The Future of Gender, Part 1

we are joined by our excellent co worker Raquel. Raquel, could you please introduce yourself to our listeners. Sure, Um, my name is Raquel Willis. I am a digital publisher here at how Stuff Works dot com and I'm also a writer and activists. Yeah. We wanted to invite Raquel onto the show today because we are talking, if you perhaps cottoned onto our prince lyric about the future of gender and this is a topic that we that we had a listener request for, and so I kind of

wanted to to read this email. It is from Gemma. She says, hi, and that said something really nice about us that I'm not going to repeat because it's embarrassing. I am delighted to say that you guys have helped influence my decision to study artificial intelligence at university next year and to do further and to further do research

in the field. As well as being excited about the technology, I try to think of how larger social issues will be dealt with in the future, such as what impact computers and AI could have on developing countries, possibly largely through education, and if capitalism will ever crumble a bit like the politics you talked about in the Star Trek Economy episode. Yeah, yeah, that that's that's one of the fan favorites I think. Yeah, we hear about that a lot. Yeah, yeah,

I enjoyed it. Um Gemma says, I try to fight against all kinds of inequalities and am an enthusiastic feminist us too. There are some interesting ideas about the future of gender specifically, such as gender neutrality and genderism linked with trans humanism. I think it would be really awesome if you guys could touch on some of these ideas sometime or just look into it. Thanks for your time and awesomeness. And then there's a really cool, cute little

emoticon thing. Well, thank you, Jimma, because I think that is a really interesting idea to talk about on this show. It's a fascinating topic to look at because it occurs at the intersection of a bunch of different things that we do talk about a lot and and touches all of them kind of equally. It includes biology, technology, and culture. And uh, now, there's obviously no way we can come even close to saying everything there is to say about

a concept is huge and important as gender. Oh yeah, yeah, we we we already delayed recording this podcast once because we were like, oh, we have too many things to

say for this to occur today. Yeah, but I think one thing that we can try to do is just look at a few indications of trends in how humans have been understanding gender, especially in our culture here in the West, and how those trends might continue into the future, and then touch on Jemma's idea of post genderism towards the end, which is which is a really interesting concept that frankly, I think we should have explored on this show sometime before, given all the ways it interacts with

topics we talk about all the time, like trans humanism. Well, there's a lot of future out there, Joe, and we only have two episodes a week. Umuh. And I did want to put in here that, uh, of course gender doesn't exist in a vacuum. Um, I mean by necessity,

because it's a cultural and social construct. So so, like Joe said, and kind of in the in the interests of our heads not exploding totally, we're going to be talking mainly today about gender in the West and in the United States specifically, and we're going to be speaking

in some generalized terms. But of course keep in mind that you know, the United States is a multicultural society and gender gender interconnects with like race and religious beliefs and all of these other big, huge factors that certainly cannot be ignored. But we might be glossing over a tiny bit. But hey, speaking of generalized terms, let's lay out some definitions because there seems to be some confusion sometimes when people are talking about the terms sex and

gender and as a side note, sexuality. So yes, so we're going to start off with some generalized terms, just kind of breaking it down for you guys a little bit. These are concepts that we live with throughout our entire lives, but of course, unless you really really have to, you might not look at them too closely. So starting with sex, So sex is generally what we think of biologically wise,

it's what's going on with your body. So you may have always heard that sex is binary, right, it's male versus female, But of course we know with the rise of genetics and the study of hormones and chromosomes and all these different sex therapies, that there's a range. There's male female, inter sex, and actually you can change your sex. Then we'll get into gender. So gender is socialized. It's kind of the person's personalized version of your sex and

how you were present to the world. Right, So going back to that binary, that's a little iffy because not everyone identifies as masculine or feminine or either one of those. In a strict sense, you can transcend gender, right, You can be anywhere on what we consider a continuum or the gender spectrum. And then just at a side note, a lot of times people conflate sexuality with the with your biological sex or with your gender, but these are

