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kimyoonmiauthor · 5 months

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Worldbuilding: !@#$ the terfs, be more creative with gender and bio sex than a binary system.

9.5 times out of ten the majority of gender systems I read in US books are really, really uncreative, and I do mean that because manga, has more creative gender systems than a lot of US books. I love you Melanie Rawn, but still, the inversion as good as it was in the uncompleted Ruins of Ambrai, still was largely a European system because it was largely a commentary on the European system. (Yes, I did understand that.)

And the US tends to, very much accuse other countries of having uncreative gender systems that are absolutely rigid, say the US to Japan. (Though the usually [white] understanding of Japanese gender is usually abysmal... but that's a whole paper and a half there.)

When building a gender system, be more creative! You have this other fake culture. You can do whatever the heck you feel like. Say, the Barbie Movie, which hilariously the alt-right USian detested, though it still was a commentary on mostly US gender norms.

Can't we loosen this up a little? You have literal aliens and you can't imagine a more creative sex and gender system than the binary? Oh really? Humans aren't even binary on either. I'm going to give cultural examples.

Introduction

Bugis have 5 genders.

BTW, someone got so mad when I pointed out the page they cited said that Bugis recognized 5 genders, they went on a youtube rant about it. lol Deal. BTW, people put a lot of emphasis on Bissu like how people hyperfocus on trans women in the US because masculinity is that fragile. Albanian is complicated.

Some countries/ethnicities have 3.

India has a 3 gender system in Northern India. Women, men, Hijra

I mean this list:

Some countries don’t even define the two gender system the same way (Europeans are sooo uptight. Loosen up.)

For example, a Korean man wearing pink--no problem. No one flips the hell out when a man in Korea wears a hanbok with a chima and a jeogori. They are like cool. He can do as he likes. Even baksu wear chima in religious ceremonies. They believe it gives them extra powers.

The whole pants. are. for. men. and. women. only. wear. skirts.

Oh c'mon...

Pants were invented for horseback riding--like the heel.

So let's get this mind-numbingly straight (pun somewhat intended here) Men, are men because of horses. (haha, yes, Barbie reference), thus have to wear pants. But are absolutely effing forbidden from wearing heels, which are also associated with what? Horseback riding. Hmmm...

And men still wear dresses and skirts, but they call it by other names.

Judicial robes for sale, and look, a man is wearing them.

But--But that's soo different from a dress...

https://www.net-a-porter.com/en-jp/shop/product/la-doublej/clothing/maxi-dresses/muumuu-printed-silk-twill-maxi-dress/38063312420399795

This is a dress because as Webster's Dictionary says:

: an outer garment (as for a woman or girl) usually consisting of a one-piece bodice and skirt

Yes, it's worn by a woman. I couldn't find another definition.

But men also wear sarongs. And bath towels, and kilts all of which look suspiciously like skirts. And togas. Which shows how fragile the definition is that you need to narrow the definition that much.

And freaking for those religious, God on the Sistine Chapel, by suspected maybe gay Michelangelo, has a vaccuum sealed butt on the Sistine chapel wearing a pink dress.

C'mon, we can be more creative than this, surely. I mean, if you look at this super rigid gender system, does it make any sense at all? OK, I'm NB and all, but seriously, I look at it and go, WTF happened to you?

You get so uptight about men wearing lace, stocking, high heels, dresses, pink but forget so quickly that less than 200 years ago, no one gave a damn, and if a man didn't wear those things, he couldn't make it in high society.

I mean...

Lafayette, wearing pink, heels, stockings, lace (his collar), and a wig. Give me a break here.

And gender definitions change over time...

Just about 100 years back, in order to be out and gay, it was thought your entire gender was different. There was nothing like a butch gay man. You were considered part female, in fact. And no one in the 19th century would have taken exception to that. It didn't change until much later in Europe.

But also Europe imperialized the world with gender expectations, leading to a rise of violence against third gender communities.

What was one of the first three rules of culture I posted? Culture changes. Koreans like to say, even in ten years the Mountains and rivers change. So gender can and will also change in definitions becoming more rigid, more fluid, recategorized, etc over time.

So given all of these things... let's rethink gender.

Gender doesn't have to be Defined by Sex Assigned at Birth

A lot of Human cultures assign gender this way. Born one way, raise them that way, hope it works out.

