Thoughts on Future Sexuality.
Dec. 9th, 2006 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swestrupThanks to my friends list I was just watching TITLER, which is, essentially, Hitler with Tits, and I had a bit of an epiphany.
I recently read Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan and thouroughly enjoyed it, but something was bothering me about it, and I just figured it out. The story takes place in the far future and humanity is now unisexual. For the most part, people don't have genitals until they are in a relationship and then they grow a matched pair so that those two individuals can have sex if they desired.
At the time I noticed that this tended to make poly relationships, orgies, promiscuity (the organs take at least a month to grow), and masturbation impossible. It seemed to me to be awfully repressive of human sexuality to go that route, but something else was bothering me, and I couldn't put a finger on it until now.
Breasts. They also eliminated all secondary sexual characteristics. You know, I don't think I'd want to live in a world without boobs. I could survive the wierd pair-bonding thing, but I insist on there being boobs. Heck, if I had been desinging the unisex world, everyone would have breasts, because why not?
I recently read Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan and thouroughly enjoyed it, but something was bothering me about it, and I just figured it out. The story takes place in the far future and humanity is now unisexual. For the most part, people don't have genitals until they are in a relationship and then they grow a matched pair so that those two individuals can have sex if they desired.
At the time I noticed that this tended to make poly relationships, orgies, promiscuity (the organs take at least a month to grow), and masturbation impossible. It seemed to me to be awfully repressive of human sexuality to go that route, but something else was bothering me, and I couldn't put a finger on it until now.
Breasts. They also eliminated all secondary sexual characteristics. You know, I don't think I'd want to live in a world without boobs. I could survive the wierd pair-bonding thing, but I insist on there being boobs. Heck, if I had been desinging the unisex world, everyone would have breasts, because why not?
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-10 01:35 am (UTC)One idea I really liked about the Culture as depicted Iain Banks' novels was the ability of its members to switch sexes on a whim... although even that seems sort of limited given the technology one might assume a civilization of its level to have.
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Date: 2006-12-10 01:45 am (UTC)I'm not really sure why he chose this particular strange sexual arrangement for this novel, but its not typical of his work.
In one of his 'diaspora' short stories, which takes place in a virtual world, sex is considered an interface preference and what sex you appear to yourself has no bearing on what sex you appear to be to others. In fact, you can be in a menage-a-trois with two individuals who each have divergent beliefs on what everyone else's sex is.