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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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In the Culture Series by the sadly departed Iain M. Banks (not to be confused with his more mundane doppelganger Iain Banks) humans can decide to change sex entirely and actually become the opposite sex in a very real sense, they are exactly like someone born that sex including womb or sperm etc... Often couples that want 2 kids will take turns doing the gestating.

If humans go on long enough a perfect sex change will indeed be possible at a genetic level. Would anyone living hard in the trans debate still have a problem with it then? How could they?

I say this as someone that thinks it is ridiculous that a man can DECLARE FEMALE Michael Scott BANKRUPTCY style and crush swimming records and smackdown college girls in basketball.

Radical feminists would have a major problem with this, based on one of their stated reasons for rejecting MTF transwomen. Which is that transwomen do not have the experience and thus memories (and/or trauma) of living childhood as a girl. They see this as an important shared experience that connects all women for having been oppressed by the patriarchy as girls, which transwomen are trying to encroach upon.

Now, if we were to develop memory alteration technology such that transwomen had memories perfectly indistinguishable from that of a female, then perhaps that might change? I don't think radical feminists would particularly buy into that, though.

But what if we tacked on literal time travel, manipulating the genes of the sperm that led to you so that it produced a female instead of male (or vice versa, though people care much less about this one), a la Luka Urushibara from Steins;Gate? I wonder.

Me, personally, I would agree with everyone who says that the concept of "trans" would be largely incoherent in this world. If you can switch sex perfectly with as little trouble as switching a tee-shirt is now, how does it make sense to identify someone as whatever sex they are at the moment? They're not transitioning from something to something else, they're just selecting something.

important shared experience that connects all women for having been oppressed by the patriarchy as girls

I think this proves too much: would radical feminists consider someone born with female parts in a non-patriarchal society to be a woman?

I don't know nearly as much about radical feminists as I do third wave feminists due to not knowing as many and not being one of them at any point, but from what I can tell from them, the concept of a society that isn't patriarchal might exist in fiction or fantasy, but one hasn't existed yet. At least, in the sense that, for any real society they talk about, they can find SOME source of patriarchal oppression. And if asked to speculate, the answer is usually some variation of "But I did eat breakfast this morning."

from what I can tell from them, the concept of a society that isn't patriarchal might exist in fiction or fantasy

I was thinking of the society postulated in the pre-Indo-European--matriarchal-society hypotheses....

but one hasn't existed yet.

...and the radical feminists' ideal future.

"Assuming the ancient-European Mother-Goddess worship hypothesis to be true, would someone born with female parts in such a society be a woman?"

"If you succeed in your goals and remove the patriarchy, would your great-great-granddaughters be women?"