Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Alien Gender Issue

This is topic Alien Gender Issue in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by autumnmuse (Member # 2136) on :

Okay, the story I am working on right now features as the MC an alien who is both male and female. Thus, 'he' 'she' and 'it' are all incorrect terms. 'It' is probably the closest thing in English to use to refer to the gender, but that raises issues in the story, because writing in third person and using 'it' instead of 'he' is quite jarring to read, and confusing.

Thus I feel forced to write in 1st person, but even with that, references to the other aliens will still have to be in third, and they are all multi-sexed.

Any suggestions on how to handle this situation?

--One idea I thought of, but I'm not sure I like, was of referring to the aliens all as male until mating time, then when they become pregnant refer to all of them as female. That would still be a bit jarring I think and will sound homosexual when I describe the MC's attraction to another alien, which isn't what I am going for, and isn't actually the way it works, so I wonder if there would be some believability issues there.

Help!

[This message has been edited by autumnmuse (edited June 10, 2005).]

Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :

I feel for you! I had this problem except that it was language based and finally abandoned it after someone suggested "thon" as an alternative.

Are there any human characters you can use for reference? Probably not or you would have solved it the easy way. I'd say, since it's an alien, pick a term in the alien tongue and waste some of your Exposition dollars trying to establish what it means, then roll with it.

Or go with it, which is gender-neutral, but at least a word we know.

OR try to avoid using pronouns.

I think I've seen both ways done and felt like I had to work as a reader.

Posted by mikemunsil (Member # 2109) on :

Heesh has been used in the past.

She-it doesn't work, for obvious reasons.

Rather than work in first person, I would generate a word.

[This message has been edited by mikemunsil (edited June 10, 2005).]

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

I bet most of us have run into this problem. I did myself, just recently, but it was a short story and "it" wasn't the main character so I just went with that.

English has a lot of words, but it sometimes lacks proper flexibility. We create words when we have need for them, and until people started wondering about sentient beings without the genders we cling to, there was no need for a pronoun to describe them. "It" was our catch-all.

I warn strongly against making up a word for this. I think it has a lot of potential to confuse people. If I started seeing "thon" everywhere a pronoun should be I would eventually get it, but I'd be reading your first couple of paragraphs half a dozen times and hsaking my head in confusion...I doubt an editor will do that.

You *can* just go with it. It really is a catch-all. My biggest problem was that I kept randomly reverting to "he" from time to time. (Interesting study in psychology, actually, because the character I was calling "it" was more feminine than masculine.)

Anyway, there is another option to go along with your first person account. The alien wrote the account, but who translated it into English? The choice of pronouns would have been made by that person. Now, I'm just throwing this out there, but maybe you can have an author's (translators?) note or a prologue or something like that at the head of the story with a blurb from the translator. At that point, you can make up any word you want. Alternately, you can have the translator claim to be using "him" in a gender neutral sense. (I wouldn't recommend this because the readers will not think of it neutrally.)

Anyway...just a thought.

Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :

Is this alien genderless, or is it bisexual?

Posted by Lanius (Member # 2482) on :

I just read Ursula Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" where this was a major issue. She handled it by referring to the aliens by he/she depending on how they projected to the human character -- and the fact that the human knew his perceptions of the aliens gender were not quite right was an intersting aspect of the story.

Posted by Void (Member # 2567) on :

quote:
That would still be a bit jarring I think and will sound homosexual when I describe the MC's attraction to another alien, which isn't what I am going for, and isn't actually the way it works,

Could you expand on this a bit? Are they attracted to opposite gender aspect in each other, or does gender have nothing to do with the attraction?

Posted by mythopoetic (Member # 2624) on :

Suppose your aliens just picked a gender that they like to refer to themselves as. So your main character could be like, well even though I don't have a gender I will refer to myself as he, or she.

It would work as long as you make very clear at the beginning that they don't really have a gender.

Posted by autumnmuse (Member # 2136) on :

Well, since they are both male and female, i.e. each has the ability to impregnate and to be pregnant, the reason I was concerned with the homosexuality aspect is because that isn't technically what is happening. However, if I refer to the aliens as male before their pregnancies, the only way to describe the mating sequence will be male/male. In our society, good or bad, there are reader preconceptions built into male/male relationships. I just don't want to bring those conceptions into my story, because I think that people will be pulled out of the world when reading a scene like that. Maybe that is just me. Anyway, it just feels wrong because of the fact that my MC alien definitely feels a reproductive urge, not something just for pleasure.