But you have a whole FANTASY WORLD and you can see, humans don't make a lot of logical sense when it comes to gender. I mean heels are for women, and men should never wear them, except when they are attached to boots, but the boots better not be too high , or you're *gasp* gay is the European "logic" system. And only what? 50 or so years ago, women were finally allowed to wear pants.

So you don't have to do it by genitals. You could do it by hair color. Gender affirming care would be changing your hair color, or horns, or whatever tickles your fancy. You could, say have a cephlapod species with smaller males that can present female part of the time, and based on their texture of their skin, that's their gender.

You could do it by color--the species has actually blue, dark blue, green, yellow, etc skin colors and they can change them at any moment and the one they tend towards, well, that's their gender.

You could also make it so you automatically need a polycule for the species to work out and reproduce. And thus there might be, say a 6 gender system. 2 possible genders for the three adults there.

C'mon. Nature is creative and sometimes has an all female species. Look at Mourning geckos. There are so few males, and they are sometimes called a lesbian species of gecko.

Even then, you have intersex, and not all intersex people are infertile.

Terfs only think it's wrong to "go against nature" when it has to do with gender presentation. Nothing else. But they have no, no problem with assigning a sex to an intersex child without their consent. That's culture taking over for nature. And how that is shaped, or not shaped, absolutely belongs in world building.

If your men aren't horseback riding, and your women aren't either, then dresses for all are fine. Deal with it.

I think it would be entertaining to see an alien species determine the gender of the child by holding up paint swatches to the child's say eyes and then saying, "Yep, a girl."

Or even well, the birther stayed in # temp rooms, for # amount of days, Oh, this is the expected sex of the child. But the gender, well, we will determine that by these [arbitrary] factors.

But seriously, you can define gender and sex however, you want. Is medical/magic intervention necessary or not? Who gets to determine it?

Next step is to find the rules for how gender is expressed in an idealized world.

Do you constantly call all of your girls and tell them they can grow up to be a princess? But tell all your boys they are going to grow up to be doctors and lawyers?

This is what Social Scientists would call socialization.

For this, I would suggest you make a spreadsheet and then put down arbitrary lists of things the "ideal" gender would wear. So for the US, Pink is for girls. Blue is for boys. How they should act. And finally, how they are taught.

It's so ubiquitous that even feminists often trip up and see a baby in a pink dress with lace and automatically pick up a doll. (I'm just saying, maybe think that one over a bit.)

Make a list for each column. And then for the individual characters figure out how they DON'T fit those norms and then terrorize them with it...

What do you threaten the privileged group with if they come out of line?

For men in the US, for example, you go with homophobia. "That's gay."

Because the threat of being gay is sooo outlandish. *eyeroll* It's an threat to everything masculine.

I'll go over this in more detail later in the series, but you need things to discipline the privileged group and the disadvantage group(s). What's the threat if you become this other group? Death? Social ridicule? Financial loss? Being outcast?

Or, do you get rewarded and become a shaman, a healer, or a celebrated hero for being able to not fit in? (This also is possible).

Cultural justifications

Cultural justifications for this are different from the actual historical reasons or the facts.

The historical reason that pink and blue switched was because dyes became more readily available for both and they felt like it.

Blue used to be more rare, and thus considered "virginal" because blue is rare in nature, but under industrialization as people became more and more disconnected from nature, and blue dyes became available, the idea of this became more diluted, and the switch was from blue to pink.

That's not what the cultural justifications were for this thought originally. The thought was that blue was a more "delicate" color, clearly more suited to women.

Because, if you have forgotten (yes a joke coming), humans constantly get amnesia on where things come from. Constantly. We've lost information in your own lifetime. You were born 2 seconds ago? Well, I hate to tell you, we've lost information in that 2 seconds.

So, when they can't remember the reason, Humans make up a reason to go with it, that's often frivolous and silly. Something that feels, what? Natural to them. Though remember the rule, Nature gives no fucks. So find and make up a logical reason for the cultural item and then find a stupid reason that people are willing to double down on it and there you go, that's culture. So say your species of aliens, the ones that are temperature linked to sex, link Iunno, gender to horn size. Bigger horns mean a certain class of gender. The original reason might be that bigger horned females are better at digging nests back when they were a pastoral society, thus better able to have larger clutches of children. But they've now reached the stars, so they completely forgot why and now just say that bigger horns are simply sexier because reasons. Or it could have flipped that smaller horns are in more demand, because big horns get in the way of industrial tasks, but no one says that. And now the bigger horned females, are considered a lower gender than the smaller horned females, who then raise all of the eggs.

