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?

Changing sex will never be easy as it will have to involve muscular and skeletal changes amongst other things.

Men just need to stay out of women's spaces. It really is that simple (and easier).

I do spend a bit too much time in a fantasy world in my own mind, so fair point taken, lol.

You're right about there being enough issues to worry about with TW!

Seems highly unlikely, what with humans being mammals who reproduce sexually and much of the world still lacking access to basic healthcare.

Not sex. I cannot see that ever being possible without deleterious effects

I find these ‘let’s imagine something that doesn’t exist and then argue on the basis of it’ absolutely infuriating. But then I don’t like science fiction, whereas lots of people seem to enjoy it. I don’t like magical realism very much either, although there are absolutely top flight authors who can make it work, usually by leaning heavily on the realism with a small dash of the magical.

Sex is more interesting than this. It’s a total organising basis of the human race. There were some feminists who argued that we ought to move beyond sex completely, but there were far more who said firstly that the oppression of gender was so strong that it was more that we didn’t know what choices women made that were the result of sex as opposed to socialisation, rather than that none of them were; and secondly that sex, though real and important, shouldn’t limit women’s lives. I personally used to find the ‘we’re all goddesses, let’s daub ourselves in menstrual blood and perform a woodland ritual’ strand of pagan gynophilia as oppressive as straightforward sexism. But nonetheless I am female and regard that as both definable and important.

It is much more interesting to me to try to define why anyone thinks that changing sex is desirable. When Gwen Raverat, who to the untrained eye is as autistic as it is possible to be, wrote about her longing to be male, she was describing the 1890s when she was required to perform femininity in various miserable ways, making her desire to be male very comprehensible (though she didn’t mention anything about wanting to be conscripted into WWI later on). It’s possible now not to be forced into femininity in that way. And yet the longing of even more girls to be male and men to be female remains, and is still highly associated with autism. It is still incomprehensible. And it’s also unachievable.

Look, if we had a world like Iain M Banks's Culture novels then we wouldn't need to have any of these conversations because literal fluidity could be built into our genes, society, laws and social codes.

(And if we ever achieve the technological state of the Culture, I would argue that perpetual wide eyed 'what if' type posting would have the offending individual slap-droned for everyones benefit)

It’s a hypothetical based on a universe so different to ours that it makes no sense.

Why don’t you define what you mean by changing sex in this hypothetical world? Is it like a brain transplant, putting your female brain into a male body?

Plus of course your brain changed. The brain interacts with the endocrine system so that’d need to be changed too.

There's an irony that gender dysphoria is the mental fantasy that you are the opposite sex, and that several polls are around fantasy situations.

Someone obsessed with sci-fi, fantasy and trans? If I had a Venn diagram, the intersection would say TRA.

Amen!

Perhaps it's a new tactic to divert us from writing to our MPs about the Early Day Motion. AKA reality

No health orientated or cosmetic beauty seeking community is as driven and motivated as the Trans/queer community from what I have observed. I actually found myself using Trans forums to find menopause medication and info.

It's not a question of universal healthcare being available everywhere. It's a question of whether the threshold for new hormones and body modification technology becomes more ubiquitous and within reach privately. Typically and contrary to intuition, it is the poorer countries that people flood to get such treatments and where access for such treatments is more affordable and the threshold lower. Think about people going to Turkey for their butt implants or Asia for new cutting edge cosmetic interventions. You can pick up prescriptions for powerful drugs that require considerable leap frogging in more regulated countries. People are experimenting with CRISPR in their basements. Eventually the technology will improve because those who are extremely driven to seek these improvements will drive it forward and it will become streamlined and more available.

People have already shown that they are so driven they would go into debt and not care about whether the supporting healthcare structure will support them.

To those of you who are unaware, there is a 'Hide' the thread option. It will transform your MN experience. Goodbye.

Do you mean “If changing sex became possible?

If it became possible it would not be possible to prevent people doing this. But it’s difficult to see how this would happen, given the biological realities

Welcome to Mumsnet OP. Well done on finding this board and posting your first thread. What are you hoping to achieve with this thread (if you don't mind answering) ?

If it was an easy process to "change sex" as you describe it, who do you think these pretransition "transgender" people would be? Would they even exist in a society where sex change would be so readily available, painless and presumably easily reversible too? And how would these people be different to many other people who would choose to easily "change sex" for a miraid of reasons.

for example, Women being able to painlessly opt out of the male gaze, all the ways we are targeted & our bodies exploited, our sexual oppressions etc, to be able to say no to all of that will be an attractive option to many. I think lots of different women would take up an easy painless and meaningful way to change sex.

It would be very attractive option for many criminals, people wanting to "get lost/start over", would be useful for those in witness protection schemes, etc.

It would make actual identiy proofs & other facts potentailly impossible to nail down - the world would become quite anarchic if humans really could easily, painlessly & actually change sex.

But we aren't ghost in meatsuit machines.
Sex is immutable and meaningful in life & law.
Medical mutilisation of young peoples bodies is in full swing, causes much harm to so many people, and is based on harmful sex stereotypes.

Look after & respect your body.
Develop your personality.
Think critically.
Don't be a dick.
The rest is gravy.

It isn't possible unless someone develops a magic wand. So it's really not worth worrying about.

It'd be funny seeing a man cope with transitioning in his 50s straight into menopause.

Good grief the hostility!

If you don't want to discuss it don't open the thread.

If you are unable to conceptualise the gene editing techniques which are currently being used to restore sight to blind people being able to implant or remove a Y chromosome then this thread isn't for you.

Great theoretical question OP.

I'm going to have to have a really hard think before I can answer, though!

I don't think that would result in you growing new organs though?

Two obvious lines in the sand:

• Not on the NHS / at public expense.

• No breaks in the ID audit trail. Original birth certificate does not change. DBS checks see all records, etc. And no secrecy.

It's a question of whether the threshold for new hormones and body modification technology becomes more ubiquitous and within reach privately.

However, that is not changing sex.

Typically and contrary to intuition, it is the poorer countries that people flood to get such treatments and where access for such treatments is more affordable and the threshold lower.

It doesn't follow that all people in poor countries have access to healthcare.

In your scenario sex still has material consequences and any cosmetic changes are limited to those who can afford it.

Why would you not allow it in a non-authoritarian society? It is surely a personal choice that has little impact on anyone else.

If people could actually change their biological sex then yes, they absolutely should be allowed to.

Changing biological sex would mean changing at a genetic level - xy to xx and vv, changing hormones - actual hormone production, not a lifetime of pills, changing reproductive system, changing body proportions and muscle strength, height, feet and hands etc.

Actually changing biological sex with all that means. The full removal of any and all advantage of the previous sex? If thry wanted to do that, I wouldn't care.

Yes, I’d skipped over that bit, the implication that it is possible today but takes some serious effort.