Is it actually possible to change sex?

@Derelectic I am a lawyer and acording to the law of my nation gender is the correct term for the dna gender...I blame language barriers

...And that adhominem is my cue to leave this disucussion. Don't worry I won't report it to the mods.You are forgiven

edited 26th May '12 8:57:18 PM by FallenLegend

Regardless, that is a personal attack and kind of a no-no here, so cut it out.

Well, to start with, what the law says something is and what social sciences say something is can and often are two different things. Secondly, yes, it's not the same in English, as I've been saying.

Also, Blowser, while I agree with you that transphobia is a terrible, unacceptable thing, I don't think personal attacks over what seems to be a language barrier-based misunderstanding are warranted. Seeing as, that will get you in trouble. Which, I should think, is not a good thing.

Personally, I thought FL made some good points regarding the actual biology of it, though I can't really say much regarding the social aspect of it considering that I'm relatively uneducated about it. It's not my prerogative what gender someone wants to be, though I'm obviously not going to know just upon looking at them if they haven't actually gotten surgery.

Yeah, the mods don't take kindly to personal attacks or (to quote how they thump that kind of post) "taking extreme positions for the lulz".

EDIT: (don't feel like using quoteblocks) "Well, to start with, what the law says something is and what social sciences say something is can and often are two different things. Secondly, yes, it's not the same in English, as I've been saying."
That's probably the biggest hurdle, reconciling those.

edited 26th May '12 9:19:05 PM by 0dd1

I can agree biology-wise via the regular body that you cannot fully change that. Mainly because of your insides. If we're ignoring the brain part.

However, I believe a person is born with one particular gender in mind, which does not match all the time with their physical sex.(which is where we got the differences of sex and gender from)

It may be because I'm a transgender(but not a transexual, as in, my brain says female, but my body doesn't match, and it might not ever.)

Anyway, I reported the posts, so let's not talk about that bit anymore.

I think you're misinterpreting what FL said, but I can't speak for him (her?), so think what you want.

EDIT: Point taken, shutting up about it.

edited 26th May '12 9:22:18 PM by 0dd1

I'm not transgender, so I can't speak from personal experience on the specific question, but I think I see how the article from the OP is flawed in its reasoning. The article arbitrarily identifies the male/female distinction as important, while failing to recognize that all changes people undergo over time make them into different people. I am literally a different person than I was a year ago (or even, to a much lesser degree, five minutes ago), and I will be a different person in another year (or five minutes).

The only reason that I am considered by myself and by society to be the "same" person over time is because it's a continuous process of change, tied together by a combination of memory (in the past direction) and intention (in the future direction). The person who I am right now simply won't exist a year from now, because that person will have continuously transformed into a different (but related) person.

So, if I were to gradually become female to some extent over the next year, how is that fundamentally different from any other substantial life change? If I also identified as female to begin with, it'd probably be a positive change, and since I wouldn't be the same person in a year either way, what's the concern? Sure, I couldn't erase my past in any case, but that's not the point of changing sex anyway; the point, as I understand it, is to make one's physical sex more closely align with one's internal perception of the correct sex to be.

If changing your brain from male to female is, as the article suggests, like killing you and replacing you with someone else, then so is changing yourself in any way. In fact, from that perspective, everyone is constantly being killed and replaced with someone slightly different. But that's an utterly bizarre way of thinking about it; just acknowledge that people change over time, and that continuity is what lets us identify a person as "the same person" over time.

edited 26th May '12 9:25:34 PM by Enthryn

I think Eliezer is greatly blowing bad science out of proportion...

Blowser caught a time out.

*regarding the thread question*: No. It is not actually possible to change sex, yet. One can never be flawlessly transitioned from male to female, or female to male completely, due to technological and medical limitations.

Rammifications on the society, and the transitioned person at large, is (what I think) not relevant to the thread question, so I'm stopping it here

I don't think this guy really understands how the brain works. (The guy that wrote the article in the OP, I mean.) Our brains keep changing throughout our lifetimes to begin with. And from what research I've done, transgender people tend to have a brain that is already the gender that they perceive themselves to be. Also, obviously, brain surgery is not what's performed when undergoing a sex change operation.