all really independent factors. So if you want to break it down, you can kind of think of it as you know, sex is basically what you are signed with at birth or what you are um said to be born as. Gender is often how you feel. It's what you go to bad as. And sex and sexuality can be thought of as who you may want to go to bad with. Putting it absolutely uh And historically all of these definitions have have kind of slid and changed. The concepts of sex and gender are not solid as

much as kind of like like. Tradition dictates that they have to have been this way all of the time. Um, they haven't been. Certainly, the medical definition has changed a whole lot in the past hundred years or so. It wasn't until the eighteen nineties that humanity first started figuring out that there are chromosomes. The chromosomes exist um chromosomes, of course, being the winded up bits of DNA that

helped determine your biological sex. There was a German biologist by the name Herman Hanking who was studying sperm formation in wasps you know like you do and he u He noticed that some of the sperm cells had a even chromosomes while others had twelve. He called this X chromosome the X element, hence eventually X chromosomes um the X element and hypothesized that it had to do with

sex determination. His hypothesis was then later supported by two American zoologists who are working with grasshoppers around nineteen o two. Not sure why it was all insects, but anyway, um uh. It was eventually the subject of of one paper that that that I read caused a lively debate for a few years. I'm not positive what in like Victorian ish times like lively debate precisely means, but I'm but I'm

delighted by that, so okay. Prior to these studies, though, it was thought that environmental factors determined the sex of an embryo. Oh like like fikeets warm while the embryo embryo is developing or something exactly. Yeah. Uh. And eventually we realize that there are a number of chromosome all conditions and humans not just X X and X why but extra xes or wise can be present or a single X can exist all on its own and um, and and that's the the intersex category that that raquel

was talking about a second ago. And estimates of the rate of inter sexuality and the population range from like zero point zero two percent to about one point seven percent, depending on exactly how you define it. So so biologically speaking, there are not just dudes and ladies like that's that's not that's not what's up. Um, And just the fun fact you cannot always just assume what your chromosomes are.

You know, there are a lot of different factors that can go into your chromosome will makeup and you really can only know if you get tested exactly. Yeah, I've read stories about that where people so your your your phenotype, your your what what your genes have produced in your body doesn't necessarily make a difference or it doesn't necessarily indicate that you have an XX or an x y UM.

And it happened to be around the same time that that researchers began realizing the roles that hormones play in our bodies. To um that there was some animal research in the mid eighteen hundreds establishing the idea that organs in the body can communicate with each other via chemicals like communicate in like a big hilarious eighteen hundreds scare quotes, um.

And and then uh, we got the word hormone. It was coined in nineteen O five and of course, you know, since then, we've we've been able to synthesize hormones in the lab and develop hormone therapies to help people who were either born with um with a with a genetic disorder. I mean also technically like insulin is a hormone, so uh, that's pretty great that we can synthesize that in labs, or of course people who are choosing to change their

their bodies with hormone therapy. So we've come a long way, but we're really still figuring out how individuals bodies regulate their own hormones and for the more how those hormones interact with with other bodily processes. Yeah, and so that's getting us closer to where we are today in terms of our understanding of biological sex and uh and intersex conditions.

But there's also a sort of cultural history that we should look at it in terms of received ideas about gender, because with this distinction we made earlier, sex is biology, gender is identity, and identity involves culture, values, norms, expectations, behaviors, and so I guess we should look at how those

things have changed in the past. I think a lot of people would just assume that, you know, the traditional position as they would see it in the West in the twentieth century or something like that has always been the case everywhere. Well, we just always believed that there are men and women, and that men should be masculine and women should be feminine, and that the definitions of masculine and feminine have been the same. Yeah, but it

hasn't always been that way everywhere. So, yes, many of the world's cultures, historically and even today recognize more than just two genders. Um. The idea of a male or female role as the only options really is in a lot of way, it's very um, let's just say, a lot of cultures have been very creative. Um. So, even here in the United States, if we think historically among Native Americans, the role or the idea of a third, fourth, or fifth gender, often called to spirit has been widely documented.

