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?

Or changing your skeleton. Or magically providing opposite sex gametes.

In a world like that, what would be the point of changing sex? How many people would actually want to?

OP

As posters have already thought, this is impossible.

If you had a process to reduce a body to sub atomic particles and reconstruct it as the opposite sex while still retaining all your experience, learning and personality, how does that work?

You still have a person who has undergone an extreme body modification but all of their understanding of the world Is of the opposite sex. The person will have no experience of their body type and how does that work?

Without developing who you and how the world around you interacts with your sexed body, how do you change sex? Not just the perceptions that are the foundation of all our interactions with the world, how does a male person then know how to adapt physically to their environment. All of a sudden their body reacts differently, eg just in walking and jumping etc .

Even from an experience point of view, a male person will never have experienced being female in any way when they come to consciousness of their new body. Will this era be utopian where no sex based negative discrimination will be experienced at all?

If not, why should a male person then be able to get opportunities needed for female people to counter the sexed based negative discrimination that they experienced from birth?

Unless you have a perfect way to change every single memory and learning and perception of that male person into them having experienced it within the linear development of a human life experience, your experiment is meaningless.

This ‘thought experiment’ has been done before on MN.

No one ever said that all it took was a male person to change their entire sexed body to one of a female sexed body. Logically, we are also the materially real experiences of how we have interacted with our bodies from the start of our life and how the world interacts with our sexed person.

I’ve pondered this too. I think it would be OK if a person could fully switch to be their opposite-sex equivalent and this did not take any effort, surgery, money etc. you would just decide to do it or maybe just take one pill and it would happen overnight. Also, you would become the opposite sex version of yourself so for example if you were in the 50th percentile for male height and strength you would become the equivalent woman, so that males changing to females wouldn’t have an advantage over natal females, and female changing to males wouldn’t have a disadvantage (which is one of the several reasons genderism currently has such anti-female outcomes).

I’m not sure whether maybe this would only become possible as an adult, but if you had grown up one sex and became the other it would be understood by everyone that you hadn’t had the same experience as someone born that sex, and most importantly being someone who changed sex would not mean you were put on a pedestal and inaccurately treated as the most oppressed demographic ever. People would be allowed to find it a bit daft if they liked.

I imagine in this sci-fi society this ability would mean sexual politics were quite different. But assuming women had the same disadvantages they do now, you’d see a lot of men changing back after finding they got ignored and mansplained to, they were scared going out at night, pregnancy and motherhood shafted their career, periods/endo/menopause made them miserable or their male partner dumped them with 90% of the childcare and housework. Unlike what happens to TW now.

Or can you only make the change once and you’re stuck?

Yeah, it would require time travel as well as the transmutation thing.

“It's not cosplay, and it's not a choice. Only coming out is.”

I don’t think most people believe that. No-one falls for the “born in the wrong body” story nowadays, they see (rightly) that what you call “trans” is just a desire to be the other sex and / or a fetish about being the other sex.

A transwoman is a man who wants to be a woman, but is not one.

I find it really amazing that anyone can really think all this. It makes no sense at all! Why do you think this - is it just because it’s what you’ve been told and you want to be a good person?

Gender stereotypes are very powerful and in almost every society they have been and often still are rigidly enforced. Almost no one naturally fits an extreme masculine or feminine stereotype. I don’t, I’m a lifelong tomboy with a lot of stereotypically masculine interests and skills, as well as some feminine and some neutral.

Some people do not fit the gender stereotypes expected of them at all and naturally long to break outside them. And of course in the past or in the most repressive societies, that;s very difficult. Lots of people have wished they were the opposite sex for totally understandable reasons. Often gay people, and of course many people who just wanted to escape expectations of masculinity or femininity that didn’t suit them or harmed them.

That doesn’t mean anyone is “really” the opposite sex inside in some undetectable way, just because they wish they were. It means gender stereotypes are stupid and restrictive. No genderist I have ever met or discussed this with is able to explain what “being trans” really means, how it works, how a “trans” person differs from someone who just wishes they were they opposite sex, and how we’re meant to tell so that we can distinguish love;y, innocent, suffering “trans” people from people (generally men) who want to take advantage of self-ID to get access to women and child victims or to gain other advantage such as kudos, eligibility for LGBTQ+ schemes and grants and awards, sporting success, etc etc etc.

