Celebrating Pride Month: How Would Transgender Reassignment Surgery Work in Star Wars

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Winter
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Celebrating Pride Month: How Would Transgender Reassignment Surgery Work in Star Wars

Post by Winter »

In Season 5 of The Clone Wars there's an episode where Obi-Wan fakes his death and takes on the identity of the bounty hunter who the Jedi Hired to "Kill" Obi-Wan. Here's the scene in question

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV5Ne9wlnIA

This scene always fascinated me, this is someone being altered to look like someone else with some sort of voice alternator to make Obi-Wan even sound like the Bounty Hunter he's impersonating. Given how this is framed it implies that what's being done here is not the usual use of this tech or that doing something like this is either highly expensive or illegal but I've always wondered what this is all for. My guess is this is how plastic surgery is done in Star Wars but I always wondered, for obvious reasons, what else could be done with this tech.

I honestly wonder if this is how Transgender Reassignment Surgery is done in universe for Star Wars? If what we see isn't limited to just changing someone's face but their whole body too? Obviously hormone therapy would also need to be considered so I also wonder how that it handled to. If someone is transitioning from one gender to another do they have to go through hormone therapy before getting their body altered?

Then there's the voice altering device that Obi-Wan uses, is that something else transgenders use to help change their voice or do they just get regular surgery? Is that someone The Jedi are using just to change Obi-Wan's voice to make him sound like Rako?

Thoughts?
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hammerofglass
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Re: Celebrating Pride Month: How Would Transgender Reassignment Surgery Work in Star Wars

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I'm guessing it depends. Some places in the setting real doctors are rare and expensive but you can get life-saving cybernetics from a back alley parlor for your massive gut wound (Tatooine, Book of Boba Fette); some places they slap a medpac on you and you can heal a similar wound overnight (Lothal, Ahsoka). As a Jedi master on Coruscant what Kenobi used was probably the most advanced stuff that only the richest and most powerful have access to.

My guess is if you have money and access they slap you in a kolto tank with the right programming for a day or two and you get whatever body you'd have if you'd gone through the correct puberty. On those isolated medieval-but-with-droids villages half the galaxy seems to consist of I doubt you'd be able to get even HRT.
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Re: Celebrating Pride Month: How Would Transgender Reassignment Surgery Work in Star Wars

Post by McAvoy »

It's something I have actually thought about in Star Trek. Pre-Disco and ignoring Quark in drag episode with all of the stereotypes you expect from a sitcom.

I figured Federation medicine would be advanced so much that they could effectively change the gender and sex of a person and none of us would know it.

I get it, they couldn't cure baldness or blindness. But you could say they can cure baldness but it's the 24th century and men are more than comfortable being bald and just accepted it even if it was available. Geordi's blindness is harder to defend.

Star Wars medical technology looks to be far less advanced to me. I can't recall outside Captain Pike (which was radiation) who took let's say severe burns and still carry the scar. But I am also drawing a good comparison in that regard. That dermal regenerator is like magic though.

Maybe their plastic surgery is more advanced than ours, but I don't think they could genetically, physically change the gender and sex of a person. Who knows maybe they can do genital transplants effectively.
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