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Sexual Dimorphism

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Wed, 2015-07-08 12:15

Pyrite

Sexual Dimorphism

In the 22nd century (or whenever Eclipse Phase is set), a significant number of bodies are designed from the ground up. I was curious what you guys thought about what this means for biological sexual dimorphism. Obviously at least cosmetic sexual dimorphism is still present, as we have men who look like men and women who look like women, but I have a feeling that the women of 10 AF would generally be unwilling to put up with the reduced ability to build upper body strength that most current women must deal with. What aspects of sexual dimorphism would have been eliminated, and what elements would remain? And what does this say about how the people of 10AF experience gender?

—

'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien

Wed, 2015-07-08 13:33

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

I suspect portions of

I suspect portions of transhumanity have not abandoned the gender binary completely, but resleeving technology does allow people to change bodies in order to accommodate how they feel. I think the introduction parts of the Core rulebook mention parts of this. Also I think some of those sexual dimorphism elements like upper body strength are probably corrected in Splicers and beyond, there is a part about how the average flat human of 20th/21st century has a 10 or less in every aptitude, so the Splicers with standard 15 across the board is literally like an exceptional person, with Exalts being like olympians and paragons compared to us.

—

Exhuman, and Humanitarian.

Wed, 2015-07-08 14:03

UnitOmega

Well, it's an interesting

Well, it's an interesting question, which has a lot of interconnectivity to elements of culture in EP. I'm gonna say it's probably got a lot to do with optimization. So, Flats are probably roughly the same ratios and differences as today. Splicers have definitely edged us toward a stronger, taller, more generalized humanity+, they do most of that by cutting out chaff DNA and finding more optimal genetics from the pool. Unless you explicitly run the morph for specific optimization of certain traits, your dimorphism spread is probably similar, though with a narrower margin. Once you go past that, though, Morph lines tend to be specialized to specific uses and traits. You're going to want similar performance from a morph type, regardless of the gender of the morph. So Male and Female Olympians probably have roughly the same level of performance all the time. Likewise, your performance in a Sylph will probably be similar - male and female will both tend to be slimmer, and more delicate and finely featured. Exalts would be more like Splicers, but probably with an even narrower gap. And even then, we're now at the point of potentially superhuman level capability. Even if a female Exalt has proportionally lower upper body strength compared to a male Exalt, the morph is probably putting out as much as any professional athlete today - and that's without training which tends to bring the difference even closer (but I'll get back to that). Of course, all of this really depends on exactly how much we can "fix" or alter with genetic manipulation and other controls. On the other hand, I'd almost say the question is too human, and not enough transhuman. There are some factors which aren't addressed yet. You mention building body strength. How many people actually work out in EP? In the LLA there's a strong history of physical exercise (and I'll wager Jove and Titan both have a decent call for PT with their relative military readiness), but in general you don't have to - basic biomods patches a lot of that. If you want a serious upgrade in strength, you could buy implants or switch to a stronger morph. Cosmetic differences and alterations, height, weight, body shape, can all be altered in the Healing Vat, same as actual physical appearances. But these considerations aren't just for those who identify as women in EP. Morphs are supposed to be somewhat limited in number, if you're taking a rental or travelling you might have to take what you can get. This would definitely push for a more generalized capability of humanity (though I'd say optimization still plays a part), but there are definitely still some differences which account for that -10 Resleeving tests. "Evolutionary" pressures are completely different, since in most parts of the system you have access to Exowombs, which as a fairly stable technology mean the evolutionary back-end of the female body doesn't always have to make sure it's optimized (ish, Natural Selection is a club, not a straight razor) for childbirth. And EP clouds the issue further, as this is a setting where with a quick dip in the healing vat, you can not only switch genders, but also become a fully functional hermaphrodite, neuter or otherwise intersexed individual. How does sexual dimorphism work there? That kind of theorizing might need some biologists or doctors to get right.

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Thu, 2015-07-09 06:27

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

All the advantages, all the time.

UnitOmega wrote:
You're going to want similar performance from a morph type, regardless of the gender of the morph. So Male and Female Olympians probably have roughly the same level of performance all the time. Likewise, your performance in a Sylph will probably be similar - male and female will both tend to be slimmer, and more delicate and finely featured. ... On the other hand, I'd almost say the question is too human, and not enough transhuman. There are some factors which aren't addressed yet. You mention building body strength. How many people actually work out in EP?

This (These?). Physical attributes are always going to be defined by morph type, with gender as an afterthought if at all. The only real differences are those arising from aesthetics – a slightly different set of proportions will result in different amounts of leverage, though these would be trivial compared to the absolute capability of the morphs. In addition, exercise shouldn't be a thing any more, because there's no longer a reason for it to exist. A given morph needs to perform at a given level regardless of circumstances, and the design should be optomised for that level. Essentially, for a given morph the muscles grow to a set size/strength, and then stay there no matter what happens, with the possible exception of digesting them to prevent starvaton.

—

In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Fri, 2015-07-10 08:31

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

I feel at this point obliged

I feel at this point obliged to point out that there are no statistical differences between the genders. A female Splicer is physically capable of reaching the same levels of physical exertion as a male Splicer with the same augs. The difference is in whether the ego sleeved into the morph has the training to make the best use of the body.

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Sun, 2015-07-12 23:15

jKaiser

Big question in my mind is

Big question in my mind is that while transhumanity is faster, stronger, etc., does the fact that that's reflected by Somatics (i.e. body control) render the actual (enhanced) musclemass and ligature secondary to neurological improvements?

Mon, 2015-07-13 12:23

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Male and female morphs are,

Male and female morphs are, effectively, identical (with the exception of a few, predominantly female morphs which have an operational on-board exowomb feature). No one is going to choose a male or female morph for the performance boost. Most likely sexual dimorphism is defined by culture. Being in a biomorph is a sign of wealth and influence, and for most people, biomorph includes having a gender. Culture is set in large part by the Jovian Republic and the Consortium elite, both of whom are largely conservative. So we should expect that dimorphism is still defined as the 'default' in much of the solar system. Those that can't be conveniently and visually categorized as male or female are generally clanking masses, non-humans, experimentalists, or culturally liberal (including those damn anarchists who clearly hate freedom!) The majority of those people are kept in lower social castes, and identifying with them is usually considered bad. So yes, I expect to see sexual dimorphism in most of Eclipse Phase. In those places that don't have it, there's generally a reason for that. If immortality weren't the average case now, I'd expect to see that die out in a generation or two. But the old guard are going to stick around for a long while yet. How that plays out stands to be seen.

Tue, 2015-07-14 08:48

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

Over time, yeah, sexual

Over time, yeah, sexual dimorphism is something that would slowly die out. Maybe some people would be into it as a kink. :) But in AF10, the Fall has probably put the brakes on this to some extent because women's generally smaller bodies need less food and air to survive. We never go into it, but there probably would have been some sex imbalance in terms of who survived the Fall and its immediate aftermath -- more women than men.

—

J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Tue, 2015-07-14 10:02

SquireNed

See, I think people would

See, I think people would maintain a fair degree of sexual dimorphism. It's something that there's a decent market for (people want to be reminded of how they were), but also unless a fair portion of the population is replaced by infolife, almost everything born will have some gendering, whether psychological or biological in nature. I also think that there's a certain want for attachment associated with gender. I don't fully buy the "exowomb for everyone" option; there are a lot of transhumans, even non-bioconservatives, who would want the old school two parents plus children approach, and if they find themselves in compatible morphs they don't want any hardware getting in the way.

Tue, 2015-07-14 11:13

#10

self-relating n... self-relating negativity's picture

Not quite true. Think in a

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:
UnitOmega wrote:
You're going to want similar performance from a morph type, regardless of the gender of the morph. So Male and Female Olympians probably have roughly the same level of performance all the time. Likewise, your performance in a Sylph will probably be similar - male and female will both tend to be slimmer, and more delicate and finely featured. ... On the other hand, I'd almost say the question is too human, and not enough transhuman. There are some factors which aren't addressed yet. You mention building body strength. How many people actually work out in EP?
This (These?). Physical attributes are always going to be defined by morph type, with gender as an afterthought if at all. The only real differences are those arising from aesthetics – a slightly different set of proportions will result in different amounts of leverage, though these would be trivial compared to the absolute capability of the morphs. In addition, exercise shouldn't be a thing any more, because there's no longer a reason for it to exist. A given morph needs to perform at a given level regardless of circumstances, and the design should be optomised for that level. Essentially, for a given morph the muscles grow to a set size/strength, and then stay there no matter what happens, with the possible exception of digesting them to prevent starvaton.

Not quite true. Think in a more transhuman mindset: exercise as we know it know is largely pointless, at least at first glance. It remains, however; merely changed. Exercise with the sole purpose of building and maintaining muscle, achieving and maintaining a certain level of fitness - these things can largely be programmed and modded. What else is the practice of boxing and tai chi, though, for example, if not exercise? Human necessities remain transhuman necessities - often reduced to automatic processes and, as such, mere formalities rather than critical needs around which one's life revolves; but for all that they are necessities nonetheless. Infomorphs need not "eat" food, but their lives are nonetheless sustained by a minimum of energy consumption. Likewise, an exalt morph excretes a single, easily-recyclable pellet once every few months in order to remove waste - the fact that this does not require the same level of individual time investment or societal infrastructure investment as waste removal and processing does today (toilet manufacture, plumbing, water treatment, etc) makes it no less crucial. What does this have to do with exercise? The same logic applies: muscle mass, fitness level, and even skill and coordination can all be easily programmed, but [i]the ability to adapt and effectively utilize such features[/i] can't be programmed and must be learned through exercise (or more precisely, it [i]can[/i] be programmed to a certain degree, and at much higher cost, but again we encounter the issue: the user of such programming requires the practice and experience than can be learned only through exercise). This is confirmed by the necessity of a period of adjustment, however short, when resleeving - even if this adjustment is a "taking stock" as trivial as the experience of waking up after a period of sleep. Furthermore, the human evolutionary code makes extensive use of exercise in various bio-processes, especially those related to emotional state, physical adaptation, and extra-especially healing. So again, we encounter a case where transhuman technology trivializes the [i]amount[/i] of exercise necessary, without ever dimishing the [i]crucial importance[/i] of exercise itself. Say you decide to get a medical procedure, shiny new implants - the performing doctor, be they another sentient or some med-bot, will tell you to try them out in your everyday life and to seek medical attention if any abnormalities are noticed. Again: exercise remains a necessity as a period of adjustment, as a means to acclimate the body to something; this never changed in the transition to transhumanity; what [i]did[/i] change is form exercise takes (no need to micromanage every aspect of one's time and diet to maintain muscle mass, for example). All of this is to say that rather than there being no reason for transhumans to exercise, there is, in fact, every reason. Being transhuman does not mean transcending basic physical laws: if you have a certain muscle mass, energy input is required to sustain it. If an individual as a certain level of skill, if a body is configured in a certain way, a level of sustained effort to maintain these things, however trivial, is intrinsically and insurmountably [i]necessary[/i] - which is the whole reason so much time and effort has been and continues to be spent by transhumanity to streamline and faciltate the process.

