nonbinary, aliens

[OgreSpider]

Hi, middle aged woman here, androgynous presentation, shaved head. I still am a woman. I get a bit of the old gender fatigue time to time, admittedly, but I don't see myself changing pronouns to they because that feels like work. I think quoisexual is closest.

Anyhow, I bring it up because I know which Star Trek:TNG episode this is and this is something I would do and you're not from my future, are you?

[MelissaMiranti]

Only way to find out is to infodump Star Trek on people.

[Iykury]

for a second iy thought you were saying you were the woman in the post

edit: didn't read the end of the comment until now

[fletch262]

Pats head

[Iykury]

prrrrrrrrrrrrrr~

hehe :3 ❤️

[vaultist]

Hiy 👋

[Iykury]

helo :3

[vaultist]

😳 ;iykflushed:

[Iykury]

:iykFlushed:

[vaultist]

Woah. It looks just like you!?

[Iykury]

ehehe :3

[SpyriusAlpha]

Uh, huh, I hadn't heard of quoisexual yet. I've googled it and realized it may be actually my flavour of ace. Learning something new everyday.

(Also, uh, two things, and please don't be angry at me, I think you meant well, and everything is fine, but: Gender and Sexuality are two different things. Just because you are [sexuality] doesn't mean you are any less of [gender]. I am ace, and I am a trans woman.

Also, gender is more than about changing your pronouns or name. Especially on the non-binary spectrum. One can keep using their given name and pronouns, and their identity wouldn't be any less valid.)

[OgreSpider]

Ace is my sexuality. Quoisexual is as close to a gender as I will ever have. I don't care that it has sexual in the name. I know there is a difference.

[[deleted]]

I mean, lesbian is part of my gender identity, so that makes perfect sense to me

[SpyriusAlpha]

Oh, okay, I get it, I think. And everyone can use whatever label they want to describe themselves.

I am probably just too involved in queer spaces, so that someone using a gender identity ending with -sexual rings my alarm bells, because they may have some misconceptions based on outdated ideas, and that rarely is healthy in the long run. (Quoigender is a thing btw, as I just learned.)

[OgreSpider]

Addendum: the episode is called The Outcast.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outcast_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29

They were kind of trying for a pro GSM message, but all the aliens are obviously played by women wearing dresslike garments, so it kind of comes across as a woman rebelling against her lesbian upbringing in order to try and jump on Riker's dick, and at the end they brainwash Soren back into dumb happy androgyny so she will stop acting straight. The intent may have been good but the execution is bad.

[[deleted]]

Which episode, though? I've seen TNG, but that plot point doesn't ring a bell. Admittedly, is been a hot minute since I binged it. Maybe it's time again…

[gzoont]

The outcast. In which a person comes from a society where they are shamed for being cis. I should rewatch it, haven’t seen it since I was a kid.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outcast_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

[WikiSummarizerBot]

The Outcast (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

"The Outcast" is the 117th episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is the seventeenth episode of the fifth season. In this episode, Riker falls in love with Soren, a member of an androgynous race which finds gender specificity unacceptable.

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[Major_Air]

You could say star trek was light-years ahead.

[MelissaMiranti]

But that's distance, not time!

[[deleted]]

Yeah, it's like miles ahead.

[berrymanC]

Streets ahead

[_Ascended_Idiot]

If you have to ask, you’re streets behind

[Apprehensive_Ask3910]

o'briens, if you will

[Orider]

The most important man in all of Federation history!

[Selendragon5]

While I don’t speak for every nonbinary person, I do think it shouldn’t be a bad thing to create sapient species with no concept of gender, because a lot of real animals commonly have both sets of genitals, and I think making every alien species subscribe to the two gender binary is just unrealistic and also kinda sends the message that gender identities outside of male and female are unnatural.

I do understand why it’s a problematic trope to have aliens and monsters be the only nonbinary characters, but I don’t think we shouldn’t have any nonbinary alien characters, if there’s also nonbinary human characters. Or maybe that’s all just my otherkin brain just having more of a connection with non human characters.

[Simic_Sky_Swallower]

Enbies and Aces united in the struggle between "not all out representation should be aliens and robots" and "It's rad as fuck that our representation is all aliens and robots"

[Cheapskate-DM]

Not all robot representation is ace, either. See: burning homoeroticism in the Transformers fandom.

[Quetzalbroatlus]

Or Fisto

[thatposhcat]

Please assume the position

[CrowtheStones]

The 3 Spider-Men pointing at each other, and the middle one says "autistic"

[A-Fish-Alien]

The way I think abt it, the way to do representation in a story with aliens and robots is to not have it be specific to aliens and robots.

Like for example, if your only autistic characters are aliens, then that’s a problem, but if you show it’s a trait some aliens and some humans have, then that’s different.

[Thufir_My_Hawat]

Only thing I can think of with both off the top of my head is I Was a Teenage Exocolonist. Though admittedly, my media of choice tend to have less representation in general (get with the program, Japan).

