RatRace123 said:
I don't know why I'm asking this, but if you had the ability to switch your gender back and forth at will, would you utilize it? What would you do? Would you choose to live life as the opposite gender?
Again, not sure why I asked this.
I'm also not sure if this thread will end up being SFW.
Well technically we all have that abillity already, we just can't control it. In every living thing with genders is the code for both genders. In some extreme cases, gender transformation for animals has been recorded, typically when the population gets low. How it happens or what the signals are, are unknown. This was a key element of Jurassic Park and the whole "nature find a way" thing. Think of the bit where they find the pregnant Dinosaur and were like "OMG, they were all supposed to be men" they wanted to control the population.
That little factoid aside, probably not. While sexist to point out, girls just aren't as physically capable as guys are. Men are stronger, and faster.
To be quite blunt, as some authors have pointed out the entire allure of being a girl comes from wanting to be an ATTRACTIVE member of that gender. Like it or not, beautiful women are showered with things in many cases, and taken care of. Girls tend to be jealous of other girls who are better looking for that reason, and a lot of the complaints about the "Hollywood body standard" (ie who gets to be movie stars and the like) are based on jealousy and what those girls get.
In a literal sense I'm not all that good looking a guy at the moment, and my general features just aren't feminine. If I went through a spontaneous gender change, I'd still be overweight, out of shaped, and fatigued from medication, but would be missing what's left of my strength.
Not to mention other biological issues. I mean a lot of girls take the attitude "it's not fair, men should have to bleed from their penis!". Well, unfair as it might be, I'm sort of glad that I don't have to. You'd be surprised how often basic facts people learned in sexual education are forgotten in gender transformation fantasies.
Having read books like Heinlan's "I Will Fear No Evil", I've put a lot of thought into the subject at times. The closest I'm likely to get is playing a female character in some RPGs. That let's me appreciate the imagery, and fuels pervy thoughts, without actually being a girl.
As a final note, concepts like "Ranma 1/2" can be amusing, but to be honest from what I've seen it's not all that well thought out. Ranma doesn't seem to lose much in the way of fighting abillity when he turns into a she.
Plus, in a realistic sense, where we don't have magic to alter reality, whenever I see shapeshifting that isn't magical I typically have to wonder about body mass and the like.