Nowadays, we can increasingly observe people who are simultaneously similar to both a man and a woman. In science, it is customary to call them androgynes. Does this trend pose a threat to humanity?
The legacy of the myth
For the first time, the most vivid image of the androgyne was described in Plato's dialogue "The Feast". Through the lips of his hero, the ancient Greek philosopher retells the myth of people with a unique nature, who had both male and female characteristics. "Terrible in their strength and power, they nourished great designs and even encroached on the power of the gods." And then, writes Plato, in order to weaken the androgynes, Zeus divided them into two components - male and female.
The legend of the androgynes was reflected in the views of the thinkers of subsequent eras. Sigmund Freud believed that neither male nor female exists in the psychic: a person is born as a polymorphic possibility and the final result depends only on his gender-role identification. Later, Carl Jung noticed that a person who combines masculine and feminine aspects in his soul can be considered perfect.
According to psychoanalysts, very often for an individual to become aware of belonging to a particular sex means to recognize himself as incomplete. This is especially true in modern societies with crumbling stereotypes of traditional gender divisions. Scientists do not exclude that in the future the number of androgynes will only grow.
In the novel by the British science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin "The Left Hand of Darkness", psychoanalytic ideas come to life. The work tells about the inhabitants of the planet Goethen, who show signs of hermaphroditism before puberty. And only when a couple is formed, both partners decide which sex-role function and for how long each of them will take on.
Isn't a similar prospect awaiting us earthlings in the not so distant future?
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A frightening trend
Today, of course, we are not talking about an increase in the number of hermaphrodites. This physiological abnormality, in which a person simultaneously possesses both female and male sex characteristics, is extremely rare. Androgyny is, first of all, a socio-cultural and psychological phenomenon, indicating the blurring of the boundaries between honey and sex. It is precisely this that is gaining momentum, both throughout the world and in Russia.
A psychologist from the United States, Sandra Boehm, who specialized in the study of gender problems, once developed a method for determining the psychological sex (a 60-item questionnaire). If in the 70s of the XX century, the overwhelming majority of the tested men were dominated by muscular qualities, and among women - feminine, now a significant part of the respondents show signs of androgyny.
Before our eyes, androgyny outgrows a purely psychological framework and manifests itself both in behavior and in appearance. According to journalist Inna Shevchenko, this is how evolution reacts to the unnatural development of civilization, in which ladies want equality in everything, causing men to respond with a desire - not to be a hero.
Androgynes themselves already call themselves the third sex and even claim the status of the highest caste. And in some countries there are recorded precedents for issuing documents without specifying gender. So, in the passport of 52-year-old American Jamie Shupa in the gender column it is written: "they".
People of the future
Belgian futurist Fereidun Esfendiari introduces the concept of transhumanism into his concept of transhumanism, which will occupy an intermediate position between modern man and posthuman. According to the futurist's forecasts, the new representative of Homo Sapiens will be asexual, and his reproduction will be provided by biotechnology, which will further allow people to completely overcome their human nature. Considering that artificial insemination has become a reality today, Esfendiari's predictions do not seem so fantastic.
Science fiction writer John Varley suggests that changing sex will become as easy in the future as removing a mole, and people will do this procedure many times. But sociologist Peter Flom is confident that the physical differences between the sexes will remain for the foreseeable future, but at the same time society can do without gender roles.
The time is not far off when gender segregation will become an unnecessary anachronism, says Martina Rothblatt, founder of the biotech company United Therapeutics. She expresses the idea that each of the 7 billion people inhabiting the planet will find his own way to express gender identity, which will no longer be thought of in terms of female-male, but will become a kind of continuum, where masculinity and femininity will be only extreme points of an infinite number of manifestations of individualities.
Change cannot be avoided
Academicians are not as categorical as futurists. They don't believe in the emergence of a third sex. Natalya Malysheva, Ph. D. in Psychology, believes that in the next 100 years we will face the disappearance of the stereotypical division of people into men and women, and the appearance of androgynes or agenders will only become a way of understanding ourselves. In the foreground, according to the psychologist, the diversity of ideas and views and respect for individuality will come out.
Biologist Alexander Kolmanovsky is completely sure that men and women will not merge into the third sex, since this contradicts the very idea of evolution, which for millions of years created opposite-sex beings from same-sex creatures. Although the scientist agrees that sex-role functions are gradually changing, the fundamental biological differences between the sexes, in his opinion, will persist for a long time.
However, a professor at the University of Oxford geneticist Brian Sykes believes that in about 125 thousand years mankind will have to face a mutation of the male sex, since the Y chromosomes (the genetic marker of a man) deteriorate from generation to generation and, eventually, disappear. But it is possible that by such a distant time the very division of people into men and women will no longer be relevant.
Taras Repin