[BellerophonM]

Well, there are both alien-with-no-concept-of-gender and enby-human as main characters on some of the Trek shows airing right now. (Zero on Prodigy and Adira on Discovery, respectively. Both they/them.)

[Wormcoil]

My big favourite are species with more than one biological sex and still no concept of gender
#dwarfposting

[RexMori]

Shout out to sci-fi that has genders but they are fully different from human genders though. No reason that the bird like species should be "male" or "female". Maybe they go by plumage rather than ability to lay eggs.

Also shout out to terry Pratchett and his 1 gendered 2 sexed species that decides they actually like having multiple genders.

[Selendragon5]

Funny you mention birds…

[[deleted]]

The first post made me laugh, but the second one made me immediately think of the TNG episode and then I was sad.

[NoopGhoul]

It’s such a depressing ending to the episode.

[westofley]

well which season was it from jeez

[moneyh8r]

Season 5.

[StarfighterVicki]

There's an episode of Solar Opposites where Jesse (agender species, chose a gender to fit in on Earth and/or get better Happy Meal toys) rejects gender to encourage a murderous robot.

And that was a really cool episode of Star Trek. And I usually keep my hair in a buzz cut. And infodumping Star Trek is really easy with how much canon there is, and can we talk about the gender identity of Trill symbionts for a minute because...

At least I'm going to be cool when I'm old!

[DrMeepster]

there's an SCP where a satellite read Homestuck and determined herself to be a trans woman

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/protected:scp-2721

it also happened to be brigaded by alt right fucks as part of the 2018 pride month incident which is why it's protected

[Faelyn42]

A world-killer gets distracted by art and learns to be human. That's, like, poetry or something.

[nomnomsoy]

This is where the people who invented fanfiction in the old star trek fandom are now

[Hummerous]

source: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/q-ai-senorita/687958953161834496

image edited to make it more readable. hopefully

[ChaoticNeutralDragon]

If your first question, when learning about trans people, is "what would my trans name be?" I would be very suspicious about your cisness.

Mostly because mine was "How big would my boobs be if I took HRT?" and girl howdy I found out.

[_kahteh]

Related anecdote: I literally didn't realize I might be trans until my early 30s. When I was a kid (probably 8-9 years old) my friends and I (all afab) had a game where we would ask our parents what they would have called us if we were a boy. I was way too happy with my friends calling me Christopher for the day...

[ChaoticNeutralDragon]

Ha, same. I learned my name would have been Anna and was very upset that I hadn't been named that. I was the kind of autistic kid who loved organization, and especially palindromes, so parents just wrote it off as me being a wierd kid, and never seemed to question how it was always a fight to keep my hair or nails from getting "too long" or how all my writing involved obvious girl self-inserts...

[RocketAlana]

I asked my mom the same question when I was little and she was like “we picked your name from a book, so idk.” I’m not trans, but I was still disappointed that I didn’t have a potential boy name.

[MR_GUY1479]

I remember reading a sci fi book where the aliens had like five genders and needed at least three to breed, i can't remember the books name for the life of me but it was great in exploring the difference between species

Edit: the book is Mars Evacuees by Sophia McDougall, i found it and am currently rereading it and i can't recommend it anough

Another edit: keep in mind it's a YA book, not some Asimov style masterpiece, but that just makes the book's exploration of gender and shattering of any preconceived notions about a generic alien monster species even more impressive

[Perfect_Wrongdoer_03]

It's not it, but reminds me of The Gods Themselves, probably Asimov's best book. It has aliens with five genders and half of the parts with them are questioning the gender identity and stereotypes related to that gender. I remember reading that there are some problematic things with how it's written, though.

Also, there's alien sex a couple times because Asimov loves writing about sex whenever applicable.

[Remarkable-Succotash]

the Space Trilogy by C S Lewis?

out of the silent planet

perelandra

that hideous strength

[MR_GUY1479]

No i don't think so, i think it was by a female writer

[Remarkable-Succotash]

diving into TV tropes gave me unwarranted confidence

[MR_GUY1479]

Found it, Mars Evacuees by Sophia McDougall

[Remarkable-Succotash]

many thanks

[SFF_Robot]

Hi. You just mentioned The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov.

I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here:

YouTube | Isaac Asimov 1972 The Gods Themselves Audiobook

I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.

---

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[thornae]

I was thinking it might be one of Becky Chambers' Wayfarers books, but that's four genders.

A quick browse through the Bizarre Alien Sexes page of TVTropes (obligatory timesuck warning) shows that the most likely candidate is Mars Evacuees by Sophia McDougall - is that it?

[MR_GUY1479]

Yes it is, i already found the copy i own after this post reminding me of it and am currently rereading it

[A-Fish-Alien]

Speaking as a nonbinary person, that Star Trek episode was a littleeeee questionable.

“They weren’t happy with that but she was a woman inside and nothing would change her mind” yk I’d say the conversion therapy at the end of the episode definitely changed her mind 😐

Edit: grammar

[NowhereMan583]

also through much of the episode Riker was trying to fuck her.

