What if...

[samvara]

You could change your physical gender. I’m imagining it slowly changing over about six months to whatever you ‘set’ it to and you could change it any time and as many times as you wanted.

Comments

[ironed_orchid]

Yes please.

[samvara]

Me too, although I suspect I'd end up trying to set it to 'half way' permanently.

[ironed_orchid]

The flexible gender stuff is one of the things I like about the Culture novels.

To clarify my answer more:

On the whole I feel I'm cis-gendered female, and I'm okay with that. But if it were a reversible option, I would happily spend a couple of years as male, or as you say, in between. And I would love to live in a world where gender was purely optional.

[chaosmanor]

Sign me up.

[maharetr]

Add me to the 'I'd love to give it a go' list. I'm actually visualising (assuming?) a situation where women would jump at the chance to be men for at least a while, and men more reluctant to try out being women. I could totally be wrong. Either way, I'll be watching other comments with interest :)

As for the longer answer: if anyone could do it, I'm wondering how often it would be taken up, and if it would become a widespread or mainstream thing. I think the six month transition (and the six months back after, if you wanted it) would stop it from being a casual thing. I'm curious about what the reaction would be to the first 'recreational changers' so to speak. Would there be a fundie backlash -- what would the Catholic Church have to say about it, for example? Would it be embraced by the world at large? Would this be the end of misogyny, or would we see a flood of women fleeing femaleness? Now I really wish Neil Gaiman had written a whole novel based on 'Changes'... someone else has done this, surely?

[watersword]

*twitch* I would...probably not do it. I like my body. I like living inside it. If it were a snap-your-fingers-and-flip-genders thing, then I would be more tempted, but the idea of living inside a body that was morphing, for months on end, into something unfamiliar, gives me the creeps.

Would I like to discover what it's like to walk down Broadway and not flinch when someone comes up behind me? Yes. Would I be willing to give up my home to do it? No.

[prk]

I'm in.

Aside from pure curiosity of the mechanics & sensations, I'd be fascinated on how it would change society, over time, to have women who were used to being treated like men and vice versa running into gender prejudices!

Prk

[rdm]

Sounds very Culture to me.

That aside, I cannot say I would not be curious...

[transcendancing]

I don't think I'd ever 'settle' on any particular gender with this on offer... I think I'd probably spend most of my time blending/suspending inside some kind of genderqueer/genderfuck space...

Add it to my list of 'cake and eat it too' things :)

[callistra]

I don't have the urge to change. Six months is a long time. if it was an instant thing, where I could decide on the morning, I'd consider it.
:-)

[delicious_irony]

I remember reading this in the Culture novels, and was immediately swamped by an enormous wave of longing. I have always been curious about the other side of the chromosome pairing.

Even if I personally decided not to gendershift, the effects on global culture and media would be fascinating to watch.

[fred_mouse]

absolutely. would I change back? not sure. had it been an option prior to having children, then yes, I would have seesawed back and forth.

And the changeover period - doesn't sound too bad. It would mean that more people would be in the middle, and thus there would be less creepiness about it.

[copracat]

Eventually, sport would have to change entirely. I'd like to think it would do so in a positive and inclusive way. International sporting bodies would resist at first. You'd only be able to compete if you were your birth gender or had been one gender for a set period of time, but in the end people who chose to be intersex or genderless or placed themselves at any point on the continua strung between would force a change through their activism. There'd be old-fashioned, conservative sports associations that would insist on the old bi-gendered standards. Other sports would embrace change, would grasp at the new possibilities with gleeful hands.

Me, I would let my genes take a tour through a rainbow of selves and perform everything!