Tue, 2015-07-14 15:34

#11

self-relating n... self-relating negativity's picture

Certain aspects of gender

Certain aspects of gender remain unchanged for transhumanity. This in no way translates to the conclusion that human and transhuman experiences of sex and gender relatable or anything at all like each other. Indeed, the prehistoric, ancient (say, a thousand years +/- 1 BCE), feudal, and modern experiences of gender are completely different from one another, even though they all share the commonality of structure (a binary). In [i]Eclipse Phase[/i], transhumans take for given what is for us today an earth-shattering, radical theory: that gender has no intrinsic basis in biology. The truth of this theory is visible today from a certain perspective; a perspective which is hazed and occluded by flawed, rigid thinking rooted in the past. Today, there are two predominant conceptualizations of gender (speaking in incredibly broad, oversimplified generalizations), which can be described as the old and the new. The old is biological essentialism: the mind is 100% reducible to the body; they are the same, and it is only false appearance that causes the misperception that there is truly a difference. The new is the currently-in-vogue postmodernist fad, for which one Judith Butler has given the ultimate formulation: gender is "performative"; it is what you "are" precisely and only to the point that it is what you "do"; in other words, regardless of what society thinks of your identity and your biology, what you are in terms of gender is determined wholly by your own free acts of identification (and as such is potentially subject to change). In terms of [i]Eclipse Phase[/i], the latter way of thinking clearly rings more true - as evidenced by gender being an [i]ego[/i], not a morph, characteristic - but nonetheless, if we are being intellectually rigorous, we encounter certain theoretical problems. One of these is the conceptual quagmire conjured by trying to define masculinity and femininity. The whole point of the archaic, rigid gender binary was to make gender an object of science by reducing it purely to a matter of biology, clearly-defined and easily quantifiable; the problem, of course, is this model's utter failure to account for gender as the characteristic of the ego (or, indeed, to account for the ego itself as separable from a body). However, in a world where someone can resleeve into any morph desired, where people may choose to change genders with their morphs (or not), can the notion of performativity really provide the answers to what masculinity and femininity are? Are masculinity and femininity merely outdated concepts to be cast away (perhaps at some point in the future)? Can it answer what gender is? The short answer is that the notion of performativity is simply inadequate; things start getting complex addressing the nuts and bolts. Performativity, as a notion, relies on a certain presupposition: gender is what you are [i]because[/i] it is what you do (when you speak, you do it as a person of your chosen gender; when you exist, likewise; etc). The conservative, biological essentialist counter to this is that, in this formulation, gender is purely subjective. This, however, is precisely the point of performativity: gender is something that is constituted spontaneously, subjectively, and discursively; gender by definition defies objectivity - this, of course, has strong mutualist and autonomist appeal. What, then, is the problem with performativity? How is it inadequate? Let's take as our point of departure a classic chicken/egg paradox: according to performativity, gender is what we are because of what we do, but what if gender is what we do because of what we do? It is here that performativity fails: it can't answer the question of [i]why[/i], in the first place, a given person performatively does actions which solidify their identity with a particular gender. At the same time, however, neither does a regression to a neo biological essentialism answer the question, such as "it's in the code" - sure, gender manifests in the programmed code of the ego, but again, from whence this code (does gender cause the code, or vice versa)? The present discourse is a back-and-forth, one side (chicken) vs the other (egg). Moving the discourse forward requires something different - and transhumanity is certainly further forward than the present discourse. What if gender is neither an object (meaning one or a set of physical objects, but also one or a set of conceptual characteristics), as the biological essentialists say, nor a process (an event or act), as the postmodernists believe? What else could it be? A [i]place[/i]; a structure. This is a notion has its roots in physics theory and the emergence of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century (not that it [i]began[/i] there). Take the example of Einstein's shift from special to general relativity: first, the density of matter was thought to have curved space, which is primordially "flat" or symmetrical; Einstein then, however, enacted a brilliant dialectal reversal in discerning that space is in fact primordially curved. Matter doesn't cause the curvature of space; rather, matter directly [i]is[/i] the curvature of space. Before comparing this example to the chicken/egg problem above, we should be cautious: Einstein's problematic is not a simple reversal. It isn't just taking chicken or egg as our starting point and shifting to the opposite one. Rather, Einstein redefined the entire framework of the problematic - note the subtle but [i]crucial[/i] distinction: it wasn't a shift from "matter causes the curvature of space" to "the curvature of space causes matter", but rather to "matter [b]is[/b] the curvature of space". It is only the last formulation that breaks out of the chicken/egg paradox and allows a glimpse at the underlying structure of reality, embodied in Einstein's formula of general relativity. How does this relate to gender? It shows us what to look for: a formula which defines a structure, a place. A useful metaphor is a camera lense or a hole in a wall - the structure of the lense/hole defines the view of what it looks at; it determines the limits of what is visible. The way our sight is [i]articulated[/i] through the lens or hole is [i]structured[/i] by the structure of the lens or hole. The theory of general relativity describes the [i]structure underlying the articulation of the universe[/i]. What we are looking for with regard to particular genders is a similar structure, a structure which regulates and defines human (and transhuman) beings. From this perspective, gender is neither a thing (in the sense of an object like the human body or the traits or characteristics of the human body and mind) nor a human act, precisely because it is that which structures all things human - just as gravity is neither an "object" within reality nor merely a property of a thing it influences, but a force empirically observable through its effects [i]upon[/i] reality. Only the notion of gender as a [i]structure[/i] can fully explain its all-pervasive presence and importance to the human psyche. The first question that arises, to my mind, is how this highly abstract, purely virtual notion of gender relates to biology, and the answer is that there is a non-relationship - not the absence of any relationship whatsoever, but a flawed, failed, incomplete one. What this means is that with the advent of sentience there is a gulf between the body and the mind that can never be bridged (without the removal of sentience). This is illustrated throughout all human history: we have to [i]give in[/i] or [i]succumb to[/i] base instincts; for animals, there is no border between the animal and the instinct, it's all one package. It is for this reason that for most of human history, gender has simply been a mimicry of the sex dimorphic binary - even in these primitive times, we were more than our bodies, even as we clung to them in our efforts to understand ourselves. Only late into the 20th century did alternate models start appearing in popular consciousness (not without precedent from less well-known history). The urge to cling to the biological binary is a desperation to cling to a kind of certainty we, as sentient beings, never had. Our identities have always been tenuous and fleeting, supported only by ourselves and our creations, our cultures; some of us grasp desperately at things we can use as "objective" support for our egos, something that explains everything and grants unto us the assurance of stability. This is precisely the function of adherence to the rigid sex binary, the axiom of bioconservatism: freedom sacrificed for a feverish adherence to some form of animalism, an attempt to gain stability and reprieve from the onus of freedom. The great irony, of course, is that the fact that it takes a [i]cultural norm[/i] to adhere to a notion of "biology" (itself manufactured by that same norm) is the clearest possible proof that bioconservatism is a grandiose self-deception, a self-defeating delusion - full immersion in biology and instinct is possible only for animals. The non-relationship I mentioned, then, is in plain wording the simple fact that "sex" in purely biological terms and "sex" in the articulation of human subjectivity are irreducible to each other, while at the same time inextricably linked. Eye-rolling stoner-talk is helpful as an example here: even in dense solid matter, there are minute "empty" spaces between electrons and so on. So too for the purely biological aspect of sex and sex as it pertains to sentients: no matter how much we might push them together, their difference persists, yet at the same time they are held together in close proximity. Having said all of this, I can finally get to the point: what this means for transhumanity. Gender isn't just a set of cultural practices. It's not just biology; it's not just what you do; not just how you identify. It's the structure of the mechanism by which all of these are articulated, how they unfold; part of the structure that one's consciousness occupies, that determines how personality develops and grows, that determines how the experience of biological features is coped/dealt with. Because of this gender is eternal for humanity. Even transhumanity. Gender [i]must[/i] be defined: it can be null, vague, changing, chaotic, an open question, but it can't be undefined; it is constituitive of human sentience. Gender will persist as long anything human persists. Further, masculinity and femininity may fade away, but if they do it won't be because they are outmoded cultural norms - they are more than that; the basis from which all the epochs of human cultural norms proceeded. And finally, sex dimorphism is unlikely to die out. The present iteration of male/female may, but there are other configurations possible as well. And in our time, there are philosophies which discern the notion of a binary as the enabling condition of multiplicity - a multiplicity of possible genders does not preclude a sex and/or gender binary. One of my favorite examples today is the binary split between cis people, who choose to model their identity based on the presence of anatomical features they were born with, and transgender people, who do not. Another example: those (cisgender and transgender) who identify as men or women and those who do not (nonbinary).