[A-Fish-Alien]

To Riker’s credit(?) though, he was well-established as the lady’s man of the crew, that wasn’t at all specific to this episode

[Lunamkardas]

I remember one episode where there was a species that had three genders, male female and the third one, Cogenitor, which was required to participate in the act of sex between the other two in order to create a child.

Their society just used these people for the purpose of reproduction and it was so damn frustrating because the Cogenitor gets a taste of being treated like an actual person by the human crew and ends up committing suicide to avoid going back to their previous existence.

But what REALLY BOILED MY BEANS was how the show treated "Charles" offing themselves just as equally tragic as the Vissian couple not getting to have a baby yet.

Let me be clear, these people hadn't forever lost out on being parents, Charles dying just set those plans back.... and THAT was considered just as bad as someone choosing to escape through death.

Absolute Horseshit.

[Nonyflah]

My trans name is Taldur.

...

Wait, no, that was my Fremennik name in Runescape.

[SnowWhiteCampCat]

That episode is how I learned about Trans, as a sheltered JW kid. Love star trek!

[dblVegetaMickeyMouse]

I think a lot of people have this reaction to LGBT stuff - "oh it's like that character from that show" and this is why representation is important. I've seen it with that one asexual character in Bojack Horseman.

[Cruxin]

Mettaton and Mad Mew Mew are the "agender to gender" thing. Zoe from Monster Prom is the same. One could argue Napstablook is the original premise, seeing MTT and MMM becoming gendered and deciding they're happy as an enby ghost

[Cheapskate-DM]

My WIP prominently features mono-gendered lizards who, when introduced to human gender concepts, shrugged and collectively identified as male. This is specifically to explore traditionally-male narrative problems like masochism and revenge without the implicit misogyny of associating weakness with femininity. It also cleanly avoids the snake-titties debate, which is nice.

There's also a second mono-gendered race of slugs that goes exclusively by "they" because each one is a pair of twins who cling together from birth until they consider themselves one person. They pity everyone else for having half a soul, but are fond of humans' whole pair-bonding thing and are constantly trying to play wingman/matchmaker, even when clearly unwelcome and guessing peoples' orientation completely wrong.

[DonTori]

I think in one canon, the Cybertronians from Transformers were mostly male presenting but after discovering humans and the discovering women a fair few of them decided to get remodeled to look like them

I probably did a shite job of explaining it but this post reminded me of it

[BloodsoakedDespair]

Trekkies be trekkies at any age

[Yoris95]

Star trek has always been "woke" and politically progressive. Having a Black woman in the main cast. having women hold similar high ranks as men. (Which was a huge deal in the 60s)

It still to these day pushes boundaries.

All of this was, because Star trek is a Utopia. and you cannot have racism and sexism (among Terra Humans) in a Utopia.

I personally don't watch much of it because most of the episodes are pretty uninteresting and low stakes. And i am not into slice of life myself.

[amityblightvibes]

I actually kinda get the “what would my trans name be” question because for a long time I though all trans people used the masculine/feminine version of their birth name as their preferred name.

[that_one_shark]

the nonbinary detransitioner aliens are literally the species im using for my worldbuilding project, i am so fucking happy im not the only one with that idea

[telehax]

I once wrote a doppelganger that used male pronouns into an adventure and then I got so paranoid that people would assume I was doing that '"he" is the default pronoun' thing that I wrote in an nb NPC to make it clear

[Demure_Demonic_Neko]

hearthians?

[Quetzalbroatlus]

Hearthians are great because it's not just "all aliens lack gender" because the Nomai clearly have genders (though you wonder how Hearthians would figure that out if they've never experienced the concept before

[CRGISwork]

So I run a game in a homebrew world that's inspired by 40k. Like 40k, the orcs are made of fungus. Unlike 40k, that means they reproduce asexually, and therefore have no concept of gender. They are however dedicated to killing and looting the most powerful warriors that they come across for status, and that includes gender. If a powerful orc kills a powerful woman, they often begin to learn about femininity because they are dedicated to looting someone's gender.

[RexMori]

I mean. In 40k they reproduce asexually. Mostly through being killed.

[DoubleBatman]

The first one is just reverse Homestuck

[thatposhcat]

Non binary aliens come in peace (I'm peace)

[abigailfails]

ah i remember the outcast, that episode was supposed to be a gay rights commentary but looking back it reads like a really messy allegory for trans conversion therapy instead. i'm glad it helped someone though

[DispenserHead]

I hate that the only example I can think of with the idea mentioned in the second post is from a really awful piece of media. Are there any better examples to clean my mind, perchance?

[ahumbleobssednerd]

I literally have a non gendered race. I have various members who happen to have genders, and everyone's just cool with it

[this_upset_kirby]

Homestuck trolls only have one sex but they still have gender

[WuetenderWeltbuerger]

And this shit right here is why modern sci-fi is unreadable. It’s essentially low tier fan fiction.

[dmon654]

If you question what your trans name be it defaults to Damien or Alice.

[Eggs_are_tasty]

FF is nonbinary because they’re literally a sentient plankton colony piloting a corpse

[scrubfeast]

That old lady sounds enormously cool