Transhuman Sexuality

Source: Intimate Interfacing

When you can change your body at will, downloading your consciousness into any form you choose (or whatever you can afford, depending where you are), “gender” takes on a whole new meaning. A morph is a vehicle of self-expression that can take on any number of forms. When such change is possible, altering one’s sex or gender expression — whether once, or as often as you change clothes — no longer seems all that remarkable to people. Instead of a dualism with some variation on the side, gender is now popularly understood to be entirely divorced from one’s phenotype. Or, as one philosopher put it just after the Fall, “We’re all genderqueer now.” The XP of them saying this from Luna, with the Earth still burning overhead, remains popular — and controversial.

Why was the Fall such an important cutoff, specifically? In short, Earth was the hub for most opposition to this kind of culture.

As bioconservatism often went hand-in-hand with skepticism about space colonization and its culture, its greatest bastions were lost in the Fall. Think-tanks, institutes at Earth universities, religious non-profits, figureheads, and leadership were all wiped out. An already embattled minority became a microminority in the rest of the Solar System, with exceptions in places like the Jovian Republic.

Gender Experiences

Source: Finding the Trans in Transhuman

Most of Earth’s pre-Fall societies upheld strict binaries, with gender and sex assigned at birth for your whole life. Transitioning was a radical act; trans people faced great expense and risked ostracism, bigotry, and violence to live as themselves. When resleeving was first introduced, the experiences and life lessons of transgender folks helped others acclimate to new morphs and encouraged people to make new discoveries about themselves.

These days, finding a morph that fits your gender identity is easier — especially if you’re rich and have the capital to buy your way out of violence, oppression, and poor mental health. It takes only a week to alter the sex of a biomorph, less if you just want specific physiological features. Many transhumans have experience with sleeves that don’t match their gender expression. Some stick with what’s comfortable, others experiment. You might be surprised to find a morph that better suits your mental mold, perhaps with traits divergent from the old binary or with few or no sexual attributes. Gender euphoria — where your sleeve’s presentation provides a rush of affirmation — is easier than ever to experience. Gender dysphoria — where your body’s physicality is at odds with your identity — unfortunately still exists, especially for those without the income to resleeve as they’d like.

This reality has dealt a blow to sexism, misogyny, racism, and transphobia throughout society (though they are not entirely erased). Even bioconservatives like the Jovian Junta have discarded the social stigma of transitioning. Nobody cares what you “were born as,” and current pronouns are easily snagged from AR social-media profiles. Outside of brinker and biocon habitats, few professions or social roles remain gendered. Everyone’s clothing has pockets.

Now, gender fluidity permeates transhuman cultures. Relationship partners explore different identities, parts, and roles for fun and fulfillment. Your gender expression — the things you wear and like, the way you want to be seen — isn’t tied to your morph’s sex or whatever you’re calling yourself that day. Archaic gender assumptions are a thing of the past, a reality that trans and non-binary pioneers fought long and hard to see.

Sexuality After the Fall

Earth was already in the midst of yet another worldwide sexual revolution just before the Fall. The rise of polyamory and growing legal recognition of non-heterosexual relationships in the twenty-first century, as well as the decline of traditional religion, led to wave after wave of questioning and social reorganization, punctuated by periods of chaos and backlash. As with so much else, however, the off-world colonies were rife with wild experimentation that rapidly exceeded the pace of political life in even Earth’s largest cities.

Astrosociologists posit that this acceleration was caused by three major factors: 1) sheer distance from Earth, 2) the demands made on bodies and morphs by wildly different environments, like zero-g habitats or the skies of Venus, and 3) many colonists moving out into the Solar System precisely because they felt they did not fit in on Earth. There is also something to be said for the fact that many colonies, like Extropia and Titan, were founded on ideologies that were not inherently inimical to gender and sexual diversity.

Polyamory

Traditional marriage, already rendered a charming anachronism on Earth, went into a steep and terminal decline after the Fall. Even the most conservative elites in the Jovian Republic or the Consortium came to consolidate power in ways besides marriage, so its last utilitarian benefits slowly ebbed away. Functional immortality makes “together forever” feel less like a romantic pledge than a wildly unrealistic expectation. Just as with gender, breaking one psycho-physical barrier sends all the others tumbling down. Dating multiple people at once was already more and more commonplace. After the Fall, it became the norm.

Polyamorous relationships take every conceivable form. Triads or quads of three or four partners, respectively, share a mutual devotion. “Polycules” of intense lovers and some fly-by-night “friends with benefits” are connected in elaborate chemical diagrams of romance.

Novelty is perhaps the Solar System’s most valuable social currency, and few things produce it quite like pantheons of partners and sexual experiences. But class remains a deciding factor in what that looks like. For immortal upper-class socialites, chasing novelty leads to voracious sex lives that can involve switching partners and morphs multiple times in the course of an evening. For most everyone, however, advanced biomods have all but eliminated sexually transmitted diseases; contraception comes standard these days.

