Transhumanism and Gender Relations

daenerys

11 Transhumanism and Gender Relations

11th Nov 2011

2 min read

11

Upon reading Eliezer's possible gender dystopias ([catgirls](http://lesswrong.com/lw/xt/interpersonal_entanglement/), and [verthandi](http://lesswrong.com/lw/xu/failed_utopia_42/) and the other LW comments and posts on the subject of future gender relations, I came to a rather different conclusion than the ones I've seen espoused here. After searching around the internet a bit, I discovered that my ideas tend to fall under the general category of "postgenderism", and I am wondering what my fellow LessWrongians think of it.

This can generally be broken down to the following claims:

A higher level of egalitarianism between the sexes increases utility. For example, if only men are generally allowed to do Job A, then you are halving the talent pool of people who can do Job A, AND women who would otherwise be happy in Job A lose that utility. It is equally of dis-utility if only women are socially allowed to be emotionally expressive, etc, etc. In other words, Equality = Good.
The differences between men and women are a mix of environmental factors, such as social conditioning, and biological factors, such as varying levels of hormones.
Some of these differences are optimal in the current environment, and others are suboptimal. For example-Women have better social skills (good!), but are more prone to depression (bad). Men are better self-promoters (good!), but are more prone to suicide (bad).
Should transhumanism occur, it will eliminate the suboptimal differences. We can help people become less suicidal and not depressed.
This will lead to a spiraling effect- Fewer *actual* differences will lead to a lessening of socialized differences, which will lead to less actual differences, etc

I am positive at least *some* of this will occur. In fact, I would posit that it is already occuring in that we have drugs to treat depression, and hormone therapy to assist people with hormonal problems, etc. Some postgenderists claim there will be no need for different genders at all, as we can have male pregnancies, and female paternity, etc. I rather doubt it would go that far.

My questions to you all is- When do you see these changes occuring, if at all? How far do you think we will go? Will we end up as essentially a one-gender society? Will we move towards the middle but still retain some gender differences? What would they be? Will they be purely physical, or some psychological differences as well?

A possible contention is that the forces of natural selection would not allow this to go too far. In other words, women are attracted to high-testosterone men, and men are attracted to feminine women. However, we already have studies that show that birth control can make women desire lower testosterone men, and I don't see a reason why we wouldn't end up just being attracted to the new/different standard.

Another possible contention is that people *like* having both men and women about. This is an acceptable argument, but is based solely on personal taste. I would also surmise that most the people who desire the current two-gender system to persist are men (and therefore used to being the dominant gender, and therefore not personally feeling a reason to change it).

One Good Reference-

[Postgenderism: Beyond the Gender Binary](http://ieet.org/archive/IEET-03-PostGender.pdf) , George Dvorsky and James Hughes, PhD, IEET-03, March 2008

EDIT- Due to some really insightful comments;

I replaced men being prone to aggression as a negative, with men being prone to suicide.

I made the verbiage a little more explicit that no one would be *forced* to change, but would seek out the changes that transhumanism would have available.

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11 Transhumanism and Gender Relations

by daenerys

11th Nov 2011

2 min read

118

11

This can generally be broken down to the following claims:

A higher level of egalitarianism between the sexes increases utility. For example, if only men are generally allowed to do Job A, then you are halving the talent pool of people who can do Job A, AND women who would otherwise be happy in Job A lose that utility. It is equally of dis-utility if only women are socially allowed to be emotionally expressive, etc, etc. In other words, Equality = Good.
The differences between men and women are a mix of environmental factors, such as social conditioning, and biological factors, such as varying levels of hormones.
Some of these differences are optimal in the current environment, and others are suboptimal. For example-Women have better social skills (good!), but are more prone to depression (bad). Men are better self-promoters (good!), but are more prone to suicide (bad).
Should transhumanism occur, it will eliminate the suboptimal differences. We can help people become less suicidal and not depressed.
This will lead to a spiraling effect- Fewer *actual* differences will lead to a lessening of socialized differences, which will lead to less actual differences, etc

One Good Reference-

[Postgenderism: Beyond the Gender Binary](http://ieet.org/archive/IEET-03-PostGender.pdf) , George Dvorsky and James Hughes, PhD, IEET-03, March 2008

EDIT- Due to some really insightful comments;

I replaced men being prone to aggression as a negative, with men being prone to suicide.

I made the verbiage a little more explicit that no one would be *forced* to change, but would seek out the changes that transhumanism would have available.

Transhumanism

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11

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Eugine_Nier15y70

Many (and probably most) animals also have gender in the sense that individuals with penises behave in certain ways, and individuals with ovaries behave in other ways, despite not having memes.

I think this is a cached thought.

Yes, but it's still true.

It's very easy to anthropomorphize; if scientists can do it for the concept of natural selection itself, they can certainly do it for animals. The scientific community is much less neutral than we would both like it to be, and as such, it will support findings that are more in line with the social status quo.

I'm confused by this statement. Are you seriously arguing that the observations that, e.g., female but not male bears take care of the cubs, or that peahens prefer peacocks with more impressive tails, etc., are simply cases of scientists being biased?

In my experience, almost all "status" conversations are based upon a hackneyed post-hoc evolutionary just-so story.

Speaking of cached thoughts: it is a common cached thought to dismiss any explanation of human behavior based on evolution as a post-hoc just-so-story regardless of the merits of the explanation.

The fact that they reject them isn't very useful; what would be interesting is why, but you don't bring that up.

OK, let's look at your explanations:

Feminist theory has held that gender (the set of memes that people with penises behave in certain ways, and people without penises behave in other ways) is both socially constructed and socially enforced. This is accomplished by instilling a great many cached thoughts in humans of both sexes that even most rationalists never question, and then severely punishing the people who transgress those categories in a variety of horrific ways.

(...)

Gender is, as the OP suggests, maintained mostly by men for our own benefit (and to a lesser extent, maintained by women so that men will reward them).

So you're explanation appears to boil down to "it's all the patriarchy's fault". This appears to be a classic case of an anti-affective death spiral.

even if my team is bad in some way, that isn't evidence for it being wrong

On the contrary, if your team is bad at rationality, that is evidence for it being wrong.

[anonymous]14y50

Yes, but it's still true.

Cached thoughts are thoughts that we think are true because we cached them at some point and never re-evaluated them. To properly re-evaluate a cached thought we need to re-evaluate all dependencies, including the ones that we might not notice at first.

It's exceedingly hard to do that, which is why otherwise intelligent people in the past didn't start questioning the aspects of racism and sexism that are commonly denounced today.

OK, let's look at your explanations:

I'm not a prominent feminist; I haven't written anything of ... (read more)

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