Can you explain the above because you would be the first, and I would genuinely like to hear this explanation.

In the creative field I work in, as a short-haired, largely gender non-conforming woman, I could very easily “come out” as non-binary or as a trans man tomorrow. It would fit my look and my genuinely non-stereotyped gender expression (because I am female without adhering to feminine stereotypes, because I don’t believe they should restrict me as a woman). If I did this, it would be a massive grift. It would get me access to all kinds of financial and career opportunities and I’d be showered with praise and adoration. I’m not “non-binary” and I think “non-binary” is a load of sexist guff that defines everyone else as fitting into gender stereotypes when that’s actually untrue. I’m not a man and I think it’s offensive to appropriate the lived experience of men and act like I know what being male is like.

But people like you would be all over it and pontificate that I was a poor oppressed trans person who just wanted to be allowed to exist. Wouldn’t you?

I this hypothetical future where not only the visible anatomy but the endocrine system and each of the 36 trillion cells in the human body was changed at a genetic level (and be clear - if that was done at a rate of one cell per second that would take 1.14 million years to achieve. You wouldneed a process that could complete the process in 14 million cells per second to achieve a whole human body in less than a month) then yoir stipulation that they still remain the same human would, in this world that we live in, still mean the change was incomplete because a male would still have had his earliest formative years with the privileges of maleness and a female would still have had her earliest formative years with the constant pressure to act as support-creature to others that males don't get. Therefore the so called "sex change" could never be complete.

If as a species we were to genetically engineer ourselves such that all babies are born as gender-neutral with no distinction such that they would be treated alike frim birth, and we only chose at become sexually diamorphic after adulthood at which point we might choose either male or female and might swap between them at willor cgoose to stay as neither, only then could such a process be actually valid, complete and ethical.

Its telling that they imagined scenarios where the body changes but never that therapy gets so effective they become happy in their body.

A lot of trans people haven't had any medical interventions at all

No shit! Because it's a feeling. An idea.

This. In such a hypothetical future, gender as we understand it would likely no longer even exist, as people would swap back and forth on a whim. We'd likely be unable to accurately imagine the dynamics within that kind of world, as they'd be so far removed from ours as to be entirely alien.

It's possible most children would be raised in a somewhat 'neuter' state, and that people would generally be male as adults except during the period of time that they wanted to gestate a child, for the benefit of increased size, strength, and no menstrual issues etc.

But we don't live in that world, so it's a little pointless to muse on.

You aren't thinking this through properly.

In a world where people really could change sex just like that, especially if they could go there and back easily, the lived experience of both sexes would be different. The social expectations and constructs around sex would be different. So other than areas where sex has direct consequences due to physical differences like sports and maternity, if sex-based or single sex provisions still exist they'd look very different.

Also, we don't know what actually losing their height and physical strength, dealing with periods and possibly pregnancy, and being genuinely 100% treated as an actual woman because they actually are one would do to a man's psyche/personality.

So, the answer to your question does I think depend on far too many things we wouldn't know until we got there.

Here's a similar, maybe better one: if we could grow babies in bags without a female pregnancy and without needing the male and female gametes, just a cell from each parent and the parents (or the state) chose the babies' sex, would we still have a population roughly half male and half female?

Can we also choose to be werewolves in this little hypothesis?

'... if we could grow babies in bags...'

Say hello to the Brave New World.

I suspect a lot of the current trans people, were they to actually change sex, would quickly discover it's not their thing at all, and change back.

They want to be a fantasy version of the opposite sex, often qhilst retaining certain characteristics of their own, and so would be unhappy with the reality. Or they think that changing sex will solve all their problems: but are quickly going to discover it doesn't.

Yes much like people who think they're cats don't actually want to live on cat food. You can't possibly know what it's like to be the opposite sex, you can only imagine yourself into your other-sex idea of it. And unfortunately a large number of male people's idea of being female is totally sexualised and not about being a fully rounded human.

But we don't live in that world, so it's a little pointless to muse on.

I think it is a useful thought experiment because one of the accusations genderists make of GC people is that they want to reinforce gender stereotypes and social roles according to sex, and don't think anyone should be able to live a life outside the stereotypes attributed to their sex. That's completely getting the wrong end of the stick of course, but if you consider how you would feel about it if people really could actually change sex at will, that may reveal more about how you do think - even to yourself.

