Re: Gender and Cognitive Style

Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko (sasha1@netcom.com)
Thu, 26 Nov 1998 12:37:26 -0500

At 03:14 11/26/98 , Joe E. Dees wrote:
>
>Without identifying physical characteristics, the distinction between
>heterosexual and homosexual would cease to exist. In fact, whom
>would be attracted to whom and how they would or could possibly
>consummate such an attraction is a huge and baffling mystery,
>admitting of much fanciful speculation, but no answers.
>

We can look at how current intentional-but-genderless entities get attracted to each other, form unions and produce offspring. Look at corporations, research groups, and communities. (Also, memetic evolution, genetic algorithms, etc.) It's all there already, with all purposes - economy, exploration, and fun. One can still find analogies with sexual reproduction here in terms of gender, courting, intercourse, birth, and child-raising, but I believe there are certain limits beyond which such analogies shouldn't be stretched.
Interestingly enough, most of intentional reproduction is already non-sexual, and sex is no longer necessary for even its original purpose - to produce human offspring. It will probably be considered reckless in the near future, to produce children by blind combinations of genes, without first running the new DNA through at least a medical check-up.
So it looks like sex and genders have a very limited future...



Alexander Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html> Extropy Online <http://www.extropy.org/eo/index.htm>