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 didn't vote. History and lived experience doesn't matter to gender critical people, unless it does.

The only 'acceptable' point in life to 'change sex' would be in the womb, before birth. Most people would object because we have ethics. So, there is never an acceptable point where a person can change sex.

It's not about whether it's "acceptable" to change sex, it's whether it's possible - and it's not.

oooooh..... Try Lois McMaster Bujold. In one of her subsidiary worlds, Beta Colony, they are able to perform actual sex-change operations, and one of the characters in one of her books (A Civil Campaign) goes for becoming male in order to keep a truly horrible man from inheriting the estate she's been looking after for decades for her brother. She is successful; he (as he then is) finds being male to be very different from being female in all sorts of ways, not just sexual ones. He remembers his life before he existed (as it were) and makes comparisons. He is both the same person and someone quite, quite different.

But it is not supposed to be real, is it. That's the difference between fiction and fact. If someone cannot tell which is which and invents a fictitious "life" for himself, he is quite likely to be suffering from Walter Mitty syndrome.

We all know gender critical people believe this.

I was answering in the context of the proposed scenario.

'Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl' by Andrea Lawlor was recommended by a lesbian friend in the US maybe 10 years ago. It was unique, and a somewhat entertaining very queer story about someone who can change sex at will.

Is that a 'generalisation'? Isn't that banned on here?

No, reasonable people who are not into bunkum pseudoscience believe this. Just like they don’t believe the earth is flat.

Mind you, even the ‘Flat Earth Society’ revealed they didn’t really believe their junk ‘science’ with an alleged facebook post stating ‘The Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe’.

One thing about all this all this anti scientific guff being laid out in the public square is that it has been somewhat educational. Well, much more knowledgeable women than me have expanded on explain the issues. I now know that there are paraphilias/ fetishes which mostly occur in men. They usually present with more than one, and male fetishes can be very dangerous for women and children as they can escalate. Rather like thrill seekers at amusement parks who have to move onto higher/faster rides to set off the same thrill.

Sex is a development pathway in humans. You can’t go back to the beginning. You can’t change anyone’s sex by marinating, or operating. They are just cosmetic changes (and in many cases not convincing), not real.

They can do sex selection in embryos now with IVF. That is not changing sex, of course. Indeed it is an illustration that you cannot change the sex, even at that early stage.

I suppose it is at least better than infanticide of baby girls among cultures where they deem girls of a lesser worth.

There may be other instances, such as to avoid fatal conditions in a baby which can be sex linked.

Not read the thread but changing sex would mean changing every cell in the body. Just like changing into hen, or a banana, would. So it could never be 'easy'. It could never be possible.

I think the question would actually be "If changing sex became easy, could society stop it?"

Short of lots and lots of fairy godmothers/godfathers/godpersons/goddogs, it ain't going to happen, though.