See, the justification doesn't even have to follow any sort of logic. It's what they tell everyone to make them feel better.

And truthfully, a lot of culture is built this way. The reason you tell everyone isn't really the actual truth. I mean I did a whole series on Story Structure, and the justifications versus the reasons why it was made that way don't even close to match. People blindly parrot what other people tell them if it will help them succeed. (BTW, not saying I'm not guilty of this, I absolutely am.)

So I think this gives you a good basis to free yourself up for a larger system and be more creative with your gender definitions. Because absolutely both gender and sex are defined by culture, but in different ways.

You have effing demons, and you can come up with a more creative gender categories? You have unicorns and you don't have more creative gender categories. And you have kracken climbing buildings, but you can't imagine a third sex category for them when it absolutely exists in nature. C'mon. Hit me with your most creative and free yourself of your own culture's definitions of gender.

What if you nuked the entire Male/female/NB system. What would that look like? How would you justify it on two fronts? Blow that system out of the water and rework it. What would the Sexual orientation work like with a 3 sexes, 2 gender for each each system?

What stupid prohibitions would you put in for such a system?

#writing advice #worldbuilding #gender #be more creative with gender please

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antariies · 2 months

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Late Winter in Divinity's Reach

Summary: Winter and Urlae are invited to celebrate the Lunar New Year's festival in Divinity's Reach.

Characters: Winterlayt, Urlae Summer, Lily Summer, Verdanzy

Notes: Winter's POV (2nd person); fluff; 1.2k words; this is my 2024 secret santa red envelope gift for @ruderubicante! happy new year!

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The charr have this theory about humans, that they insist on being so noisy all the time to make up for their dull sense of hearing. You’re inclined to believe it. You’ve only just arrived in the Crown Pavilion and the cacophony of firecrackers and joyous shrieks bombards you from every angle, unrelenting. This was a bad idea.

“This was a bad idea,” Urlae remarks, echoing your thoughts. “We should leave.”

Well, now you obviously can’t leave. That would be letting him win.

“You can leave, if you’d like,” you offer, perfectly cordial. You even give him this sort of sympathetic look you’ve been practicing.

Urlae sees right through it. “You can drop the holier-than-thou act. I know you hate this racket just as much as I do.”

Your reply is as pleasant as spun sugar and just as substantial. “Hm? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A gaggle of human teenagers rush by, and for some reason, every single one of them feels the need to knock their bony elbows into your legs as they pass like you’re some Dragon Bash piñata. “Ow,” you intone with the same lofty cadence.

Urlae crosses his arms, unimpressed. “Winter, I can see your eye twitching.”

“You should get yours checked then, Doctor.”

“You’re acting like a huge prick right now.”

“And is that your personal or professional opinion—”

“Dad! You made it!” A new voice interrupts your bickering. Urlae turns faster than you, eyes scanning in the direction of the familiar shout until he spots a young charr squeezing her way out of a sea of humans. The tension bleeds from his shoulders as his daughter makes her way over to the pair of you.

“Oh,” he murmurs, a fond smile stretching across his face, “Lily, you look stunning.”

That, at least, you can agree on. Her hanbok is gorgeous in its simplicity, consisting of a pale green chima, an even paler yellow jeogori, and as she gets closer, you spy little white flowers embroidered on the goreum. Combined with her soft, well-brushed fur, she looks like the last frost before spring, in spite of her namesake.

Speaking of spring. Verdanzy is next out of the crowd, the blue-and-orange ribbons of their hanfu fluttering wildly behind them in their hurry. Their beizi is light and delicate, long sleeves billowing around their body like a cloud.

“Hi, Uncle! Hi, Dad!” they cry, and now it’s your turn to smile. Which, to everyone else, looks like an infinitesimal uptick of the corner of your mouth. It seems like a hassle for them, having to constantly dodge lanterns and paper dragons and the occasional stray sparkler because of their height, but when they skid to a halt in front of you, it’s clear that nothing short of an apocalypse could ruin this day for them.

“Wow, Uncle,” they start, breathless, “you look great!”

