In the News

These folks get a lot of credit for leadership in breaking out of linguistic enforcement of sexual dimorphism:
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http://www.michigandaily.com/content/profs-encourage-movement-toward-gender-neutral-language

Also compelling is the use of "ey" for "he" or "she", "eir" for "his" or "her" and "em" for "him" or "her". This system can be easily remembered by simply dropping the "th" from the associated plural forms (they, their, them) of each sexually dimorphised pronoun.

I like both of these solutions because they add more gender diversity to language rather than erasing it. Transgender is not about being non-gendered. It is about freedom of gender -- freedom far beyond the silly and oppressive two male-female poles of sexual dimorphism.

Science and Sex

The empiricist thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.
- George Santayana

Science and Sex

In 1962 Thomas Kuhn, a leading historian of science, crystallized the concept that virtually all science is not a pure search for truth, but an effort to further confirm some preexisting, generally accepted model or framework, which he called a “paradigm.” Kuhn shocked people with his seemingly cynical view that young scientists work to please their older mentors, which is best done by confirming the mentor’s theories, since the mentors have the keys to what younger scientists want—professorships, grant monies, laboratories. Furthermore Kuhn noted that when scientific research contradicts the “prevailing paradigm,” the young researchers are told that their experiments were flawed or that they misinterpreted the results. It would be heresy to suggest that the last generation’s theories were wrong, for that would mean that the mentors’ lifework was largely wasted.



For example, thousands of years ago the astronomy paradigm placed the earth at the center of the universe. Eventually the observations of young astronomers began to contradict this paradigm, indicating that maybe the earth and planets circled the sun. But those observations were rebutted, suppressed, or re-explained to be consistent with an earth-centered worldview. Hence the period of time that it took planets to reappear in the earth’s sky, a period of time that was clearly not consistent with an earth-centered solar system, was made to be consistent by positing that the planets pirouetted in small circles along their orbits. The size and number of planetary pirouettes (which would prolong the planet’s orbit and were called “epicycles”) were adjusted until the planet’s period of appearance in the earth’s sky coincided with that which was the case for an earth-centered solar system. In short, science looked not for truth per se, but for truth within the confines of accepted theories.

Once in a great while, observed Kuhn, brave and brilliant scientists can succeed in smashing the old paradigm and replacing it with a new one. Kuhn called this a “scientific revolution.” It takes bravery because the existing scientists will all fight against the revolutionary, who is, after all, claiming that the preceding generation’s work was wrong, meaningless, or at least irrelevant. It takes brilliance because the revolutionary model must (1) explain the old data in a way that is more consistent with a new theory than with the old theory, (2) explain inconsistencies or holes in the old theory, and (3) make predictions that can be checked out by a new generation of scientists. This new, younger generation of scientists will eventually become the standard-bearers of a new paradigm.

In the case of the astronomy paradigm, the brave and brilliant scientists were Copernicus and Kepler. Copernicus doubted that plants pirouetted in circles along their orbits. But he also calculated that if the planets and the earth all orbited the sun in perfect circles, then they also would not appear in their positions in the sky when they did. Kepler’s brilliant breakthrough was to predict that all the planets orbited the sun along elliptical paths, in a kind of oval-shaped circle. The hunch turned out to be correct—the calculated period of reappearance in the earth’s sky for a planet going around the sun on an elliptical path matched perfectly with the planet’s actual reappearance in the earth’s sky.



Copernicus was derided and labeled a heretic, for his theory rendered irrelevant hundreds of years of earth-centered astronomy. But his theory proved more accurate and elegant than the old theories and provided many new research opportunities for young generations of astronomers. In time Copernicus and Kepler accomplished a scientific revolution.

One of the great statements of the courage it takes to foment a scientific revolution comes from Machiavelli (The Prince), who is buried across a Florentine church floor from another great rebel, Galileo: “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain of success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. The innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and but lukewarm defenders in those who may do well in the new.”

Machiavelli’s statement will no doubt prove as true for any revolution in gender science as it has proven true for revolutions in every other field of science.

Scientific revolutions are also called paradigm shifts because they actually cause a shift, or change, in the way we view the world. Such paradigm shifts occur in all fields, including fields that we might not consider “scientific.” Examples of scientific revolutions include the triumph of behaviorism over Freudianism in psychology and the victory of Darwinism over creationism in anthropology.

In each case there are three key elements to a paradigm shift:

1. The old paradigm does not meet the needs of society as well as the new paradigm promises.

Examples:

Astronomy: the need for accurate prediction of planetary appearances

Anthropology: the need for understanding the origins of humanity

Psychology: the need for a fast means of modifying human behavior

2. The new paradigm solves at least one major discrepancy or hole in the old paradigm.

Examples:

Astronomy: discrepancy of unobservable planetary pirouttes

Anthropology: discrepancy between biblical time scale for creation of life and geologic evidence of ancient life

Psychology: discrepancy of behavior unaltered by dream analysis

3. The new paradigm must make predictions that will provide many new opportunities for younger generations to verify, as compared with the stale opportunities in the old paradigm.

Examples:

Astronomy: All orbits of planets and moons will be elliptical

Anthropology: Evolution can be traced from animals to humans

Psychology: Human behavior can be modified through stimulus response type of conditioning

The time is now ripe for a paradigm shift in the field of gender science. As shown above, for this to happen, a new gender paradigm must (1) promise a better match with reality, and better satisfy social needs than the old paradigm, (2) solve discrepancies in the old paradigm, and (3) offer many opportunities to a new generation of researchers.



The old gender paradigm is known as “sexual dimorphism,” which means sex takes only two (“di”) forms (“morphism”), male or female. It claims that this absolute division arises from sex-differentiated levels of hormones released prenatally, which in turn create not only two different reproductive systems, but also two different mental natures. From its ancient genesis, the old gender paradigm has been used to enforce the superiority of one apparent sex over the other and as a framework for research to prove one sex has a different nature from the other.

The new gender paradigm is called “sexual continuism.” It posits that humanity is composed of a continuous blend of sexual identity, far beyond any simplistic male or female categorization. The new paradigm predicts that sexual identity, like other aspects of personality, arises from a confluence of factors not solely hormonal or environmental in origin. The new paradigm claims that reproductive systems are not strictly personal, but are sociotechnical and are accessible by all persons regardless of genitalia.

Based on Kuhn’s analysis of scientific revolutions throughout the history, the paradigm of sexual continuity will succeed if it (1) better addresses society’s needs regarding sexual identity than does sexual dimorphism, (2) solves discrepancies and holes in the theory of sexual dimorphism, and (3) offers more interesting research opportunities than does sexual dimorphism. Each of these three points will now be analyzed to see if, in fact, we are at the beginning of a revolution in gender science.

What Society Needs from Gender Science

The principal objective of a humanitarian society is to provide equal, nondiscriminatory opportunity for personal fulfillment to all persons. The paradigm of sexual continuity is able to achieve this better than sexual dimorphism because sexual continuity eliminates the largest allegedly immutable division among persons. Whenever such divisions are present, inequality inevitably results.



