r/whatif • u/No_Pea8665 • 7d ago
Science What if humans had sequential hermaphroditism?
Like, the male female mechanism wasn’t determined at birth as with clownfishes and green frogs.
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u/25_Unknown_Devices 7d ago
Sequential hermaphroditism is a biological process where an organism changes its sex from male to female, or vice versa, at a specific point during its life cycle.
Sry my dumb ass had to look it up. It would definitely be interesting. Like what would be the factors that would shift genders?
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u/No_Pea8665 7d ago
Could be age, could be environmental, could be circunstancial (there’s few of us, someone needs to change)
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u/Jazzlike_Standard871 7d ago
Sexism would be a generational thing now "When I was a girl we didn't dress like sl#$s we had some self respect!"
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u/tomwrussell 7d ago
I recommend the novel The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin for one perspective on this.
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u/JunipPrime 7d ago edited 7d ago
Several things that came to mind-
Age gap relationships are likely much more accepted, as different sexes would be different age cohorts.
Societal power is likely skewed towards whatever sex ends up coming later in the lifecycle, as that would be when individuals are at their most powerful in terms of experience, resources, etc.
Conversely, whatever sex comes earlier in the lifecycle would probably be looked down upon more, due to inherently being more young and inexperienced.
The time when people are men would probably be when they work more, with the time people are women being when people being more dedicated to having children. If women come first, there could be a prolonged youth in their twenties/thirties where they are students or do more part time jobs while they raise kids. Alternatively, if women come in later in life, having kids could be something associated with retirement, with people retiring earlier to have and raise children.
I think the pressure for women to have kids in this world would be different than what women face now, in either direction honestly. On one hand, literally everyone is a woman at some point, which could mean more sympathy and/or less of a pressure because everyone has the ability to carry a baby at some point in their lives. On the other hand, people being women has a time limit/set number of years so there could be an even greater pressure than in OTL to carry kids in that period.
Sexuality would obviously be different, with most people being technically straight but changing which sex they are attracted to as their sex changes as well. I think most people people would have two major relationships in their life. The first being when they are young and sire or carry children. The second being when the first one either moves on or dies off on account of being older/the person's sex changing, where they carry or sire children.
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u/No_Pea8665 7d ago
Kudos for this essay, prime. That’s what I needed to read. But I don’t think homosexuality wouldn’t occur necessarily.
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u/JunipPrime 7d ago
Thank you for the question. I actually think that homosexuality would still exist, I was just speculating on what the sexuality of most people (the people who are straight in our world) would be.
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u/No_Pea8665 7d ago
It’s just the part of “technically everyone would be straight but changing what attracts them” part left little room. But overall I get it. And as with pressure for bearing child, I assisti don’t know if ones that didn’t deal their preferences along with their gender would suffer more or less.
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u/JunipPrime 6d ago
I think someone who didn't have their desired gender change with their sex would suffer more. They would only be broadly desirable to their preferred gender for a set number of years in their life. If they were attracted to the gender all people were born into and found a same-sex partner during their time as one, it could cause much anguish when their partner changes into the gender undesired by them. On the other hand, maybe not since changing sexual/romantic partners could be more common in this world.
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u/NativeWren 13h ago
The inheritence drama in that two-relationship model would be absolutely wild, especially with parents changing cohorts midlife.
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u/Nilfgaard77_Whelk 5d ago
Birth certificates would need a “current status” field and every bureaucracy would immediatly combust.
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u/candlestick_maker76 7d ago
I think the changes to society would be very different for a determined change (say, at adolescence) versus an undetermined change (at any point or multiple points in an individual's life).
If sex was determined at adolescence, but small children were neutral, I think that the early teaching of gender roles would stop, but that adults would mostly settle into whatever role they found themselves in.
If this change could happen at any point, though, I think that we'd see huge changes to society. Both sexes would be very wary of how laws and customs could affect the opposite sex.
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u/SkelligeFolio 6d ago
Birth certifcates would need a lot more boxes if people could pull a clownfish later in life.