Apr. 24th, 2003
SF and gendered characters
Apr. 24th, 2003 11:09 amI was reading
ajhalluks most recent LJ entry, and I am struck by the insistence by all parties in the dialogue that characters must be either one gender or the other. I'm writing an original story with a trio of main characters, one character specifically being an alien hermaphrodite, who simply doesn't get the whole H. sapiens thing of gender roles, and who is having a lot of fun making snarky comments about the Creator's imperfect design and watching these crazy H. sapiens deal with the whole gender thing. I'm not exactly sure of the ending yet, but there will be some emotional triangles at points....The one thing that's driving me up the wall right now is what personal pronoun to use for the hermaphrodite. I refuse to use either "him" or "her." I am using "it" right now, but that seems a bit depersonalizing. I suppose I could make up some sort of gender-neutral personal pronoun, but that would seem to be a bit of a barrier to easy reading....
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