Tue, 2015-07-14 16:44

#12

jKaiser

Ignoring the much-discussed

Ignoring the much-discussed sociological factors for now, I'm going to poke at the purely pragmatic, physical concerns, then touch on it a bit from my angle as an artist. First, let's establish a baseline by which to physically diverge from in terms of sexual build. I imagine most splicers being fairly similar in build, which probably hedges closer to an androgynous frame than a modern-day aggregate of body types would. Them being the most common morph out there, there's going to be a ton of variability, but given the broadly spacefaring nature of transhumanity, being slightly smaller and more compact has a lot of advantages (see also the justification for the neotenic, which despite the stereotype does not have to look at all childlike except in broad size). A massive, muscular frame (i.e. typically masculine features) has greater caloric needs and takes up more space, and on many habitats that may be simply undesirable since it means needing more meals and thus stretching your food credit a bit further and thus a few more meals out of the cheaper makers. Particularly in microgravity habitats it makes the place feel more claustrophobic and clumsy. A compact, lithe body may end up being a matter of sheer convenience and comfort, and it's only a few sessions with a nanovat away in most places. There are also admittedly more trivial advantages to a fairly size-uniform population, though the advent of smartmaterials meets that one halfway. And as the write-up in the Bruiser in the MRG notes, being that big is just a hassle in most places, as anyone in reality who is taller than average can attest. Looking at the other common morphs, baseline bouncers are probably more physically feminine regardless of genitals, as would any morph with the prehensile feet and accompanying hip restructuring for added control and flexibility (Presumably they're made wider, though I'm not sure what other physical restructuring would be done). Microgravity-adapted morphs are more likely to emphasize dexterity and mobility over strength, and again in many microgravity habitats and ships, it's cramped and close-in (I know Locus has big open areas, but owing to the nature of how microgravity movement works, it's better design sense to never build things too open unless you're expecting everyone to carry a gas jet system or otherwise bring along some reaction mass in case they misjudge a leap). So again, being on the smaller side is a practical advantage here. This is again reinforced by the existence and relative commonness of the neotenic among spacefarers. On maturely-developed planets and moons, however, the spatial needs are generally less strict. The Hazer is noted as being taller than a splicer, so for anywhere that physical height is an advantage, (i.e. an open and significantly gravitied location), people will be taller as a matter of course. I assume this is why the remade is fixed to be taller and more slender, too. [I would like to point out that having the dvergr be shorter makes sense, but being [em]stouter[/em] doesn't. I know the dwarf stereotype, but having more biomass in more gravity means even more strain on the heart. They should be optimized for endurance and stamina and thus leaner, not strength] It bears emphasizing that Titan -- and any other significant source of new bodies -- is in a unique position to custom-build its population, and the enormous need/demand for bodies -- and sheer amount of providers -- means that a lot of morph developers are going to be looking to present the most versatile meatframes possible. This is, for all intents and purposes, a largely artificial population with a view of bodies as tools, so the most cost effective and proven size and shape, regardless of physical sex, will be dominant. See also automotive manufacturers and the general dominance of middle-of-the-road vehicles. This is based on the assumption that changing soft parts, such as breasts, genitals, and the like, is vastly easier than altering bone structure. If nothing else, it's going to be much faster, which is a fair justification. With the body as clay, people will alter their morphs to suit themselves and their desires for expression or practicality. (And now I'm wondering how common the sex switch implant is in various parts of the system, and if [em]it[/em] alters the skeletal structure, if it allows for fertility, etc.). And there are so many other ways to drastically alter the body with biosculpting, etc. now that one's physical sex really comes down to just being another...shall we say, practical-aesthetic. All that said, as someone who makes a living partially off drawing people, I'm going to poke a hole in my rambling notes up there, as there is no way in hell we're doing away with physical sex purely because something is more practical. Physical beauty is wildly subjective and intensely tied up with our reproductive urges, and those aren't going anywhere. And I think that while in a lot of ways transhumanity is more uniform and less sexually dimorphic (overall height is less, body mass is leaner and slighter), limitation is the mother of creativity, and transhumanity have a lot of tools to play with their physicality now. Speaking strictly physically, I think the language of sexual display is going to be [em]immensely[/em] more complex and more visible than it is in our day, and in ways that we might not recognize. In the art world, for instance, there is a tremendously complex and developed language for masculine and feminine beauty due to the differences in the typified male and female bodies. Just from my experience with life drawing, a male and female body in the same pose can say very different things. Take the field of erotic art, for the elephant in the room. The erect penis is both pretty unambiguous and often seen as obscene due to its obviousness (and other reasons, but that's another topic), and thus throughout a lot of the western art tradition, male eroticism was downplayed or only alluded to; on the other hand, female subjects were and are drawn in comparatively glaringly blatant displays of sexual arousal, and I mean that in terms of pose -- the canted hip, erect nipples, tilted head-- but also things like blushing, flushed lips, wider eyes -- yes, pretty much the whole makeup industry is built around sexual arousal because of the connection to that with attractiveness. (Side note: this is fairly exclusively the stereotypical domain of women now, but a quick survey of a lot of western art will show plenty of male portraits showing off the same features. And while the female body has been artistically more allowed in the nude for purposes of eroticism, while I said earlier that the male arousal is usually downplayed...codpieces. Just codpieces. It's a very weird cognitive dissonance throughout western art, and that's why I wrote my thesis partially on it) As someone who paints erotica and has a real love of body beauty, it's been a challenge to figure out modern ways to display male eroticism in the same way as female because by now, after centuries of prudishness toward the more obscene male, the visual language of the female body seems vastly more developed and accepted. By the point of EP, they'll have had time to develop that same language for not just the typically male and female bodies, but many of those between and outside. And now there are nonhuman sexes to consider, so bottom line, I think sexual dimorphism will still be very, very much a thing, just working from different places and in different ways.

Tue, 2015-07-14 16:54

#13

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

I pretty much agree with

I pretty much agree with Jkaiser on all points. I'd add that there's probably a significant class dimension to sexual dimorphism, as the clanking masses are going to be a lot more uniform than biomorph sleeved transhumans. This probably means that clanker sexuality has slowly been drifting apart from biological norms for at least the past decade, and is probably complex enough to be its own field of study by AF 10.

Tue, 2015-07-14 17:57

#14

UnitOmega

Well, if we're talking about

Well, if we're talking about the visual medium, there's at least one more element to add to this discussion - which even applies to synths, the ubiquity of AR technology and AR skinning. Almost everyone engages in some form of AR and both picks or allows in AR "skins" from the world around them. So maybe if you're in a slim, elfin, perhaps feminine bouncer, but you want to appear like an ultramacho body-builder type you can pick to project that skin over yourself. Or maybe your personal identification and presentation is highly feminine, but you're stuck in a dull neuter or male splicer (say like for a business trip or something) - you can instantly project a skin of your chosen appearance without having to say, drop down for like 24 hours in the healing vat for a complete restructure (Which, BTW, I would say Sex Switch probably does do a very heavy conversion possibly including internal organs and at least skeletal adjustments - while it is bioware it takes a week to complete the conversion, while a Healing vat accomplishes the same in 24 hours or so). Now, obviously, this isn't perfect. Anybody can just filter out your AR and see you in true-life, or just slap their own skin over you. Certain sensor types will just ignore the AR because even with the integration of Mesh inserts, AR probably can't filter over a T-ray sweep or a LIDAR pulse (otherwise why are you using them?). This is why bodysculpting is still important, and I'm sure there are dedicated Socialites who shun AR skinning as it is temporary and illusory, but if you have a certain fashion, identity or presentation to maintain, the AR skin is a quick fix. And this is relevant to synths, because while your Case may be a cheap, cold, plastic shell which probably has shitty tactile feedback and looks like it's made out of the same plastics consumer electronics are wrapped in, you're one short AR skin away from looking like a sexy supermodel or a dashing athlete or whatever you prefer.

—

H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/

Tue, 2015-07-14 18:16

#15

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

Ooo! Unique specialties of

Ooo! Unique specialties of Eclipse Phase academics, like "Clanking Masses sexuality" sounds neat. Makes the world seem more lifelike/real.

—

Exhuman, and Humanitarian.

Tue, 2015-07-14 18:48

#16

jKaiser

What's probably really

What's probably [em]really[/em] interesting is when the clanking masses log into open-form simulspaces. No one expresses themselves "physically" than someone stuck in a cookiecutter plasteel frame that they probably can't even modify without breaching contract or having the arm fall off. Again.

Thu, 2015-07-16 09:14

#17

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

All Teh Words

self-relating negativity wrote:
Not quite true. Think in a more transhuman mindset: exercise as we know it know is largely pointless, at least at first glance. It remains, however; merely changed. ... Human necessities remain transhuman necessities - often reduced to automatic processes and, as such, mere formalities rather than critical needs around which one's life revolves; but for all that they are necessities nonetheless. ... The same logic applies: muscle mass, fitness level, and even skill and coordination can all be easily programmed, but [i]the ability to adapt and effectively utilize such features[/i] can't be programmed and must be learned through exercise (or more precisely, it [i]can[/i] be programmed to a certain degree, and at much higher cost, but again we encounter the issue: the user of such programming requires the practice and experience than can be learned only through exercise).

This is only true to a limited extent, because the ability to "program" those abilities is a prerequisite of resleeving – otherwise the Morph would define the integration roll, not the Ego. When considering physical abilities, we can break them down into 3 categories. Firstly, there is basic kinesthetics/autonomic abilities required to use a morph, such as how to use the organs and limbs. Because these are morph specific, they can be hardwired in to the morphs neurology and don't need to be transferred when ego-casting; Sleeve into a fury or octomorph, and you can use the limbs with a set level of competence without any "exercise", because without them you'd be effectively paralyzed. Secondly, you have "Skills", such as Boxing or Tai Chi. These "may" require exercise, but only in the form of learning and maintaining that skill – they are not "necessities" per se. Finally, you have Somatics, which would be the ability to adapt/absorb physical skills and abilities. I suspect this is what you are primarily talking about, but Somatics is programmable – it is a function of the ego in the same way as any skill or trait. More importantly, there's no need to adapt to changes in Somatics and you don't need to "exercise" to improve it – it isn't a physical ability but a personality trait reflecting the ego's relationship to the body – improving Somatics "normally" would more likely involve meditation and lessons on philosophy than exercise; "Close your eyes and center yourself. Raise your fist in front of your face. Open your hand. What part of you has moved? Your hand or the muscles in your arm... but these are temporary and transient. Your hand and arm are no more yours than the air in your lungs. Breath Deeply. Where did the motion come from? Where did the command originate, and what path did it travel? Where does the desire for motion transform into motion itself?"

self-relating negativity wrote:
Furthermore, the human evolutionary code makes extensive use of exercise in various bio-processes, especially those related to emotional state, physical adaptation, and extra-especially healing.

There is no reason for this to remain true, and in some cases may be explicitly harmful: long-term survival in microgravity requires direct alteration/excision of adaptive elements, as they are (partially) the source of the muscle/bone atrophy and coronary problems microgravity entails. Similarly, there's no reason to link healing ability to physical exertion when it can be triggered in response to injury instead. This is why exercise isn't necessary – all the benefits and functions it performs are either obsolete or can be achieved more effectively through other means.

self-relating negativity wrote:
Certain aspects of gender remain unchanged for transhumanity. This in no way translates to the conclusion that human and transhuman experiences of sex and gender relatable or anything at all like each other. ... In [i]Eclipse Phase[/i], transhumans take for given what is for us today an earth-shattering, radical theory: that gender has no intrinsic basis in biology. The truth of this theory is visible today from a certain perspective; a perspective which is hazed and occluded by flawed, rigid thinking rooted in the past. ... Today, there are two predominant conceptualizations of gender (speaking in incredibly broad, oversimplified generalizations), which can be described as the old and the new. The old is biological essentialism: the mind is 100% reducible to the body; they are the same, and it is only false appearance that causes the misperception that there is truly a difference. The new is the currently-in-vogue postmodernist fad, for which one Judith Butler has given the ultimate formulation: gender is "performative"; it is what you "are" precisely and only to the point that it is what you "do"; in other words, regardless of what society thinks of your identity and your biology, what you are in terms of gender is determined wholly by your own free acts of identification (and as such is potentially subject to change). ... Are masculinity and femininity merely outdated concepts to be cast away (perhaps at some point in the future)? Can it answer what gender is? ... Having said all of this, I can finally get to the point: what this means for transhumanity. Gender isn't just a set of cultural practices. It's not just biology; it's not just what you do; not just how you identify. It's the structure of the mechanism by which all of these are articulated, how they unfold; part of the structure that one's consciousness occupies, that determines how personality develops and grows, that determines how the experience of biological features is coped/dealt with. Because of this gender is eternal for humanity. Even transhumanity. Gender [i]must[/i] be defined: it can be null, vague, changing, chaotic, an open question, but it can't be undefined; it is constituitive of human sentience. Gender will persist as long anything human persists. Further, masculinity and femininity may fade away, but if they do it won't be because they are outmoded cultural norms - they are more than that; the basis from which all the epochs of human cultural norms proceeded.

