Kris Notaro: Will gender exist 100 years from now, or does it already not exist?
Kris Notaro of the IEET
ponders a postgendered future:
Traditional values of looking at gender in binary fashion grow less and less important as scientists show that gender identity is diverse in nature and is caused by many biological and social conditions. If one were to look at the pure science of gender identity, it not only appears that a postgender society is possible but it seems we are already living in one.
More on
postgenderism.
We do not live in a postgender society. We live in one where "postgender-identified" persons (for lack of better term) can sometimes get by without being overly disadvantaged socially. But people are still strongly gender-judged, at least in my experience. That's still a far cry from being a society where gender is considered non-binary and largely irrelevant socially. Perhaps it looks different in your circles, but futurists and transhumanists and the like seem to be living in an entirely different world sometimes.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the reason for marking off "M" or "F" on official papers is due to the fact that many agencies (governmental or otherwise) provided services differently to different sexes in the past (and occasionally still do, in insurance industries for example), plus same-sex marriage is still illegal in most places. Eliminate the mindset which requires a legally-enforced distinction between "M" and "F" for such purposes and there will be no real reason for an additional "N" sex/gender - requiring someone to declare one's gender on paper would be pointless at best and discriminatory at worst. And adding an "N" without eliminating the mindset would almost certainly be very messy.
Yes, but only if you want it to.
ReplyDeletefallingupthesky, i totally agree with most of what you have to say. I just want to encourage people to read articles like Quantum Sex: Intersex and the Molecular Deconstruction of sex by Vernon A. Rosario. http://vrosario.bol.ucla.edu/CV/GLQ15.2_06_Rosario.pdf
ReplyDeleteGender is quite real. As a transsexual I know this better than most. I also know that it is not a simple as most people assume. That gender is complex should not lead us to the fallacy of presuming that it is unreal entirely. That does not follow. That it is non-binary also should not lead to a conclusion that it does not exist.
ReplyDelete