Divisions of people into free and slave meant less opportunity for slaves. Insistence that people declare a skin color or ancestry always brings racism. “Separate but equal” has never proven itself to work as a social tool for equal opportunity. Legal division of people by sex has always had as its corollary the inequality of one sex.

The social shortcomings of sexual dimorphism in terms of equal “pursuit of happiness” are everywhere apparent. Persons labeled as women do two-thirds of the world’s work but own 1 percent of its property. Census data from China, Indian, and Korea, and a secret Chinese government report obtained last year by The New York Times, indicate that millions of fetuses with vaginas are aborted each year after ultrasound tests because of the wide-spread, accurate perception that persons labeled as women will get less out of life. Persons of the same genitalia who want to marry each other are denied, in the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, this “most basic right of man” because of the paradigm of sexual dimorphism. Persons labeled one sex are denied jobs or strongly discouraged from them if under sexual dimorphism those jobs are thought best attuned for persons of a different sex. Sexual dimorphism leads scientists such as Doreen Kimura, writing in the September 1992 Scientific American, to claim that women are more likely to succeed in “medical diagnostic fields where perceptual skills are important” and men are better in “professions that emphasize math skills, such as engineering or physics.” Such sexually dimorphic thinking is as socially odious to persons of any sexual identity as are the racist claims that Africans are more likely to succeed in sports and Asians are more likely to succeed at science.

The paradigm of sexual continuity promises greater social equality by eliminating the sex typing of persons based on genitalia. Sexual continuity offers greater fulfillment for society by enabling all persons to develop their sexual identity outside of any fixed male or female choice. Allocation of wealth, jobs, and marital and parental rights would be accomplished by merit and personal choice; by the unfettered individual pursuit of happiness that is the hallmark of a humane democratic society. By eliminating a separate, legally mandated male or female label, sexual continuism takes a big step forward toward achieving society’s quest for equal opportunity.


The Inconsistency of Sex

The ultimate test of the validity of any theory is its match with reality. This reality match is put to its critical test by experiments that either confirm or disprove predictions made by the theory. If important predictions of a theory are not confirmed, and if these results cannot otherwise by reasonably explained, then the theory or paradigm has an Achilles’ heel that renders it susceptible to revolution.

At least from the time of the Greeks, a key prediction of sexual dimorphism was that humanity was divided into two absolute categories—male and female—each with different natures. For millennia unscientific proof backed up the theory—the “evident” passiveness of women and aggressiveness of men. No one seriously considered whether the “proof” was, in fact, created by the theory: that sexually dimorphic laws, customs, and socialization created the two “evidently” different-natured sexes.

With the rise of monotheism, the “proof” of sexual dimorphism became the Word of God as enshrined in one or another Bible. No one seriously questioned—or lived long after such questioning—whether the “Word of God” was not simply the words of men intent on enforcing the paradigm of sexual dimorphism.

As the Renaissance dawned there arose interest in obtaining measurable, repeatable proof of theoretical assertions. But, as noted earlier, most science is an effort to find or force data to fit the prevailing, popular paradigm. Most science is not an unprejudiced abstract quest for truth. Hence, up through the early twentieth century, “scientists” claimed to have measured differences in brain weight, brain size, and skeletal structure that “proved” women were inferior to men. By the late twentieth century scientists admitted that their early data on brain mass, and its relations to intelligence, were bogus.

At the end of the twentieth century many scientists continue to claim they have measurable proof of differences in men’s and women’s natures. Today the proof takes two forms. First, scientists present statistics from various kinds of verbal, mathematical, and perception tests showing, on average, that women and men score in different ranges on these tests. Second, scientists present data showing, on average, that parts of the brain are of different weight, size, or neural connectivity for men and women.

All of the alleged proofs of sexual dimorphism have suffered from a glaring but studiously ignored Achilles’ heel—absolute differences in men’s and women’s minds, mental abilities, and psychological natures have never been found. There are always many women who score in the same range as men on math, verbal, and perception tests, and vice versa. There are always many women who are more aggressive than many men and many men who are more nurturing than many women. There are always many women who are bigger, stronger, and hairier than many men, and vice versa. The absolute sexual dimorphism that is externally apparent in genitals has never been found elsewhere in the body, least of all in the mind.

If there are but two mental sexes, which sexual dimorphism alleges to be true, how does one account for the total failure to scientifically test people such that male and female minds falls into two absolutely discrete groups? There are but two possible answers to this question. Either we have not yet discovered the right test to prove mental sexual difference or sexual identity is continuous, not dimorphic. Neither solution bodes well for the paradigm of sexual dimorphism.

If we have simply not yet found the right test for dimorphism, then the old paradigm is faced with an immense mountain of existing test data that supports sexual continuism. Further, the existing paradigm can only offer researchers the hopeless task of searching for some test that produces sexually dimorphic results, while condemning researchers to continue reporting results that find only average differences between sexes, leaving unexplained the dominant finding that, again and again, absolute sex differences were not found. If we explain all of the existing test data with sexual continuism, then we must concede that humanity is not divided into two sexual natures. This admission marks the death knell for sexual dimorphism and brings gender theory into a better match with scientifically measurable reality.

What of the results showing average differences between sexes, such as more males performing very high on math tests than females? Is this not proof of at least some sexual dimorphism in humanity? The answer is no, for two reasons. First, the paradigm of sexual dimorphism cannot allow for “some” dimorphism. If there is such a thing as “some” dimorphism, what are the people who do not test sexually dimorphic? Are they neither male nor female? Are they persons with vaginas and male minds? The answers to any of these questions lead to a conclusion that there is a continuum of possible sexual identities, which is the antithesis of sexual dimorphism but the very essence of the new paradigm of sexual continuity.

The second reason that average sex differences on test scores do not support sexual dimorphism is that all tests designed under a sexually dimorphic paradigm are suspect. In particular, the experiments to date simply correlate a person’s self-stated sexual identity with their test scores. The researchers then assume, ipso facto, that if some percentage of persons identified as women score differently from some percentage of persons identified as men, the difference was because they were women or men. No efforts have been made categorically to analyze and eliminate all of the other nongenital-based reasons for different scoring—namely, environmental and genetic ones. No effort has ever been made to assess why the sexually atypical performers exist. Instead, under a paradigm of sexual dimorphism, researchers satisfy themselves with weak average data than can be correlated with sex. But average test data on sex-type performance is no more meaningful or socially useful than is average test data on racial or ethnic performance. Stereotyping passes poorly as science, yet all sexual dimorphic research to date is based on average differences, which is to say that any sexually dimorphic conclusions drawn therefrom are simply quantitative stereotypes.

Sexual continuism explains the glaring hole of no absolute mental sex differences that plagues sexual dimorphism. No absolute “male or female brain” indicators have been found because they don’t exist. Instead the human mind is arrayed across a broad continuum of sexual identity, and this is shown in the data of all contemporary researchers. The task for the twenty-first century is to outline the map of sexual continuity.