I disagree again, but before I get into why I just want to say you make a lots of interesting points here, and it's definitely thought provoking. :) In my opinion the question of what Gender is... is a null question. Gender isn't. Consider for a moment what gender “does”. First, we have to remove anything to do with biology – gender has nothing to do with physical sex or appearance, and any behaviors that are linked to biology or hormone balance. Secondly, gender has nothing to do with sexual or romantic orientation. Now we strip away cultural mores – the idea that men and women should or should not perform specific acts or display certain behaviors. So what's left? As far as I can tell, nothing. The closest thing to an actual gender trait I've ever managed to determine is that individuals who identify as female “appear” to be more effected by the opinions of their social group than males. That's it. Yes, there are “attacks” on ones masculinity or femininity, but they almost always center around social behavior – a man isn't Masculine if he doesn't assume a dominant role in his relationships, or doesn't engage in “manly” activities. The heart of the matter is that once you get rid of gender prejudice and fixed physical sex, then Gender itself is utterly unimportant. It just doesn't matter. The “all-pervasive presence and importance to the human psyche”... it all comes from prejudice – a label only ever used to inflict suffering. A simple experiment should help demonstrate my point; Pick an internet forum or chatroom (this one is fine), then engage with the fellow members. The questions are this; can you tell which members are of a given gender without them telling you? More importantly, do you care?

jKaiser wrote:
In the art world, for instance, there is a tremendously complex and developed language for masculine and feminine beauty due to the differences in the typified male and female bodies. Just from my experience with life drawing, a male and female body in the same pose can say very different things.

Do you have any good resources or practical examples of this? It's a fascinating subject. If I might key this into what I was saying above; I've often marveled that whilst the formats and standards of erotica for given genders is vastly different, the underlying message they communicate is fundamentally identical – the presentation of an individual who desires the audience, communicated via body-positioning in for male audiences (serpentine spines, tilted hips...) and through acts for females (overcoming obstacles, passionate embracing...). Regardless of gender people tend to want the same things, it's just the language they're expressed in that's different.

—

In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Thu, 2015-07-16 10:06

#18

jKaiser

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:Do

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:
Do you have any good resources or practical examples of this? It's a fascinating subject.

I'm lazy and just copied my sources directly from my old thesis notes:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

Clark, Kenneth, [em]The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form[/em] di Stefano, Eva, [em]Gustav Klimt: Art Nouveau Visionary[/em], Sterling Publishing Compay, New York, 2006 Eslen, Albert, “Drawing and a New Sexual Intimacy: Rodin and Schiele” in [em]Egon Schiele: Art, Sexuality, and Vinnese Modernism[/em], edited by Patrick Werkner, The Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship, Palo Alto, 1994 Gay, Peter, [em]Moderinism: the Lure of Heresy, From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond[/em], W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 2008 Getsy, David J., [em]Rodin: Sex and the Making of Modern Sculpture[/em], Yale University Press, Singapore, 2010 Gill, Michael, [em]Image of the Body: Aspects of the Nude[/em], Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., New York, 1989 Haiko, Peter, “The ‘Obscene’ in Viennese Architecture of the Early Twentieth Century” in [em]Egon Schiele: Art, Sexuality, and Vinnese Modernism[/em], edited by Patrick Werkner, The Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship, Palo Alto, 1994 Hollander, Anne, [em]Seeing Through Clothes[/em], University of California Press, 1993 Leppart, Richard, [em]The Nude: Cultural Rhetoric of the body in the Art of Western Modernity[/em], Westview Press, Boulder Co., 2007 Machotka, Pavel, [em]The Nude: Perception and Personality[/em], Irvington Publishers, Inc., New York, 1979 ith, Alison, [em]Exposed: The Victorian Nude[/em], Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 2001 Lucie-Smith, Edward, [em]Censoring the Body[/em], Seagull Books, New York, 2007 If you're curious, my thesis was an exploration into the nature of and changes within the artist/model relationships pre- and post-Imperial downfall in Vienna circa 1900. Tricky subject to hit, since there's almost nothing written about the models themselves that are so crucial for the artists. It was the academic equivalent of painting the negative space and not the subject.

And few others from my shelf that I've collected since then:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

Lucie-Smith, Edward, [em]Sexuality in Western Europe[/em], Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 1973,1991 Waugh, Thomas, [em]Out/Lines:Underground Gay Graphics from Before Stonewall[/em], Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver, 2002 Hurd, Pippa, [em]Icons of Erotic Art[/em], Prestel Verlag, New York, Munich, Berlin, London, 2004 And less academic, but George Machado's [em]Masculine[/em] (Crown Publishers, Inc. New York, 1995) is a superb collection of male nudes that shows the kind of body language a muscular form lends itself to (often handed to the curious along with a hardcover collection of [em]Dreamboys[/em] for comparison between erotic art and softcore with male subjects). Genevieve Field's collection [em]Nerve/ the New Nude[/em] (Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco, 2000) is another, multi-artist collection of photographic art, which is where I've personally seen most of the envelope-pushing in the erotic art field. It's about the only place I've ever seen modern nudes taken with an ambrotype, for what that's worth (Robert Maxwell's work).

And in fairness to your other points, you hit the nail on the head in the artist wanting to say the same thing through different mediums/tools (bodies in this case), but the more I think about it, the more I find issue with both what I and you said. It's very difficult to put into words, since my "reasoning" is basically playing out different poses and such in my head. Best way I've thought to put it so far is that, like any physical activity, the goal may be the same but the pathway is dependent upon the exact physical nature of the body. There's a right way and a wrong way to throw a punch, for example, but every body has to take into account different physical variables. Even more so in art, where a muscle under tension on one body might cast a shadow that breaks a crucial line, which might not happen with another body but the second may be proportioned correctly to convey whatever je ne sais quoi the artist is going for.

Fri, 2015-07-17 12:42

#19

VorlonJoe

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:
In my opinion the question of what Gender is... is a null question. Gender isn't. Consider for a moment what gender “does”. First, we have to remove anything to do with biology – gender has nothing to do with physical sex or appearance, and [b]any behaviors that are linked to biology or hormone balance[/b].

Could you expand on what you meant here? It seems to me that gender and biology, especially hormones, are tightly linked.

Fri, 2015-07-17 13:38

#20

jKaiser

VorlonJoe wrote

VorlonJoe wrote:
ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:
In my opinion the question of what Gender is... is a null question. Gender isn't. Consider for a moment what gender “does”. First, we have to remove anything to do with biology – gender has nothing to do with physical sex or appearance, and [b]any behaviors that are linked to biology or hormone balance[/b].
Could you expand on what you meant here? It seems to me that gender and biology, especially hormones, are tightly linked.

Biological sex is how you're physically arranged, including genitals, hormones, and so on. Gender is an identity construct relative to social standards, often matching up with the biological sex but not necessarily, and varies tremendously with the society and era. For example of the difference, someone who is of indeterminate physical sex is referred to as intersex (not a hermaphrodite), while someone who identifies as indeterminate gender may identify as queer, genderfluid, or whatever. Note that sexuality, i.e. what you find attractive in other people, is separate from both, though the terms used to describe the various shades of biological sex and gender do tend to overlap a bit simply because it's a distinction that is still being given a proper language in the West, at least.

Fri, 2015-07-17 14:30

#21

VorlonJoe

jKaiser wrote:Biological sex

jKaiser wrote:
Biological sex is how you're physically arranged, including genitals, hormones, and so on. Gender is an identity construct relative to social standards . . .

Got it, I see where you're coming from semantically and understand what you're getting at.

Sat, 2015-07-18 06:19

#22

self-relating n... self-relating negativity's picture

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:This

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:
This is only true to a limited extent, because the ability to "program" those abilities is a prerequisite of resleeving – otherwise the Morph would define the integration roll, not the Ego. When considering physical abilities, we can break them down into 3 categories. Firstly, there is basic kinesthetics/autonomic abilities required to use a morph, such as how to use the organs and limbs. Because these are morph specific, they can be hardwired in to the morphs neurology and don't need to be transferred when ego-casting; Sleeve into a fury or octomorph, and you can use the limbs with a set level of competence without any "exercise", because without them you'd be effectively paralyzed. Secondly, you have "Skills", such as Boxing or Tai Chi. These "may" require exercise, but only in the form of learning and maintaining that skill – they are not "necessities" per se. Finally, you have Somatics, which would be the ability to adapt/absorb physical skills and abilities. I suspect this is what you are primarily talking about, but Somatics is programmable – it is a function of the ego in the same way as any skill or trait. More importantly, there's no need to adapt to changes in Somatics and you don't need to "exercise" to improve it – it isn't a physical ability but a personality trait reflecting the ego's relationship to the body – improving Somatics "normally" would more likely involve meditation and lessons on philosophy than exercise; "Close your eyes and center yourself. Raise your fist in front of your face. Open your hand. What part of you has moved? Your hand or the muscles in your arm... but these are temporary and transient. Your hand and arm are no more yours than the air in your lungs. Breath Deeply. Where did the motion come from? Where did the command originate, and what path did it travel? Where does the desire for motion transform into motion itself?"
self-relating negativity wrote:
Furthermore, the human evolutionary code makes extensive use of exercise in various bio-processes, especially those related to emotional state, physical adaptation, and extra-especially healing.
There is no reason for this to remain true, and in some cases may be explicitly harmful: long-term survival in microgravity requires direct alteration/excision of adaptive elements, as they are (partially) the source of the muscle/bone atrophy and coronary problems microgravity entails. Similarly, there's no reason to link healing ability to physical exertion when it can be triggered in response to injury instead. This is why exercise isn't necessary – all the benefits and functions it performs are either obsolete or can be achieved more effectively through other means.

My point is a standard hermeneutical-philosophical one. There is a minimum of activity - even if it's pure thought on a cyberbrain emulator, the flickering of some bits of electricity - that remains necessary in order to do the things exercise (as we know it today) does. Until this changes, what is thought of as "exercise" may be vastly different, it might be externalized, and it might be something so trivial that it's never thought of, but it will never be obsolete.

