Since Human Cloning is a big topic, here is an odd idea. What would happen if the scientific community cloned a male, switched the X and Y’s making the clone female and allowed the two to mate. I guess that’s as close as you get to screwing yourself over. Is it legal?
Um, if you switched the X and the Y you’d still be male.
I would imagine it would be just as illegal has incestuous sex between identical twins is.
Hm, I’d think it could be argued that it’s just really masturbatory behavior.
<sings>
Ouch.
I can’t reach my mouth.
If I could do it myself, I’d never leave the house… </sings>
I’m sure you mean replace the Y with an X. But that is where your twisted twin buggering fantasy falls apart. Even if you found an X to put in place of they Y, you have also replaced half of the genetic material that was going to make up that individual.
Type. Shite. Repace ‘as’ with ‘on’ in that subject.
Read Robert A. Heinlein’s “Time Enough for Love” for a really mind blowing exploration of this concept. Lazarus Long deals with a couple in exactly this position, and then ends up with a pair of identical female twins cloned from his DNA. Good reading.
Personally, I’d make a great chick. I’d do myself in a second. 
winces as he realizes that now this is now stored on the 'net forever and will most likely destroy any possible chance at a future career in politics
Thank the Lord for semi-anonymous screen names.
Purely from a technical standpoint:
You could make a female from a male by removing the Y and duplicating the X.
This brings up several problems. First, by duplicating an entire chromosome, you increase the likelihood that the individual will suffer recessive genetic disorders (in this case, sex-linked ones). This could range from mild ones, like colorblindness (I am one of those rare females who is) to more serious ones like hemophilia.
If the two were to have children, this would increase even more. You see, most people have a recessive gene or two (or 5 or 6) floating around in their genome. It’s just that most of the time there is a dominant gene that supresses it. They show up most commonly in poplulations with a limited gene pool. This is also why incest causes so many problems.
Funny, I’d have thought that being a space dinosaur alone would have been sufficient to preclude that particular career opportunity. But then, it didn’t seem to deter William Kennedy Smith. Or Hillary Clinton.
[hijack]I recall when I first got involved with my girlfriend. I would periodically look up at her over her belly at “key moments in the relationship,” so to speak, and say brightly, “Well, there goes the political career!” To which she would reply, “Don’t be ridiculous. There is nobody in the world more political than lesbians.”
[/hijack]
The threesome with his daughtertwins was perhaps one of the least perverse things Lazarus Lopng does in that book . . .
but hey it’s Heinlein so it’s good