Discussion Main / NoBiologicalSex

Perhaps this one should be renamed, or maybe the page reworded. Gender is purely psychological/social, while the physical aspect is sex.

OK, it's not a problem with the page or the trope, but noticing the Lloyd in Space entry about the alien character that chooses their biological sex on hitting puberty and thinking you'd want to avoid Conversation in the Main Page and any accidental trips into Thread Mode, the Fridge Logic about xir possible homosexuality might not necessarily be the case. I can think of a few ways it's not Fridge Logic at all: Bizarre Alien Biology and the Values Dissonance of an alien culture being what they are, it's possible that the character's choice of sex is meant to be based at least in part on whether xe is primarily androsexual or gynesexual, with xir taking on the sex that would make xir heterosexual (I know, I know, runs into Trans Equals Gay Unfortunate Implications from a human perspective, but sexuality and gender identity almost certainly have to be very different for an alien race that actually chooses their biological sex upon hitting puberty). Maybe xe is told to decide based on whether xe would rather reproduce as a male or as a female, which would necessitate the crush being of the opposite physical sex. We might (unlikely though this may be in a Disney cartoon) even be dealing with a case of Bizarre Alien Reproduction, where "male" and "female" mean different things to their people after the choice is made, and the terms used are just the closest English-language analogues. Where you find Bizarre Alien Biology, you're likely to find Values Dissonance bordering on Blue-and-Orange Morality as it relates to matters of sexuality and reproduction.

After all, what sets of values we humans have been able to have has always been determined by the needs of biology and the limits of technology. In times past, where child mortality and the need for a large agricultural (or later, industrial) labor force were both much greater, the technology at the time limited humanity to only those sets of values that would maximize reproductive success: Men Are the Expendable Gender as far as reproduction goes, because of the simple mathematics of the human reproductive system, so men ended up doing all the farm work, animal herding, war-fighting and such, work that might get them killed but also work that gave them power and status; women, as the limiting factor on reproduction, were unfortunately treated as property and stuck with tedious but relatively safe domestic work and with raising whatever children came out of them either until the child died of some combination of malnutrition and disease or, if the parents were lucky and the harvests were good and the diseases stayed away, until the child was ready to join in the adult community. Non-reproductive sexual relationships, especially homosexual ones, were a major no-no in some of these societies (usually those where there was little enough sanitation that unnecessary sexual contact might spread diseases around), while in others they were tolerated or outright accepted so long as the people involved were still cranking out kids. And transsexuality was right out in many places, because you couldn't have women trying to perform the male role if that hindered the work of having kids, and you couldn't have men trying to perform the female role if that hindered the work of providing for those kids. Grim conditions require grim actions in order to survive. Thanks to science and technology, we're no longer entirely stuck with those grim conditions: our need for agricultural and industrial labor has dropped off dramatically with mechanization and automation, child mortality has been cut significantly due to modern medicine and increased food supplies. So our values are changing. Slowly, yes, because ten thousand years of uninterrupted male rule and two thousand years of overall heteronormativity don't disappear overnight or even over so few decades as we've had since feminism and LGBT rights became major social forces, but the values at the core of our society are clearly changing, and will continue to change, and that's very much for the best.

I'd assume the same basic fact to be true about any alien species with different concepts of sexual identity: what values they're able to have conform to their biology. A species that chooses its sex at the onset of puberty will definitely have an entirely different concept of sexual and gender identity, and of gender roles, and likely of sexual orientation as well. Questions can be asked, like if anyone even decides, years after choosing their sex, that the sex they assigned themselves isn't what they feel like inside anymore? Humans at the onset of adolescence, at age 12 or so, don't always know their sexual orientation or gender identity yet; you hear stories about people who knew they were gay or bi or trans from the very beginning, but you also hear stories about people who thought they were straight until a Closet Key came along when they were already an adult, or who spent high school and college questioning their sexuality and identity before realizing what they really felt themselves to be. Is it the same for this race? Or is their concept of gender identity different enough from the human one that they simply don't have many transsexuals? For that matter, are there individuals in this race who decide they don't like either gender identity, and so choose to stay sexless, or who can become intersex if they so choose? Also, how much does their opinion on gender identity affect their social standing? Among humans, at least in the First World patriarchy is slowly giving way to egalitarianism at about the same time that transgender rights are becoming recognized, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Would power be generally held by those who decided to be male, those who decided to be female, or equally independent of sex? How early is a gender identity developed among that species? For all we know, the non-sexual components of gender identity might not exist among this specific non-human species and a key component of the choice might be what kind of partner they feel a greater attraction to, male or female, which would make the original question and Fridge Logic irrelevant.

Sorry if this is irrelevant, and thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Questioning sexual orientation in the presence of Bizarre Alien Biology that begins with No Biological Sex is just opening up a can of worms when it comes to weird sci-fi questions that just came flooding to my mind on reading that and remembering the episode.

I noticed there's no picture for this topic, I don't know how to add pictures, or if it needs to be elected, but Cloud of Darkness from Dissidia seems like a rather amusing choice. Her picture from that game is high quality too, so it won't look crappy. Her game data even includes the perfect quote for the picture:

"Although appearing as a woman, the true nature of this being remains unknown."