What about referring to single individuals as s/he?

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

I don't want to speak for everyone who might read your story, but it really doesn't seem homosexual to me at all. It's different. Anyone who reads science fiction is expecting different. They even expect sexual reproductive differences. The people who would be put off by this probably won't read your story at all. At least, I think so.

Posted by Robyn_Hood (Member # 2083) on :

I did some searching on Dictionary.com and had a few ideas if you develop your own word.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hermaphrodite
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=androgyne
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gynandromorph

Perhaps: andro, herm, herma, gygan (might not work because of Star Trek: TNG sound-alike).

I also like the prologue idea. Worked for Tolkien to introduce Hobbits. If the aliens aren't introduced until later in the story, perhaps an expository chapter would work.

[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited June 10, 2005).]

Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :

So, can these aliens impregnate themselves?

In fact, I have a similar situation in my novel (see thread on alien languages) where the alien in question is asexual and reproduced by what is essentially fusion. I'm tap-dancing around the issue in the first draft, but I'm probably going to invent an alien word that represents any individual--something like: The gazork came into the room. Translation: The individual from my species came into the room.

Might work for you also. (Gazork is the first thing that popped into my head.)

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[This message has been edited by Spaceman (edited June 10, 2005).]

Posted by franc li (Member # 3850) on :

Latin has some perfectly good neuter pronouns. I think German does as well. There are others but those are the closest cousin languages of English. I don't know them off the top of my head. You could also have an honorific system where they refer to each other by rank or status or age as short for their names.

[This message has been edited by franc li (edited June 10, 2005).]

Posted by MCameron (Member # 2391) on :

This reminds me of Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness," which has a race that is both male and female. You may wish to check it out. The story is told from the POV of a normal human, though.

--Mel

Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :

Call the ones that can have children She and the ones that can't He. (By can't I mean medically, I assume that they all would be able to normally.) Or perhaps the ones that have had children she and the ones that haven't he.

Posted by AstroStewart (Member # 2597) on :

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in English, if you need to refer to someone whose gender is unknown, isn't it technically correct to refer to the person as "he" instead of "it" or "they" or some other word?

I seem to recall in high school, anyway, I had a teacher whose pet peeve was whenever you call a gender-unknown person "they" because using "they" indicates that there is more than one person and is not technically correct for one person of unknown gender, even though that is the common usage.

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

Not exactly, Atro. Your English teacher was speaking about something like the article I read in a parenting magazine a few days ago which went through the first year's development month by month. They would say something like, "In the first month, he will..." Actually, they did something weird in the even months, they switched to "she", which is technically and traditionally wrong but has its roots in the sexual revolution and isn't entirely as evil as your English teacher makes it out to be.

In other words, "he" is used to refer generally to one unspecified person when one of those unspecified things is gender.

This is subtly different from the case where we have a specified person (or alien), and know its gender, but it has both genders. There is no case for handling this in the English language. Some might argue for using "he" based on the same rule you cited, but I argue that they are wrong. You start calling an alien "he" and human readers will consider it male, even though this is not true.

Did that make sense?

Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :

The alternating he/she thing is typical of parenting writing, and it's also more irritating than trying to read Finnegan's Wake. Such a creative way to satisfy everyone. Blech!

Posted by autumnmuse (Member # 2136) on :

Well, thanks for the input. Unfortunately making up a word sounds too much like a noun versus a pronoun for me to use. I'm going to try an experiment and see how it goes:

When I would normally write 'he' or 'she' I will use 's/he' instead. When I would normally write 'his' or 'her' I will write 'hir' instead, and see if I can get the reader to accept those as being realistic pronoun morphs.

Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :

I think the hir will work, but the s/he could be a distraction. Maybe hse or hi. At any rate, good luck with it. I hope to read it when it's finished.

Posted by Void (Member # 2567) on :

Funny, I thought just the opposite. I don't have a problem with the s/he, but hir just looks weird to me. No pleasing them all on this one, I'm afraid.

[This message has been edited by Void (edited June 11, 2005).]

Posted by shadowynd (Member # 2077) on :

I rather like Christine's suggestion of a prologue, and Robyn Hood's suggestion of some gender-neutral terms.