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:
I disagree again, but before I get into why I just want to say you make a lots of interesting points here, and it's definitely thought provoking. :) In my opinion the question of what Gender is... is a null question. Gender isn't. Consider for a moment what gender “does”. First, we have to remove anything to do with biology – gender has nothing to do with physical sex or appearance, and any behaviors that are linked to biology or hormone balance. Secondly, gender has nothing to do with sexual or romantic orientation. Now we strip away cultural mores – the idea that men and women should or should not perform specific acts or display certain behaviors. So what's left? As far as I can tell, nothing. The closest thing to an actual gender trait I've ever managed to determine is that individuals who identify as female “appear” to be more effected by the opinions of their social group than males. That's it. Yes, there are “attacks” on ones masculinity or femininity, but they almost always center around social behavior – a man isn't Masculine if he doesn't assume a dominant role in his relationships, or doesn't engage in “manly” activities. The heart of the matter is that once you get rid of gender prejudice and fixed physical sex, then Gender itself is utterly unimportant. It just doesn't matter. The “all-pervasive presence and importance to the human psyche”... it all comes from prejudice – a label only ever used to inflict suffering. A simple experiment should help demonstrate my point; Pick an internet forum or chatroom (this one is fine), then engage with the fellow members. The questions are this; can you tell which members are of a given gender without them telling you? More importantly, do you care?

We agree on what is for me the most important point: gender is nothing. The status of this "nothing" is critical, and it's from this seemingly innocuous point that all my scattered ramblings about gender proceed. There are a couple of approaches I take to explaining this. First, an abstract approach using a metaphor from physics. A given system always eventually assumes a state of lowest energy; the more mass we take away from a system, the lower its energy, until it reaches the vacuum state of zero energy. However, once the Higgs field appears within a given system that has reached its vacuum state, its lowest possible energy point, its energy will somehow decrease further. The Higgs field is a "something" which has [i]less energy than nothing[/i]. We might thus distinguish between a vacuum state and a vacuum state with the Higgs field active in the following way: the former is "false" vacuum, and the latter is "true" vacuum. What I am aiming at with regard to gender is that it's not a "nothing" in the sense of absolute zero (a false vacuum) - gender is [i]less than nothing[/i], a very different kind of "nothing" (true vacuum). The point here is that gender is not "nothing" in the sense of a peaceful void, a total zero in absolute repose; it's an active nothingness that bootstraps itself into something ex nihilo. In this precise sense, gender is a structuring absence. All of this abstraction explains why I called gender "eternal": gender is immortal in precise sense that it always survives its own negation (by negating itself again). As you said, when we strip all of the social trappings from gender, we get nothing - and it follows that this nothing is [i]necessarily the source of the aforementioned social articulations if gender[/i]. This nothing, therefore, is the [i]place[/i] from which the social experience of gender comes: a purely imaginary structure which regulates the articulation of gender. Gender is a queer thing which persists even in its own death - to those who have no gender or do not care about gender, it is [i]nonetheless crucial for their position regarding gender to be recognized[/i]. Gender is therefore nothing but the necessary presupposition upon which a self can form. So - gender is not only a label used to inflict suffering, and the solution to the suffering caused by gender is precisely [i]not[/i] to conclude that gender doesn't matter because it's ultimately nothing. It is [i]precisely because gender is nothing[/i] that makes it so overwhelmingly important, that sets in motion all the social stuff and prejudices pertaining to it. Consider the purpose of all the myriad social constructs of gender: to [i]make sense of it[/i], to systemize, explain, and ultimately to regulate it. Just like a disease is more than its systems, so too is gender more than the social constructs attempting to deal with it. And just like a disease, treating the symptoms can't be the end goal, because it leaves the underlying problem unadressed - the disease infected a system without such symptoms. Of course, gender is not a disease, because its status is purely imaginary, virtual. This is what I was getting at calling gender an imaginary structure, similar to a law of physics: it doesn't "exist" [i]in[/i] reality, it is the virtual law which can be deduced through the empirical effects it exerts in its function as the structure of reality; it is imaginary, virtual, but this does not make it any less [i]real[/i]. For transhumanity, gender only becomes more important - the limitation of only ever having one body has disappeared, and with it the ability to use one's body as an unimpeachable support for identity coherence.

Sat, 2015-07-18 13:19

#23

jKaiser

Quote:This is what I was

Quote:
This is what I was getting at calling gender an imaginary structure, similar to a law of physics: it doesn't "exist" in reality, it is the virtual law which can be deduced through the empirical effects it exerts in its function as the structure of reality; it is imaginary, virtual, but this does not make it any less real.

In other words, Gender is a symbol. It's something that doesn't physically exist but still has definite meaning, like numbers and language, based on physical constraints and the other semiotic context around it. In particular, it's a core component of the symbol of identity, which is second only to survival for reasons humans do things. See also the us-vs-them mentality that causes most wars, or the need for expression of the self that leads to art. Admittedly, we're diverging a bit from discussing the physical variations between morphs based on strict genetics (or genetic analogues, such as android/gynoid frames), which may or may not reflect the ego within.

Tue, 2015-07-21 10:04

#24

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Read all the Books!

jKaiser wrote:
I'm lazy and just copied my sources directly from my old thesis notes: ... And few others from my shelf that I've collected since then: ... If you're curious, my thesis was an exploration into the nature of and changes within the artist/model relationships pre- and post-Imperial downfall in Vienna circa 1900. Tricky subject to hit, since there's almost nothing written about the models themselves that are so crucial for the artists. It was the academic equivalent of painting the negative space and not the subject.

Well that's... significantly more than I was expecting. More titles to go on The List :D Your thesis sounds fascinating, though I suspect it would go so far over my head that it would suffer explosive decompression :P

jKaiser wrote:
It's very difficult to put into words, since my "reasoning" is basically playing out different poses and such in my head. Best way I've thought to put it so far is that, like any physical activity, the goal may be the same but the pathway is dependent upon the exact physical nature of the body. There's a right way and a wrong way to throw a punch, for example, but every body has to take into account different physical variables. Even more so in art, where a muscle under tension on one body might cast a shadow that breaks a crucial line, which might not happen with another body but the second may be proportioned correctly to convey whatever je ne sais quoi the artist is going for.

I'm not entirely sure I understand – are you talking about physical differences or Kinesics? If the first, I agree that the aesthetic appeal of a given pose is going to be dependent on the specifics of the figure – that seems inevitable regardless of subject matter – but for a given morph that's going to be largely an aesthetic difference rather than one of performance, such as having different angles on muscle-forms and body fat distributions whilst the attachment points and volumes remain (near) constant. If it's the second I meant more that whilst all humans share a universal baseline for bodylanguage (smiling, laughter...) any given cultural grouping will have it's own "dialect". When applied along national lines or to different periods of history this seems a no-brainer, but it as far as I can tell the concept is rarely applied to other groupings, in this case gender. [quote=self-relating negativity]My point is a standard hermeneutical-philosophical one. There is a minimum of activity - even if it's pure thought on a cyberbrain emulator, the flickering of some bits of electricity - that remains necessary in order to do the things exercise (as we know it today) does. Until this changes, what is thought of as "exercise" may be vastly different, it might be externalized, and it might be something so trivial that it's never thought of, but it will never be obsolete. Ahhh... I think I see where you're coming from – I'd just never refer to that level of activity as exercise, simply as it's indistinguishable from “normal” activity. I also concede the existence of gender as a conceptual entity as opposed to a psychological one; one must understand the concept of gender to declare it's absence.

—

In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Tue, 2015-07-21 20:40

#25

Gerzel

Of course you probably could

Of course you probably could get a lot of mileage by using the difference between your ar skin and morphology. One example would be wearing a highly feminine morph but using a masculine ar skin as an artistic expression.

Wed, 2015-07-22 10:22

#26

jKaiser

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:
I'm not entirely sure I understand – are you talking about physical differences or Kinesics? If the first, I agree that the aesthetic appeal of a given pose is going to be dependent on the specifics of the figure – that seems inevitable regardless of subject matter – but for a given morph that's going to be largely an aesthetic difference rather than one of performance, such as having different angles on muscle-forms and body fat distributions whilst the attachment points and volumes remain (near) constant. If it's the second I meant more that whilst all humans share a universal baseline for bodylanguage (smiling, laughter...) any given cultural grouping will have it's own "dialect". When applied along national lines or to different periods of history this seems a no-brainer, but it as far as I can tell the concept is rarely applied to other groupings, in this case gender.

I guess Kinesics filtered through physical differences. This is getting to a very fine point of detail in the setting, but if I'm an artist trying to make it in, just for fun, the body-obsessed Neptunian art houses, the choice of which morph I choose to capture in my work makes a big difference. A fury will preset a different message than a sylph or a bouncer, and not just because they physically look different but because those bodies have different meaning attached to them in the setting's context. Even if all three are female, brunette, and roughly the same size, if we're talking next gen photography or similar, or just really well-done painting, it's very likely people will recognize the morph type just as I can recognize whether a model is a dancer, a gymnast, or a different type of athelete by his or her build. But I digress; the second choice is who or what would be in the body I ultimately choose, and that's not an easy answer. Do you sleeve a generic PoseMe AI into the body? Well, that first requires having a body to put it into, which out in Neptune or in many, many other places is a significant cost. And with Kinesics being so advanced now that people can change their bodies and need other ways to recognize themselves, even the best AI drone may come across as stiff or fake. But the same person will wear three different morphs differently, and three different people will wear the same morph very differently, and everyone brings a different set of skills and emotions to the easel. Right now, I could call up my models for a session, and each one of them (one's a gymnast/dancer with a thoughtful streak, one's a playful party girl who swims, and one's a guy with an easy going nature and blend of sticklike and well-muscled...the lucky bastard) would both mentally interpret a concept to pose for differently, and be able to do so differently. And part of that is sexual dimorphism, if only in the simplest fact that having some organs external or developed affects how the limbs can actually go. To put this a bit more humorously...there's a reason the uneven bars are a female-only sport. This is getting more into body dynamics as an individual expression than sexual dimorphism, but now that I think about it, someone born female in a female morph may indeed move and otherwise have telltale hints if she sleeves into a male morph or synthmorph that "this is someone in a different sex than they're used to." In morphs that aren't tailored toward being "androgyne except for...", the differences in male and female are significant enough that I doubt the adjustment period for a new morph is time enough to smoothly wear the thing. It takes time to acclimate to physical changes that affect everyday life, as anyone who's stubbed a toe or broken a leg can attest. It's interconnected, is what I'm saying, though I'm having trouble phrasing my thoughts in the right way. Though getting back to the original topic, I started doing some research into body dimorphism and looked in other games for how they handle things like shapeshifting, etc. Two resources I found that might be interesting, one is a lineup of olympic atheletes showing differences in body type and physique between sports. Right Here. The other was an excerpt from [em]Mage: the Awakening[/em], specifically dealing with one of the sub-orders based off some Indian traditions and in-universe beliefs roughly summed up as "we are divided and must be made whole to ascend." Which for our purposes here means that they see divisions, like sexual ones, as an impediment, and thus use magic to cultivate a hermaphroditic or androgynous body,The whole thing is here, but the most relevant passage that got me thinking about how much one's physical sex actually does factor into things beyond simple skeletal structure and organs and into nuances of recognition, voice, etc. is this:

