(no subject)

[sythyry]

In the last poll, people seemed about evenly split between calling Sythyry male and calling zir female. Which is pretty cool for me, actually.

Still, if you put zir in a human gender stereotype, why?

Here are some features. I'm probably missing some, so I'll post another quiz at some point if I need to.

All these questions are asking, "I think that Sythyry's [feature] inclines me towards considering zir male / [feature is] irrelevant / female". Insofar as one ever knows why one makes mistakes, of course.

[Poll #1578124]

Comments

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! I voted first!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

And as your prize -- a Potential Poptaloop!

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

*grin* I should have posted 'irrelevant' to each of those questions. But I'm just posting my personal, unthinking male/female prejudices.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Exactly! They are all formally irrelevant, but I am trying to understand your nearly-subconscious impressions. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity!

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

Well, the big thing is that Bluelark is female. I'm not sure if I can off-handedly recall a time when Sythyry took a male gender of another race for playing around.

[bloofox.livejournal.com]

'zie' sounds more like 'she' than it does 'he'.

And 'zie' sounds a LOT like 'sie' which is 'she' in German.

Also I just have a tendency to think of neuter as female, but I think that's a result of markedness.

Male is 'unmarked'.

Female is 'marked'. Neuter is definitely 'marked'. Since the binary gender divide is so ingrained, wanting to slide neuter or other similarly non-standardly gendered people into one or the other is likely. Since non-standard is 'marked' they'd fall into female, the marked category in the binary gender system.

(At least that's how I'd analyse my own tendencies in that area.)

[vik_thor]

I'm fairly comfortable viewing Sythyry as hermaphrodite. A lot of the female I get from zir, is the fact, as @dracosphynx says, when Sythry takes Orren form, she is female.

[From how I understand Cloak of Another God, zie would have to make strong act of will to become a male Orren, correct? Does the female predisposition carry over to the other Prime species? Or would each one still be random between male/female the first time? Has zie taken any other forms regularly?]

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

After doing this I realized it's less that zie comes across as female-in-general and more that zie comes across as "similar to me" in certain ways and I'm female. Which is weird since I spent a large portion of my life mentally gender-neutral.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Although I sometimes catch myself using "she", I don't think it's anything to do with gender stereotypes. The fact is that "zie/zir/zir" is just rather close in sound and structure to "she/her/her". In other words: see the first part of bloofox's comment above.

[zeeth_kyrah]

While I don't think I've ever used the wrong gender for Sythyry when writing about zir, zie comes across a bit more as masculine to me due to zir writing voice. But then if zie were to write in the same way but be female, then I would naturally think of her as female. Body overrides tone in this way, but an otherwise neutral tone defaults to "male" in my mind.

[rowyn]

If I'd started with "Sythyry's Vacation" I don't know that I'd have a gender bias for Sythyry. But Sythyry's attitude towards sex in zir early journal -- specifically the AH I MUST GET LAID NOW! just screamed young male to me. I've never met a woman as desperate as Sythyry was. (Not saying they don't exist, just saying I don't know them). Sythyry never turned anyone down (except maybe Ysgwyd), which likewise strikes me as masculine.

OTOH, World Tree doesn't have STDs and contraception is trivial. Those are the two biggest biological factors that discourage casual sex in the real world. So it wouldn't surprise to see females in a World Tree setting acting more "masculine" in this sense.

[rowyn]

Zie is male in at least one form -- Herethroy. But I don't remember zir ever flirting or otherwise engaging in sexual behavior while Herethroy, either.

0_o

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Um, Sythyry is a hermaphrodite. For me, that sticks. I'm not comfortable changing people's gender for them. If I have to stop and explain why I'm saying "zie" instead of "he" or "she" then that's what I do.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

If I can object here, the poll question was which pronouns we use for Sythyry when not using 'zie', not what gender we consider hir to lean more towards. For some of us, those questions could lead to very different answers.

Re: 0_o

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Me too. But sometimes people (including me) slip up and use a different pronoun. I'm curious about why people pick the one they do.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Good point.

Re: 0_o

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Okay, that happens once in a while. But for me, there doesn't seem to be a pattern (i.e. always slipping the same way for a given character) unless the pronoun set is really close to either "he" or "she."

