Androgyny

[The_Fractal_King]

I've been going back and forth between How To and here for ten minutes trying to figure out where I ask questions about writing and I guess this is it? lol

So anyway, I'm working on a SciFi story and one of the major characters is a transhuman without a sexual identity I've been trying to keep the character androgynous by using various titles and indirect references in the narration but it's getting really tough.

Anyone ever had to deal with this or have an idea about how to get around it?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I think you could do this in some other language but in English, you're in for a tough time. Sorry.

 

[Xelebes]

I remember reading older English texts (possibly Wessex English) that there were in fact pronouns for non-gender-specific persons that were not "it". Can't recall what they were exactly. I'll see if I can dig them up.

 

[gauchecritic]

What you may find in trying to write any character is that your own gender intrudes and you begin to think that your androgynous character is too far one way or the other.

This is not what actually matters. What does matter, as with any character, is how far along the middle line between male and female you want this character to be.

I think you're being confused by men versus women and as you are no doubt aware there are few people that fit either character. Your confusion lies in the difference not of gender identity but with perceived male and female attributes.

As the Kinks say 'Girls will be boys and boys will be girls, It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.

If that's any help good luck to you.

 

[jomar]

Yeah, I clicked on this before anybody responded with a hope to help. But... Maybe you could google it, or better yet, find a sci-fi writers site. I'm sure this has been discussed before somewhere.

 

[Guest]

I think Ursula LeGuin's "Left Hand of Darkness" dealt with an alien, humanoid race in which the members were male for a period of time and then switched gender. It's been too long for me to be sure of any details, but you might check to see whether she found a solution after the featured alien changed.

 

[Weird Harold]

So anyway, I'm working on a SciFi story and one of the major characters is a transhuman without a sexual identity I've been trying to keep the character androgynous by using various titles and indirect references in the narration but it's getting really tough.

I know of two different SF authors who made up gender neutral pronouns for asexual/trisexual Aliens.

One used Ve -- Ve's neck flushed in embarassment or ve raised ve's tentacle for permission to speak.

The other used Ze.

I've actually seen other variants, but they tend to get more "alien" and less intuitive for the readers.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I know of two different SF authors who made up gender neutral pronouns for asexual/trisexual Aliens.

One used Ve -- Ve's neck flushed in embarassment or ve raised ve's tentacle for permission to speak.

The other used Ze.

I've actually seen other variants, but they tend to get more "alien" and less intuitive for the readers.

I'm an old Sci-Fi fan. I've never seen those. Have you got either titles or authors? I'm interested.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I've been going back and forth between How To and here for ten minutes trying to figure out where I ask questions about writing and I guess this is it? lol

So anyway, I'm working on a SciFi story and one of the major characters is a transhuman without a sexual identity I've been trying to keep the character androgynous by using various titles and indirect references in the narration but it's getting really tough.

Anyone ever had to deal with this or have an idea about how to get around it?

Are you speaking of character/psychological difficulties, or grammatical ones? I think you've gotten good advice on the character/psychological ones, and of course given that your character is an alien, the pleasant thing is that it doesn't have to fit any specific human model. It just needs to be coherent within itself.

If you're asking about grammatical issues, I have a little experience in that area. (I choose not to have a gender in this forum.) There's no simple, completely fluid answer to the absence of a gender-neutral pronoun, as you've learned, and it sounds like you've been creative with solutions thus far. Do your characters know that the alien has no sexual identity? Is the reader meant to know this? If so, and if this sort of alien is a known race, then you can always simply invent a third-person gender-neutral pronoun and introduce it in the text.

If the characters aren't meant to know that the alien lacks a gender identity, then it looks to me as if your solution is simple: they'd call the alien whatever gender they thought they were looking at. If, on the other hand, you don't want the reader to know that the alien lacks a gender identity and you don't want to draw attention to that fact, then indeed you are in tricky territory. Some things that may help:

(1) Keep the name of the genderless character short so that repetition will feel less cumbersome. "Sil" won't stand out like "Kalkandarian" would if you're skipping pronouns and re-using the name.

(2) Describe parts instead of the whole character. This, for instance, is a (very bad, no doubt) snippet of a character describing an encounter with someone whose gender he does not know:

"We drink fast small talk with our shoulders touching; sharp eyes dare me further. We dance tight, bodies close, gold skirt riding higher and thighs sleek to my hand. Higher still, up under the taut gold hem, I find the tense delicious moment: the hand that stops mine, the sure, taunting smile."