The paradigm of sexual continuity provides a vast amount of interesting opportunities for scientific research. These opportunities dwarf the moribund and to date hopeless quest of researchers to prove there are either male or female minds. It is to the research opportunities of the revolution in gender science that we now turn.


Opportunities under the Rainbow of Gender

We have seen that scientific revolutions, or paradigm shifts, occur when a new theory provides a better match with reality than the old theory and in particular explains some flagrant discrepancy in the old theory. The field of gender science is ripe for revolution because the old theory of sexual dimorphism cannot explain the flexibility of sex roles in modern society as well as the new theory of sexual continuism. Furthermore, the persistent failure of scientists to document any absolute difference in “male” and “female” mental abilities or natures is readily explainable by sexual continuism but is a gaping discrepancy in the theory of sexual dimorphism.

As noted earlier, however, it is difficult to accomplish scientific revolutions because the older generation of scientists is naturally reluctant to admit their life’s work has been wrong, misguided, or meaningless. Younger-generation scientists cannot easily carry out research in the new paradigm because their research proposals must ordinarily be approved, supervised, and funded by more senior scientists, such as older, tenured university professors. Faced with this catch-22 situation, how does science ever advance beyond further confirmation of traditionally accepted theories?

Occasionally a proposed new paradigm provides so many new and interesting research opportunities that some scientists would rather fight an uphill battle to publish research under the new paradigm, and hence have a chance at fame, than to take the much easier but unrewarding path of continued mediocre research under the old theories. It is at this nexus that gender science now lies.

The opportunity for new gender science research is to “deconstruct” (break down) sexual identity into genital independent constituent elements and to corrollate these elements of sexual identity with the behavior, psychology, and neuroanatomy of people. A further, but much more difficult, direction for research is to explain a person’s chosen sexual identity in terms of a confluence of genetic and environmental factors. All of this research can be profitably carried out under the paradigm of sexual continuism; the same kind of research has been condemned to failure under the simplistic “male or female mind” model of sexual dimorphism.

Elements of Sexual Identity

To usefully identify the elements of sexual identity, it is necessary to abandon entirely the male/female, masculine/feminine lexicon of sexual dimorphism. Such terminology obscures the true continual and genital-independent nature of sexual identity. We must leave behind such archaic notions as “men are aggressive” and “women nurture,” without, however, denying the reality of aggressiveness and nurturing as elements of a continuum of sexual identity. Hence a new vocabulary is needed for sexual identity.

For analytic purposes, shades of color may prove to be a useful vocabulary for dissecting sexual identity. First, color comes in an infinite number of hues, thus permitting representation of an infinite number of sexual identities. Second, the infinite hues of color can be grouped into similar chromatic categories. This permits a scientific grouping of similar sexual identities, without either denying the uniqueness of each person’s identity or reverting to the unreal “black or white” dualism of sexual dimorphism. Third, colors can be combined together to create blended hues. This enables us to model basic elements of sexual identity with a few primary colors (red, yellow, blue) and then realistically represent the complexity of individual sexual identity with hybrid colors (green, purple, orange, and so on). For all of these reasons, colors offer a useful and objective lexicon for modeling the elements of sexual identity.

Fundamentally, sexually identity has been recognized from the beginnings of consciousness to consist of three elements: activeness (or aggression), passiveness (or nurturing), and eroticism (or sex drive). The error of sexual dimorphism was rigidly to associate these elements of mental nature with physical anatomy. Hence, from the time of the Greeks, all persons with penises were declared active, all those with vaginas were deemed passive, and erocticism was something shared in equal measure by both sexes. Later, with the rise of monotheistic patriarchy, the element of eroticism was associated only with women and became something to be suppressed as too earthly, unspiritual, and corruptive of male power. Under scientific patriarchy, an “active” sexual identity presumed intellect, especially as expressed in “hard” sciences like math and physics. A “passive” sexual identity presumed either less intellect or mental skills limited to “soft” sciences and the arts. And eroticism, while liberated from religious denial, remained largely suppressed as a subject for scientific discussion.

In the rainbow lexicon of sexual continuity, the aggressive element of sexual identity may be represented as yellow, the nourishing element of sexual identity as blue, and the erotic element as red. From these primary colors, an infinite array of sexual identities can be represented, and similar sexual identities can be grouped chromatically.

The list of sexual identities can be expanded infinitely by considering the relative extents to which a person reports being aggressive, nurturing, or erotic and following the quantitative rules of color combination. “What’s my gender? I’m mauve—a low-intensity nurturing person with a fair amount of eroticism but not much aggressiveness.” By having subjects rank their propensity to be aggressive, nurturing, and erotic on standard numerical “lesser to greater” scales, and correlating the rankings with a standard chromatic scale, it will be possible to develop a common lexicon for gender science of hundreds of uniquely defined sexual identities. For example, the Munsell system contains 427 standardly defined colors and is widely used by the fabric industry. Such a system could accommodate seven different levels of aggression, nurturance, and eroticism that a person might feel with 343 (7x7x7) unique chromatically named genders.

A deconstruction of sexual identity into objective, ungenitally infected elements requires a new chromatic lexicon. Associating the primary sexual identity elements of activeness (aggression), passiveness (nurturance), and eroticism (sex appeal) with the primary colors of yellow, blue, and red yields a rich and realistic framework for the analysis of gender.

Sexually we are not “men” and “women,” but we are shades of purple, orange, green, and brown. Some of us are white with indecision, and others of us are black with dynamic gender complexity. And all of us can change our gender during our life. Far from being trapped for life as men or women, we can individually evolve our chromatic sexual identities as our minds grow and develop in interaction with life. Anatomically we may have penises or vaginas, gonads or ovaries. Sexually we are a rainbow of color, a spectrum of gender.

Identity and Behavior; Sex and Tissue

To be successful, the paradigm of sexual continuism must make better predictions of behavior, psychology, and neuroanatomy than the old model of sexual dimorphism. Under the old model, people who identified themselves as “male,” or were so identified by their genitals, were predicted psychologically to be active, aggressive, and adept at mathematics and spatial analysis, perhaps with a high sex drive to propagate their seed. Neuroanatomically it was predicted that these people had a larger hypothalamus brain structure than women and fewer intrabrain neural connections. As noted earlier, these predictions proved correct usually not even half the time. In short, the old model is not very accurate in predicting psychology or neuroanatomy based on a male or female sexual identity.

The new paradigm of sexual continuism predicts that once a person has selected a stable, chromatically categorized sexual identity, that person will test similarly on psychosocial measures with other similarly hued persons regardless of genital structure. For example, a group of persons with magenta sexual identities but different genitals will test more similarly on psychosocial measures than a group of persons with the same genitals but a rainbow collection of sexual identities.

