Daily Archives: January 23, 2023

In the 2019 TV series Years and Years, a young girl dissatisfied with her life reveals to her parents she is trans. Her parents readily express their acceptance and support for their daughters supposed desire to have a sex change. But then she tells them she is not transgender but transhuman, and wishes to leave her physical body behind to become data. Her parents are shocked and then furious.

As this scene shows, although technological advances may offer new ways for people to lead their lives, they can also create new prejudices. A growing awareness of trans issues both transgender and transhuman is stimulating general debate. But we should not assume that discussion of bodily changes necessarily means progression towards a more equal society.

The human body comes in a huge variety of shapes, sizes and colours, yet people outside the perceived norm have often been seen as threatening, ridiculous or hateful. For example, the Hijra, an Indian transgender community dating back 4,000 years, may have achieved legal recognition in 2014 but faces renewed discrimination today.

The possibilities for physical change have never been greater. From tattoos to cosmetic surgery, gender reassignment procedures to bionic implants, people have an increasing number of ways to alter their appearance and the way they live.

As Years and Years hints at, technological progress doesnt only affect gender identity. While prosthetics and implants for medical purposes have been around for years, a whole new range of elective body augmentations are becoming possible. The term transhumanism describes the evolution of the human race beyond its current state, particularly through the implantation of technology in the body.

This bio-hacking blurs the line between human and non-human. For example, Professor Kevin Warwick, often referred to as Captain Cyborg, had a microchip implanted that enabled him to control the lights and doors in his lab. He then had further surgery to connect an electrode array with his nervous system, which allowed him to control a robotic arm with his mind.

While transgender people have been around for thousands of years, they are offered new possibilities through technology. In contrast, transhumanism is only possible because of technology. In either case, the increase in body modification and gender reassignment procedures suggests now is a good time to reconsider our notions of gender and identity more generally, especially as we live in such an interconnected world. The ability to decide how our body appears and performs in society is transferring more power to the individual, and diverse lifestyle choices are proliferating.

But the increase in alternative ways of living also gives rise to more and different types of discrimination. There has been a sharp rise in transgender hate crimes in the UK, and even an alleged assault in France linked to transhuman discrimination. In this case, staff members in a fast-food restaurant tried to forcibly remove a mans augmented reality headset, as they thought he was filming them, but it was attached to his skull.

Fiction, in literature, film and TV, plays an important role in showing alternative ways of living. Such stories reflect and foster an awareness and experience of current issues in society. So it is not surprising that a variety of fictional transhuman and transgender protagonists have emerged over recent years. They also can help us to anticipate possible avenues of discrimination.

Two very recent examples of transgender and transhuman matters in British fiction are Jeanette Wintersons latest book, Frankissstein, and the previously mentioned series Years and Years, created by Russell T Davies. Both of these works depict alternative modes of gender and identity in an increasingly tech-dominated world, showing how technological advances can offer increased choices for people but also create new prejudices.

In Franskissstein, the human body is subjected to radical changes in a contemporary world of cutting-edge technology and artificial intelligence (AI). The characters, including a transgender doctor, a Welsh sex-bot entrepreneur and an AI professor, collectively push at the boundaries of what it means to be human. Gender reassignment, sexual relations with robots, and the transfer of the mind to digital form are all depicted. Each of these new ways of living are met with resistance and intolerance by others in the book.

Meanwhile, in Years and Years, the character Daniels status as a gay man is unquestioningly accepted by his family and friends. By contrast, the desire of his niece, Bethany, to become transhuman through tech implants and bio-hacking is met with anger, fear, and revulsion. 30 years on from the groundbreaking, and at the time shocking to many, presentation of a gay relationship on Eastenders, the portrayal of Daniel shows how far the acceptance of same-sex relationships on TV has come. This also suggests that the desire to become transhuman may take many years to become more widely tolerated.

In real life, as in fiction, the expanding range of lifestyle choices available now and in the future will not simply lead to increased tolerance of difference. Although transgender and transhuman issues are becoming increasingly visible, new forms of discrimination will arise as people move further away from traditional modes of living.

But if the end-goal of transhumanism is to leave our biological origins entirely behind us, then a posthuman world would also be a postgender world. In which case, so much of the discrimination that focuses on the body would become extinct.

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Transgender, transhuman: technological advances offer increased choices ...

"Your mind is software. Program it. Your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it. Extinction is approaching. Fight it."

Transhumans are people who have been artificially enhanced with mental and/or physical abilities beyond what is considered normal for the species from an evolutionary standpoint. Despite the name, species-wide artificial improvement is not actually limited to humans other species or entities that are enhanced count as well. The means used for this augmentation can be anything from magic to science.

Transhumanism as a movement and a philosophy implies that people can, and should, become transhuman en masse rather than be restricted to a select few who came across such abilities through extraordinary circumstances. By implying that scientific progress may grant superhuman powers to anyone with appropriate knowledge and resources, and without any regard for predestination, luck or hard work, transhumanism is notoriously opposed to narrative exceptionalism. A positive portrayal of transhumanism generally places a work on the Enlightenment side of the Romanticism Versus Enlightenment spectrum while a negative portrayal or conspicuous absence of it does the opposite.

Proponents argue that transhumanism is an essential part of our future lives, because...

The opponents also have many arguments to support their views.

Historically, media has not been kind to transhumanists. For a long time, desiring for human improvement has been the province of dictatorial dystopian societies or a Mad Scientist with a God complex. Anarcho-Cyber Punk writers focused on how cybernetic augmentation could be abused to the detriment of society, as well as how it eats people's souls. Religious Moral Guardians object to the idea on the ground of tampering with God's creation (though, ironically, many religions espouse a transhuman plane of existence free from the sinfulness of flesh). And, particularly with the rise of far right and Neo-Nazi movements in recent years, there is the concern that transhumanism can serve as a rebranding of the old Eugenics Movement designed to make it seem more palatable. In fiction, upgrading a human being through science was usually portrayed as a bad idea strictly due to the Squick factor, and even when it wasn't, it was either shown as a Deadly Upgrade with significant disadvantages or a part of an Utopia Justifies the Means plan objectionable on moral grounds.

Curiously enough, as augmentation-based medical therapies gain traction through both in-vivo genetic engineering and advanced prosthetics and improve human lives in ways thought impossible in the past, the criticism has gradually subsided. Today, many would agree that, from a strictly utilitarian standpoint, transhumanism has a great potential to be used for good, with the criticism being mainly aimed towards the implementation and its potential pitfalls and dangers rather than the idea itself.

The word "transhuman" is now found in legitimate scientific and political debates.

For some of the abilities a Transhuman might have, see the Stock Superpowers Index; related to How to Give a Character Superpowers. See also No Transhumanism Allowed. This may be used as an aspect of a Cyberpunk or Post-Cyberpunk setting.

Compare the bermensch,notemeaning "over-man" or "superman" in German whose transcendency is psychological and moral in nature rather than physical.

Sub-Trope of Trans Nature. Mutants and Human Subspecies may or may not be a result of this, and they may be crippled instead of "enhanced". Contrast Formerly Sapient Species. Not to be confused with Transgender people, though medically transitioning is a mild form of real life transhumanist modification.

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'Cause it's gonna be the future soon, I won't always be this way/As the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away...

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Dr. Gross: Humans have relied on mods for thousands of years. Glasses to let us see better, artificial hearts to replace bum tickers, and the next logical step scissor hands and telescopic spider-legs!

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Original post:
Transhuman - TV Tropes