Creating a Queernorm Fantasy Setting: The Language Around Attraction

In the real world, when it comes to language about queer identities, we often find ourselves in a bit scuffle with pre-conceived linguistic notions. What’s the actual difference between pan and bi? What are the different ways non-binary identities (genderfluid, genderqueer, agender) interact with each other? What about the micro-labels that pepper the asexual spectrum? Is it transexual or transgender? That’s not getting into the use of neopronouns.
It’s not really that any of these things are particularly difficult when given even an ounce of study. There’s a level of changeability, though, as more niche concepts enter the mainstream and require more discrete definitions. There’s also the factor of individual variance in considerations for some of these definitions. Different pan and bi people define pan and bi a little differently. Then there’s complexity of intra-community lingo, language only used within queer spaces and how that interacts with external language.
Now imagine all of this, but you’ve built a fantasy setting where different species have their own specific constructs around all of this.
And it’s different for every single one.
And they have to talk to each other, frequently, in a language that’s not their native one.
And it all needs to, preferably sound as natural as possible. Because, right now, we’re still struggling with the language of asking people’s pronouns in written dialogue, and we sound ridiculous.
This was the challenge I found myself presented with. One of my own making. And I had to find a way to present it in the English in which the story is written.
One of the methodologies I found myself making the most use of was simply neo- and gender neutral pronouns. What better way to express that a person uses a different gender structure than a different set of pronouns. The single-sexed goblins became a population of ze/hir. The third gender of another species does the same, and this becomes an in-setting point of contention. Syvlan, some elves, and members of a similar species are introduced to the reader as “them” by default, adjustments to this perception not made until a full introduction is made. Still others of these specific species actively choose ey/eir as their pronoun structure in human languages as a recognition that their version of gender simply isn’t the same.
And while I feel this mix and match of pronoun usage creates a feeling of gendered variety, it’s still very human centric. It’s English centric. But then it almost kind of has to be. The hotpot of language here is sort of a linguistic compromise. Diversify and normalize a diversify of language with the tools I have.
I also found myself faced down with the question of how people would describe sexuality in a setting where’s there’s such a variance in the way gender is described. Some of the language we already use would be effective, no issue. But some of it would fall short. What I found as I explored these ideas is that there simply wasn’t a one-size-fits-all approach that would work across all species and circumstances. So I see this as an ever evolving thing, something that I touch and cast on as more species emerge in their totality into the setting.
What I did decide is that there needed to be language around cross-species sexual and romantic attraction. Through the effort of smashing Latin words together, I envisioned a distinction between being attracted to other species, only other species, and being actively not attracted to members of your own species. But I still have the question of where does that start and end? Human to giant pangolin person? Relatively easy. What about human to elf? Two species that can inter-breed and come from the same evolutionary line. What about humans and the bi-pedal horned people I created that have roughly the same anatomy? I find myself in the exact same pickle as we do in real life, trying to apply a limited number of terms to a bunch of nuanced instances of attraction.
And thus life imitates art.