Your prologue could also be an entry from, say, an exploratory colonization ship that ultimately finds the planet unsuitable, but does refer to the creatures, pointing out their hermaphroditic nature and assigning a gender-neutral pronoun for convenience sake. Or, alternatively, you could just say "The alien", or use the name of the alien's species instead of he or she. Of course then you still have to deal with himself/herself issues. Itself might work, though.

Susan

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

You could come up with something that really explores the effect of biological hermaphroditism on things like romantic attraction.

Think about this for a moment, seriously. Why would anything analogous to our ideas of romantic (rather than merely sexual) attraction ever develop in a race where all the members of the species were hermaphrodites?

Sure, you'd still want to seek out a mate with exceptional genetics, so sexual attraction would play a strong role. In fact, which partner was more attractive would tend to determine which acted as the "male" and which as the "female". The one doing the pursuing would probably be content to take the more burdensome parental role, the super-fit would probably get pregnant a little less often but would impregnate others much more frequently.

Eventually, with the rise of culture, contract law, and all that good stuff, you'd probably find legal arrangements where one individual who was not sexually attractive by the usual standards could nonetheless comphensate another for bearing one of "his" children (such persons would probably already be bearing their own children unless there were some reason it was impractical). But that wouldn't be part of their evolutionary heritage, would it? There wouldn't be any reason it would have to be an exclusive relationship or anything like that.

And I can love men and women without being particularly sexually attracted to them. If I can do it, anyone can. Let me put a bit of a point on that point. I can love others without feeling any desire that their genetics should be shared with my own children. I don't know if humans generally are able to feel this way, certainly it isn't the sort of thing that you say to people to show affection ("I like you even though I want to make sure my children don't have your genetic defects" ). And honestly speaking, I'd marry and procreate with a woman who had "genetic defects" (yeah, even if she were blond ), if I felt like I wanted to spend my life with her and have her involved in raising my children. Because I don't live in a culture where you can separate love and procreation that easily.

But for a society of hermaphrodites...there would be no reason that love and procreation would be mixed in any way, because everyone can do it themselves. If you were in a cooperative "labor sharing" partnership with someone (and this partnership could include any number of individuals) and you found out about a super-fit who was willing to get you pregnant, it would be much more desirable for you to share that super-fit with your partner than to couple directly.

I mean, all this depends a bit on what you mean by "both male and female", the specifics of how the biological investment works out. But having what we would understand to be romantic attachments would be a serious error in plausibility.

It's worth a lot more thought than coming up with novel pronouns.

Posted by autumnmuse (Member # 2136) on :

I agree that there is room for thought along those lines, Survivor. However that is not the direction my story takes, unfortunately. My aliens are more like animals. Intelligent, but not intellectual if you will. They don't work with tools or create permanent civilizations. They live only twenty-four hours. They don't possess birth canals, so the only way for the young to be born is for the parent to die, so everyone is pregnant only once. The mating urge at dusk is very instinctual and very strong; celibacy is unheard of among normal members of the society. While they ARE hermaphroditic, they do not impregnate themselves, and they rely on pheremones to choose mates instead of the way most humans pick sexual partners, by other attractions.

If you feel strongly about the above post, Survivor, why don't you write a story exploring that idea? I'm certain it will bear little to no resemblence to my own.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

Octavia Butler, in Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago, gave an alien third sex the pronoun "it." I did not find this usage confusing at all. I really don't see why people wouldn't use it. In UK English, it's OK (or used to be) to refer to a baby or toddler as "it."

Niven & Pournelle, in The Mote in God's Eye, used the appropriate pronoun for an alien based on where it was in its hermaphroditic cycle. Since theirs was much slower than that of your aliens', it wasn't confusing. Essentially they were almost all "she." If there had been sex scenes, I guess this would have taken care of the apparent homosexuality problem.

I read Left Hand of Darkness, and to me, LeGuin's choice didn't work. The alien kept being referred to as he, so I perceived "him" as male, which wasn't correct and undermined the point of the book.

Posted by autumnmuse (Member # 2136) on :

The problem with using 'it' is mostly a problem due to third person. I tried writing a couple pages that way, and found no way to make it less confusing. I think the reason for that is in English 'it' is used for so many things, and is kind of a catch all.

But, I have to report that using the s/he and 'hir' options also aren't working for me. I wanted to hurl the story across the room after a paragraph, and I'm the author so I know the reader will hate it as well.

I know that people are biased against first person, but in this story I really see no other feasible way to address the problem. I will use 'it' when referring to other aliens, but try to limit the usage as much as possible.

