Sex Metamorphosis
I’d like to propose a thought experiment. Suppose the sciences of biology and medicine advanced to the stage where it became possible to change the sex of an animal (including, of course, human animals) completely. Let me make a few more stipulations. The change would be complete at every level. A woman transitioning to become a man would grow a penis and testicles; a man transitioning to become a woman would grow a vagina, clitoris, ovaries and breasts. These organs would be fully functional. The Now-Man, as I shall term him, would be able to produce sperm, ejaculate, and father children. The Now-Woman (if of appropriate age) would menstruate and be able to become pregnant, bear children and lactate. (I don’t mean that either the Now-Man or the Now-Woman would be defined by actually producing children, but by the capacity in principle to do so.)
Secondary sexual characteristics would also be altered according to the target sex: facial and body hair, musculature, height, bone density, lung capacity, physical proportions and so on. This means that some of the changes would be retrospective; that is, changes occurring during and after puberty would be reversed. So a man of average height transitioning to be a Now-Woman would lose some absolute height and become of average height for a woman; a woman of above average height would become an even taller Now-Man, and so on.
The transformation would go all the way down to cellular level. A scientist examining a single cell of a person who had undergone this process would identify that cell as female, if the person had transitioned to be a Now-Woman, or male, if the person had transitioned to be a Now-Man. What we are talking about, then, is a complete metamorphosis. Since it will be convenient to give the process a name, let’s call it Sex Metamorphosis.
Here are some further stipulations. First, the process would have no negative side-effects. It would be safe, painless and would not affect long-term health. Second, the process would be inexpensive, available to anybody who wanted it. Third, the process would not be unduly protracted. It would take no more than (say) a few weeks. Finally, the transformation would be fully reversible. If you weren’t happy being a Now-Woman or Now-Man – or were happy enough but decided a year or two was all you wanted – then you could metamorphose back to your original sex.
This is an utterly implausible science-fiction scenario. But it’s a thought experiment, remember. Bear with me. If it were possible, what consequences would follow?
I would expect the opportunity to meet with considerable uptake. And I mean in the wider population, not just those who are trans. I myself, though not trans in the smallest degree, would be keen to try it. At my age I wouldn’t get to experience everything a natal female experiences – I would be a post-menopausal Now-Woman. Nevertheless it would be fascinating and highly informative. It seems likely to me that one important consequence would be increased empathy between the sexes. We might also find ourselves living in a freer, more fluid and sexually adventurous society – as well as a less sexist one.
A population where people could shift sex at will would need careful planning and regulation, in terms of such things as provision for male and female health and other sex-specific services. There might also be problems of legal identification which would need to be addressed. But the existence of Now-Men and Now-Women would raise none of the controversies currently raised by the existence of transmen and, in particular, transwomen. There would be no problem about accepting a Now-Woman onto a women’s rugby team, for example. They would possess none of the puberty-acquired physical advantages that natal males typically have. They would be women in the full biological sense. (Moreover, Now-Men would be able to take part in men’s sport on equal terms.)
But now it is time to ask the more difficult and sensitive question, what difference would this new technology make to those who are currently transpeople?
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An immediate answer might be: why should this make any difference to transpeople? For if one takes the standard view – ‘Transwomen are women’ – then transwomen are already women (and transmen are already men). There would therefore be no reason for them to choose Sex Metamorphosis. It would deliver nothing they don’t already have. The Sex Metamorphosis thought experiment, however, is designed to cast doubt on the standard view.
At this point I’d like to make a small digression to argue that even leaving the thought experiment aside, the standard view fails to convince. In its logical form it appears to be the same as any statement that a particular sub-category of women are women (Vietnamese women are women, for example): in other words, a simple tautology. This appearance is deceptive. For when we sub-categorise women under nationality (or age, religion, socio-economic class or other non-biological criteria) the category of ‘woman’ is not in any way modified by the sub-categorisation. The sub-categorisation does not require us to re-think our definition of what a woman is. It works perfectly well with the traditional definition of ‘woman’, of which femaleness is an essential component. But ‘Transwomen are women’ does seem to require a re-definition (often requested, never supplied) of what a woman is. It seems that the new definition would have to lose the essential component of being female (unless, following the re-definition of ‘woman’, one re-defines ‘female’ – but then one needs a new word to cover what was formerly designated by female. That is a game which could go on forever).
