A Possible Future Of Gender And Sex

So, by its very nature sexuality — and more recently the shifting concept of ‘gender’ — has always been interesting to me. First off because at its core it seems to be based in biology: the imperative to reproduce the species, right? But culture has… shifted this seemingly obvious definition quite a lot over time, especially recently. Please note, I’m not here to talk about the legality or moral/ethical/religious etc implications of these issues. Personally, my philosophy is something like benevolent apathy: if you’re a citizen, you’re a citizen. If you’re black or white or old or young or male or female or trans or gay or whatever it really has no bearing on my life and thus is no concern of mine. If you’re not hurting anyone, then I don’t see how it could possibly be any of my business to interfere. You do you, I don’t care. No, I’m here to talk about the fact that it seems to no longer be an obvious binary line is interesting, and speculate about how that increasingly blurry line might get further blurred in future. Whether that is good or bad is not really the point, merely that it is quite interesting and I’d like to share that.

So, lets start off with the reproductive angle. Frankly, I think we can pretty quickly dismiss this in a social context as the general zeitgeist seems to indicate maybe 0.00001% of sex is for the actual intended purpose of creating another human. Most of the time it is for fun or love. Which, frankly, is fine. Despite what the Puritans would like to have you believe, sex itself is a perfectly healthy and happy thing. So, the absolute bare-bones biological imperative of reproduction isn’t really the issue. Sex, as a general concept of being sexually attractive, sexual attraction, the sex industry (entertainment/porn/dancers etc not slavery problems), the fashion industry, hell, even the fitness industry, the list goes on and on, these are all things that are integral parts of society in how we approach and interact with the world and each other. We are built to want to be attractive and to find others attractive, and to find all of this to be a good thing. Hence the ‘sex sells’ mantra of advertising. A lot of our decisions are based on what and who we find attractive, as this goes back to the biological angle of what is most useful for the tribe, and what we want to get out of other people. That’s not objectifying people in a negative sense, that’s seriously how we’re wired to perceive most of the world. “What can I get out of this? How will this improve my life?” Sex is fun, therefore, that’s an improvement. Being surrounded by attractive people and being attractive yourself allows for social reinforcement of value, which as much as we may want to deny it, all the psych science points to being extremely important. External validation is vital to our mental health and happiness. I would say, “in a perfect world that wouldn’t be so,” but… is that actually necessarily true? That thought is what prompted this article.

I find it very interesting that concepts like Drag Queens and such exist, like, at all. Not being trans myself (or gender dissociative or similar) I can’t truly empathize, but I can try to listen to such people and see the world through their eyes. To me, the very concept of wanting to be, even if only outwardly, something else is extremely interesting. In a way, I don’t think it’s much different from my own basic wants like ‘to be a better writer’ or ‘to be healthier’, they’re both ways I think I could improve myself, and a drag queen: a man who wants to appear as a beautiful woman, is a way he thinks he can improve himself. And who am I to judge, really. But to me the underlying idea that that could be an improvement is quite fascinating, as to my heterosexual male brain it seems… bizarre. And bizarre is intriguing. Also, paying attention to the news for the last decade or so, this is certainly not an isolated incident. There’s lots of ‘gender fluidity’ being discussed and acted upon these days. And I’m here to wonder if we’re seeing the edge of a curious trend over time.

Here’s the thought: given time, more advanced technology and access, will this trend continue? And might it continue to a remarkable degree? Specifically, I’m talking about a possible strange future with extremely advanced transhumanist technologies. Regular readers will know I am very much on board the transhumanist train, I think it is exciting as hell. However, a lot of the ideas of transhumanism do give me a LOT of pause for thought. Consider the following: when your body becomes essentially another thing you own, does that change your opinion on it, on yourself? Think about it. Lets start simple to ease you into the idea: when you can buy new eyes that work better than your natural ones, and then while you’re at it, decide to get them a different color, well, why not? And further, are they really ‘your’ eyes anymore? I would argue yes, as they’re connected to you, part of how you perceive reality, and perception is, if not everything, then nearly everything of how you relate to the world, right? So, you’ve gone from brown eyes to blue. Because you can buy that upgrade. To me, this isn’t terribly different from technologies of body modification already available, like tanning salons and tattoos. Those are both cosmetic changes to your body, and treating your body as a thing that can be changed, altered, modified, as you want. So… then consider a more radical technology, like replacing internal organs, whole limbs, or even your entire body? It’s not so far-fetched, really. Technology is always a matter of scale, and when you can manufacture one part, it stands to reason you can manufacture the rest. And there will be demand. Already, even now, right now, there are clubs of people excited about body modification. There are companies growing new hearts, lungs, etc in laboratories. Just earlier today I saw yet another post of someone making an artificial limb from scratch. Granted, not a very advanced one, but DARPA is spearheading the advancement of mind-to-machine interfaces, and Deus Ex level augmentation is not far behind really. So… what happens when you can buy a whole new ‘you’?