Quote:
A Daksha awakens from the second initiatory trance as a hermaphrodite, gaining the primary sexual characteristics of both genders. [b]A male Daksha becomes shorter and slimmer, with a higher voice and a more delicate neck and jaw line.[/b] His Adam's apple shrinks, and he gains small breasts. His genitalia move slightly, and he gains a vagina and womb underneath his testes. A female Daksha experiences analogous but opposite changes. With some concentration, the Daksha can temporarily become either sex more completely, with an effect similar to the Life 3 spell, Transform Self. [b]This is sometimes useful in that all three forms the Daksha can take -- male, female, and hermaphrodite -- look distinctly different.[/b] The gendered forms don't just look like the other forms in drag. A casual observer, particularly a Sleeper, might notice the resemblance between a Daksha's male form, female form and hermaphrodite form (perhaps thinking, "Hey, she could be the sister of that guy I met this morning") -- but few people would immediately think the three forms are the same person. (The Storyteller might call for a Wits + Composure roll for a character to notice the similarity between forms, but only an exceptional success would let someone suspect that two forms are the same person -- and a Sleeper probably Disbelieves at once. If a player suspects that male and female characters are the same gender-switching person, however, the Storyteller should not insist the character would not think such a thing.)

(Emphasis mine) For reference for those not familiar with the Storyteller game system, an exceptional success means that five or more dice need to roll an 8, 9, or 10 in one roll. So that's a difficult proposition. Granted, in EP such would be easier. I question how cheap and easy nanovatting really is when put in context of having a life to live, job, and deal with the logical logistics such a change would bring, but just the fact that it's an established tech and part of life would make it easier to expect someone would change drastically. All of this is just reinforcing my beliefs that the majority of splicers, at least, are generally built to be fairly androgynous compared to a flat, designed, as one might say, with after market upgrades and modifications in mind, as well as thought toward making adaptation to those changes easier on the user.

Wed, 2015-07-22 14:13

#27

Gerzel

Would you have a few books

Would you have a few books you'd recommend for an interested lay person on the history or impact of erotica?

Wed, 2015-07-22 15:22

#28

jKaiser

Sure. Pippa Hurd's Icons of

Sure. Pippa Hurd's [em]Icons of Erotica[/em] (ISBN 3-7913-3165-5) is a good who's who and gives a quick overview of subjects and themes. It's tricky to name one that really traces the impact of erotica explicitly, or if one exists I'd be very interested, but there's a definite reluctance to ascribe to erotic art what credit it's really due...and what's erotic and what's pornographic and what's "fine art" is entirely subjective and blurred, so there's that too. But Hurd's a good springboard. It's been a while since I've re-read a lot of that list, so I'll use that as an excuse to do so once I have a bit of free time.

Thu, 2015-07-23 06:40

#29

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Philosophy meets design.

jKaiser wrote:
To put this a bit more humorously...there's a reason the uneven bars are a female-only sport. … All of this is just reinforcing my beliefs that the majority of splicers, at least, are generally built to be fairly androgynous compared to a flat, designed, as one might say, with after market upgrades and modifications in mind, as well as thought toward making adaptation to those changes easier on the user.

It's the future! One day men too will be able to use the uneven bars! :P I think I understand what you're getting at – the main difference being that I think a good chunk of what would count as observable differences would get replaced as part of the resleeving process. The quote about the Daksha is interesting, but I feel that changing physical gender for a given morph is significantly more aesthetic than functional. If you looked “under the hood” on a male/female version of the same morph, I expect that the major structural elements like skeletal structure and organ capacity will be largely identical, combining the sexual attributes of both sexes to form the most “ideal” for the morph's purpose, with gender-specific elements being “faked” with bodyfat or cartilage deposits; a “male” morph may have “female” hipbones and internal testes, with the “visible” versions being simple lumps of non-functional tissue. For the most advanced morphs at least, I imagine they're all genetically hermaphroditic, with gender-specific elements being suppressed/concealed as necessary.

—

In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Sun, 2015-07-26 01:35

#30

self-relating n... self-relating negativity's picture

jKaiser wrote:
Quote:
This is what I was getting at calling gender an imaginary structure, similar to a law of physics: it doesn't "exist" in reality, it is the virtual law which can be deduced through the empirical effects it exerts in its function as the structure of reality; it is imaginary, virtual, but this does not make it any less real.
In other words, Gender is a symbol. It's something that doesn't physically exist but still has definite meaning, like numbers and language, based on physical constraints and the other semiotic context around it. In particular, it's a core component of the symbol of identity, which is second only to survival for reasons humans do things. See also the us-vs-them mentality that causes most wars, or the need for expression of the self that leads to art. Admittedly, we're diverging a bit from discussing the physical variations between morphs based on strict genetics (or genetic analogues, such as android/gynoid frames), which may or may not reflect the ego within.

Gender [i]identity[/i] is a symbol (or a "symbolic fiction", to use psychoanalytic jargon). This is distinct from gender itself. Identity is the province of the ego. Gender itself is an imaginary structure which must be presupposed in order to account for gender identity - much like how the Higgs field has purely "imaginary mass", thereby avoiding violation of causality, and is is no less [i]real[/i], exerts no less material influence, for being "imaginary". Sapience is a good metaphor here - a sapient entity's identity can be thought of as a way to achieve the modicum of stability and coherence necessary for sanity. By itself, sapience does not [i]mean[/i] anything at all; it provides a structure in the form of meaninglessness and chaos which can be filled with symbolic content, allowing for the possibility of meaning: identity. This is confirmed by the diversity of identity: you can be a rock star, a serial murderer, a soccer mom (and in EP, a singularity seeker, a mercurial AGI, etc). Sapience does not necessarily entail any of these, it merely entails identity [i]as such[/i], with the precise form of identity open to question. Likewise, gender does not entail any [i]particular[/i] identity, only gender identity as such, void of content and nebulous in form; determinate identity is a way of bringing coherence and stability, definition, to this form by generating tangible content. All of this is crucial background when speaking of sexual dimorphism because it's so often conflated with sex and gender. The topic is a veritable mire, especially when we try to pinpoint the distinctions and relations between them, as you noted in your subsequent post:

jKaiser wrote:
This is getting more into body dynamics as an individual expression than sexual dimorphism, but now that I think about it, someone born female in a female morph may indeed move and otherwise have telltale hints if she sleeves into a male morph or synthmorph that "this is someone in a different sex than they're used to." In morphs that aren't tailored toward being "androgyne except for...", the differences in male and female are significant enough that I doubt the adjustment period for a new morph is time enough to smoothly wear the thing. It takes time to acclimate to physical changes that affect everyday life, as anyone who's stubbed a toe or broken a leg can attest. It's interconnected, is what I'm saying, though I'm having trouble phrasing my thoughts in the right way.

Ultimately, the precise point from which all confusion proceeds is the conflation of epistemology and ontology. How can we reconcile, on the one hand, the assertion that gender identity is distinct from biology, while on the other hand, the indisputable fact that anatomical features influences psychology (behavior) in a variety of ways? (spoiler for length. worth reading if you like theory that doesn't balk at the absurd or gender theory that doesn't rely on postmodernism.)