Also, to the extent that sex-dependent psychology is vested in brain structure (nerve cell patterns in the brain), the paradigm of sexual continuity predicts that once a person achieves a stable sexual identity, brain structure will correlate more closely with chromatic sexual identity than with genitals. For example, if greater verbal ability is associated with a greater number of cross-brained neural connections, and if verbal ability is related to sex type, then persons with similarly hued sexual identities will have more similar brain structures regardless of their genitals.

Any test of the paradigm of sexual continuity will be only as valid as its chromatic categorization of the subject’s sexual identities. Hence considerable care and attention must be paid to preparing objective genital-independent questionnaires that sort people out by their degree of active/aggressiveness, passive/supportiveness, and eroticism. If this is done properly, despite society’s powerful apartheid of sex, there will be “men” and “women” in all gender hues. Of course, this fact along demonstrates the falsity of distinct male and female sexes.


Where Did My Sex Come From?

Under sexual dimorphism, sexual identity is genetic. One’s sex chromosomes are either XX (female) or XY (male). Somewhere on the Y chromosome are genetic instructions that code for the modification of embryonic Mullerian ducts into gonads. The gonads in turn trigger “male” hormones that ultimately differentiate a person into a person with a male body and male mind. In the absence of the Y chromosome, the embryo produces female hormones that ultimately create a female body and female mind. In rare cases a person with XY chromosomes may appear female in body and mind, and a person with XX chromosomes may appear male, because other genes have failed to produce certain mediating enzymes that enable sex hormones to create their usual “male or female” features.

All persons are at all times producing both “male” and “female” hormones. So, in the prevailing view, it is the relative amounts of each hormone that produce males and females. The relative differences in amounts are extremely small—not even enough to fill a thimble.

The paradigm of sexual continuity accepts the fact that genes code for hormones that are produced in different amounts for different persons. However, under the sexual continuity model, the differences in measured hormone levels that produce male and female reproductive tracts are far too gross to account for the manifold possibilities of human psychosexual identity. The neuroanatomic basis of sexual identity is not accounted for by hormonal levels because

1. the brain is inadequately developed at the time of neonatal hormonal fluxes.

2. neuroanatomical structure is mediated by numerous other non-sex-dependent factors, of which hormones may play a minor part.

3. brain development is already nearly complete and shaped by environmental factors, such as socialization, when postnatal pubertal sex hormones begin to take effect.

For all of these reasons it is as impossible to find a precise, genetic link between chromatic sexual identity and genes as it is to find such a link between a unique personality and genes. Nevertheless, this is not to say that there is no relationship between genes and sexual identity. The link, however, is to genetic predispositions toward the elements of sexual identity—aggressiveness, nurturance, and eroticism—not to genes that code for aspects of the reproductive system. The place to search for genetic markers for sexual identity is in the genes that code for mental attributes, not for gonads.

As with all inherited mental attributes, the genetic endowment is but a direction, not a place. A person with a genetic predisposition toward active or passive eroticism, or toward aggression or nurturance, may end up with any particular sexual identity as a result of the experiences of life. Nevertheless, the paradigm of sexual continuity would predict a higher correlation between one or more genes that codes for “activity” or “passiveness” and persons with yellow or blue range sexual identities, respectively, than with such attributes and either XY or XX chromosomes.



How, it may be asked, does the new model explain the much-accepted superiority of persons labeled as men at mathlike skills and of persons labeled as women at verballike skills? First, the new theory observes that such differences cannot be the result of sex hormonalization of the brain. If they were, there would be no explanation for the countless millions of women who excel at math skills and of the greater number of men who do not. The far more likely explanation is that verbal and math skills are not part of sexual identity, but that predispositions in these areas may be genetically coded separately. Socialization and environmental pressures encourage math skills in men and verbal skills in women. The pressures of society work often but not always, thus explaining the discrepancy of men and women in math and verbal professions. With the support of society on their side, it is easier for persons labeled as boys with innate math skills to express them; persons labeled as women face a much more uphill battle to express any innate math skills.

There is a genetic basis for sexual identity, but is likely to be located on different genes from the genetic basis for sexual reproduction. For thousands of years we assumed and mandated that persons with penises thought differently from persons with vaginas. Hence we labeled both mind and body with the term sex. Twentieth-century science then thought it natural to look for brain sex in the same place they found body sex—on the XX and XY chromosome. But twentieth-century science could not find the absolute sex of mind that it saw in the body. And as sociosexual discrimination broke down, it became abundantly obvious that genitals had nothing to do with mental accomplishment. There is no other conclusion but that whatever genes drive our minds, they are not the same genes that drive our gonads.

The new paradigm of sexual continuity posits a rich reservoir of research opportunity for the twenty-first century. From a starting template of primary elements—activity/aggression (yellow), passivity/nurturance (blue), eroticism/sexuality (red)—an organizational palette of chromatic sexual identity can be found. The paradigm predicts that sociopsychological attributes of persons with similar chromatic sexual identities will be found to cross gonadal lines with irreverence. In time, environmental and genetic predisposing factors may be found that enable us to predict a person’s likely life path of sexual identity. Of course, chance and will power will confound many of these predictions.

In contrast with the old view of sexual dimorphism, sexual continuism ably serves society’s interests in a meritocracy free of discrimination based on innate body size, shaper, or reproductive function. Society’s quest for individual expression is well served by viewing sex as a choice of chromatic identity; it is disserved by insisting on sex as a lifelong trap.

Unlike sexual dimorphism, sexual continuism accurately reflects the infinite possibilities seen in sexual identity. Indeed, the resemblance of sexual identity in real life to the male or female nature model of sexual dimorphism is a good measure of the repressiveness of a society. As oppression is relieved, human sex roles bear ever less resemblance to dimorphism.

Sexual continuism, not sexual dimorphism, explains the lack of absolute differences on sociopsychological tests of persons with penises and vaginas. For sexual dimorphism, the inconsistency of men who test like women, and vice versa, is explainable only by the absence of the “perfect test.” For sexual continuism, persons with different genitals test similarly because the genes that code for gonads do not code for brain cell patterns; persons with similar genitals test similarly either by chance or when the tests reveal similar socialization patterns, not innate abilities.

The innate abilities of persons are probably discoverable as the human genome is gradually understood. Sexual continuism predicts that sexual identity, the aggressive/supportive/erotic trunks of our unique personalities, will be found elsewhere in that genome than in the part of the chromosome that directs the production of semen and ova. When this is accomplished, the theory of human sexual continuity will be proven conclusively. All that will be left of a male or female difference will be reproductive systems that social choice and biotechnology can make available to any person, regardless of anatomical birthright. Sex will be creativity, not destiny.

Is Consciousness Like Pornography?

Uploaded transhuman minds will certainly avail themselves of the entire rainbow palette of sexual identity. It will be fun, creative and they won’t face the obstacle of a penis screaming “but you’re a man!” However, they will face a more severe barrier: people pointing to the computer system on which they reside and screaming “but you’re a machine!” Loaded into that epithet is the popular and scientific consensus that human consciousness is not possible outside of the human brain. The prevailing scientific paradigm is that unique anatomical aspects of the human brain make consciousness possible. A common public view is that God or Nature endowed only humans with a human soul, and consciousness is its earthly manifestation.