I’ve dated girls who had neon pink hair and piercings and tatoos and the like. I’ve dated girls who found, for example, anime boys and girls to be extremely attractive. Which makes sense, insofar as broadly speaking characters like that are drawn with distorted proportions exactly to be more attractive than reality. Thinner, stronger, bigger-genitalled and whatever else than real humans. So a weird question arises: if you could buy a new body, …why not go for a superior one? If this new body is hotter than any human ever actually could be, (be it through genetic engineering or mechanical engineering really is irrelevant) then why wouldn’t you want to go for the best you possibly could? “Bang for your Buck” and all that, right? If you have a $15,000 car budget you don’t get a scooter you kick along the ground, you try to find the best new car in that range or even a better one that’s slightly used, right? You aspire to greatness in all your other purchases, so why not in a purchase of a whole new you? To me, it seems like that’s what the market (and thus, people), will be inclined to do most of the time.

Now, of course, there will be some people who find this absolutely mortifying and will have nothing to do with it. That’s fine, I’m not really talking about them. I’ve met people who still don’t have cell phones, which… is a choice. Most of the world would find that a blindingly stupid choice, but it’s theirs to make. I am inclined to think that as this option becomes available, it will be highly sought after.

Upon reflection, this idea was explored a little bit in “Surrogates,” but not quite. That movie assumed you, as you are, would still exist, and you’d just be piloting around another ‘you’. I think this misses the point of transhumanism, that you could actually become that other body. you wouldn’t need your original anymore at all. So why keep it around?

…Getting back to gender and sex, now that I’ve laid the groundwork for where this notion is coming from (that you could buy new parts or a whole new thing of/for yourself), a curious thought came to me which inspired me to write this. Namely, would people want to… take other things out for a test drive? I’ve heard so many joking notions of asking girls/boys what they would do if they were the other gender for a day, and there have been some delightfully creative answers, and a lot of the answers seem to indicate a pretty intense curiosity as to why the other gender seems to see the world so differently. Girls joking about how they’d put their new penis into everything just to see what all the fuss was about, boys saying roughly the same, trying to understand what a period cramp really feels like, or pregnancy, etc. So… if you could rent a body of the opposite gender for a week or something, wouldn’t that be… interesting?

I have to say, even as a quite heterosexual male, I would be fascinated to experience life as a woman for a few days. Even really minor things like how weight is distributed differently. Maybe balance feels totally weird. What does sex really feel like for the girl, besides, you know, ‘good’? What is it like to have a billion more fashion options? Our two genders have wildly different kinds of maintenance, even for simple things like showering being different. Different shampoos, different kinds of exercise, etc etc. I think it would be probably the most enlightening experience I could have. Absolutely fascinating.

Again relating this back to the metaphor of buying a car, if you need a big truck for work, fine, but if you could zoom around in a Bugatti for a weekend, wouldn’t that be fun? Just to see what it was like? You could go back to your truck, but, it was a fun experience right?

So… to me, the weird question becomes… as increasing numbers of people are declaring themselves bisexual, homosexual, pansexual, etc etc, would this become much more normal, hell, even expected? As I said before, I myself am a heterosexual man. I don’t get even the slightest sexual interest from another male. Nothing. I get as much arousal out of a tree. But if I were in the body of a girl, with girl hormones and inherent urges, would I want to take that out for a test drive? Same goes for straight girls in a man’s body, right? And what about gender dissociative (Trans) people who actually literally could be the gender they want to be? And what if it becomes incredibly easy to flip back and forth, and hell, make new things in between?

To me, one of the most interesting things in Brave New World was the casual attitude towards sex, especially considering the social climate it was written in. I’m not going to talk about whether BNW was meant to be horrifying or positive, just the fact that people were so much less concerned with whether sex was ‘taboo’ or ‘evil’ or other frankly ridiculous ideas. Sex is perfectly healthy and happy and normal, and if you could construct a system wherein there were no more STDs, no more unwanted pregnancies, no more real concern over negative consequences because there would BE no negative consequences… …wouldn’t we all be a hell of a lot happier, in general? SO much angst is caused by our lust, so if lust wasn’t really an issue anymore, nor was bigotry against alternative sexualities, well, it sounds like the world would be a much more mellow place.

I’ll end this for now, and merely leave you with this thought: Is that a future to look forward to, or abhor? And either way, is it one we can really avoid anyway? Or should even be trying to avoid? I leave you to your own musings.