Something that came to me, in a study of biology, was how much more interesting a fantasy setting would be if some of the sapient peoples in the world I was creating didn’t adhere to the typical reproductive binary. From this thought process came how I ended up writing hermaphroditic goblins and a whole planet of higher lifeforms that adhere to a totally different system.
Goblins I designed as a species having the anatomical structure and the cell production to either sire or carry an offspring at their discretion. This, of course, leads to a number of knock-on effects around gender and sexuality. Goblins aren’t going to build any hard lines around gender expression and the social expectations therein because those lines simply don’t exist. The primary and only typical sexuality would be “attracted to goblin.” The more perilous sexualities would be “not attracted to goblin” or “attracted to not goblin,” both of which are still a possibility within the setting and raise questions of their own.
That’s not to say there isn’t gender, but their concept of gender is simply different. It relates more to their preference for sexual or reproductive role (sire or carry), all of which would be very private. So gender’s not discussed outside necessity leading to an absence of all gender from language. In the setting equivalent of English, goblins are referred to with the pronoun set of xe/hir to show this model.
This reproductive quirk also affects romantic and familial structure. Goblins trend toward polyamory and favor triads. This allows them very easily to have multiple children close in age with way less physical duress on the gestational parent simply because they can trade the role. So when the entire population has the potential to be bagged down by pregnancy, that sort of automatically reframes our human notions of gendered everything in that regard. There is no “mom” or “dad” role outside the actual genetic lineage and physical reproduction because anybody could be physically either.
I also created a whole planet that, as part of its evolution, is home to higher level species with a three sex system including the extant sapient species. Regarding the alignment of their sex chromosomes, homozygous Alpha produces a female, homozygous Beta produces a male, and heterozygous produces a hermaphrodite with both reproductive structures. This also leads to a completely different hierarchy around gender and their social expectations.
There’s also the additional biological consideration that the sex of the child is dependent on the sex of the parents due to basic genetic heritage. So the spread of sexes, if left to more natural means, is not going to produce an even split across all three divisions. The possibility for numerical rarity also ends up being a gendered social pressure.
Since there are four different sapient species with this construction they all approach these pressures differently based on other anatomical and social factors. The pherax let things fall where they fall. But they as a gene that codes for a certain protein is only found on the Alpha chromosome, there are certain anatomical structures males never develop, so they can be found lacking in this regard in social situations. Because of this specific protein deficiency, the cyndaren favored their hermaphroditic gender so much, they almost ran their homozygous sexes out of existence. This led to a major genetic issue down the line that almost wiped out their whole species. The female corrocco are very big and strong yet statistically more prone to a neurological condition that carries on the Alpha chromosome. So all reproduction takes place with that risk-reward scenario over their heads. The jyantaur go through phases of restriction and permission in order to keep the ratios of different sexes at a given percentage in attempt to prevent population level genetic disadvantage.
So because there’s this massive difference in the way reproductive sex is valued, this ends up reflecting out into their connected genders.
With both these species, my intention is to deconstruct the binary-by-default by forcing biology itself out of that structure.
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