Taboo Topics (Heavily moderated)

[DoNotDelete]

Yes, yes, but the gender would be useless if only females are necessary for reproduction.

It's only a vague memory but I think an embryo has already been made with genetic material from two women.

I personally find it insulting that people talk about men being redundant or the Y chromosome being useless/phased out; It just comes off as unnecessarily petty man-bashing a lot of the time.

I guess the reason human beings (and a lot of other species) are not hermaphroditic is because women and men are optimised towards different roles; From nature's/evolution's POV it was beneficial for one sex to be the carrier of the offspring (with the mobility, discomfort and risk that brings) while the other sex provided for that carrier and protected them from predators.

Of course that was more relevant when human beings lived in forests and/or jungles and not cities, but men generally have a physique more suited toward manual labour (lifting/carrying) and women's and men's brains are generally optimised toward different tasks (men generally having a better three-dimensional perception, women having a better social/emotional perception*).

Taking human beings out of the forest/jungle lessens the importance of the male role to a degree, but it's not enough of a reason to discount men/the Y chromosome completely - not by a long shot.


*Those are not brilliant examples and they're pretty stereotypical and I know that some women have brilliant three-dimensional perception and that some men have great social sensitivity but I'm not really interested in investigating better examples right now.

EDIT: changed X to Y because I'm half asleep and made a goof.

[Riku]

I think you mean Y chromosome, dude.

[DoNotDelete]

I think you mean Y chromosome, dude.

Ooops; You're absolutely right.

I'll fix it.

[Galaxy Man]

The idea that it will, at any point, be a better option to just start making test-tube babies entirely from women is entirely and completely stupid and far more work than the tradition option of just having a fuck. The surgery to do so alone is entirely more work than necessary.

Even if women, at some point in the evolutionary future, end up with the ability to asexually reproduce... Well they're not really women anymore. They're not even really probably human anymore, and the idea of physical gender would probably be a decently alien concept.

[Madican]

It definitely won't be common, but have you heard about designer babies? Rich people will be lining up to get them as soon they find the perfect method to ensure that the baby has everything they want. Intelligence, good health, strength, a body that has little to no fat, etc.

That's more the thing I'm worried about is when the designer babies come about they will completely rip open the class gap in a matter of generations.

[Syobon]

Y'know, sexual reproduction is defined as a process that creates a new organism by combining the genetic material of two organisms, so even with gender out of the question it's still sexual reproduction unless you're making clones.

[Reyo]

Sex has become more of a social thing since we learned how to hack the system of natural selection. In fact, it's become such a social thing that it's more of a joke than anything else. I'd say "women will feel worry when there's no men to have sex with!" but you can just take a look in any sex shop and realize that you can substitute anything you'd "use" a man for with some kind of plastic rubber.

"But what about the emotional connection!"
"What are you, gay?"

That's more why this technology scares me, because we're all still immature cunts when it comes to shit like this...

[shazza]

It definitely won't be common, but have you heard about designer babies? Rich people will be lining up to get them as soon they find the perfect method to ensure that the baby has everything they want. Intelligence, good health, strength, a body that has little to no fat, etc.

That's more the thing I'm worried about is when the designer babies come about they will completely rip open the class gap in a matter of generations.

This is exactly why Gattaca was such a good movie. It was pretty realistic in the sense of how looked down upon people who are ~naturally made will become. eventually we'd all probably end up being clones essentially - conventional beauty, intelligent, talented, perfectly healthy. maybe the only difference is our eye/hair colours. or have talents forced upon us by our parents like the guy in the movie with 12 fingers because his parents wanted him to become a pianist. this shit already happens now and it's depressing.

[D-vid]

Sex has become more of a social thing since we learned how to hack the system of natural selection. In fact, it's become such a social thing that it's more of a joke than anything else. I'd say "women will feel worry when there's no men to have sex with!" but you can just take a look in any sex shop and realize that you can substitute anything you'd "use" a man for with some kind of plastic rubber.

"But what about the emotional connection!"
"What are you, gay?"

That's more why this technology scares me, because we're all still immature cunts when it comes to shit like this...

Rubber things don't come close to the real deal though.

[Reyo]

Are you sure you said that correctly? They have them the size of fire hydrants. How do I compete with that?!