Children who may have been born physically male or female, but showed an interest or proclivity for another gender role within their societies were often encouraged to live out those gender roles and and see what fit them best. So, you know, when you think about these roles and and how they were regarded within a lot of Native American cultures, we won't say all um, these the roles were given a lot of respect, and they were often thought of

as very spiritually powerful. So people who were two spirits were often shamans and teachers and caretakers. And it's very important to remember that there are many two spirit identified people around today. And of course there are many cultures still throughout the world to view gender in a different way than we do here in the United States, and

the and the the history. I mean, like like we could do an entire, ridiculously long episode about the changes in in this kind of cultural perspective that have happened over the past few centuries, let alone the past few millennia, and UH that it's it's it's really interesting, And that's not what we got into today. But what we did get into is, um, some of the modern attitudes and definitions that we that we ascribe to gender and sex here in the United States, like like like legally and

culturally speaking. Yeah, that's right, because I think looking at law is a good way to sort of get a gauge for the level of acceptance something UH is encountering in the society at large. So you know, how does the law treat gender? Does the law even recognize this idea of gender identity as something different than just what

genitalia you have or what sex chromosomes you have? And in US law, traditionally the answer was mostly no, until more recently that there was a sex distinction in the law, any laws that pertain to how men and women should be treated or treated differently or not treated differently. Just we're trying to use biological distinctions as understood at the time. Ay, yeah, exactly. They were reverting to the biological binary as they understood it.

For example, in US law, Title seven of the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four prohibits, among other things, employment discrimination on the basis of sex. So you're not supposed to, under this law hire a man when there's you know, a more qualified woman that really you you should be hiring, but you just would rather have a man working for you. So traditionally this was interpreted by US courts to refer to biological sex, not gender identity.

But this is changing and through the accumulation of many changes in law and judicial interpretation over time. So I want to talk about one example I read about in two thousand twelve, the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or the e o C, set this important precedent relating to the legal status of gender identity in a case called Macy versus Holder, and the holder was Air Culture the Attorney General suit being brought to the government about about

gender discrimination. And so the plaintiff was a police detective as she was a ballistics expert who applied for a job at a crime hi lab while still presenting as male, and she seems to have been offered the job pending a background check, but then after she announced to change in her listed name and gender, the tentative job offer was retracted. And then she reported receiving contradictory explanations for

why this happened. One person told her budget cuts eliminated the position, and a different person told her, you know, well, we went with a different candidate who was farther along in the process. According to the plaintiff, and in the end, the equal point that the e s C ruled that Title seven should apply to gender identity, that was one of the things that was taken away from the ruling in this case. So they wrote, quote, if Title seven

prescribed only discrimination on the basis of biological sex. Then only prohibited gender based disparate treatment would be when an employer prefers a man over a woman, or vice versa. But the statutes protections sweep far broader than that, in part because the term gender encompasses not only a person's biological sex, but also the cultural and social aspects associated with masculinity and femininity and so yeah, so this is one legal precedent for understanding there's a distinction here and

sort of recognizing that distinction. And of course when courts recognize the distinction, it begins to to gain a level of leverage essentially over what what can be done with the law in the society. And UH, some jurisdictions have actually tried to put gender identity into specific terms so that, for example, it can be demonstrated in the court in the case of, for example, an employment discrimination suit on

the basis of gender identity. Just one example is a two thousand eleven Massachusetts state law UH that tried to offer one of these definitions, and it said, quote, gender related identity may be shown by providing evidence, including but not limited to, medical history, hair, or treatment of the gender related identity consistent and uniform assertion of the gender related identity, or any other evidence that the gender related identity is sincerely held as part of the person's core identity,

