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Extracts (17)

As many people have significant lifelong quantities of male and female hormones and phenotypically are bisexual, intersex, or indeterminate, the pronouns “he” and “she” are often avoided, or when used are a matter of self-designation, sometimes changing according to situation. Referring to someone else with such pronouns is the equivalent of using “tu” rather than “vous” in French, indicating familiarity with the person

deepest phenotypic signals of gender appear to be waist-to-hip ratio, and waist height relative to total height, usually a matter of proportionately longer female femurs and wider female pelvic bones

such as French, Turkish, or Chinese. Alternative ungendered pronouns in English include “it,” “e,” “them,” “one,” “on,” and “oon,” but none of them have

it is not a case of “there is no gender,” but rather a complex and ambiguous efflorescence, sometimes called a fully ursuline humanity, other times just a mess

gatherings composed entirely of gender-indeterminate people are a new social space that some find intensely uncomfortable, eliciting comments such as “like a nakedness I hadn’t thought could happen” or “you’re only yourself, it’s terrifying,” and so on. Clearly, a new kind of psychic exposure

distinctions can be pretty fine, with some claiming that gynandromorphs do not look quite like androgyns, nor like hermaphrodites, nor eunuchs, and certainly not like bisexuals—that androgyns and wombmen are quite different—and so on. Some people like to tell that part of their story; others never mention it at all. Some dress across gender and otherwise mix semiotic gender signals to express how they are feeling in that moment. Outrageous macho and fem behaviors, either matched with phenotype and semiotic indicators or not, create performance art ranging from the kitschy to the beautiful

as there are now people close to three meters tall, and others less than a meter tall, gender may no longer be the greatest divide in human

even approaching the size of spider monkeys, a modification that was severely censured by larger people, until longevity statistics kept reaffirming the association between smaller sizes and longer lifetimes, especially in light gravities. A saying among small people is “smaller is better”

we all began female, and always had both sexual hormones in us. We always had masculine and feminine behavioral traits, which we had to train into gender-appropriate behaviors, even though they were traits that everyone has. We selectively encouraged or repressed traits, so for most of our history we have reinforced gender. But in our deepest selves we were always both. And now, in space, openly both. Very small or very tall—human at last

this culture’s structure of feeling could also be called balkanized. Gender therapy and speciation were both parts of the longevity project, and the combination of the three created a new structure of feeling that is often characterized as fractured, compartmentalized, bulkheaded, firewalled. Usually longevity itself is identified as the primary force driving this; until now, no one has had to integrate a personality in its second century (or more), and often it is experienced as an existential crisis. The super-elderly have had so many experiences, gone through so many phases, lost so many companions to death or simply time that they have grown distanced from other people. Spacers, mobile over huge distances, especially bold in trying all the augmented abilities, often live as isolatoes, in a solipsistic narrative or performance of their own

people in space enact a kind of nonattachment. A common opinion expressed is that to keep relationships lasting a long time one shouldn’t see too much of a person, or create too intense of a relationship, or it will burn out. Paced for the long haul, one spreads oneself out among a network of acquaintances and new friends, and moves on when

love famously has different definitions within cultures, between cultures, and in different historical periods. “Balkanized love” refers to a situation in which affection, child rearing, sex, lust, cohabitation, family, and friendship have all been delinked from each other and reconfigured as affect states, just as individuals and societies have been

sex itself, having been delinked from reproduction, love, transgression, religion, and other biological and cultural associations, has become just a physical function for a lot of people, either private or shared, and pleasurable as a sport or game, conversation or bowel movement

traditional marriage, line marriage, group marriage, polygamy, polyandry, panmixia, timed contracts, crèches, roommates, sexual friendships, friends, pseudosiblings, fellow travelers, soloists,