Spoiler: Highlight to view

There are two options: one of the two is subordinate to the other. In contemporary discourse, as I noted in my first post ITT, the postmodernists view the former as the dominant factor because cultural influence defines how physiology affects consciousness (chicken), while the biological essentialists argue that the cultural horizon itself is ultimately at least partially defined by the biological capabilities of its members (egg). Following the chicken/egg circle always involves putting the cart before the horse - missing something important in the premise. What's missing is the third option: there is no reconciliation. Hence my proposed term, "non-relationship". What I'm aiming at with "non-relationship" is a logic strictly homologous with "undead". Non-relationship does not mean "not a relationship" - in exactly the same way that undead does not mean "not alive". The key point is that the undead are a contradiction born of the coincidence of opposites: belonging to two mutually-exclusive categories, thereby constituting a third, monstrous category. The non-relationship is precisely such a paradox: both a relationship and not a relationship. In other words, it is a failed relationship, the remnant of a contradiction that did not cancel itself out and disappear - a relationship that is both inevitable and impossible. For practical examples, consider my above formulations of sapience and gender - no individual or group fully embodies "sapience" or "gender" itself. In these examples, therefore, there is a [i]non-relationship[/i] between the identity and its structural presupposition. The vast multitude of possible gender and sapient identities is only possible because "gender" and "sapience" are themselves impossible to fully realize. Precisely because the thing itself, whether sapience or gender, (to get all Kantian) is impossible to realize, the chaos spawned by this inherent contradiction necessitates some means of dealing with it; this - turning chaos into meaning and stability - is the function of identity. Thus, gender and sapience are linked to identity by inevitability. At the same time, the stability and coherence granted by identity is always failed in the sense that it is intrinsically fragile and temporary. Identity requires constant support, a kind of upkeep or maintenance of active effort, and will always collapse given enough time (if only because of death). (As a sidenote, this active effort takes the form of performarivity.) This necessity is on account of the contradiction intrinsic to identity: no particular manifestation of sapience or gender can fully encompass sapience or gender themselves. In this precise sense, gender and sapience are linked to identity by impossibility. What we are dealing with here is an [i]operative contradiction[/i]: an antagonism; a contradiction which is irreducible (unresolvable), one that does not cancel itself out. It's crucial to note this antagonism is an impossibility, but it [i]functions[/i]. Finally getting to the point, I claim that exactly such a non-relationship characterizes the link between sexual dimorphism and identity - more accurately, the non-relationship is between biological machinery in general (including sexual anatomy) and identity. Most of this machinery is out of the ego - the identity's - control; to the extent the ego does control it, this control is intrinsically fragile and never total or self-sustaining (I can easily control my breathing unless I'm having a panic attack, etc). This non-relationship, so tricky to pinpoint and difficult to define, is the source of the theoretical confusion surrounding sex: we [i]know[/i] sex-dimorphic features have [i]something[/i] to do with behavior (and therefore also psychology and identity in general), but when we try to articulate this in language, to pinpoint and explain it, the precise nature of the relationship eludes us, always-present but never clearly dilineated. Imagine the miniscule gaps between atoms in solid matter, atoms held both forever apart and inexorably together such that they remain in rigid proximity - such a picture is difficult to comprehend and inaccurate if we focus on either "together" or "apart" to the exclusion of the other; only when we understand how both function together in an overarching system to we gain an accurate understanding. Once the non-relationship has been discerned, spelling out its many implications sheds light on the matter. First to my mind is the issue of behavior. Physiology undeniably exerts influence on behavior, and therefore also on psychology and identity. Because we have discerned here the non-relationship, however, we know that things are more complicated than "biology determines identity". Indeed, identity is only possible in the first place because it is fundamentally removed from biological machinery. Operative contradiction, proximity at a fixed distance, is at work here, too, where physiology and identity appear to - but don't - intersect. Physiology capable of supporting sapience is the precondition of identity (a minimum of hardware is necessary to host the software); this precise sense, physiology capable of supporting sapience necessarily entails identity as such. But physiology and its effects on behavior only become part of identity through an act of freedom, whicn adopts some feature and incorporates it into the performative-identity apparatus. So we encounter a familiar structure: the right physiology causes identity as such, but does not and cannot determine the content of that identity. Numerous examples illustrate this point. Everyone has to shit, but do we [i]identify[/i] with the act of taking a dump? Most people don't; others fetishize it. A friend of mine hates weed, says he's not himself when he's high; I enjoy weed in moderation on rare occaisions. Those are easy examples, though. When it comes to sexual dimorphism, we're dealing with hormone levels and the presence or absence of both internal and external organs. When it comes down to it, yes, any biological feature can be subjectively experienced and dealt with any number of ways, but the fact remains that however it's experienced the identities of those who have certain organs like breasts or a penis have to [i]account[/i] for these features somehow. It is here that the distinction between epistemology and ontology comes into play. The presence or absence of certain biological features exerts an [i]epistemological[/i] influence upon identity. Identity itself is a monstrous amalgam of ontology and epistemology, its function being to bridge the gap between its ontological, imaginary structure and epistemology (constituted reality), thereby securing a fragile, necessary subjective coherence. To translate all of this jargon to something understandable - what I'm getting at here is that it isn't at all contradictory to say [i]both[/i] that physiology in itself has nothing to do with the content of gender identity, [i]and[/i] that the presence of sex-dimorphic features influences behavior. Behavior does not directly translate to the content of an identity, and furthermore, identity influences behavior as well. It's a two-way street, a dialectic - identity also indirectly influences behavior and psychology. For empirical examples, I can offer my own experience., having recently lived in a shared living arrangement where everyone was transgender (myself included), and only some were men or women (and of those, some were some variety of genderfluid so it wasn't a constant thing). It's easily possible, for example, to without contradiction, 1) possess a 100% typical range of male biological features, 2) identify as biologically female, 3) be a woman, and 4) have perfect awareness that being female, as an identity, has no bearing on the physiological design and function of the sexual anatomy bits. Interestingly, this leads directly into a hot topic these days in transgender politics: the distinction between sex and gender. More and more, lately, I'm convinced that the usual distinction is utterly wrong. The standard formulation is that sex is biological and gender is psychological. I will concede that there is a difference, but there is also a difference internal to sex - "gender" as it is generally used is a term made up to circumvent and ignore the contradiction internal to sex. Epistemology and ontology, which correspond (to reference Kant again) respectively to pathology and the [i]a priori[/i]. Behavior, psychological features, anatomy - these are all epistemological. If, when we speak of sex and gender, we try to locate the difference between them between anatomical features and psychology, we are confining ourselves to the epistemological level. As soon as we do that, we doom ourselves to flawed thinking, because we've chosen to ignore ontology, which is the only dwelling place of universal truth. Universal laws - laws of physics - are ontological. Confining the discussion to epistemology damns it, by definition, to conclusions that are not universally true. These days, folks are afraid of ontologizing sex for fear of being called New Agers - historically, sex ontology has been anthropomorphic (masculine and feminine as cosmological balance, etc) - but this is a poor reason to abandon truth. The difference internal to sex is, of course, between its epistemological aspect (content) and ontological aspect (form). This is a difference unique to and introduced by sapience. As the postmodernists love to repeat ad nauseum, we as finite, subjective beings are limited to our own finite, subjective perspectives. We can deploy science to speak of sex objectively, but when it comes to our experience of sex, we are limited to our own limited subjective perspectives on it. Postmodernism loves to stop here and endlessly wank off, repating the point in a billion different ways, but let's go further in the interest of actually learning something (this is also Kant's limitation: demarking the boundary between the penomenal and noumenal, then calling it quits without investigating further). If our personal perspectives of sex are limited and subjective, then it necessarily follows that this limitation is part of the objective character of sex itself, its internal obstacle: the structure of sex is such that it only be understood in a limited, subjective fashion. Understanding is possible only for an identity. Therefore, we must conclude that when sex is subjected to identity (subjectivized), it undergoes a split that can be articulated in different, corresponding ways: subjective and objective, content and form, epistemology and ontology. (Performativity is the splitting process, the means by which sex becomes a property of an identity.) For a sapient being, therefore, sex is fundamentally different from itself. The objects - the behavioral influences, the body parts, the hormone levels, etc - are epistemological, and remain forever out of the identity's direct, conscious control. These same objects subjectivized (subjected to performativity via the non-relationship) become tenuously ontological and, therefore, imaginary: they become objects of subjectivity, our own personal images. Ontological, because these objects serve as the imaginary basis for certain elements of identity; and imaginary, because we are not dealing directly with, for example, a certain anatomical feature, but the [i]experience[/i] of that anatomical feature from the perspective of an identity. This ontologization grants a fragile, indirect measure of control over biology (for example, some aspects of arousal reaction can be controlled under the right circumstances). The significance of this complicated abstraction can be discerned in a practical example. When we speak of sexual dimorphism, we are speaking of two fundamentally different things: sexual dimorphism in the mode of epistemology and in the mode of ontology. The former influences identity only to the extent that an identity selects it for integration into its performativity apparatus, ontologizing it. Thus, saying that only folks with a certain configuration of dangly bits can use the uneven bars is not tantamount to conflating biology with identity, to saying that only folks with that physiological configuration or its behavioral influences qualify as a certain identity. There is no danger of "going too far" in spelling out the epistemological implications of physiological features - that line is only crossed when we make the mistake of attempting to draw a direct causal relationship between epistemology and the content of identity. When we are speaking of the epistemolgical aspect of sexual dimorphism, we are speaking of the form and function of certain anatomic features and biological process in their capacity for fertilizing and being fertilized - this is the zero-level of epistemological sexual dimorphism. The production of eggs and sperm is far removed from identity, which concerns ontology: even plants can exhibit a certain rudimentary dimorphism. Sex-dimorphic epistemology only translates to ontology to the extent that an identity chooses to subject it to the performative apparatus. Against this background, the fundamental mistake of biological essentialism is quite simple: people are not slaves of the biological process of reproduction unless they choose to be. This is a fact that is immediately obvious when considering the following: some people don't care about sex; the vast majority of sex is for pleasure, not reproduction; even completely inhuman things such as inanimate objects can become sexualized; sometimes sex occurs without physical contact (phone sex, for example); etc, etc. In fact, in sapient beings, the very fact that sex [i]has a cause[/i] unequivocally proves my point: non-sapient creatures are [i]subjected[/i] to causality but do not [i]experience[/i] (nature is "ohne Warum", as Heidegger said), because they have no identity, and all their actions can be reduced to instinct; for [i]people[/i], though, there is a degree of inner distance which allows for the experience of causality. I had sex "because I gave in to lust", "because my clan expects it of me", "because I felt like it", "to consummate a marriage" - the first case, "because I gave in to lust", is of special interest. We are always [i]acting[/i]; there is a gap between our "self", our identity, and our bodies (epistemology) which persists even when we are supposedly caught up in animal instinct - animals don't "give in" to instincts, they [i]are nothing but their instincts[/i]! This highlights with perfect clarity the gap between epistemological sex and and sex as identity. Someone who identifies "male" is [i]acting[/i] their idea of what male means, regardless of whether the function of their sexual anatomy is geared towards being a fertilizer (male); regardless of whether their genital configuration is a cock and balls, a vagina, a set of vibrantly-covered teeth with a moustache, or a tentacle. ...I'll just end here for now, since I can basically continue on forever. I haven't even touched the topics of freedom, pure difference and antagonism, coincidence of opposites, or repetition and the ontological incompleteness of reality, all of which have to be explored in order to fully account for identity and therefore sex and gender also.

All of this is to say that, in EP, what the ability to create morphs from the ground up and customize them means for sexual dimorphism isn't easy to answer. It's Complicated. The short version is that no sapient really knows. Sexual dimorphism isn't going anywhere quickly, though it will change with time and culture as it always does. At the same time, there will be a lot of experimentation, especially outsystem. There will be a lot of panic, confusion, celebration, culture wars, and research as society is forced to confront sex, gender, and identity, as well as the shortcomings of current understanding of those.

Sun, 2015-07-26 22:30

#31

jKaiser

I typed up a fairly long

I typed up a fairly long essay for this, but honestly, on re-reading your stuff, you're...agreeing with me? I think? Though if you are saying that gender and physical sex have a "non-relation," I strongly disagree. Gender is a societal construct in reaction to one's physical sex. It's like saying "I'm a rebel." It requires something to rebel against. Masculinity, femininity, and other genders require a context for meaning, just like every other symbol. What does this mean for EP? Depends on the habitat. There's nothing stopping a habitat from sleeving into nothing but fully-functional hermaphrodite morphs, or from strictly operating on traditional male/female relations. It will be very case by case. However, that's no different than our world today, where what is masculine and feminine and other varies tremendously. That said, we have built in recognition software in our brains that recognize [em]physical[/em] signs of male and female, and doing some studies on faces recently, I started to realize just how deeply entrenched that is, and how much of a full-time job nanovat techs and biosculptors have. Transitioning from physical sex to physical sex is much more than rearranging penis into vagina or vice versa. If anything, those parts are straightforward despite their complexity; the face, on the other hand, raises a lot of questions. Every single part of our faces plays into our recognition programming. Heavier brow ridges and jawlines, or wider eyes and larger lips, voice pitch and nature, width of the neck, all that is subjected to the differences in physical sex. Admittedly, I did just watch [em]Hedwig and the Angry Inch[/em] last night, so the blurred lines of gender and physical sex are on the brain a lot. But my conclusion is that there have to be a lot of biosculptor apps on the market, wherein you can upload a medical scan of your morph and tweak it by hand, then upload it to your nano clinic for your nanovat session. Body image consultants probably make a pretty penny in this market too. The more I think about it, the more I think gendered descriptors may fade in such a society where physical sex is a preference, and tertiary sexual dimorphism (the aforementioned facial features, etc.) become a matter of aesthetics. Neuter characteristic descriptors may be more common now. How can you really say someone looks manly when for the last two generations males and females can look like whatever they want to, and take a body that fits their preference? Though in practice, that's rather utopian. Hard truth is, A simple majority of people are still stuck in infolife or synthmorphs, which render a lot of that moot (sure, you can modify either to look however you want, [em]or[/em] you can save your credits for your eventual biomorph). And as previously mentioned, while biosculpting may be a mature industry, and relatively cheap objectively, that doesn't mean it's something everyone can afford whenever they want. We got bills to pay and shit to get done, and there's always paperwork and GRM rules and regs to consider, and it's a fuckton cheaper and less drama-ful to just live in an androgyne splicer with some minor cosmetic work and live out your more esoteric identity expressions in simulspace.

