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The BBC reports (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140627-how-our-descendants-will-hate-us):'How will the future view us? Tom Chatfield asked some of the world's best minds, and discovered that we will be seen as barbaric in ways we may not even realise. Far more interesting, we felt, is this question: how will our generation be looked back on? What will our own descendants deplore about us that we take for granted? Will our descendants abhor our refusal to banish nuclear weapons for example? Some possibilities are more obvious than others. Eating meat and factory farming may move towards the margins of acceptability, given the intensive use of resources and cruelty they represent. Another kind of profligacy the future might regret is the over-prescription of antibiotics. In terms of prejudice, meanwhile, our descendants may hopefully wonder how still-marginalised groups like transgender people ever faced intolerance; let alone how some parts of the world continued to criminalise homosexuality, reject equal rights for women, or hold some groups of workers in modern slavery. All this, of course, is really about what we ought to deal with right now; about those wishes we desperately hope to see fulfilled, and the kind of world we hope to leave behind. What, I wondered, would some of today's most influential thinkers make of my question?'
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cafebabe on Sunday June 29 2014, @10:34PM
Sex discrimination will look very antiquated within the next 20 years. Unfortunately, that won't be due to widespread equality or a deep understanding between men and women. It will be due to medical advances which will make a sex change relatively trivial. Women first received stem cell vaginas eight years ago [newscientist.com]. Stem cell penis, testicles, uterus and ovaries will follow.
It will also be possible to make eggs or sperm from a blood sample.
Anyhow, it will become routine for anyone to have children with anyone else and for anyone to get pregnant, if they choose. When that happens, we may see a range of living arrangements and working conditions become truly accepted. For example, a large number of people tolerate gay marriage but they wouldn't necessarily want their children to be in such a relationship. Likewise, a large number of people tolerate transsexuals but wouldn't want their child to be one. I suspect that part of the issue is that a gay/transgender child is seen as a genetic dead-end. However, this won't be a barrier.
When people have free choice in sex, gender and procreation, we may find that the sex ratio becomes skewed. For example, lesbians may be able to get simultaneously pregnant with each other's children but only have daughters. Some of these daughters may wish to have a penis and testicles but will only be able to have a son with a genetic man or a male-to-female transsexual. Hopefully, sex and gender ratios find a stable equilibrium but this is not guaranteed.
Regardless, two things are quite certain. All of these developments will make porn increasingly unrecognizable and they will make current complaints about sex discrimination seem quite trivial.
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