1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Do non-binary identities reenforce gender stereotypes?
since you still lean toward continuing to use feminine pronouns in that scenario, I thought you might have a preference for female identity that transcends physical traits.
Not the OP, but I don't think that's the case. They are saying that they would choose the pronouns that are familiar, given that they wouldn't have a sexed body. Much like most people wouldn't want to have to change their name when they have used it their whole life.
But if they were a man, they would have a male sexed body, so it would make sense to change pronouns, in the absence of any internal gender separate from body parts. The physical reality would override the desire to just keep using the same name/pronouns.
As you've mentioned, we do use gendered pronouns for robots in popular culture despite them not having sexed bodies. So you could choose either. Now, if it was commonplace to only ever refer to robots as "they," I think there'd be more likelihood people would adapt to being referred to as gender neutral as a robot.
In any case, how exactly would you transfer a person into a robots body? How would that actually work? As long as they still had a brain, they would still have sexed cells within that brain so would still be male/female/intersex as they were at birth
Comment by labcoat_samurai at 14/01/2025 at 18:33 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I think we tend to gender robots because we have a cultural view that there are two genders, and genderless or genderfluid conscious creatures seem strange to many of us. Even robots without bodies commonly get gendered. HAL 9000 is a he. And robots with sexless bodies still often get gender coded. WALL-E is also a he.
I thought that reflecting on this might help people understand that the concept we have of gender transcends sex organs, chromosomes, and physical characteristics.
As for how we would put a human consciousness in a robot body, that's still the stuff of science fiction, of course, but unless you think that the physical human brain is doing anything to produce consciousness that only a biological brain could do, there's no reason in principle why your consciousness needs literal chromosomes to exist.