devi ever wrote:aen wrote:Gender. the oldest, stickiest, most explosive issue in human history.
Gender will be a laughable matter once we move onto robotics, cybernetic integration, and body modification at the genetic level (growing real cat ears, four sets of tits, a whale sized penis, vagina in your hand, a tale, second head, etc. etc.)
devi-
I dunno. Have you seen Stand Alone Complex. I think it'll probably be more like that, especially the bit where Batou asks Motoko why she doesn't just switch to a male-type body. Also people tend to stick with what they recognise. There's plenty of things we "can" do already, but we don't(which is a shame as some ways since even things as simple as purple hair are very nearly verbotten in many areas).
I think gender is important for reasons other than biology, and represents a deeper duality than people realise. People don't like to be limited by things like that, but I think those same patterns will always re-emerge. The way I look of it a lot of who we are is made up of loads of little "flags" like that anyway, so gender isn't something that has to limit you, just another switch/scale that helps define who you are.
Unless you mean gender in terms of rights/issues rather than it's meaning otherwise, then you could well be very right.
I'd be very sad if people did get rid of gender. The thing is that there are some things that when you redesign them, you have to replace them with something of equal value. This is the same reason I'm critical when it comes to hollywood "reinventions" of comic booky franchises, they should stick to adaptions since there's no gaurantee this new version will recreate any of the magic.
I'm not sure humans are creative enough yet for reinventing social structures to that extent, most of the activism nowadays is for issues that have existed in some form for a long time, so I don't think the feeling of impending soulessness is a "conservative" thing in this case. It's something we need to think long and hard about before jumping into, sometimes our limitations are what helps define us(obviously not being able to marry the person you love or simply being born entirely the wrong gender is not a valid "Limitation" in this sense).
I think it'll be kind of cool to see people with different skin colours, horns, wings, tails and stuff like that, but it'd also be nice if it was kept as a slightly "alternative" thing, maybe, so it doesn't in of itself lose it's meaning.
People walking around as cubes with legs or something, is something I'd worry about a bit more maybe, as it could be easily to push the boundaries of being able to relate to other beings that way, but maybe not.