which seems reasonable. Yeah, So I think legal definitions like this provides sort of like additional bricks in the edifice of mainstream acceptance of the idea of gender identity is something distinct from biological sex and thus something that could contribute to this post gender idea that we're going to

talk about eventually here. Right. So, one of the reasons or one of the main reasons that gender identity is kind of this term that we needed to to describe um our experience as a gender is that there are so many people who may not identify with the gender that they were assigned at birth. Right, So we often think of um people who may be transitioning from a male gender to a female gender or vi versa. But of course there are many ways in which people can

kind of trans egenter. People can identify with gender on the spectrum or off of the spectrum, in the middle of the spectrum, on different ends of the spectrum. There are so many different ways to identify and and we often associate this with transgender people. And so there actually is a report that came out in two thousand eleven from the Williams Institute in California. The estimated that there are about seven hundred thousand transagender Americans. I would dare

to say that there are many, many more. Yeah, that number sounds slow to me, it does, I mean, but but maybe maybe I'm also including in my mental calculation, uh, non gendered people like like people who do feel that they fall outside of the spectrum and aren't necessarily in our in our living just however they want to, but wouldn't necessarily identify as trans right. And I would imagine, you know, since two thousand even there has been such

an upset invisibility and just understanding. I mean, there are new ways in which people describe themselves, um, within the transgender community. So there's definitely got to be more out there. Um. But going into uh recognition, right, so it's important that people can get that legal recognition of how they identify. And so one of the things we're seeing lately is

an expansion of legal gender definitions and options. Recently, an Oregan court ruled in favor of a person identifying as neither sex option or or traditional sex option or traditional gender option, and and so that they can really assert their identity as a non binary individual. And so historically oregan law. UM it didn't necessarily specifically limit gender options to male or female, but that was kind of the unspoken idea or rule. It's like the checkbox likes right.

When rules are unspoken, people sort of default to their prejudices. I suppose yeah, right. And then of course, so for decades that legal process really only involved this idea of changing from one sex to another or changing from one gender to another UM. And so that process really was

very much like changing a name. You know, you submitted papers and and and the petition and the petitioner would submit that paperwork, you would pay a filing fee, and then you know, get a notice of your proposed change. And so this judge in particular was like, Okay, you know, you've got all the paperwork here. If this is how you identified, then this is valid. And so this is really one of the first cases within the United States of of legal representation of people who don't identify a

strictly male or strictly female. And of course there are other countries around the world that have kind of tackled this issue or have some kind of uh built in mechanism legally that that encompasses people who identify with the gender that isn't just male or female, places like Singapore, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and then of course there are other places like Australian Germany that have stipulations on intersex children or people who

are born as intersex identifying um in different ways. Right, So there really does seem to be a trend, a trend towards more recognition of of gender as a separate category from sex and of non binary sex identification in illegal framework. And it doesn't mean that there's not resistance to this trend. It's obviously no surprise that people have lots of opinions about gender and how things are supposed to be when it comes to sex and sex related concepts.

But I have noticed that on the internet once or twice. Yeah, so so fairly stated. We all know that people have opinions. But I would say, from a from as close to we can get as a point of neutral observation, it does seem undeniable that in the United States things are changing, The law is moving toward a more general recognition of gender identity as a category separate from sex and a potentially protected class under laws like the sixty four Civil

Rights Act. UM just one more example in an article for the American Bar Association, which mentions the things that that I was talking about the last time I spoke and more. Evan Schlack predicts that this trend of increasing legal recognition for gender gender identity will continue into the future.

