[extropy-chat] Spain has become the third country in Europe to legalise gay marriage

[Joseph Bloch]

Dirk Bruere wrote:

> I would think the whole thing would become a non issue.
> On one hand we will have groups of 'people' who band together for 
> various quite logical reasons.
> On the other, why bother with gender and 'needing people' from an 
> emotional POV at all?
> All this talk about swapping gender etc seems to be a contemporary 
> pre-occupation that will become utterly irelevent by the time it is 
> practical.
>
> I see PostHumanity moving in two major directions.
> They are total individualism and hive minds.
> And sex/gender has no major place in either IMO.


I fully agree with Dirk here. While gender reassignability is something 
of significance as an intermediate step, in the longer term it is 
irrelevant. Gender roles for reproduction will disappear with the advent 
of alternative methods of reproduction (either physically through 
biological cloning, asexual budding, etc. or on an entirely mental plane 
through creation of uploaded (and possibly deliberately reprogrammed to 
assure diversity) copies of people which are then set loose as 
completely discrete individuals themselves.

On a psychological level, gender assignment becomes even less 
significant. When truly effective methods of psychological 
re-programming become available (both on a pharmaceutical and 
methodological level) gender roles will cease to exist. Biological males 
could adapt the nurturing aspects of the "feminine" mindset, biological 
females could deliberately become more aggressive, etc. We've already 
seen this psychological effect taking place "in the wild" as it were, as 
a consequence of the reduction of socially-induced gender roles. As we 
increasingly have the ability to perform such changes deliberately and 
on an individual level, yet another vestage of our hominid past will 
fall into obscurity.

Joseph

Enhance your body "beyond well" and your mind "beyond normal": 
http://www.humanenhancement.com
New Jersey Transhumanist Association: http://www.goldenfuture.net/njta
PostHumanity Rising: http://transhumanist.blogspot.com/ (updated 
yesterday!)