[nekomavin.livejournal.com]

It's funny. The question about colour actually made me stop and think for a bit. It's not so much the blue-for-boys thing, though - but I think a bit of Pern at the back of my subconcious. All the male dragons had colours beginning with B (blue, brown, bronze), the females with G (green, gold).

Re: 0_o

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Which is exactly the problem I have. A number of the pronouns used for non-male-or-female genders, including the one used in the World Tree material, are somewhat similar in appearance and very similar in structure to the feminine "she". I don't think I've ever called Sythyry male, and the times when I have said "she"(usually in actual spoken conversation, not very often typed), it's not because of a gender bias on my part but because of a language slip.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Mentioned elsewhere, but to be sure it gets to your attention: Sythyry's "default" Herethroy shape was male.

All others that were identified were female AFAIK.

Cani: Female
Gormoror: Female
Herethroy: Male
Khtsoyis: Never mentioned
Orren: Female
Rassimel: Not sure, but I *think* it was mentioned female
Sleeth: Sex not specified
Zi Ri: Um, N/A

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, now that I think of it - Herethroy females are the "manly" sex, generally bigger and stronger. Males are in-between, with co-lovers having the traits humans might consider "feminine". So in a cock-eyed sort of way, even the male-as-Herethroy bit does fit into an overall pattern. Not that most primes are terribly dimorphic, however - Herethroy and Gormoror are the main ones, maybe Rassimel to some degree, and Gormoror women are tougher than the men are. (Contrast Cani and Orren, which if I got the right impression differ pretty much only in primary sex characteristics. Both are hard to tell apart without a keen nose, and in both, males can suckle infants.)

But however convoluted that thread, I think it's interesting.

This is, of course, very tangential to the point at large. But I still think it's moderately interesting.

[terrana.livejournal.com]

My approach to third person pronouns is haphazard at best. I get the right one perhaps two thirds of the time and a random substitute the rest.

[terrana.livejournal.com]

Case in point: Arfaen.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

It's not exactly the skills, which could be irrelevant, it's zir relative power that reads to me as male, much more now than in the original diary. But actually I think zie's a pretty good neither.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Bard beams!]

[weatherglass.livejournal.com]

I tend to think of Sythyry as female, even when actively reminding myself that zie's not (case in point: I initially typed that as "that she's not", even while discussing this). I don't think this has much to do with how zie's written, honestly; I think it's mostly what I'm bringing to the story, as Sythyry reminds me of bits of myself (female), and bits of various friends who happen to be women. I think you've written zie quite well as gender-neutral.

I debated whether Sythyry's occasionally passive style and introspection were leading me to peg zie as female, but I wound up putting down "irrelevant". I think this isn't quite right--I suppose these are some of the things about zie that remind me of myself--so, probably influencing my subconscious, but for idiosyncratic personal reasons?

The fact that zie's blue, on the other hand, makes me incline strongly towards female. I'm not entirely sure why-- I like blue, but I don't see why that affects my view of Sythyry as strongly as it does.

One other thing--it's been a while since I read back through Sythyry's journal, but all of the characters from there that I remember most strongly are female. I may have initially started thinking of zie as female because of the company? And I can't remember at what point we were introduced to the fact that zie's actually a hermaphrodite--if it was a ways in, I may have first settled on a female gender for her because no gender had been given and I needed a mental default. I find it rather hard to change my impression of these things, once I've gotten a character settled into my mind.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

I think in general, between the submissive "Why can't I assert myself" attitude, and the whole "Why won't anyone sleep with me!" thing, Sythry has times come off very 'male' to me at times. The fact that zie has gotten a Denmother to handle things doesn't help shove off that impression much.

That said, it's also a unintentional educational bias that I am trying hard to shake off myself. It's the whole tail end of the "Use He unless you know the person is a she" teachings of my elementary school life that I just can't ditch, which drives me crazy, especially when I start thinking about *me* specifically. So please take the thought process with a grain of salt.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I am interested in the thought processes! That's what this quiz is about.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

OTOH, I know (well, used to know) a couple girls that (if you believe reports from 3rd parties) acted pretty much like Arfaen, complete with breaking 'open' relationships because of an inability to keep it in their pants even long enough to ask permission.