The above post from a Facebook transhumanist group is obviously intended to be funny (and it is!), but perhaps it raises some interesting points. For example, in the not too distant future, when gene editing for cosmetic and personal (and sexual) enhancement is perhaps commonplace, genes taken from animals might be regularly inserted into humans. Many woman might desire to have the grace of a cat, while some men might like to have the penis of a bull. Would this blur the boundaries between our species and that of animals and even raise ethical questions as to bestiality? Probably not, unless the resulting being was indeed recognizably and significantly part human part the animal of whom the genes had been taken from. After all, there has already been extensive research conducted on animal to human organ transplants, and the major issue is overcoming the problem of immune system rejection rather than ethical objections. When the first say, pig to human transplant does take place, nobody will think the human patient will be any less a human or any more a pig. Similarly, we can imagine some extreme ‘body modification’ females in the future taking advantage of advancing technologies like CRISPR to give themselves literally, for example, the tail of a fox. Although such a woman may be bizarre, at least until we get used to such sights, there would be no question she is a human rather than a fox.
Another question relates to the idea of technology creating the ‘perfect woman’. The discussion currently revolves almost entirely around the increasingly newsworthy subject of sexbots, but perhaps the average woman will face a different sort of competition much sooner – the genetically enhanced female. Of course, neither women nor men can turn themselves into sex robots (unless perhaps we ‘merge with machines’ as many transhumanists predict and hope for), but anyone with the money to afford it might soon have the ability using gene editing to turn themselves into not only foxy ladies, but quite literally sexual Gods and Goddesses of their choosing that we can barely even imagine now.