> Those who questioned the centrality of sex to human existence directly attacked the fundamental social conventions of their time. Almost every person who has

> Those who questioned the centrality of sex to human existence directly attacked the fundamental social conventions of their time. Almost every person who has ever existed, exists because of sex. That is literally what causes people to happen. That's not merely a social convention. I say "almost" because artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilization are possible. Whether those "are" some intermediated kind of sex becomes debatable. The man who masterbates to fill the cup -- is he having sex? The woman who undergoes the procedure -- is that sex? You can worry about the boundaries of concepts and try to shift them around. Certainly I've done this. And very topically you can do that for very basic concepts, like "man" or "woman". So, obviously, the word "sex" is somehow a social convention. Trivially, you at least say it differently in different languages. But there is one act that everyone, everywhere, will agree is sex, and that is penile-vaginal sex between a male and a female. The thing that creates babies. That is central to the concept. And though I'm sure efforts are underway to "de-center" that, and to shift the meaning of the word... ...the thing that underlies it is fundamental to your existence. At most, by altering your internal representations, you can cut away from yourself some ability to think or sense or communicate productively about this aspect of reality. But this aspect of reality won't go away. Granted, this is an aspect of reality whose time dynamics are slow, on the order of generations, so it's possible in the short term to make it seem unimportant. But slow dynamics -- like climate -- are actually very important...