[TheStranger]

I dont think you have to compete, any woman that can take the more jumbo sixed ones is clearly a mutant you shouldnt be breeding with in the first place

[Kamak]

What interests me most about the future or human reproduction is the possibility of artificial wombs, putting the strain of caring for the child until birth away from the mother and reducing developmental defects due to cramped space/bad diet/etc.

Even wih that alone, it can lead to them being considered superior individuals just because of the lack of pre-mature births and health defects.

And I wonder what that might do to the concepts of abortion and the general societal opinion of a woman's rights to her children, not to mention other social issues like how attached the parents will be to a baby that's growing in a hospital incubator, or how traditional pregnancy will be frowned upon by employers because of "special considerations" for a condition with a safer (and more work-friendly) alternative.

I know that artificial wombs are a ways off currently, but they're already developing them for endangered aquatic life, and it's not unheard of for this to happen eventually.

[SaintCrazy]

I think that (at least for right now) enough people place some sort of value on traditional baby-making and "natural" conception that the idea of custom genetic babies and maybe even artifical wombs would be pretty heavily resisted. Considering groups like conservative/mainstream Christians who already have a pretty narrow definition of sex and family (sex and kids only in marriage, unborn children have the same rights as born children, not to mention the sects that won't use contraception or promote births outside a hospital), there will be plenty of people who feel like messing with the process of conception and pregnancy is too "unnatural", perhaps even to the point that a large population of people will campaign to make genetically altered babies or test-tube pregnancies illegal.

Regardless of religion I would think that most people would agree that spending cheddar to give a child a genetic advantage over others sounds pretty unethical as it directly cuts into the idea that "all men are created equal"

[Valbrandur]

I'm going to add a bit more of my thoughts on the discussion brewing in text screencaps thread.

I find pedophilia unsettling because children are young, innocent and they're still at the first stages of growing up, being shaped by their surroundings and experiences.

At this phase, I believe they should be growing up learning the basics. They haven't learned about sex, consent or anything of that sort yet. For a child to have sex, even if it's just a cartoon, to me it appears as one of the worse defiling of innocence. Where an experience that they shouldn't have to worry about yet is forced upon them.

I think it's usually expected for a person to not even learn how to fully socialise until they're entering puberty or later. Yet this would be a case of a child, who's not ready for it, to learn one of the more intimate things you can do with another person.
I can't really condone preying on the underdeveloped but I realise that sexuality isn't something you can just control to your will.
So while I find attraction to children disturbing, I do not always fault the people who have it if they realise that it would be harmful to act out.

[Reyo]

Sex is no longer about plain reproduction anymore. Now it's more focussed on adding a physical connection to the emotional one already nurtured in a relationship (or at least that's the IDEAL situation). Back when it was primarily about "We need to continue the lineage! Fire up the baby makers and breed us an army!" it was normal to be considered a prude if you didn't have a family by the ripe old age of "the second you had your first period." Even the concept of "childhood" was that way. My parents still give me shit that their parents never had a chuldhood. They worked at the mines and had babies...that's it...

Now, it's a social construct that children need to keep their innocence as long as possible (which is a discussion in it of itself), which includes the concept of "sex." I think the negative feelings come from the idea that anyone who's decent enough to warrant a relatively positive look from other people, even if their sexual urges stem into the "children" range, isn't going to act on them in a blatant way. They might have a spouce who's "too young" yet still legal, or do roleplaying that stems into that sort of demographic. The problem is the people who have those urges, and they act on them. Were it an issue of "I have an emotional attachment to this child I want to make physical" then there'd be some problems, namely around the fact that people can barely stand anyone who's a single generation outside of their own, let alone someone who's barely begun participating in their own. How does one have an emotional attachment to a child outside of the "child/parent" relationship that has an entirely different purpose? Physically acting on them only really has one viable reason, and that's "I have this urge! Must act on urge!" They're taking what makes them feel better without any respect for what freedoms, or comforts they're removing from someone else, like the fact that he'd have to kidnap a child from their parents, and the physical act of sex with the child. This is the same behavior expressed in a sociopath who will do everything, to include torture/murder, to get what makes them feel good, and not feel any sort of remorse in who they hurt in the process.

So really, I don't get angry at the fact that a child was introduced to the idea of sex, I get angry at the fact that the guy most likely had to kidnap a child for the sole purpose of giving in to his desires. He's not a terrible person for being attracted to children, he's a terrible person for acting like a sociopath. That's the reason he doesn't belong in society, because were it something else, he'd probably be just as much of a nuisance to society.