Pleased, Urlae gives them a short bow. He’s wearing an áo dài himself, a long-sleeved peach-colored tunic embroidered with matching blossoms over black trousers. The whole ensemble is made of silk, and the reflection of the warm lantern lights in the fabric creates an illusion of luminescence.

“Thank you, Verdanzy. I’m glad at least you two understand the importance of dressing well,” he says, shooting you a sidelong glance.

You look down at your extra lumpy sweater. It’s a thing of beauty—in your humble and unbiased opinion—made of eye-catching (though some would say eye-searing) red and yellow wool. “I’m told these are the traditional colors. Very auspicious.”

“But not traditional dress,” Urlae says, picking at a loose bit of yarn on your shoulder. You slap his hand away.

“When did you get here? Have you eaten? Just in case you haven’t, we got something for you!” Lily manages all in one breath. “Here!”

She shoves a paper carton under your noses. Yours, literal, and Urlae’s, figurative. The gentle reminder that you two can’t eat regular food dies on your tongue when you open the container.

“...Is it human custom to eat raw meat during this festival?” you ask instead, staring down at the chilled pile of—you sniff the meat—uncooked pork.

“Nope!” Verdanzy chimes in, “We just asked if we could have some of the, uh, what’s it called?”

“Bánh chưng,” Lily provides helpfully.

“That. We asked for some of the filling before they cooked it. They didn’t even charge us.”

“You’re kind to think of us,” you say, taking the small wooden skewer that Verdanzy holds out to you. The raw pork strips are soft and marbled with fat, yielding under your teeth with surprising ease. Seasoned well with salt and pepper, but unlikely to make you sick later. It’s not bad. Urlae gives you a knowing look as he chews slowly on his own meat skewer. It’s rare the two of you get the opportunity to actually enjoy the food you eat.

“Have you two been enjoying the festival?” Urlae asks after swallowing.

“Yeah!” Verdanzy nods fervently. “We’ve been having lots of fun at the game tables. I think one of the dealers is using loaded dice, though. I lost a handful of silver there.”

You reach for your gun.

“Dad.”

“That was humor,” you clarify, holstering your pistol. What, did they think you were actually going to shoot someone for your kid? …Hm. Unconvincing even in your own thoughts.

“I liked your joke, Uncle Winter,” Lily reassures. “And you two are just in time for the lion dancers! They’re about to start, c’mon!”

You and Urlae are unceremoniously dragged through a throng of people and all the way to the front of the crowd. Some people glare up at Verdanzy, who can’t help their height, but quickly find other places to look after catching a glimpse of your glower. A crash of cymbals and rhythmic drumming pierces the air, and cheers erupt as costumed dancers bound into the middle of the circle.

They don’t look like any lions you’ve ever seen, but what do you know? Perhaps Canthan lions are much more friendly and colorful than their Elonian counterparts. Admittedly, they’re growing on you. The puppetry is impressive, and for most of the performance you even forget that it’s two human dancers under there, and not one giant, fuzzy beast.

A little ways to your right, Lily urges a reluctant Urlae to offer a cabbage to the lion. “Quick, Dad, he’s coming back around, hold it out! He’s not going to eat it if he can’t see it—”

The lion considers the offering for just long enough that you can see Urlae’s patience wearing thin, then takes the whole head of cabbage into its mouth, making a show of chewing the vegetable with great vigor. Abruptly, it stands up on its hind legs, opens its mouth—

“This is my favorite part,” Verdanzy whispers.

—and begins spitting cabbage leaves back into the crowd. Before you can move out of the way, Verdanzy holds their arm up above your head, protecting you from being pelted by the chewed-up cabbage. To your endless amusement, Urlae is not so lucky. As soon as he peels a cold, wet leaf off his face, he’s immediately hit with another one. And another one.

“It’s supposed to bring good fortune, apparently,” Verdanzy explains, grinning. They look down at you, eyes bright with unrestrained mirth. You would give the world for them to be this carefree all the time.

“Is that so?” you say instead of voicing that thought, “I suppose I am feeling rather fortunate right now.”

“Yeah? That’s good. Happy New Year’s, Dad.”

“Happy New Year’s.”

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #our server had too much goin on in december so we turned out secret santa into secret red envelopes for the new year instead!#my writing #ruderubicante

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