One of the reasons I don't support the concept of gender identity is that no one ever actually changes sex, but retains their sexed body (even with surgery) - which that means the concept of being "trans" brings huge benefits for males and generally disadvantages and endangers females, just one of many elements of its inherent sexism. So if they did really change sex, would that be better? I'm still not sure but it helps me clarify my thoughts to ponder it.

Theres so many other things that could be achieve in the process towards making sex change a possibility.

Before sex change, we'd have the ability to eliminate lots of disabilities, aging. Maybe we could live forever.

Perhaps we would be able to make women as physical strong as men.

I think that'll be the stumbling block. Before sex change is possible, enough women would be physically strong enough to make these mens lives very difficult if they did transgres boundaries.

The government guidance suggests that women shouldn't confront men in their spaces and opportunities. They mean ask not threaten harm, because they know the average women couldn't hit an average men and come out on top.

They suggest men dont feel safe in men's spaces, and need alternative options, because they know men can harm each other and will.

So if women do get on average as strong as men, would men want to be in women spaces and be confronted? Theyd be liable to the same threats as currently claimed they are in the men's.

I think long before sex changes are possible, the other process will make the thrill of trans less appealing.

Yes, but being a tiger would be better (so long as in a location where tigers have appropriate protection from poachers)

“Suppose men could be magically transformed into women, should it be allowed?”

That’s really what this “thought experiment” is saying, so of course it’s nonsense.

Step one towards achieving this possibility would be to build a society where violence against women, and every kind of sexism and misogyny is totally eliminated, and girls and boys are brought up in the same way with no preconceived sexist ideas about what their personalities and preferences will be, and no children's clothing or toys push children towards choosing one or other set of stereotypes. In that utopia the only needs for differentiation between male and female would be in sporting categories, for fairness, and in communal changing facilities for privacy. Once that is achieved then a fully scientifically actualised sex change on a cellular level could be actually genuine.

But transgender ideology requires sexist stereotypes of male and female to remain firmly in place so that there is something solid to be transitive through. Eliminating sexism would be counterproductive to the whole philosophy so I have no confidence that will happen.

There would end up being very few women, especially in countries that already kill a large number of female fœtuses.

Homosexuals would be forced to change sex.

Vulnerable people (weak, poor, stupid, unlucky, disabled, or of a minority ethnic or religious group) would be pressured into doing all the gestation.

New (war) crime: turn them all into women, then forcibly impregnate them.

We'd go from women being vulnerable to vulnerable people being forced to be women.

If Manimal was real, and not just a fictional 80s tv show starring (the very dishy but taken too soon) Simon MacCorkindale, should he be allowed to run in the Grand National?

Yes absolutely - in this highly hypothetical world - bodily autonomy is paramount. The change would have to be total and absolute and I think the biggest issue would be brain patterns built up as a child or person in the opposite sex.

Iain M Banks has this built into human brains in the Culture novels it's fascinating
Quick summary of the books "In Iain M Banks’s Culture novels, people can genuinely change biological sex because they have been extensively genetically engineered. By consciously instructing their body to change, a male person gradually becomes fully female, or vice versa, over roughly a year. The process changes the whole functioning body, including reproductive capacity, so someone who was male can later become pregnant and give birth. Banks even describes it as a “viral change from one sex into the other”.
So, within the fictional world of the Culture, sex really is changeable. It is not simply a change of identity, clothing, hormones or surgically altered appearance. It requires imaginary, extraordinarily advanced biotechnology that does not exist in real life. Banks’s idea therefore does not demonstrate that humans can currently change sex; it imagines a future in which medicine has acquired the ability to make that literally true."

Of course - you can't, if this ever happens it's a very long way away and by then I think we will be well past the desire to do so.

It's interesting isn't it that we find it easier to believe humanity will have the technical progress to be able fully change a person from one sex to other before it has the ethical, social and emotional progress to treat each other with equality and respect whatever our sex.

Reminds me of how Star Trek could envision a future of space travel, aliens and even that women and people of colour might be (almost) equal crew members (and all credit due to Rodenberry for that), but still assumed the women's uniform would have a skirt.