In order to definitively challenge the prevailing human-centered consciousness paradigm it will be necessary to prove that an uploaded transhuman, embodied in software, was in fact conscious. Yet such a proof is difficult because consciousness is by definition not very measurable. It is usually defined as that subjective state in which an individual is aware of himself as part of a larger environment. In other words, each of us is confident that we are conscious, because we visualize ourselves. Yet none of us can be positive that someone else is conscious because we cannot climb into his or her mind.

While it is possible to find brain waves that correspond to consciousness, this would not be a definitive test of consciousness, only of its presence in a brain. Lack of such brain waves in a human is a good measure of their demise, but brain waves are irrelevant to consciousness that exists on a non-flesh substrate, such as an uploaded transhuman.

In practice we assume and believe other people are conscious if they display the same hallmarks of consciousness that we personally feel – self-awareness, rationality and empathy. To the extent these are not evident, we think the person is mentally deranged if they are moving about, or unconscious (possibly dead) if they are stagnant. In other words, we tend to judge consciousness the way U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said he judged pornography: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” Consequently, while we can be no more certain that a transhuman is conscious than we can of some robotic-acting human clerk (except that the latter looks more like us), we can make in each instance a reasonable decision based on their interaction with us.

Long after most people have accepted at least some transhumans into their set of “conscious people”, there will still be a minority of humans who refuse to accept the possibility of machine consciousness. Similarly, long after most people have adopted a rainbow spectrum of genders, there will still be a minority of people who insist that everyone is either a boy or a girl. Such is the welcome diversity of human opinion. For now, however, there is a wonderful opportunity for scientists to program software so that people will “know its consciousness when they see it.”

A useful route to programming consciousness consists of replicating in software the neural pattern structure of the human brain. When we experience some aspect of the outside world our sensory organs transmit the information to hard-wired neurons. These neurons are genetically structured to respond to particular wavelengths of sound or light, or to particular smells or tastes. Each such triggered neuron tells up to 10,000 other neurons what it sensed. Meanwhile, as we grow through infancy and childhood we are rewarded for associating certain neural outputs with each other. For example, we are rewarded for associating the visual wavelengths corresponding to the color red and the auditory wavelengths corresponding to the word red. Thereafter, when we hear the word red, we see something red in our mind, and vice versa. Multiply this process several million-fold and you arrive at a brain that is conscious of the world and itself. Outputs from neurons that detect lines and shapes become anchored in neurons that are associated with the phonetics of “mother” and “father.” Other sets of neurons become associated with the grammar of language, and this in turn enables us to easily cut-paste-and-edit reality inside of our heads.

The transhumanist paradigm is that consciousness arises from millions of cross-correlated relationships among general neurons far removed from the basic hard-wired sensory neurons that are like the footings for the skyscraper of the mind. There is nothing magical that makes our brains conscious other than this web of interconnected neurons. Consequently, there is no reason that consciousness cannot exist in software, provided the same level of interconnected complexity rooted ultimately to sensory apparatus is provided. This is the challenge to the 21st century neuroscientist and computer scientist. Build minds that pass the pornography test – minds that seem as authentic as our own. Once that is done, sexual identity will be liberated not only from genitals, but from flesh itself. Consciousness will be as free to flow beyond the confines of one flesh body as gender is free to flow beyond the confines of one flesh genital.

Billions of Sexes

The human face is really like one of those Oriental gods:

a whole group of faces juxtaposed on different planes; it is impossible to see them all simultaneously.
- Marcel Proust

Billions of Sexes

There are two sexes, male and female, right? Wrong! In fact, there is a continuum of sex types, ranging from very male to very female, with countless variations in between. This startling new notion is just now beginning to emerge from feminist thinking, scientific research, and a grass-roots movement called “transgenderism.” In the future, labeling people at birth as “male” or “female” will be considered just as unfair as South Africa’s now-abolished practice of stamping “black” or “white” on people’s ID cards.

What is Male and Female

There is little that we take more for granted than the separation of people into two sex types, “male” and “female.” Yet when we try to define the difference, problems and inconsistencies arise immediately.

At birth a cursory examination is made of a baby’s genitals. If the doctor sees a small penis, the parents are told, “It’s a boy!” A small vagina, “It’s a girl.” From this initial declaration, most people are sent off on two different tracks in life. Those tracks are called “gender development.” Gender is the set of different behaviors that society expects of persons labeled either “male” or “female.” Is the significance of being born with either a penis or a vagina so great that a person’s future destiny should be dictated accordingly? Would we consider predetermining a person’s life path based on either accidents of biology, such as birth weight, eye color, skin tone, or hair texture?

Of course, there was a time when accidents of birth determined everything about a person’s life. And in many ways accidents of birth biology are still paramount. But the course of civilization is to provide all persons with equal opportunity regardless of their birthed biology.

Up through the eighteenth century, the doctrine of “primogeniture” held that the first son to be born automatically inherited all of a family’s land. This concept was banned around the time of the founding of the United States, a period when land ownership was equivalent to power. Founding patriots such as Thomas Jefferson and Noah Webster argued successfully that primogeniture was undemocratic because it locked individuals into conditions of inequality based on the mere accident of birth order. In time, the once-paramount sociolegal classification of society into firstborn sons, and all others, became completely irrelevant.

Up through the nineteenth century “illegitimate” children could be disavowed of almost all legal rights. It took Supreme Court decisions to finally ban discrimination based on the marital status of a person’s parents. Since the marital status of one’s parents is wholly irrelevant to a person’s humanity, we would be shocked today if people’s life paths were sharply limited by when or whether their parents stood before a judge and exchanged vows. But at one time, even in America, that’s how it was.

Well into the twentieth century, being born with an enriched-melanin skin tone meant being channeled into a menial life. Today we recognize this as fundamentally unfair. Law, and gradually society, accepts the choice of apparent African Americans to work in any profession or to identify as nonracial citizens. Similarly, there are young Europeans who identify as dreadlocked Rastafarians, Asians who have adopted African culture and increasing numbers of persons of all geographic backgrounds who identify themselves simply as human.

Gradually, “immutable race” is becoming “choosable culture.” The analogy to sex is unmistakable. Manhood and womanhood can be life-style choices open to anyone, regardless of genitalia. It is law and custom, not biology, that makes birth order, birth parents, skin tone, or genitals relevant to one’s ability to choose a culture, perform a job, or adopt a life-style. Liberated from legal constraints and archaic stereotypes, our social identity can flow from our soul and our experiences, not from our anatomy and our birth status.

The course of progress in civilization has been to render as irrelevant as possible the birth status of a particular individual. As this is accomplished for categories of birth status—firstborns, children of single parents, children of one or another religious or ethnic group—those very categories begin to lose rigid social meaning. This is because the true meaning of any category of persons is but the meaning assigned to those persons by law and society. Ultimate equal opportunity means that from birth on, people are persons first, free from then on to choose such cultural and social affiliations as they like. Ultimate equal opportunity means to be born free from any label: child/bastard, black/white, or male/female.

