by this brain? Further, how does your brain tell you stuff like this? Have you ever thought that maybe you mishear (misread? -- anyway mistake) what you think your brain tells you? What, I wonder, is odd about such questions?

... I suppose you mean nothing more than that you think (feel?) you were meant to have a flat chest and dick. Talk of 'my brain tells me' may be a relatively harmless metaphor. Saying this, and thinking of it, the way you do, though ( 'my brain tells me' and so on), predisposes you to think you are something that exists independently of the body of which your brain is a part. And so off we go with the soul or gender identity and so on.

It is difficult to get your head round this (another metaphor!), I know. Our understanding gets 'bewitched' by the way our language works, as a famous philosopher once said. But do have a think about it all ...

Again, who or what is this 'me' that my brain talks to? (Writes to? ... sends pictures to? ... communicates telepathically with?) Is this 'me' ( 'Am I?' ) a physical thing? Non-physical? Or what? How is this 'me' related to the walking, talking human being that lives my life? And so on.

If you think about this, you might see that this soul thing is illusory. But that, of course puts paid also to the idea of 'gender' as something you have which is independent of (biological, bodily) sex. This strikes at the basis of your ideology, I know. Still, do have a think.

pop91

we would end up with a horrendous sci-fi dystopia

"I dunno a lot of this depends on men being innately sexual monsters but I think that social more than biological.

If culture changed so would men."

I think this is the more interesting question. How do we get men to change?

We may prefixe this with the question, do men need to change? I think we know from society, yes, as most violence comes from men. So back to the question how. And would men be happier if they did, I believe so, and would society function better, I believe so.

"I just refuse to believe women hate being female THAT much and none of these reasons played into why I transitioned."

I love being female, I love the fact I have birth to a child but I didn't enjoy pregnancy or birth much. I hate the fact I am too scared to walk alone at night but my husband is rarely scared.

If I magically morphed into a man, would I still feel scared walking alone at night? Unless I lost all my memories, I expect I would.

pop why did you transition, and are you a trans man or other? You do not need to day, I am most asking. My child is non-binary trans masculine.

Oh sorry I see you have already answered that question!

@pop91 If you change 'sex' to 'race' does this hypothetical thought experiment become offensive?

@Thelnebriati

It’s not a hypothetical thought experiment - according to the op it’s just a possible future medical procedure. Not sure why they’re insisting on pretending that the total impossibility of this procedure is irrelevant.

@WouldBeGood

Watch it! I’m in the mood to watch it now, might ask DH if he fancies it tonight 😂 it’s got Michelle Rodriguez as Frank the hitman bizarrely - not sure how he managed to grow long hair during this forced sex change but I’m sure it will be explained in the course of the film. Also must have been a pretty petite hitman!

It's a hypothetical question but considering that self-ID doesn't require any sort of sex change operation (or taking of cross-sex hormones), I think we're better off questioning the "trans" people who don't want to transition.

Really want to know how these people think their consciousness will continue to exist in a completely different brain and body.

How do you not realise within five seconds of thinking about this question that the underlying assumptions are religious?

What makes humans bodies sexed is not just their DNA but also the developmental processes they have been through. Hence why you can have conditions like androgen insensitivity syndrome where a person's karotype is of one sex but their body has developed characteristics of the other sex.

So the only way to achieve a 'perfect' sex change would be to revert back to the fertilised egg, change the DNA, implant the egg in a uterus and start the whole developmental process from scratch. Anything short of that would still leave characteristics of the previous sex.

@Kanaloa petite, but big gun? 🤣

Told ds about this film and he’s told me about one called Velocipastor - on the list