My understanding was that "sex" referred to biology, while "gender" referred to identity/social construct. So with that premise, transgender individuals don't go to the initial point, but intersexed individuals do.
I am aware of non-surgery gender reassignments, but not of any non-surgical sexual reassignments.
From a storytelling standpoint, I find the idea of someone reincarnating as someone of the opposite sex far less weird than the idea of somone reincarnating at all - once I've bought the latter, the former is along for the ride.
However, there are a couple of flawed analogies: "race" as a concept, is an attempt to apply a taxonomy to the normal human genetic variation. As far as I can tell, there is not a single case where it has proven to be a useful taxonomy (certainly it has less descriptive power than, say, ethnicity, or class does), but I may be wrong. Scientific evidence cannot "mean an end to Creationism" for the same reason that chocolate cannot mean an end to concrete - they are qualitatively different concepts with qualitatively different assumptions and referents. Expecting such is striving after the wind.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-12-04 10:55 pm (UTC)I am aware of non-surgery gender reassignments, but not of any non-surgical sexual reassignments.
From a storytelling standpoint, I find the idea of someone reincarnating as someone of the opposite sex far less weird than the idea of somone reincarnating at all - once I've bought the latter, the former is along for the ride.
However, there are a couple of flawed analogies: "race" as a concept, is an attempt to apply a taxonomy to the normal human genetic variation. As far as I can tell, there is not a single case where it has proven to be a useful taxonomy (certainly it has less descriptive power than, say, ethnicity, or class does), but I may be wrong. Scientific evidence cannot "mean an end to Creationism" for the same reason that chocolate cannot mean an end to concrete - they are qualitatively different concepts with qualitatively different assumptions and referents. Expecting such is striving after the wind.