The shape of one’s genitals would appear to be a most arbitrary basis for determining to which of two fundamental human classes a person should belong. How did we arrive at this situation? Searching back into prehistory, our ancestors recognized that genital shape was a systematically recognizable difference among humans. Categorizing people based on genital shape was a simple method for establishing a division of labor among early human communities. Childbearing and child-nurturing capabilities of women further led our ancestors to establish a genital-based division of society. As civilization advanced, extensive gender-based rituals and customs reinforced the ancient genital-based division of society into men and women.

Today progressive people accept as self-evident that genital morphology (shape) is irrelevant to one’s productive role in society. Childbearing and child nurturing are a matter of choice. Hence, whatever relevance genital shape had for a division of society into men and women in the past, those reasons and traditions are obsolete as we move into the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, the gender-based rituals that grew up around genital distinctions still weigh heavily on our heads. As noted scientist Richard Lewontin has observed, “The immense superstructure of attitude and social power that has been built historically on the base of biological [sex] differences has long ago become independent of the actuality of that biology.”

Despite the apparent irrelevance of genitals to a person’s capabilities, the legal system in the United States defines men as people with penises and women as people with vaginas. This has been made clear in several cases dealing with transsexuals—persons who claim to be women despite their birth with a penis, and persons with vaginas who claim to be men. In cases dealing with marital, business, and criminal rights, courts have regularly held that one’s sex is determined by one’s genitals. For example, a person with a penis who has lived for twenty years as a woman will not be allowed to marry a man. But a person who undergoes a surgical transformation of the penis into a vagina will be immediately allowed to marry a man.

So, while men and women are defined by their genitals, the significance of that genital difference no longer justifies the social and legal division of society into two classes of people. The division of labor in an advanced society is not based on sexual status. Hence, why bother to divide people form birth into two groups, men and women?

Are Genitals But the Tip of the Iceberg?

It might be argued that genitals are but the tip of the sexual-differentiation iceberg—don’t women have XX chromosomes and men XY? Doesn’t this chromosomal differentiation give rise to a wide variety of clear differences between the sexes—hormonal balance, reproductive capabilities, physical abilities, mental thought patterns? Surprisingly, the current scientific answer to these questions is increasingly no, or at least ambiguous.

First, it is not true that all legally defined women are XX and all legally defined men are XY. Hundreds of thousands of people are born with all manner of chromosomal variations, including XXY and X, among others. The Olympics has ceased using chromosomal tests for a second X as a means of disqualifying women, after certain athletes—namely, persons with a vagina, a lifelong “female” gender identity, and but one X chromosome—were cruelly disqualified right at the quadrennial event. Similarly, the famous transsexual Renee Richards was ordered by a judge to be accepted into women’s tennis competition despite her XY chromosome makeup. The judge found her no different from any other ovariectomized and hysterectomized woman. Chromosomes are an unreliable means of classifying society into two sexes. They argue better for a continuum of sex types.

Second, sex based chromosomal differentiation appears to be relevant only in triggering different amounts of estrogen and testosterone. Both men and women produce both estrogen and testosterone, although in differing amounts. This further shows the chromosomal similarity of all people. Portions of the X or Y chromosome appear ultimately to govern the relative amounts of estrogen and testosterone produced, creating a continuum of “male” and “female” possibilities. When certain hormonal thresholds are reached, “male” or “female” reproductive organs are created. The specific levels of hormonal production, and their timing of release, are different for each person and result in a continuum of “maleness” and “femaleness” that may affect thought patterns and body shape. For example, the leading explanation of transsexuality is that a person’s chromosomes triggered levels of testosterone and estrogen that resulted in the genitals of one sex and the thought patterns of the other sex. Hence, not only the variety of chromosomal combinations, but also the actual operation of the chromosomes themselves, argues for a continuum of sex types.

Finally, it is quite clear that in modern society sex chromosomes would be a specious basis for separating people into two classes, male and female. If we were to separate people because different kinds of chromosomes create different kinds of reproductive capabilities, how would we account for the legitimacy of biologically or intentionally infertile persons? In a February 1994 review of in vitro fertilization, Scientific American estimates that there are three million biologically infertile couples in the United States alone. Clearly ability to reproduce in one manner or another would not create a consistent category of male and female persons.

If we were to separate people because different kinds of chromosomes create different hormonal states, how would we account for the legitimacy of the millions of people who alter their hormonal balance through daily pharmaceutical hormones? In this regard it should also be noted that as people age, their hormonal levels continually decline, creating a convergence between “male” and “female” hormone states in mature adults. Absent estrogen replacement therapy (ERT), postmenopausal women often begin to sprout facial hair and acquire deeper voices. Older men and women begin to look more “transgendered,” more like each other, than in their youth. Such are the transient effects of chromosomes and resultant hormonal states.

It is true that there is a lot of biochemistry behind a set of genitals. Nevertheless, that biochemistry is as irrelevant as the genitals themselves as a basis for categorizing people into two classes. There is no hard and fast biochemical line that separates men from women—just a continuum of biochemical levels with most women toward one end, most men toward to the other, and much overlap and variance in between. Professor Anne Fausto-Sterling, a Brown University geneticist, recently observed that “sex is a vast continuum that defies the constraints of categories.” Behind her observation was new research showing that as many as 4 percent of all births are to some extent “intersexed,” meaning that the infants have portions of both male and female sex organs (often internal and hence generally undiscoverable). Even the presence of nipples on men is evidence of some amount of universal intersexuality.

Chromosomes provide no logically consistent basis for creating sociolegal categorizations of people into “male” and “female.” There are too many exceptional chromosomal combinations, and the net results of the chromosomes—hormonal levels—both vary continuously across all people and may be altered easily by pharmaceuticals. While there are systematic chromosomal differences among peoples from any gene pool—Semitic, Asian, African, Nordic—we would not use such differences as a basis for creating separate legal categories for each gene pool. It would appear equally absurd that such a mundane, variable, and alterable thing such as hormone levels could provide the basis for a fundamental division of humanity into two subspecies, male and female.

Thought Patterns

It might also be argued that different sex types are justified because men and women think differently. For example, as noted above, sex researchers believe that transsexuals have genetically induced “female” (or “male”) thought patterns but “male” (or “female) genitals. Also, authors such as Anne Moir (Brain Sex) have propounded the view that male and female brains are systematically different—leading to different behavior patterns in boys and girls and in men and women.

There are three flaws with using brain sex differences to justify society’s apartheid of sex. First, as Dr. Fausto-Sterling observed, genetics creates a broad variety of sexual diversification. If her statistic of up to 4 percent of the population being physically intersexed (having portions of both sexes’ reproductive tracts) is correct, it’s likely that at least that number of people are also “mentally intersexed” —possessing both male and female thought patterns. No legal categorization of people can be valid if it leaves out such a significant percentage of the population: people can’t be only male or female if 4 percent of the population is neither or both! Indeed, even “brain sex” proponent Anne Moir concedes that “it is possible to be female and have some male attributes, and this simply depends on the presence or absence of the male hormone during certain stages of pregnancy.” If sex is in the brain, and the brain can be a blend of both sexes, what absolute meaning do “male” and “female” have? None, other than the rigid either/or division imposed upon us form birth by society, law, and tradition.

