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antigonus comments on Transhumanism and Gender Relations - Less Wrong Discussion

7 [deleted] 11 November 2011 01:48AM

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Comment author: antigonus 11 November 2011 09:08:11AM 3 points [-]

I anticipate that preference for current gender system to be approximately the same across the sexes (and also fairly widespread).

I'd imagine it's virtually universal. Transhumanists are a tiny population, and I can't think of anyone outside that population who would even consider revising such a basic facet of human life. Those few who've been posed the question of "Should we add or remove a gender?" in earnest would assuredly respond with an incredulous stare. Maybe some feminist academics have discussed it, though.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2011 02:50:09PM *  4 points [-]

Number of Google Results

  • Postgender- 1,004,100 Transhuman- 841,000

  • Postgenderism- 77,000 Tranhumanism- 1,340,000

Google scholar

  • Postgender- 1,330 Transhuman- 4,720

  • Postgenderism- 10 Transhumanism- 1,910

So even though people considering postgenderism are apparently a slightly smaller minority than transhumanists, it's not a completely undiscussed topic: Both topics are being discussed both in scholarly and in non-scholarly modes.

I can see how you would assume that because the transhuman community doesn't do much discussing of postgenderism, that it must not be that popular, but in fact it is just that they are pulling from a different pool of adherents. Postgenderism has its roots in feminism, masculinism and transgender movements.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 11 November 2011 02:55:53PM 1 point [-]

Note that this may be an unrepresentative sample. Both non-standard gendered individuals and transhumanists are often groups considered to have disproportionate internet footprint and compared to their actual size. Given that, using this data to decide that one minority is "slightly smaller" than the other seems dubious. Similar remarks may apply to the academic footprint (although my impression is that postgenderism and related ideas are much more common in academia than transhumanism.)

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2011 03:01:08PM 0 points [-]

Note that this may be an unrepresentative sample.

Which is why I wasn't using the data to say "The postgenderism movement is 68.3% as much as the tranhumanism movement" or some-such. Because that, yes, would be insufficient data to make that claim.

Instead I used the data to say "Both things are being discussed. Transhumanism probably more so". For which I think Google results are, in fact, sufficient to make that claim.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 11 November 2011 03:16:17PM -2 points [-]

My objection was to the notion that these are useful statistics for evaluating how many people are discussing the issues. Given how close the numbers are, given the proportionality problems, and given that for one of the numbers one actually gets fewer results (Postgender v. transhuman although that one is probably less of a good measure because postgender is also an adjective whereas the general adjective form of transhumanist is transhumanist), I don't think concluding anything about the size of the groups discussing it is justified from this data even in the weak way you have done so here.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 11 November 2011 02:29:41PM *  4 points [-]

There's a fairly large segment of the LGBTQE community which probably would if they knew about the idea jump at it. See especially the subset that identifies as "genderqueer" or talks about "genderfucking".

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 11 November 2011 02:35:38PM *  4 points [-]

What does the 'E' stand for?

I recently heard the term QUILTBAG (Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Trans, Bisexual, Asexual, Gay) which I like for actually forming a pronounceable word.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2011 08:15:52PM *  1 point [-]

I like for actually forming a pronounceable word.

Same here.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 11 November 2011 02:42:29PM 0 points [-]

The "E" the stands for et cetera.