And to illustrate the sort of single directionality of the trend, uh, he points out that only three states recognized and prohibited employer discrimination based on gender identity between nineteen and two thousand three, but that expanded to thirteens states plus the District of Columbia during the next ten year period up to So that does seem like a pretty strong trend

we can observe there. Uh. And the trend, of course in law is mirrored in culture at large is something that's probably less strictly codified and enforceable, but you can kind of get a gist of generally how gender is perceived among you know, in movies and on TV, and what what people talk about on the internet. Absolutely absolutely all of that that that fascinating pop culture stuff. Yes, yes, So getting out of the kind of nitty gritty legal

world and we're gonna step into the culture. And if you're like everyone in the world and you follow some kind of entertainment and media, um, there has always kind of been this playground of gender expression. You can think about what a lot of who a lot of people consider this kind of gender nonconformed any goddess, Grace Jones, you can think of the late David Bowie, and of course the also very very recently late Prints. But more recently there have been a lot of young mouth celebrities

like Will Smith's son Jaden Smith and Magic Johnson's son E. J. Johnson. Um, pushing the envelope for a new generation with closets that are a bit more unabashedly feminine. And then, of course women have transcended gender in fashion for a long time. I mean you can just think of days long ago when women could not wear pants, and and of course the women wear pants all the time. We have someone running for president who always wears pants in the most

we are both wearing pants right now. It's true, Joe, It's all true. Pants for everyone or not, you know, or whatever you want. Yeah, yeah, and it's it's a little bit more except I think or it's been more acceptable in women, so it's kind of exciting to see

men having the opportunity to do that as well. But um but yeah, yeah, there there's been uh, certainly in high fashion for a long time, this this trend towards breaking those rules, right, definitely, Yeah, breaking the rules is all the rage in fashion world, and of course androgyns

models have been involved at various points. However, there's been a reluctance for a long time to actually feature models that may really identify outside of the bounds of a binary gender, right, people who weren't like like playing in with it. But we're serious about it, right right, Yeah, so not just necessarily a woman breaking norms and in a suit or a man breaking norms than a scart,

but actually people who identify outside of the binary. Um So, within the past ten years or so, maybe more, I guess, maybe a bit more. Uh, there's been an increase our interest in gender variant and transgender models. Um So, in two thousand eight, there is a model on America's Next Top Model, of course, a Tyra Banks masterpiece. Uh, and her name is Isis King. She kind of became a household name and really um gave a face and a

start to trans models in a mainstream sense. And then we can kind of flash forward to now, um, almost a decade later, and there are so many other trans models covering magazines all the time, people like Andrea Pejik, who really kind of transient transitioned in front of the fashion world from from Brilliann androgenus model before to now like claiming her identity as a woman. And then Leah t Aidan Dowling was on the cover of ment Health a trans man um and then Laife Ashley and and

some other models. There's actually a transgender model agency in New York. Yeah, it opened a few months ago. So we're really seeing this um continuing trend even in culture, and then as well with some specifically gender neutral fashion lines. Um, there's also been this huge emergence. There are some lines like Vicia, Tillian William, Claire Barrow, Claire Barrow and sixty nine, amongst so many other gender neutral fashion lines. But of course it doesn't seem that culture as a whole is

going gender neutral, right. Not everyone's going around wearing nondescript gender clothing, but it's kind of undeniable that the options from men, women and folks who may identify otherwise are kind of expanding, respectively, and and that the cultural acceptance of wearing those kind of clothes out out about in the world is expanding. It's still I mean, depending on

what what area you live in. Absolutely, we're We're very lucky here in Atlanta, I think to have a very diverse community who is who is, who is comfortable and and accepting of of people's self expression. Yeah, I think that's true about our city. Uh. It's funny how I for some reason, my brain did not even go to this place when I was thinking about this episode. I didn't. It did not even cross my mind to think about clothing um as such a fundamentally gendered part of our

everyday experience. Oh yeah, it's the language. Ye oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. We we had we had Holly on a few months to a year ago to talk about the future of fashion and uh and and yeah, it's it's it's such it's crazy, especially when when I think we decided during that episode that that Joe is of the like what