Second, it is far from proven that any anatomical differences in men’s and women’s brains account for behavioral differences. The overwhelming amount of behavioral differences between men and women are learned through a socialization process that insists “act like a girl” or “think like a boy” or pretend to. Anne Moir cites several experiments in which infant girls are much more responsive to colors and sounds than are infant boys. But no one has shown that these knee-jerk reactions have an significance for the complex behaviors associated with job performance and other life pursuits.

Finally, even if there are statistically significant differences in the way most males and females react to stimuli, this does not mean that people should be categorized as males and females for social, economic, or legal reasons. There is no doubt that certain people are gifted from birth with various mental, musical, artistic, or physical abilities. But such relative abilities do not entitle these persons to be legally categorized into a special class of people. In an egalitarian society we recognize that what people actually do with their abilities is far more significant that what abilities they may have.

In essence, a society works much better if biological differences among its subpopulations are ignored or minimized than if those differences are magnified and classified. On average, individual initiative far outperforms biological inheritance. The differences in men’s and women’s thought patterns are at most only statistically significant, not absolute sex differentiators. And as for the persons who do have “male”-type or “female” –type thought patterns, society has learned that it is counterproductive to classify its citizens based on inherited characteristics. Finally, “male” and “female” thought patterns are probably an especially specious basis for sociolegal categorization. This is because such thought patterns are simplistic in nature and easily rendered meaningless in the complexities of everyday life.

New Feminist Thinking

Professor Sylvia Law, a noted legal scholar, recently argued that “a core feminist claim is that women and men should be treated as individuals, not as members of a sexually determined class.” This is also a theme that Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg emphasized in her lawsuits as a women’s rights advocate: “Nurturing children in my ideal world would not be a woman’s priority, it would be a human priority.” This new feminism rejects sex-based differences among people as wholly irrelevant to any socioeconomic purpose. As Simone de Beauvoir noted some four decades ago: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

It is but a short step from the new feminist thinking to our thesis. If sex-based differences are irrelevant, then what is the point of saying one is either male or female? While there is often a medical reality to sex-based differences, this does not justify a carryover of sex typing to the social, economic, and legal spheres of life. There are innumerable medical differences among people, such as diabetes or propensity to heart disease, but this does not justify the creation of a legal straightjacket of difference about such medical conditions.

The feminist insistence upon seeing individuals as individuals, regardless of sexual biology, can now be carried to its next logical step: individuals are individuals, not sex types. Labeling people as male or female, upon birth, exalts biology over sociology. Instead the new feminist principles inspire us to permit all people to self-identify their sexual status along a broad continuum of possibilities and to create such cultures of gender as human ingenuity may develop.

The bimodal segregation of people into men and women has oppressed women from the time of the ancients. As Margaret Mead observed in her 1949 treatise Male and Female, the effect of creating artificial expectations for each sex is to “limit the humanity of the other sex.” As we gradually free ourselves from stamping newborn babies as one sex or the other, gender expectations will become self-defining and the full cultural liberation of all people can occur at last.

Scientific Developments

Soon after feminism opened academia’s eyes to the reality that people with vaginas were no different socioeconomically from people with penises, scientific research began to accumulate data that blurred even the biological differences between supposed sex types. As of 1990 Johns Hopkins University sexologist Dr. John Money was able to summarize research in this area: “Despite the multiplicity of [apparent] sex differences, those that are immutable and irreducible are few. They are specific to reproduction: men impregnate, and women menstruate, gestate, and lactate …. However, in light of contemporary experimental obstetrics, being pregnant is no longer an absolutely immutable sex difference. The hormones and stimuli required for normal fetal development are intrinsic and within the early embryo.”

Dr. Money was referring to recent experiments in which male baboons were made to serve as surrogate mothers for zygotes fertilized in the test tube. The embryos grew in a fatty cavity near the intestines and were delivered by cesarean section as healthy infants. In a similar vein, Dr. Money reported on ectopic pregnancies in women whose wombs had previously been removed and on zygotes that implanted themselves in the small intestine and grew their own placenta—with the implication that a man could have carried the embryo as well. All of these cases strongly suggest that even nurturance of a child, with technological help, is not an absolute biological imperative of any one subclass of humans.

Further scientific advances in the areas of genetic engineering and neonatal care foretell the likelihood that a zygote might be formed from the chromosomes of two women or of two men, assuming the necessary biochemical codes that enable cellular union are learned. Once this scientific threshold is passed, the axiom that “men impregnate” will no longer be strictly true. Of course, one need not wait for this science-fiction scenario to occur: as long as sperm banks and in vitro fertilization exist, the relevance of men’s monopoly on impregnation disappears. Impregnation becomes a commodity. And as long as surrogate motherhood is legally available, the relevance of women’s monopoly on gestation disappears. Gestation becomes a commodity.

Scientific developments have blurred the differences between supposed sex types to a greater degree than most people imagine. Feminism tells us that the differences between sexual biology are irrelevant to socioeconomic behavior. And science tells us that the differences between sexual biology are remarkably few and disappearing rapidly.

It might be argued that science masks true sexual differences, since men do impregnate naturally, and women do gestate and lactate naturally. But this argument seems unpersuasive: it could just as well be said that since most men are stronger than most women, men must do “heavy work,” and since women lactate naturally, they must be the ones to care for infants. Yet thanks to science and technology, heavy work can be done with the pushing of buttons, and infant formula can be dispensed from a bottle. Science did not mask “true” differences between sexes; it just made those differences irrelevant in everyday life, allowing us to achieve the continuum of sex types that are possible today.

Transgenderism

A grass-roots movement called transgenderism developed during the 1980s. The guiding principle of this movement is that people should be free to change, either temporarily or permanently, the sex type to which they were assigned since infancy. Transgenderism makes manifest the continuum nature of sex types because even if a sex type was real birth, it can now be changed at will during one’s life.

There are two main types of persons in the movement: transsexuals and cross-dressers. Transsexuals use sex hormones and sometimes plastic surgery to change their anatomy toward the other sex type. The results are so persuasive that rarely can a “new man” or “new woman” be distinguished from a biological original. Over a thousand persons a year actually have sex change surgery, and many more than this number simply use hormones to change their facial hair, voice, and physique. What sex type are these persons? The law calls them the sex of their genitals, but in reality they are occupying a vast middle ground on a continuum of sex types.

The cross-dressers use attitude, clothing and perhaps makeup to give the appearance of belonging to the other sex or to an androgynous middle ground. Most modern women may be considered cross-dressers since they often wear clothing normally intended for men. What is a new phenomenon is the rapidly rising number of men who wear women’s clothing. Because a male-dominated society frowns on its members mimicking the “inferior” female class, male cross-dressers are usually deep in the closet.

