If changing sex became easy, should society allow it?

[ByTheRiverside]

This is a hypothetical question that lives in a sci-fi like future.

Transgender people currently don't have access to an awful lot of options to change sex characteristics. Early intervention prevents a lot of secondary sex characteristic development. Other than that, there's hormonal and surgical interventions that do not change a lot of their underlying anatomy and genetic/epigenetic sex traits.

In the future, let's imagine that changing sex is an easy medical option available to anyone. Transgender people can quite easily change their anatomy, and even their genetics. They do this while still remaining the same human, with the same prior experiences.

Then the question becomes less 'have they changed sex' but rather 'ought society to allow it'?

What are your thoughts?

I think we've got enough to be thinking about in the real world, tbh. What would the results prove?

Oh my fucking christ please make it stop.

Is it me, or have there been a bunch of these lately? Is this the latest gotcha attempt?

No gotcha here! I'm a sex realist.

I think my answer is 'yes, without legal recognition' to prevent abuse.

There's more than enough science fiction going on in real life for me to even contemplate answering this question. Seriously, let's just fix the problems we have first. People claiming they have changed sex are stepping all over women's rights, and you want to talk about sci-fi? No thanks.

Sex or "sex characteristics"?
But actually, what Shed said.

There will be relentless arguments and wangling to edge in gaps for the next 20 years. These men just need to use the bloody gents.

Please can we do a hypothetical poll about whether MN should allow endless polls about trans issues.

There have been quite a few "how about we try this instead " posts. Could be random, could be targeted. All of it is stupid.

In this sci fi future they are literally changing sex, so why wouldn't that be recognised in law?

I'm imagining everyone switching back and forth depending on what they are interested in doing at the time though, so many of the reasons for equality legislation would no longer be relevant.

”If humans could fly, should it be allowed?”

”If God was a human should it be legal to have him round for tea?

Equally pointless questions

But the answer to both is yes.

This happens in the Culture sci fi books. They're in a sort of post-scarcity utopia and illness is basically eradicated. People will change sex to have a baby or just to try it out.

This is not a good-faith question, it’s designed to further the argument that men today should be allowed into female-only spaces, sports and services.

It’s designed to elicit a yes that then leads to the follow-up question of where the line should be drawn.

That line should be drawn where single-sex spaces are accessed on the basis of biological sex.

If someone says yes to this question, it doesn't make any difference to the fact that TW are not women. That's why this is a hypothetical. It's not real.

How incredibly original 🥱

It never seems to work in the Science fiction i read. They still feel like the same people with the same attitudes. Rather like tourists or dressups.

I think this is where things are going anyway. Not necessarily the complete changing genetics thing, that is much more complex, but people becoming so sexually fluid they change outward appearing sex characteristics on a more frequent basis aided by technology and improvements in medicine. Eventually going through life as the experience of a mono-sexual being, with just a monosexual lived experience and perspective will be rarer.

Even now many people are moving through life experiencing far more sexual identities and perspectives as queer people. I'm seeing people say now they will only date queer people. Going full sci-fi mode, I can see people including robot tech either as integrated physical appendages or advanced simulations.

As to whether it should be allowable, I don't see why not in a liberal democracy. The question is at what age and how far that should deviate from facts about what sex you were born. In the near future we will be able to have a greater influence over how we look. We are seeing the start of that with these GLP-1s but eventually with gene editing technology such as CRISPR you may be able to go even further.

Dress how you want, behave how you want, be yourself. You can’t change sex though.

I did wonder this.

It feels hard to say that they could truly ever change sex if they would have the same history. Women cannot have the history of men, so how can a man retain his experiences as a man without retaining their manhood in some way?

The endless threads and polls, please do get a hobby, I here cycling is fun

but just to play along…. If the cock has been lopped off, do you still fear them perving over the toilet door even though technically they cannot rape? Do you think all lesbians do this too because every woman is irresistible to them?
I’m 💯 sure that is not the case

Someone who has enough time to worry about fantastical and hypothetical issues clearly doesn't have to worry about reality.

There are plenty of real trans issues to worry about and what effect they have on everyone else.

Sex characteristics or sex, @TightlyLacedCorset? If people completely change their sex, so all bones realigned, all muscles realigned, all organs realigned including sex organs, then sure, change your sex marker. But it sounds painful to have all your bones and muscles realigned and more along the lines of an Altered Carbon storyline

Wait, though, what if we were all actually mushrooms who had been infected with a virus that just made us THINK we were humans?

<insert 'hey you're a fungi' joke, if you can be bothered>