is what is what can I wear? To be the least obtrusive visually speaking in the world um and and Holly and I were like more sequence on everything um or you know, for for sometimes and so yeah, yeah, it's it's very very much um a thing that I certainly think about, like every day, like how am I going to be perceived as a lady human when I put this particular outfit on? Huh, I mean I worry about how I'll look. But I guess, yeah, I mean which is which is also part of part of that,

like like unfortunate gender binary Uh, oppression, oppression. Oppression is a strong word. But but it's but but I'm but I'm kind of you and serious like it's it's a it's a very interesting thing where like the amount of policing that we do of how men are supposed to look versus how women are supposed to look. Well, I'm okay to live in that future where everybody wears identical jumpsuits muchallic ambolishments or no, yeah, that's the expression. You

can pick a color. Everybody's got identical jumpsuits and you can pick you know, I want a green one. Can I just have to wear that color all the time? No, you can wear whatever color you want can I pick sequin colors to go on. I would never force anybody else to wear a jumpsuit. Uh. So, okay, the future of gender may not be jumpsuits. But but but we but we do have a discussion about about what it

might look like and what some people are theorizing. Yeah, because so everything we've talked about now kind of gets us gets us up to now, right, so that there there are these trends in legal recognition and ideas about gender. They're there are trends and what's accepted culturally. But in the future, how much could these things change? Uh? And here's where we want to come to the future ology concept of post genderism, which our our listener, jim Jimma

brought up in the email she sent us. I think this is a really interesting concept and I didn't know that much about it before I started doing the research for this episode. But I think maybe I'm a post genderous now. I think maybe I'm convinced by the argument. Yeah, I think. I think I didn't have a word to put on my my opinions before, but I think this absolutely sums up how I feel about stuff. Um, we should at this point put in a hat tip to

a to a really useful overview of the topic. Yeah, it was a paper I found published through the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies in two thousand and eight. It was called post Genderism, Behind or Beyond the Gender Binary by George Davorski and James Hughes, and it essentially just tried to, in a very tight space condense a lot of historical and cultural and technological trends that would that have led up to where we are with gender

now and how technology might be changing that. Yeah. So so if you guys are are, if you're if you're appetite as wetted by this conversation, then maybe go check out that article and uh and go through its source list because there's a lot of really interesting gender theory that they that they referenced. So all that stuff earlier we mentioned that we could not possibly explore today. There's a lot of gender theory in there. People have a lot of thoughts. People do have a lot of thoughts, Joe,

that's accurate, But we should define it. So what is postgenderism? Essentially, post genderism is a movement that predicts or advocates, So you could you could think of it just as like I'm saying this is most likely to happen, or you could think of it as saying I think this is what should happen. But either way, it either predicts or advocates the voluntary erosion or elimination of gender distinctions and human beings or their descendants. And it's associated with trans humanism.

Now we've talked about trans humanism on the show before, but real quick refresher, it's essentially the movement advocating technology that fundamentally changes capabilities of the human animal mentally and

or physically. So if you want to become a cyborg with huge, powerful robot arms and claws on the end of them, and yet clamps, powerful clams, supersensitive, yes, supersensitive hearing, listen through the walls, see if anybody is coming to discover you with your clamps whatever you're doing with them. Or you want night vision, you want to be the predator, any of that. If you want any of that stuff, or if you want hey upgrade to your brain, how

about that. If you want to upgrade your own processing power, maybe some onboard memory implants, any of that. Sign up for any of these things. You are at some level of trans humanist. You want to transcend or modify biologically determined aspects of your animal nature. Wait, so do my

contacts count? Yeah, in a mild form, I think you could say that the various pros theses we have today, like glasses and hearing aids and stuff like that, surgery, I mean, yeah, absolutely, yeah, I think I think those are a little bit more than human things. Our cell phones are like actually to third arms and oh yeah, yeah,

it's it's a useful end defector. It certainly is. I think there's actually an interesting case to be made about what how we come to think about certain tools that we use very often as a part of our body.