Aaargh! This is sooo frustrating. I have written the beginning of this story at least six different ways, all of which have disappointed me. Must keep trying.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Oh, right, the non-sentient bit comes in here, doesn't it?

If these things aren't sentient and only live for 24 hours anyway, it's not a big deal. Just describe them like they were snails or something.

Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :

autumnmuse, I presume that when your aliens give birth, they can have more than one child at a time? Otherwise how did there come to be more than one of this species in any generation?

The biggest question you must answer is: how important is this alien gender issue to your plot? In The Left Hand of Darkness it was very important, so LeGuin worked hard at building the vocabulary and attitudes of her characters and narrator. But if it is just window dressing on your world, not central to plot, then you can be casual about it.

I ran into a similar problem with robots and computers as characters. When I call my robots and computers "it" I get lots of complaints from critiquers: they say the mechanical characters are stiff, boring, flat, underdeveloped, etc.

If I simply change "it" to "he" and "she" with no further description or character development, critiquers stop complaining.

Our culture has made personal identity inseparable from gender. This will always make it difficult for speculative fiction writers to depict interesting characters who have no gender.

Posted by autumnmuse (Member # 2136) on :

Originally I thought they would have only one child at a time, but I did realize that couldn't work, so yes, they have multiple births.

[This message has been edited by autumnmuse (edited June 21, 2005).]

Posted by franc li (Member # 3850) on :

I had the same reaction as Survivor to the added information about the species. But then, that's probably not surprising. I think your reaction is unwarranted. P.S. Though I'll grant there may be some kind of interpersonal history here that I'm unaware of.

[This message has been edited by franc li (edited June 13, 2005).]

Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :

Why not 'they' 'them' 'their'? It could sound wrong but what wouldn't?
Has someone said that already?

Yoimeni a darikwyrm went to their fridge. Such an old fridge. How long had they had it they wondered?

It may mess with some people's heads though.

AstroStewart above said it is wrong to refer to someone of unknown gender this way, however their gender is not unknown in this case. Our language is setup for 2 genders, not three of four or more. What if there was a race that had a male, a female and a receiver sex into which an sperm and ovum were deposited by the respective male and female by means of some sort of penis/ovipositor ? There would be three clear sexes and you would have the same trouble as to how to refer to the receiver. In a language setup for two genders only, I think they (which is ambiguous) may be your best option.

[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited June 13, 2005).]

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

It's hard for am and me to get along, she feels that she should be ranked above me, and I don't agree

That makes her no different from half the people on the forum, though. So it isn't that big a deal.

I'm just saying, there is nothing wrong with the word "it" if you're talking about something that is an "it".

That said, am's probably right, I just don't buy this concept, and nothing she's done with it has made it any better. So I probably should stop trying to help her with it. I just didn't realize it was this old hash again when I first saw the thread.

Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :

autumnmuse: Who is your narrator? If your narrator is an Earth human from 2005 then he or she will probably struggle just as we are struggling. But if your narrator grew up in a society that has lived with these creatures for a long time then doubtless the society will have adapted the English language. For example, perhaps "they" has evolved into the proper pronoun.

Survivor: Only half the people on the forum? I'm afraid you've made a mathematical error, my friend!

Posted by autumnmuse (Member # 2136) on :

My narrator is one of the aliens. The story is told through his eyes. That is why I don't want an introduction written by a human or something like that. The planet is highly radioactive and would not be a likely choice for colonization from Earth. The alien race is the dominant life form on the planet.

I think I have given up on using anything other than 'he.' I will simply describe 'him' getting pregnant at one point, and see how that goes over. Anyway, I need to stop talking about it and just do it.

The above sentence is a good example of why I cannot use 'it' to refer to the protagonist. 'It' is used in reference to far too many things for me to use it just in connection with one being.

[This message has been edited by autumnmuse (edited June 14, 2005).]

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Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

I thought I was the only one with any rank around here.

Anyway, this looks like a good time for certain people to ignore each other.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

Autumnmuse, let me suggest you try "she." The reason I say this is that there are at least 2 kinds of creatures I was reading about (in _Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation_ -- a really funny and interesting book about animal biology), that reproduce asexually, which are called "she." One is a species of all-female lizards that do parthinogenesis. Another is a rotifer. OK, they're not hermaphrodites, but still, it's all one sex.

Of course, this is something you can change with search-and-replace and see which way you like best.