Be that as it may, the possibility of Sex Metamorphosis changes the game. Even without that possibility, transpeople frequently choose to take courses of hormones and undergo surgery to effect chemical and morphological changes in order to transition to the target sex. But the journey is incomplete. Transgenderism is a faute de mieux. Changes do not go all the way down to cellular level. The effects of puberty are not fully reversed. Not all the required physiology can be activated. But with Sex Metamorphosis, the journey could be completed. If, as I surmise, even non-transpeople would be tempted, then a fortiori one would expect trans-people to sign up in large numbers. If the state of existence you’ve longed for all your life is offered to you on a plate, you would surely take it.
Or so I imagine. If you are a transman or transwoman reading this, you’ll make up your own mind.
Nevertheless, there would, no doubt, be some transpeople who’d choose not to complete the journey. Some might prefer to remain en route, as it were. They might relish the in-between-ness of their position. And I hope it goes without saying that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But would the refuseniks still claim, if transwomen, to be women, or, if transmen, to be men? This now looks untenable. For the refusenik could have been a Now-Woman, or Now-Man, and chose not to be. It makes no sense to say that ‘Transwomen are Now-Women’ when, through their own choice, they’re not. But if they are not Now-Women (or Now-Men as the case may be) then in what sense are they women (or men)? What, then, should we call those who choose to remain in transit? What would they want to be called? It seems to me that there is a perfectly good name already to hand, which would reflect ownership of their choice: they would be transwomen, or transmen.
My approach here starts from the scientifically accepted view that biological sex is binary. That means there are two, and only two, biological sexes, and they are defined by what kind of gametes one produces: small motile ones (sperm) in the case of males, and large immotile ones (eggs) in the case of females. I ought to say just a little more about that. For the view has got abroad that sex is a ‘spectrum’. When I showed a draft of this piece to an exceptionally keen-minded friend of mine, a professor of philosophy, her immediate comment was that I was ‘massively simplifying the binary of male-female classification’. She claimed I was ignoring intersex cases, and also failing to acknowledge that sex-markers such as chromosomes, morphology, hormones and gonads do not always line up as expected with gametes. Had I not read the paper by Fausto-Sterling which, she said, ‘everyone’ refers to? But that is everyone in gender-studies departments (and apparently philosophy departments too), not everyone in biology departments. Fausto-Sterling’s claim that the incidence of intersex cases is as high as 1.7% of all human births was debunked very shortly after her 2000 paper came out. It was refuted by Leonard Sax in 2002, who assesses the true prevalence of intersex conditions at 0.018%, or nearly a hundred times lower than Fausto-Sterling’s estimate (see here).
Nevertheless, Fausto-Sterling’s erroneous figure is still widely touted, 25 years after her paper came out. It refuses to die. It seems to be something that many people want to believe. But even if intersex conditions were more common than they are, that would not make sex a spectrum. There are still only two types of gametes, and the existence of sexually-ambiguous individuals does not change that. As for the point about chromosomes, gonads, hormones etc not inevitably aligning with gametes, those things are nearly-always-reliable markers of sex, but they’re not definitive of sex. A clear explanation of this position can be found in Colin Wright’s 2023 paper, ‘Understanding the Sex Binary’. Wright also makes the obvious but often overlooked point that the existence of intersex individuals and the existence of trans individuals are two entirely separate and unrelated matters. Trans people are not intersex and do not claim to be.
I’ll end by making clear something that ought to be clear anyway. Since this area of debate is so bedevilled by accusations of bad faith, it cannot do any harm and might do good to state the bleeding obvious. The view that sex is a binary and not a spectrum does not commit me to any normative claims about what gender roles or sexual orientation each sex is supposed to have. Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble (1999) asserts that the male-female binary is ‘an ontological construct’ and is associated with ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. But she offers no argument or evidence in support of these assertions and I see no reason to accept them. (I must allow for the bare possibility that she does give reasons elsewhere, as I have not read any of her other books.) On my view, whether one were a man or woman (either Now- or natal) or a transperson who elected to stay trans, one would be allowed equally to be butch or feminine or a constantly-shifting blend of the two, to wear dungarees or frocks, to enjoy cricket or needlework or both, to be straight, gay, bi or pursue any sexual orientation that human ingenuity could devise. I hope it also goes without saying that transpeople must have the same civil rights, freedoms, protections under the law and entitlement to dignity and respect as non-transpeople.
I said at the beginning that Sex Metamorphosis was an implausible science-fiction scenario. So it is. But science-fiction scenarios have a way of coming true. It could be that in a century or so Sex Metamorphosis will become a reality. Those will be exciting times. It’s a pity I shan’t be around to see them.
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