But uh, I we digress. So yeah, So post genderism applies essentially this trans humanist concept to the desire to modify and transcend our our basic nature, uh, to the naturally determined distinctions of sexual dimorphism in the species, and also just to culture broadly, to gender norms that flow

from them. In the words of Dvorsky and Hughes quote, post genderists argue that gender is an arbitrary and unnecessary limitation on human potential, and foresee the elimination of involuntary biological and psychological gendering in the human species through the

application of neurotechnolog gy, biotechnology, and reproductive technology. So now if even if you're not like a very traditionalist person, you might be getting a little freaked out there, things like wait a minute, you know, there are armies of radical postgenders that are gonna come try to turn me into an androgenous creature while I'm asleep with their transhuman

robot clamps. Right. Uh, No, we should point out the fact that this is a voluntary movement, right, So it says essentially that in the future, to whatever extent you display dimorphic sexual characteristics or gendered social behaviors, that's going to be up to you. It's not something determined for you without your consent by biology or by social expectations. Yeah,

the choice is really the operative thing here. Consent will always be sexy, yes, yes, yes, so even thinking about the societal expectations expanding, right, So, so when we're and we're kind of put into these boxes, right, so kind of taking this um idea of post genderism and thinking about how it will play out for someone born into

a post gender world. Um, So, today there are already intersex activists who are really challenging this idea about children being born intersex being pressured into picking one gender or one sex and going with it. Yeah, and that's often

been the case leading up to now. So children born intersex are often they're either it's chosen for them at birth, you know, well, we're gonna do some kind of therapy to you to try to make you more typically male or more typically female and usually a surgery, yeah, um. Or they're later in life sort of encouraged to just embrace one or the other. Right. And so according to this position, you know, why should they Why should we put all of these expectations on a human being who

may realize that that doesn't really fit them. So what is really inherently wrong with having some anatomical sex characteristics that don't match what we're expected to see based on chromosomes, right, Or what's inherently wrong with some ambiguous genitalia? According to these activists, Um, you know, if intersex people don't feel naturally inclined to embrace one half of the gender binary or the other, they shouldn't really be pressured to do so. In a sense, the position is really seen as one

of the earliest forms of fully realized post genderism. People are born not fully conforming to a typical sex profile of male or female, and it's okay if they want to say that way or not. In these cases, the gender binary already kind of lies more or less fully vanquished. And while it might seem unusual, for example, in America in the century, there are precedents of this all over

the world and in many cultures throughout history. Right. So, the the intersex birth cases, I think are one case where you're sort of already posed to be in a post gender position. All it really requires is the changing of attitudes. In that case, like if you are an intersex person and you live in an environment where that is fine and that you know nobody's telling you you well you really should be picking one. Uh you, you've

already in some sense become post gender there. But there are other cases where technology could play a big role in changing what's what options are available to people. Oh yeah, and and this isn't it's not just future technologies. This

has already been going on for a couple hundred years. Honestly, because the move towards a post gender society, I would argue, has already begun, and it started with industrialization, the stratification of our economy, you know, the the creation of a middle class, and the slow but but widespread inclusion of women in the workforce has changed society's roles for men and women moved, moving away from a strict binary Yeah.

And I think that's very true in that work has very often been one of the main lines upon which gender distinctions and gender oppression occurred throughout history. Sure, And and the communication age, the information aged, changed that even further. Uh, you know, it's it's giving more people the option to balance work and child care as they desire, which, of course, child care being one of those like typically gendered kind

of roles in society. Also on the on the ideological end, this whole digital revolution has been wonderfully speeding the exchange of both scientific information and also personal experiences about sex and gender. And it's allowed for the for the creation of support communities for people outside of the gender norm who don't live in areas our such support exists, which is so critical for for for changing um quality of

life and and and changing people's minds eventually. And now I had a question for you guys that I just kind of wanted to toss out there. How how do how do you guys think that the communication technology is going to continue changing gender in the future, Like, not not biotechnology and stuff like that, but just the computers and internet stuff we got right, Yeah, not your sexy, sexy modem. But but uh yeah, well, I mean one thing that occurred to me. I wonder what y'all think

about this is virtual gender performance. So uh oh yeah. So already we do a lot of our social interaction online, but in the future, just imagine a future where we do even more of it, there's even less face to face social interaction. I mean, whatever you think about that.