(3) Titles - great idea. I think that's a winner. Anything from a formal title of rank or position to simply "the pilot" or "the merchant" can substitute in for pronouns.

(4) Use character voice to color references. "That damned interfering cop" or "the delicious vision gliding toward me/him/them over the dance floor" can let character point-of-view description skip over the pronoun gap.

(5) Drop the pronoun/noun/person reference altogether. In referring to my SO, for instance, I choose not to identify a gender either. I've grown accustomed to writing sentences like "I choose not to identify a gender" rather than "his/her gender" to shrug off the need for a gender while not repeating "the SO" more than I flatly have to.

I don't know if that was at all your question, or at all a decent answer to it. Here's hoping!

Shanglan

 

[3113]

C.J. Cherryh in her "Chanur" series had a race with three sexes, the third being neither male nor female but something completely different, and having it's own pronoun. This makes the most sense, that a third or non-he/she would have it's own pronoun.

LeGuin actually refereed to her gender switching aliens as "he" being that the pov was that of a bias human--she later regretted this as she felt it undermined her point about there being no absolute male or female in any of us.

Ultimately, I think the best two things to do is (1) create a pronoun for this unique sex that "it" can think of "itself" by (Cherryh used "gtst" instead of "he" or "she." (2) Give it a name.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I think LaGuin ran into this problem in "Left Hand of Darkness". Her solution was to make the character male, but would change sex to procreate.

My thought would be to give the character a "neuter" name and just not refer to the sex at all. For a pronoun, just use "it".

 

[Stella_Omega]

C.J. Cherryh in her "Chanur" series had a race with three sexes, the third being neither male nor female but something completely different, and having it's own pronoun. This makes the most sense, that a third or non-he/she would have it's own pronoun.

LeGuin actually referred to her gender switching aliens as "he" being that the pov was that of a bias human--she later regretted this as she felt it undermined her point about there being no absolute male or female in any of us.

Ultimately, I think the best two things to do is (1) create a pronoun for this unique sex that "it" can think of "itself" by (Cherryh used "gtst" instead of "he" or "she." (2) Give it a name.

If you try reading the book substituting "she" for "he" you do get a different text. (dammit, I wonder what's happened to my copy? )

The character, if I remember correctly, was asexual until its "season" and became gendered in response to the gender of whomever was around at the time. Since the Earth man was a man, the character became female and got knocked up...

 

[3113]

If you try reading the book substituting "she" for "he" you do get a different text. (dammit, I wonder what's happened to my copy? )

The character, if I remember correctly, was asexual until its "season" and became gendered in response to the gender of whomever was around at the time. Since the Earth man was a man, the character became female and got knocked up...

You got it part right. Yes. The aliens were gender neutral, but went into "heat" as it were at certain times, at which point they'd each fall into a gender (male or female) and have sex. Whichever one was the female at the time got to have the baby, obviously.

The main alien in the story is thought of as "he" by the male human. At one point, they're trapped together while the alien is in season, and the alien stays away from the human because it knows it'll turn female and want to mate if it gets too close. They never have sex, and the alien never gets knocked up by anyone. Our human heartily agrees that they should stay apart and, given that the human thinks of this alien as "he" we can see why. Intentionally or not, LeGuin put in some homophobia there--though what she was really trying for was more the idea that the human didn't want the alien to become "female" and therefore truly "alien" to him.

It's not surprising that early female and minority writers of SF cast themselves (females/minorities) as the "alien" and used sci-fi to explore white male fears and biases towards that "other"--but I, myself, never quite bought it. I always thought of myself as human so I often found such comparisons problematic...and not really all that subtle

 

[Weird Harold]

I'm an old Sci-Fi fan. I've never seen those. Have you got either titles or authors? I'm interested.

Nope, I can't recall precisely which authors or series they were -- I want to say the Moties from The Mote In God's Eye are the aliens that used 'Ze' for their third gender, but I couldn't swear to it.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I always thought of myself as human so I often found such comparisons problematic...and not really all that subtle

This made me smile. Evidently, with some of us it runs deeper than even race or gender. Before I was well aware of myself as having either, I recall wondering why, in "Snow White and Rose Red," the prince who was turned into a bear would go to all of that trouble to turn back again. He was a MAGIC BEAR!

