ok this is a little thought experiment I had a little while ago, what brought it about was that I was tired of seeing sci fi that always used our concept of male and female (and often even our secondary sexual charecteristcs like breasts) on aliens, it seemed rather arrogant to even in fiction always have sex and gender of creatures from diffrent planets or realities, mirror our concept of sex and gender. so I wanted to come up with a species that didn't mirror that, further more as I feel is the case with the best sci-fi I wanted to come up with plausible reasons why the creatures took an evolutionary path like I hard rather then just say "this is what their like" so here's what I came up with.
the species is divided into four group, any member of any group can produce an offspring by mating with any member of any other group. each group is actually adapted to handle the harsh conditions of one of the four seasons on a planet were the conditions season to season vary so widely that their adaptation is to have most of the species enter a shelter and a period of little activity (similar to hibernation but not quite), while the subset best adapted for the current environment, provides for the rest. off spring are typically carried by an inactive member of the species unill the baby is born.
Had Surgery/Has this Blog run its Course
5 years ago
Well for most organic things on the planet earth the male-female exists, so it is more then just human genetic path. I truly think the reason for most tv doing that is to kind of ground in something viewers can relate to not to mention keeping production down. Now I know there was a TNG episode in where the entire race was one gender. I have never seen anything complex as a four gender race but in books you will see sometimes something more complex. The trilogy xenogenesis has a third gender and arthur c clarke book rendavois with rama has a species with 3rd gender, so the stories exist.
ReplyDeleteThe human race has more than two genders to begin with. Though this four gendered concept is pretty neat. I tried a similar thought experiment and my result was a species that had gender but didn't have sexual differentiation. As in every member of the species had the same type of body as everyone else but their self expression was free to be varied. I thought there would probably be a group that would express themselves and traits similar to our femininity, and a group that did the same but with masculinity. There would also be groups that didn't rigorously fit into one of our common groupings. In that way their expression of gender could be tied completely to their own self image and how they interact with society and be expressed in a true manner devoid of other individual preconceptions of how they should be.
ReplyDeleteMy view our society's gender is pretty interesting too. But I won't clutter your blog with deconstructionist theory.