That might sound kind of scary, but let's say we're as we're as comfortable with that in the future as we are with using Twitter all day on our phone is right now, Um, how much of our social interaction and public face is going to be mediated by technology, including social media, online forums, online video games, virtual worlds.

Um if these venues end up representing the like a really large or even totally dominant percentage of our interactions with others, will physicality as in, you know, the biological or physical aspects of your body play a smaller and smaller role in how your gender traits are expressed, to whatever extent they are. Uh So, it's just like so much of our thinking about gender always ends up being

about bodies. But in a in a space where you have no body or your body is literally a virtual construct construct, does gender disappear or become less important to you as a person? I think? I think also there's a really interesting trend in social media lately, uh with with that has to do with the creation of profiles and the the construction of of like a brand for yourself online. Like I think that we're all being suddenly like like not even encouraged, but but kind of forced

into like curating a brand for ourselves. And uh and so the way that we present ourselves to the world is more careful perhaps today, like like more thought out, because you you can you can look and evaluate your own and other people's profiles and see see how you want to be presenting yourself, and and gender is absolutely a part of that, you know, I would definitely say, of course, with social media and and access to just information in general, that kind of levels the playing field, right.

I think a lot of the conversations that we have online around gender are so interesting right now. I think about Twitter and how we how a lot of feminists use Twitter and talk about the inequality these talk about their experiences and and then also maybe people who don't identify as them to talk about their experiences too, And it's really kind of giving us an inside glimpse at how we all kind of have thought about gender all along, or or have moved throughout society, maybe not knowing how

people who identified a different way felt. I mean, I wonder if if these virtual environments and virtual social circles give us the ability to experiment with non binary or non traditional gender roles in a way that a lot of people wouldn't if it had to involve their body and face to face contact. So a person, for example, who's biologically male might not feel comfortable uh, performing as

female in person, but maybe would on the internet. And I don't know how prevalent something like that is, but but it's interesting that that that kind of venue might open up new possibility is for what people can decide they like and who they are, right, yeah, I think it might be a lot more common than we think. I mean, catfish, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, I laughed, but I don't know what catfish is. You have to Oh, okay, that that's one. UM. That's when someone presents as someone

who they are explicitly not online um. And it's it's usually a negative connotation in which someone is is taking someone in, is trying to extort someone for money, or something like that by presenting the story of this person this this this completely made up human uh and and it is not infrequently been used cross cross gender. That makes sense to me. Hey, sudden insert that you probably

weren't expecting our record scratch. Yes, our conversation with Riquel Willis here on the future gender ended up going very long, so we are splitting it up into two episodes, and that is going to be the end of part one of the episode. But if you want to hear the conclusion of this discussion about the future of gender, you can join us again next time. Yes, so we we hope that you will stay tuned across time and space

for that one. UM. In the meanwhile, Hey, if you guys would like to get in touch with us, we would like that too. Our email address is fw thinking at how Stuff Works dot com. Our profile handle name on Twitter and Facebook is also fw thinking. Uh. Search around Google US, you'll find us. Uh. We will have Raquel's contact information at the end of the second episode. Although I believe off the top of my head that if you would like to find her website, it is

Raquel Willis dot com. That is our a q U E l w I L l I s dot com. I think I can spell. I think that's correct. So yeah, get in touch with us. We hope to hear from you either away. You will hear from us again very soon. For more on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,