So, assuming we manage to not destroy ourselves for long enough to become a post-human society, do you see gender and sexuality remaining defining aspects of humankind, or is it on the way out?

With gender expression becoming ever more fluid, and the very concept of being human diverging into genetically or cybernetically altered forms, can our binary system survive? Indeed with life extension and AI on the horizon and cloning already here, will we even relate to concepts such as procreation, gender, and sexuality at all?

I think as long as were are corporeal in any way at all we will remain sexual -- unless we go to behaving like amoebas. Procreationally speaking. 

And since cultures have had various stances toward gender that are totally unlike western European/global culture today, I would think there is a very good chance that gender will be looked at differently in future than it is now, Simone.

What will that look like? I dunno. As I have said before, I have no huge fight with the binary anyhow.

N~

This just caught my eye.  Regarding gender and sexuality I think they will always be around in some manner.  The question that caught my attention was about genetically alterned forms of human being (at least that is what I got out of, but that may not have been yours) and the nature of being human.  I read an article today from the Daily Mail, Science and Technology Section about a scientist that became the first human to clone himself.  The embryo's lived five days.  So I find the ethical questions regarding the use of this technology interesting.

Maya

It would take a hell of a revolution to dislodge it.  Sure, it's more fluid these days in the West than in the last few centuries, but like religion, humankind probably will never be able to go without it.  Unless cybernetics really takes off and we've all got interchangeable bodies or something.

Lia

Will gender be easily hunted by dogs and it's eggs eaten by rats? Would make life easier - but improbable. The wish is that it just becomes something looser a true reflection of individual personalities rather than a pre-expectation.

Not in my lifetime.

Btw, nice kitty avatar 

I think gender and sex is not more fluid now, its just that the natural fluidity that
existed in nature can finally express itself.

So, before social pressures where pressuring and hiding a natural state of affair.

If sex and gender are based in our cells, and I have no doubt that they are,
there's no way that 30 years can change anything.
At most, we can change our point of view on what existed before.

As an example, in many countries in the middle east, there has been no real visible
changes. Does that mean that the people there somehow are different? No,
the differences are merely suppressed like they used to be here.

I wonder if everyone is totally on the same page... On this forum page. Are we talking genetically, or culturally?

The actual extinction of a binary system scares and thrills me. I actually may prefer the two extremes though, and feeling the contrast between the two. Not the wall mind you...

...
Not in my lifetime though I guess. Stupid mortality....

Its not the extinction of binary, just realizing that there are people in between the binaries.
People tend to have reductionist view of the world; what's normal for them because
biologically their sex and gender is congruent and they are attracted to the opposite sex,
is the norm for everyone and they impose these norms culturally. People become
myopic to everything but their own worldview.

Even in non oppressive society, peer pressure, taking society as a whole as a peer, exists
and the human being wants to be part of something and not be alone. So, for those
who nature has placed in a strange place culturally and biologically, the desire
to be part of the community and be like others conflicts with the inner desire to be
what we truly are. In a sense TS have it easy, because they can rejoin this majority
community, while those in between (CD, Androgyne, etc)
have to find their peer and build this community that they want to belong too.

The STRICT binary construct is cultural point of view. It is the one that is very
slowly fading. But, since gender is not a lifestyle, and is a biological imperative
overlaid and amplified by sexual identity, it cannot fade. It can only morph
into another form, less strict but still there. Boys will be boys and girls will be girls
and then they'll be all the others, finally revealed in all their beautiful form.

Quote from: Keira on January 18, 2008, 08:47:16 PM
I think gender and sex is not more fluid now, its just that the natural fluidity that
existed in nature can finally express itself.

I'd agree this to be the case, though I would also contend that there is more variance these days because of interference from pollutants like PCB's and other xeno-oestrogens.

from a social point of view, I also agree that cultures change, and that gender and sexuality will not be regarded in the same way as it is now - patriarchy is fading (I dearly hope) and it's been the patriarchal Western system that has been most responsible, in my opinion, for the sexual repression the West has suffered, and in many ways still suffers from.

The question of altering our biological forms is less clear-cut though. If our gender and sexuality is rooted in the structure of our hyopthalamus, our chromosomes and our hormonal system, then who can guess how that will be changed when we start to alter those chromosomes, download our consciousness into nanocomputers or cybernetically enhance our brains.

Back to the sociological aspect, once we have the option to extend our lives indefinitely, (well, the rich anyway...) rendering the biological imperetive of sex largely redundant, what kind of a revolution of expression might that not trigger? It's closer than we think too. The lives of most lab-animals can already be extend by huge margins, (we're talking multiples here) and some estimates contend that life extension might be less than a decade or two away.

Meanwhile I was reading yesterday that we can now clone human embryos from skin-cells, we tinker happily away at the genetic code of the plant kingdom, and it's only really legislation that holds stem-cell research, cloning and genetic modification in some sort of check.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/17/AR2008011700324.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Anyway, no matter what our opinions on the matter, it's bound to be interesting to see what new unintended consequences our cleverness create for us ... if the current unintended consequences like global warming, biomass pollution and affluenza don't get us first 

I only hope nothing gets in the way of said revolution, because Its what I've dreamt of since I was in elementary school. I've never been satisfied with knowing how short a period of time I will exist, unless science eases this. I've heard similar accounts, but I'm remaining skeptical so I am not disappointed...

you know I'm pretty damn sure the government is hiding information on how to have your Chromosomes changed.

If they can clone humans and such and all those amazing things why not a biological sex change?
theyare also stopping stem cell research and some genetic research, this has chance at benefiting transgenders and many others too.

I think we will still have sex. ( I hope!)
And thus will have a use for gender. After all we need the species.

Sara

Well Sara... Mitosis would feel kinda cool. Not gonna lie.

Imagine what a lovely clone you'd have!


Or just... Spores. That'd be better than birth, but it'd be weird...

As for Chromosomal change... I've heard it can seriously mess you up. Like bad... As in genetic change done when you've already developed stuff like that.