 

[Stella_Omega]

YESSS! And Cocteau's Beast was so sexy-- the Prince was a disappointing wimp.

 

[The_Fractal_King]

What you may find in trying to write any character is that your own gender intrudes and you begin to think that your androgynous character is too far one way or the other.

This is not what actually matters. What does matter, as with any character, is how far along the middle line between male and female you want this character to be.

I think you're being confused by men versus women and as you are no doubt aware there are few people that fit either character. Your confusion lies in the difference not of gender identity but with perceived male and female attributes.

As the Kinks say 'Girls will be boys and boys will be girls, It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.

If that's any help good luck to you.

That's a very interesting insight. I think I'll go back and put a bit of analysis into the character's personality again.

Are you speaking of character/psychological difficulties, or grammatical ones? I think you've gotten good advice on the character/psychological ones, and of course given that your character is an alien, the pleasant thing is that it doesn't have to fit any specific human model. It just needs to be coherent within itself.

If you're asking about grammatical issues, I have a little experience in that area. (I choose not to have a gender in this forum.) There's no simple, completely fluid answer to the absence of a gender-neutral pronoun, as you've learned, and it sounds like you've been creative with solutions thus far. Do your characters know that the alien has no sexual identity? Is the reader meant to know this? If so, and if this sort of alien is a known race, then you can always simply invent a third-person gender-neutral pronoun and introduce it in the text.

If the characters aren't meant to know that the alien lacks a gender identity, then it looks to me as if your solution is simple: they'd call the alien whatever gender they thought they were looking at. If, on the other hand, you don't want the reader to know that the alien lacks a gender identity and you don't want to draw attention to that fact, then indeed you are in tricky territory. Some things that may help:

(1) Keep the name of the genderless character short so that repetition will feel less cumbersome. "Sil" won't stand out like "Kalkandarian" would if you're skipping pronouns and re-using the name.

(2) Describe parts instead of the whole character. This, for instance, is a (very bad, no doubt) snippet of a character describing an encounter with someone whose gender he does not know:

"We drink fast small talk with our shoulders touching; sharp eyes dare me further. We dance tight, bodies close, gold skirt riding higher and thighs sleek to my hand. Higher still, up under the taut gold hem, I find the tense delicious moment: the hand that stops mine, the sure, taunting smile."

(3) Titles - great idea. I think that's a winner. Anything from a formal title of rank or position to simply "the pilot" or "the merchant" can substitute in for pronouns.

(4) Use character voice to color references. "That damned interfering cop" or "the delicious vision gliding toward me/him/them over the dance floor" can let character point-of-view description skip over the pronoun gap.

(5) Drop the pronoun/noun/person reference altogether. In referring to my SO, for instance, I choose not to identify a gender either. I've grown accustomed to writing sentences like "I choose not to identify a gender" rather than "his/her gender" to shrug off the need for a gender while not repeating "the SO" more than I flatly have to.

I don't know if that was at all your question, or at all a decent answer to it. Here's hoping!

Shanglan

That's great advice. Especially the use of "we" in dialogue, I completely failed to think of that. I'm definitely considering shortening syllables in the character's name.

Thank you very much for your input!


To those suggesting an invented gender-neutral pronoun, although appreciate the sentiment it seems awkward as it would only be applied to one character in this case.

 

[NoJo]

I've been going back and forth between How To and here for ten minutes trying to figure out where I ask questions about writing and I guess this is it? lol

So anyway, I'm working on a SciFi story and one of the major characters is a transhuman without a sexual identity I've been trying to keep the character androgynous by using various titles and indirect references in the narration but it's getting really tough.

Anyone ever had to deal with this or have an idea about how to get around it?

The trouble is, of course, is that "it" is not a personal prounoun. So, as has been suggested above, you'll simply have to come up with one, or check out the table of neologisms in the wikipedia entry on gender-neutral pronouns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Neologisms

 

[gauchecritic]

The trouble is, of course, is that "it" is not a personal prounoun. So, as has been suggested above, you'll simply have to come up with one, or check out the table of neologisms in the wikipedia entry on gender-neutral pronouns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Neologisms

I'd forgotten all about thon. I've heard geordies use it. And they pronounce thou like you. (I don't mean you sound like a geordie I mean the word 'you')

Although come to think of it you do sound like a geordie. (but only if your name's georgie)