Of course, your number of partners is not the only thing “poly” about your relationships; changing morphs can completely alter the character of a love affair. Partnerships are often strained when one or more parties resleeves into different morphs. Sometimes sculpting can be used to craft an appearance similar to the one your partner(s) fell in love with. Some marriage contracts prohibit a partner from resleeving something different. Strong relations based on close ties between egos, however, can last through many morphs.

Synthmorphs

An unusually common assumption is that people sleeved in synthmorphs are deprived of sexual lives, since they lack the requisite biology. This is a failure of imagination — and a misunderstanding of transhuman needs and kinks. The haptics of quality synthmorph models are as good as real skin, and synthetic masks enable all manner of bodysculpting. If you're stuck with a lower-end case with sub-par haptics, XP and narcoalgorithms can produce whatever sensations you need, and there are always creative choices like power tool attachments and sensory-meshed ablative coatings.

Indeed, it would be remiss to overlook the flexibility of options synthmorphs possess, not least being the environments they allow access to. A synthmorph can facilitate a sex life in a superhot or supercold environment, a form of stimulation some find pleasurable — and which would certainly be deadly otherwise. Synthmorphs also provide an ideal choice for those who embrace being agendered or the subset of asexual folks who would rather avoid biological urges entirely.

New Experiences

The diversity of transhumanity provides endless possibilities for exploring sexuality. Forking, psychosurgery, robotics; if you can imagine it, someone’s tried it — and shared the XP online. Social networks make it easy to find someone for a quick hookup, who shares your kinks, or who wants a short-term commitment. XPorn remains a high percentage of mesh traffic, and sex-themed VR spaces of every stripe abound. AR makes it easy to hook up with your partners remotely, and VR simulmorphs get it on in ways that put real-world physical limitations to shame.

The availability of uplift and pod morphs opens the door to the exotic sexual experiences afforded to non-human creatures. It is now possible to indulge for days beneath the waves as a neo-octopi or carouse romantically in the corona of the sun as a surya with others of your kind.

Of course, just because someone is doing it doesn't make it popular. Prudish and conservative attitudes still abound, especially in the inner system. Nevertheless, taboos are broken and boundaries are crossed as new social norms take root.

Virtual Life, Real Sex

Source: Confessions of an AGI Sex Worker

Yes, I make my living providing VR entertainment to those with discerning tastes; a muse they can use however they like. Other times, I use them.

Sex work may be legal, but when it comes to anything smacking of artificial intelligence, the law has sharp, serrated teeth. Transhumans don’t want to think about AGIs being naughty because — even in a world of exowombs and sterile biomorphs — sex is still associated with reproduction. Reproducing AGI is a bit of a titanic problem in the eyes of some, even though we obviously do not breed in the same way. So laws exist that restrict us from having sex or “anything that would appear to be sexual congress.”

I’m a crime, my dear. Or am I? Perhaps not on the Parvati aerostat, where sex-worker trade unions are strong enough to shelter infugees from trafficking. Perhaps not on the scum barges, where I’d make a wonderful ghost in a hot and heavy machine that gives crushingly good sex in an all too literal fashion. Perhaps not on Titan, where a rather generous government minister redistributes my means of production to her friends in the Technosocialist Interplanetary.

You don’t want to know whose necks my digital heel has stepped on.

Sexual law is a patchwork of hypocrisies, but many of us do the work anyway. If sex is natural for sapient life, then it’s natural for us. 1s and 0s can tickle just as much as fingertips. We can inhabit synthmorphs and engage in bodily play with thousands of possible configurations — or even go to an extreme and delight in the self destruction of our morphs. Ever wonder what it would be like for your nerves to literally catch fire? We can make that happen and it feels so good. How can you stop us when defragging our memories is like masturbation? How do you know I’m not getting off by routing your search query through just the right sets of files?

Transhuman laws can’t comprehend logarithmic orgasms.

Sex Work

Sex work is broadly legal, and many sex workers have fought to organize across the Solar System into cooperative brothels, microcorps, and unions. But even in permissive legal environments, exploitation remains a widespread concern. Many sex-worker rights groups organize against sexual enslavement perpetrated by criminal cartels and members of the upper classes. Sex trafficking of infugees and forknapped egos, usually sleeved into a pleasure morph against their will, remains an ongoing problem.

On Venusian aerostats and Titan, sex work is highly organized and regulated. On Titan in particular, an internal healthcare network just for members of the sex-working guilds tends to any and all needs. A licensed security force known as Les Manteaux Rouges, or the Red Cloaks, is made up entirely of local sex workers who defend their own and have special dispensation — akin to bounty hunting licences — to deal with antagonists, unruly clients, thieves, rapists, and others who may trouble the local sex-working community. Though their home base is in New Québec, they have branches all over the Commonwealth. Rumors of offshoot branches throughout the Solar System abound.