I remember reading, a long, long time ago, Samuel R Delaney's "Triton". I don't remember much about the book, except that it describes a society where sex-change surgery is highly perfected, and widely available. I tried to refresh my memory by reviewing the Wikipedia entry on the novel, but it wasn't particularly helpful.

I also recall reading Ursula K Leguin's "The Left Hand of Darkness", about a world where the hermaphroditic human colonists have evolved the ability to change their gender in a matter of just a few days. Unfortunately for them, they have no control over this process: it occurs suddenly and unexpectedly several times during their lives, usually at the most inopportune moments. I don't remember much about this book either, except I enjoyed it very much, and (like "Triton"), it received excellent reviews and won a Hugo.

Whatever strange places humanity goes to, you can count on SF writers making the first exploratory trips.

I consider myself a thoroughly heterosexual creature, I like women, both as sexual objects and also for their many other fine qualities. If pressed, I must confess that I consider them, on the whole, to be morally, emotionally and intellectually superior to men. (Yes, a number of exceptions immediately come to mind.) I like to think of myself as a feminist, and I am convinced I have always felt that way, in spite of having reached puberty well over a half century ago, and being brought up in a culture dominated by Latin machismo and homophobia. I have never felt revulsion, or even hostility, to unconventional sexual practices such as homosexuality or bisexuality. Come to think of it, the only sexual deviancy I feel instinctive and total disgust about is rape. I can visualize situations where murder might be justified, but I can conceive of no such circumstances for rape.

But I must confess I do feel some concern about the contemporary societal infatuation with what we now call "LGBTQ" issues. I can't say "some of my best friends are gay", but I do have one fairly good friend who is. I have no problems with individual's unconventional sex practices, but when the entire society seems obsessed with it, I can hear the alarm bells starting to go off.

Perhaps this newfound fascination with homosexuality and its related states is simply a sign of societal maturity, a realization that this is the last of the Great Prejudices to be recognized and overcome. I certainly hope so. Because if it isn't, then it may be telling us something much more disturbing.