Gender is so weird

[beccaelizabeth]

So I idly invented an alternate gender system for a fantasy world, because everything being the same is boring

so in my world, nobody is assigned a gender, gender and bodies has nothing to do with each other, people just choose to be a man or woman or person and can stay a person their whole lives or switch as many times as they want.

So then I go to populate this world
and I keep gendering everyone
by binary gender.

I made this stuff up and I keep failing at it.

I decided my main character is nonbinary and I keep typing she.

I feel like a fraud.

It's like my brain is so thoroughly colonised I can run through it with a burning flag yelling 'no masters' but in five minutes I'll be back to doing the same old shit anyway.

*sigh*



Some of it is because I'm populating it fanfic style and just throwing characters at it to see where they'd fit, but of course in the source they're basically binary gendered, and basically all cis and not fluid, and then they just end up staying the same and my world is disproportionately white guys again. Which is daft, because I just made it up, it should not be white guys.

Some of it is because it's one thing to set out to disrupt gender by using unfamiliar pronouns or singular they, and quite another to get your fingers to remember. Singular they bugs me, you lose data, but there I am using ambiguously general you and that doesn't bug me, so it's just habit.

Also the per/per/pers/perself pronoun set is tempting but the first per doesn't fit, we have she he they in that slot already, so clearly it should be pe, which is then unfortunate. It can't be Phe because that changes the P sound weirdly, and Peh belongs to another set.

I'm better at typing ze but for some reason best known to my subconscious it doesn't feel like it belongs in this verse.

So just, in general, thanks brain.




I shall type a first draft and then fix it later.



But seriously, gender is weird.

Comments

[elisi]

Genders and pronouns are a nightmare.

Or rather, it's a nightmare to get rid of the rules in one's head.

Some years ago I came up with (which sounds weird, they just APPEARED and demanded to be written) a gender neutral character, and - just like you write here - it's only when trying to write someone like that that I realised how gendered language is. This particular character had chosen their own pronouns (sie, hir) and you would NOT believe how often 'hir' turned into 'her'...

But seriously, gender is weird.
Yes. Yes it is.

[beccaelizabeth]

*nods*

[melannen]

I have a story on my "to revise when you are brave enough" pile where two of the main characters (and one of the minor) are nonbinary, and I sort of solved the pronoun by making one of them the 1st-person-POV character, but then I decided to solve it for the others by having the pov char consciously (and clumsily) codeswitch between three different languages, one of which doesn't have grammatical gender at all, and one of which has approx. six genders and genders everything.

...the other gq character's native language is none of those three and has a completely different gender system.

...this was probably not a good choice.

[beccaelizabeth]

that does sound a bit ambitious. like you could build it up, but readers might not want to make the climb.

cool though.

[baronjanus]

my brain is so thoroughly colonised

it's hard and near impossible to shake ingrained things :( I know

maybe make your own pronouns? maybe use existing pronouns but mix them, or make somehow clear that they don't actually represent what they're supposed to?

...or write it with "she" and then use your "change all" option to alter them :) but that only works for the actual pronoun use, not the stereotypes. those are persistent little buggers.

[beccaelizabeth]

I'm thinking of writing it however it writes, then nuking the next draft with find/replace so every pronoun is 'they', and when I've got that into shape and put it away for a while only then regendering people who absolutely definitely need one.

but that requires finishing a first draft first, and planning is always more fun.

[baronjanus]

planning is always more fun

*nodnod* I have yet to master the art of "just put everything into a junk first draft! You can always worry later!" - I worry now. and if I can't reread the first draft for the junk in the way, it doesn't help me ;)

..Not saying anything about your draft here! Just bitching about my own.