In questioning why there is a growing transgenderism movement, we reach to the heart of the question of sex typing. Transgendered people of all types normally report that they feed a need to express a gender identity different from the one society associates with their genitals. Leading psychologists explain this need by positing that the transgendered person’s neonatal brain was at least partially feminized (or masculinized) while their genitals were masculinized (or feminized). But if the new feminism and scientific research is correct, there are no “male” and “female” brains. Even if there were, is it reasonable to posit that brain patterns can dictate a need to wear one or another type of clothing? Do all the women who wear blue jeans and T-shirts have masculinized transgendered brains?

A more likely explanation is that sex is a continuum along which people, if allowed, will flow naturally to a comfortable resting point. What that resting point is depends upon the same complex of mental propensities and chance socialization that leads people to adopt one or another career, hobby, or religion. It is a matter not of “male” and “female” brains, but of chance orientations toward primal responses such as “aggression” or “nurturance,” limited by social pressures. Modern female cross-dressing represents gender creativity unconstrained by social rejection. Male cross-dressing is rare because society frowns on male gender creativity.

For most people society’s gender rules are so powerful that they simply go with the flow. But in every society there are the free spirits, the stubborn, and the insistent. In the 1960s they fought for civil rights. In the 1990s they fight for gender rights. The grass-roots transgender movement represents those people who are brave enough to risk some opprobrium to explore the gender continuum. Once that opprobrium is eliminated, the ranks of gender and sex-type explorers is sure to increase manyfold.

The Apartheid of Sex

We live under an apartheid of sex. At birth we are cast into a sex type based on our genitals. From then on we are brainwashed into a sex-type-appropriate culture called gender. Women can mimic (but not too much) the powerful entrenched men. But men who try to be “womanish” face the kind of vicious scorn reserved for traitors or the humiliation accorded masters who identified with slaves.

Like the apartheid of race, blurring of class boundaries is the gravest offense because it challenges the division of reality. Hence the old feminist doctrine of “separate but equal” was more acceptable to the male power structure, because they knew that it would never occur. But the new feminist doctrine of sexual continuity is threatening—it destroys the male-dominated power structure completely. If there are no hard and fast sex types, then there can be no apartheid of sex. If there is no apartheid of sex, then there is no entrenched birthright of power—people must achieve on their own. To men threatened by economics and social survival, loss of birthright superiority is frightening.

The apartheid of sex is every bit as harmful, painful, and oppressive as is the apartheid of race. When people are categorized at birth into a sociolegal class on the basis of chance biology, they will be socialized into a segregated culture. Once they are so socialized, human potential will be repressed, for the mind does not know boundaries except for those imposed upon it from outside. Our legacy of sexual apartheid is countless millennia of female oppression and male frustration, of gynacide and warfare.

The apartheid of sex is too ancient to be dismantled overnight. But there are concrete steps that can start the process of liberating humanity’s future, among them:

• Adopting resolutions in the psychological and medical community to the effect that sex in humans is a continuous variable, a complex of phenotypic and genotypic factors as unique as one’s fingerprints. While male and female categories are useful to group biological characteristics for medical purposes, these same categories have socially detrimental effects when used outside the field of medicine.
• Adopting laws that prohibit the classification of people according to sex type except for bona fide medical purposes.
• Adopting educational curricula and entertainment programming that encourage the concept of self-defined sex and flexible gender behaviors.

Sex should really be the sum of behaviors we call gender—an adjective, not a noun. People should explore genders. When they settle on a set of gender behaviors, the name for that set describes their sex. There are billions of sex types: from Rambo to Oprah, from Madonna to Prince, from deep blue to blood red, and a vast rainbow of androgynous possibilities in between. The important point is that gender exploration should come first, through free choice, and that sex is just the label for one’s chosen gender.

Today we go about the matter of sex ass backward. A male or female label is first imposed upon us without choice. We are then trained to adopt a set of appropriate gender behaviors, whether we like them or not. We have some flexibility in our particular choice of gender behavior but not much choice, lest we fall afoul of the apartheid of sex. However, feminism, technology, and transgenderism have debunked the myth of a “male and female” world. Life has much more gender potential than we can imagine.

As we break free of the chains of sexual apartheid, we will establish a new human culture of unparalleled creativity in personal development. From homo sapiens, literally the “wise man,” shall emerge our new species, persona creatus, the “creative person.” From the subjugation of women shall emerge the sensitization of men. And from the apartheid of sex shall evolve the freedom of gender.

Persona Creatus

A new species implies a very fundamental break with the DNA-based definition of homo sapiens. Yet, as indicated above, we have already made that fundamental break as a consequence of technological changes in the way we live and reproduce. Our DNA no longer dictates all aspects of our individual survival, for if it did near-sighted individuals would be gone, eaten by predators they could not see. Our DNA no longer dictates our ability to pass on our genes. In vitro fertilization with or without embryo transfer routinely provides reproduction for hundreds of thousands of infertile couples.

The rise of transgenderism provides sociobiologists with evidence of a new species. An important part of most species’ signature is the characteristically gender dimorphic behaviors of their members. However, as noted above, thanks to culture and technology, humans are leaving those gender dimorphic behaviors behind as they come to appreciate the limitless uniqueness of their sexual identities. As our creativity has blossomed, we have matured from homo sapiens into persona creatus.

The greatest catapult for humanity into a new species lies just beyond the event horizon of transgenderism. Based upon our rapidly accelerating ability to imbue software with human personality, autonomy and self-awareness, a movement of “transhumanists” have joined transgenderists in calling for the launch of persona creatus. The basic transhumanist concept is that a human need not have a flesh body, just as a woman need not have a real vagina. Humanness is in the mind, just as is sexual identity. As software becomes increasingly capable of thinking, acting and feeling like a human, it should be treated as a fellow human, and welcomed as a fellow member of the technological species persona creatus.

The biologist will insist that members of a common species be capable of producing fertile offspring, and so it is for transhumans and persona creatus. Reproduction will no long necessarily occur, however, via joined DNA. Instead, people of flesh will upload into software the contents and processes of their minds. Think of this as taking all of your digital photos, movies, emails, online chats, google searches and blogging to the next level, and merging it with “mindware” that can replicate how you think, feel and react based on the huge digital database of your thoughts, feelings and reactions. Once we have thus digitally cloned our minds, new digital people can be produced by combining some of our mindware with some of our partner’s mindware. Voila, there are fertile offspring and the species persona creatus is alive. Furthermore, since purely digital people can reproduce with flesh humans in this manner, the humans and the transhumans are common members of persona creatus.

Freedom of gender is, therefore, the gateway to a freedom of form and to an explosion of human potential. First comes the realization that we are not limited by our gross sexual anatomy. Then comes the awakening that we are not limited by our anatomy at all. The mind is the substance of humanity. Mind is deeper than matter.