So I'm pretty much calling that whole thing bullshit and say yes, you can change your sex/gender. You can't change your DNA, but you can certainly get the physical surgery if you so desire.

What do you mean? M to F and F to M surgery has been done successfully many times. Granted, it's expensive, but it can be done. Sex is just what genitalia you have; DNA and such really don't play a role, as far as I know.

That excerpt worries me. It implies that gender is somehow this rigid thing when it's clearly not; if your gender doesn't match your sex, then it's your sex that's wrong.

edited 27th May '12 2:11:23 AM by Autumncomet

You don't need to have surgery to change you sex. Sex is a socially constructed imagination used to (rather inadequately) describe the differences between physical bodies. For the record: I'm not talking about gender, which is also a social construction. I'm talking about sex.

I recommend that you read something by Anne Fausto-Sterling, a famous biologist who has scrutinized the function of sex in United States culture. For example, you can, free of charge, read her essay titled "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough" on the internet:

http://www.uta.edu/english/timothyr/Fausto-Sterling.pdf

Do people think that a person who is male on a genetic level but naturally developed a female body should be counted as male or female for this discussion?

What about mosaicism then? It is possible, in some circumstances, for a person to be composed of genetically different cells, even geneticaly male and genetically female ones; and unless this happens in some reproduction-related system, the person looks precisely like a typical member of their sex/gender/whatever.

But really, the question simply depends on what we mean with "change sex". The author of the article of the OP seems to take it to mean "becoming indistinguishable, on all levels, from somebody who is <insert gender here> from birth"; and for this definition, it is clearly impossible for now. Perhaps it might become possible in the future; but it looks like a very difficult problem.

To start with we would have to establish the ways in which people born a particular gender are indistinguishable from one another. Once we have this list from a diverse group we could then determine which of those are not addressed by current sex change methods.

@Autumncomet: I don't think you really read what I was saying there. Especially as I was agreeing that yes, you can change your sex. And yes, DNA does have something to do with it, especially as a trans person can't magically grow a penis or breasts or whatever else and make themselves entirely the gender they desire to be. The outer surgical procedure is all I see being done for decades, probably, as a practical matter.

Mostly I have an issue with what that guy was saying about how brains work and how he was saying the surgery would somehow cause the brain to make a bunch of new connections that it hadn't had before. The genital reassignment surgery doesn't affect the brain and doesn't even need to. An Mt F person already has what you could call a female brain, because they perceive themselves to be female and take whatever steps they can to become the way they want to be. The brain isn't making any new connections after the surgery that wouldn't otherwise be done, because the brain remains normal for that particular person. The guy clearly doesn't know anything about how the brain works or forms connections.

edited 27th May '12 12:52:25 AM by AceofSpades

Can you really blame Yudkowsky for falling for it? Also, is "overthought" really a criticism?

@Ace: That was directed at the person above you. I missed an arrow. Oops.

It all comes down to the usual issues of substance and accident, I think. If sex is an accidental property, then it is possible, at least in principle, to change it while preserving the identity of the subject; but if it is an essential property, then it is entirely impossible.

Now, the modern world seems to be generally in favor of Nominalism — of the theory according to which abstract concepts exist only in human minds. I cannot say I agree with this position myself; but if we work under this hypothesis, then the whole thing is just a matter of language. It all depends on what we take to be the essence of an individual, and what we take to be meaning of "sex".

If we instead take abstract objects to have independent existence of some sort, well, it is still at least in part an issue of language. If we are not clear about what constitutes one's sex, we are not going to be able to talk about the possibility of changing sex and make any sort of sense. However, the question whether one can change sex and preserve their identity is, from this point of view, a real one.

edited 27th May '12 2:26:27 AM by Carciofus

I was NOT arguing for mental changes. I was planting my argument in a completely physical way. In this case, whether or not the sex change is completely true to the transitioning person's fit-of-being. And there is a reason why I said no.

What if people want to have both genitalias? Our advances aren't sufficient in making that possible. At least, not in a complete percentage of safety yet. Until that is settled, I won't go for 'yes' as an answer. And since this thread did not specify 'male and females ONLY', I assumed it is reasonable to argue that a person cannot apply for transitioning into hermaphrodite

edited 27th May '12 2:46:03 AM by Cassie