Thu, 2015-07-30 08:07

#32

Panoptic

Pyrite wrote:What aspects of

Pyrite wrote:
What aspects of sexual dimorphism would have been eliminated, and what elements would remain? And what does this say about how the people of 10AF experience gender?

Just because the option to change sex is there, doesn't necessarily mean that people will change sex. Changing morphs is a non-trivial exercise with a chance of insanity, so the idea of changing sex at whim is a little more complicated than it is sometimes made out to be. And many are going to be content to stay with what they know. Similar to how people often gravitate towards the religious and political beliefs they were raised with. As for dimorphism, there are pros and cons to the sexes as is. Men's bodies can achieve more muscle mass and easier on average, but that muscle mass significantly increases calorie consumption.

—

On 'IC Talk': Seyit Karga, Ultimate [url=http://eclipsephase.com/comment/46317#comment-46317]Character Profile[/url]

Tue, 2015-08-04 15:07

#33

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Insanity is going a bit far.

Panoptic wrote:
Just because the option to change sex is there, doesn't necessarily mean that people will change sex. Changing morphs is a non-trivial exercise with a chance of insanity, so the idea of changing sex at whim is a little more complicated than it is sometimes made out to be. And many are going to be content to stay with what they know. Similar to how people often gravitate towards the religious and political beliefs they were raised with.

You don't need to change morphs to change sex. The sex switch augmentation allows a morph to alter it's physical gender over the course of a week, and any healing tank can alter a morph's gender in 12 hours without entailing any kind of tests or risking SV. Add in time for cosmetic touches, and changing your gender is the work of a weekend.

—

In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Tue, 2015-08-04 16:20

#34

jKaiser

True, but the same could be

True, but the same could be said of changing your car's engine. There's a lot more to it than that, and exactly how trivial or non-trival physical changes to one's morph are depends on a lot of other factors. Namely the question of how dystopian you're running the system, and thus how much free time and how many behavior restrictions your characters have. There's also probably some social stigma attached to it for various reasons, not the least of which being that it's seen as a luxury when so many people are still sleeved in cheap polymer (or on the other end of the spectrum, [em]not[/em] a genetailored sylph).

Thu, 2015-08-06 09:07

#35

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

That seems fair.

I'm not sure I can see social stigma - there's no stigma against changing your car's engine because of poverty in Africa. I'll concede that there are extraneous factors; I was trying to call attention to the fact that changing gender as written doesn't risk mental health. Anything beyond that is afaik GM fiat. I'll admit my leanings are relatively utopian as to difficulty and restrictions on behavior, simply because I like my dystopia to come from different issues - either through the PC's guilded cage or the AA's liberty without security. As an aside, it also promotes the type of personal exploration I love: If you could be anything or anyone - if you could change your gender, your personality, your emotions and desires... who would you choose to be?

—

In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Thu, 2015-08-06 19:12

#36

jKaiser

I can see the utopian angle,

I can see the utopian angle, believe me. I would love nothing more than to live to see this kind of tech be ubiquitous. But I'm coming at this as a storyteller/gamemaster, and trying to think of both how it would actually be in the setting and how to source out logical conflicts from it. I doubt I'd ever use most of these seeds myself either, but hey, someone might, and it's a chance for me to steal a bit of the spotlight from all the STEM folks here. While there may be no stigma about swapping your car because of poverty in Africa, there is in having the only beater on the street, even if it's perfectly servicable. Habitats are by nature a very closed environment, and social pressures are going to be magnified to a large degree (in the physical, anyway; I'm not sure how much virtuality really affects that sort of thing, but based on how the book describes the extremes habitat in-culture can reach, I'm guessing not enough to make a huge difference). There are several habitats in the books that have morph preferences on record, and every community is going to carry its own prejudices and inclinations. Even relative neighbor habitats, separated by only a few thousand kilometers, might have drastically different views on physicality. I'm trying to think of new elements to bring to this discussion on actual physical dimorphism that isn't just spinning wheels, but I'm at a loss at the moment. I do still think the vast majority of civilian bodies are more uniform and even androgynous (in comparison), for exactly the reasons Panoptic pointed out. There's probably some data-defined happy medium of muscle mass/calorie consumption/size that best fits life in each major habitat environment, which is probably more on the feminine side than masculine side. Doubly so when you have things like worker pods and synthmorphs to do jobs requiring a lot of physical labor. Come to think of it, if you clothed a standard splicer, an exalt, and a fury in the same thing, you could probably tell them at a glance just from the different build and muscle mass. Morph division might be much more visible between type than sex now.

Sun, 2015-08-09 18:34

#37

self-relating n... self-relating negativity's picture

jKaiser wrote:I typed up a

jKaiser wrote:
I typed up a fairly long essay for this, but honestly, on re-reading your stuff, you're...agreeing with me? I think? Though if you are saying that gender and physical sex have a "non-relation," I strongly disagree. Gender is a societal construct in reaction to one's physical sex. It's like saying "I'm a rebel." It requires something to rebel against. Masculinity, femininity, and other genders require a context for meaning, just like every other symbol.

Exactly. Which is precisely why there is a non-relationship: one's anatomical features are meaningless (at first), and this fact is what sets the whole process of identity in motion (to create meaning). The function of identity being to provide a coherent context for meaning and then to formulate a particular meaning and articulate it in a shared social context. All my talk of the non-relationship is to overcome the bluriness between one's physical anatomy and social identity: sex, as one's anatomy, and gender, as the foundation of one's social identity, are both in themselves meaningless because it's only after they are introduced to a social context that they become meaningful. All of the confusion results from the compulsion to assign sex and gender [i]inherent social meanings[/i], when in truth meaning is by definition [i]never inherent[/i] despite its inevitability and necessity. The light in the fridge isn't always on just because it's always shining when you open it; likewise, sex and gender always [i]appear[/i] meaningful and symbolic because we view them from a social context, but they aren't intrinsically so. So, yes, I am largely agreeing with you. But in my long-winded rambling, I'm also attempting to provide context to the discussion. Context that is necessary for the discussion, otherwise you get people suggesting things like (paraphrasing someone a few posts up) "just because sex changes are available doesn't mean anyone will get one". Access to sexual reassignment surgery is incredibly difficult to obtain today, and it's still sought after, as is access to hormones (which are often obtained extralegally). Fast forward to EP where reconfiguring physiology is cheap and easy and there's little to no social stigma, and it's logical to conclude that it will be much more common. Of course most esoteric experimentation will occur in simulspace, especially in the inner system - but this isn't always be the case, in the same way that contemporary sex-related experimentation isn't confined entirely to fiction or online roleplay (though both are popular). Expression requires a degree of social actualization, and as the plight of LGBTQ folks today shows, the deprivation of this actualization can be life-threatening. In light of this, a greater degree of sex, gender, and sexual identity expression is necessarily a given in the social context of Eclipse Phase.

Sun, 2015-08-09 18:55

#38

jKaiser

Well, yes, identity and

Well, yes, identity and conflicts related to identity are major factors in one's choice of physical appearance, and in a setting where bodies are as plastic as in EP (not to mention literally made-to-order if you have the scratch). And as far as actualization...well, the Carnival of the Goat exists. So there's literally a place to go for [em]any[/em] choice of personal expression related to sexual physicality. Thing is, while you're right, you're also verging on the fringe of the population. Custom morph-work is, if not exactly cheap, certainly available to anyone who wants it and has the courage to physically embody whatever their identity dictates. The mainstream, however, the design-by-committee morphs that 90% of the biomorph-sleeved population lives in, that's going to exist completely separately from anyone's identity beyond the offered options, which are probably still going to be binary male/female, possibly with a neuter option as a discount (it keeps all the peons less distracted). Actually, that's a concrete way to think about it. You're an infomorph indenture who just hit their one-week-till-freedom milestone, and your muse pops up the selection screen for your Splicer morph. What options do you think you'd see on that, for a baseline, unaugmented (beyond possibly having grabby feets and other very minor augments, so +/- 5 CP, we'll say)? Off the top of my head, you'd probably have a few thousand face presets (brought to you by FaceOff, a subsidiary of Skinthetic!), a mix-your-own melanin option, and hair to your liking (within a 30cm length limit).

Tue, 2015-08-11 12:08

#39

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

+30 Credits for the Bioluminescent Haircolour Option!

jKaiser wrote:
I can see the utopian angle, believe me. I would love nothing more than to live to see this kind of tech be ubiquitous. But I'm coming at this as a storyteller/gamemaster, and trying to think of both how it would actually be in the setting and how to source out logical conflicts from it. I doubt I'd ever use most of these seeds myself either, but hey, someone might, and it's a chance for me to steal a bit of the spotlight from all the STEM folks here. ... I'm trying to think of new elements to bring to this discussion on actual physical dimorphism that isn't just spinning wheels, but I'm at a loss at the moment.

Honestly, I can't think of any storyline based on gender dimorphism or identity which doesn't boil down to "OMG Space Sexism!" or unexpected pregnancy, which seems more than a little dull when compared to evil space robots. Imo making gender equality/fluidity a setting element instead helps play up the futuristic nature of the setting whilst throwing the dystopian elements into contrast. I agree completely about identifying Morphs by body form, by the way.

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In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Wed, 2015-08-12 13:58

#40

Panoptic

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:You

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:
You don't need to change morphs to change sex. The sex switch augmentation allows a morph to alter it's physical gender over the course of a week, and any healing tank can alter a morph's gender in 12 hours without entailing any kind of tests or risking SV. Add in time for cosmetic touches, and changing your gender is the work of a weekend.

Ah. I had forgotten about that. No risk of problems seems...optimistic considering how attached modern people usually are to their sex.

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