History Main / GenderNeutralWriting

** And on [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0629.html this strip]], [[spoiler:his/her children refer to their parents as "Parent" and "Other Parent"]].

* ''Bone Dance'' by Emma Bull manages (in part by virtue of being [[TheAllConcealingI written in the first person]]) to avoid mentioning the main character's gender for half the book. The character turns out to be [[spoiler:genderless]].

* The four legal who dunnits by Sarah Caudwell (starting with ''Thus was Adonis Murdered'') are narrated by the legal scholar Dr Hillary Tamar, of undefined gender (and only a slightly unreliable narrator).

* The original ''Kino No Tabi'' novels were written so as not to reveal the gender of the protagonist (until a certain point, anyway), although the English translations throw that entirely out the window since it's a lot harder to do in English.

*** This appears to be an EnforcedTrope at BioWare. David Gaider showed up on one of the KnightsOftheOldRepublic fan boards and proceeded to write that he thought Revan was ''female.'' The canonical gender of male was decided by Leeland Chee well after the fact. MassEffect and JadeEmpire also go as gender neutral as you realistically can. The BiTheWay status of some of the love interests works in their favor, too.

* The Japanese manual of Metroid works with this, but the US translation deliberately positions Samus as a [[SamusIsAGirl man]].

Enter GenderNeutralWriting. In English, this is when every attempt is made to avoid any use of the words he, she, him, her, or any references to characteristics that would specify a gender (e.g., mentioning breasts or genitals). English ranks about middle in difficulty in pulling this off, but generally looks highly obtrusive in the process. It takes an excessive amount of roundabout language to pull this off, often looking out of place and calling quite a bit of attention to itself (though there are [[TheAllConcealingI some tricks that make it easier]]). And let's not talk about gendered languages like Spanish or German, where pulling this without looking fake is next to impossible...

This is most common in interactive fiction designed for both players and avatars of either sex. This generally shows up in games where the developers were too constrained (or, perhaps, too lazy) to have the game capable of modifying the dialogue to fit either sex, so they try to write for both. This leads to an {{AFGNCAAP}} (although as that article mentions, they more often than not fail because they assume MostGamersAreMale). The ChooseYourOwnAdventure genre makes heavy use of this, since they won't exactly split the book into two halves to accommodate both sexes. Often, they get around this by either assuming a gender based on the genre of the book (e.g., a science fiction book would assume a male reader while a book that places the character as nobility in medieval Europe would assume a female reader) or by just creating a very generic character who has a PurelyAestheticGender. This is also the main reason ChooseYourOwnAdventure books are written in the second person. It's not entirely rare for it to show up in other fiction, though.

** Almost, but not quite. At one point Ms. Bradley slipped up and referred to Lythande as a male.

* Fantasy author MarionZimmerBradley wrote a story about the heroine Lythande (a female wizard in a world where wizards are always male), which is gender neutral until the last two paragraphs.

* In the InteractiveFiction game ''[[http://www.wurb.com/if/game/117 Jigsaw]]'', the gender of Black, a WellIntentionedExtremist and the PC's intended LoveInterest, is never mentioned, and neither is the PC's - though one scene does establish that Black and the PC are of opposite genders.

* The [[{{PPC}} Official Fanfiction Universities]] occasionally have some joker sign up with their gender written in as "N/A". [[RuleOfFunny Naturally]], this is taken [[LiteralGenie literally]] by the admins and the student in question finds him/herself lacking any...erm...parts to speak of upon arrival ([[YouKeepUsingThatWord which would be a function of sex, not gender]]). They end up being referred to with the made-up pronoun "xie" and possessive form "xir".

* Done very well by Vonda N. [=McIntyre=] with [[AmbiguousGender Merideth]] in ''Dreamsnake''.

* The Finnish language has no gendered pronouns, so writing gender-neutral text isn't hard. A good example is the novel ''Pimeästä maasta'' by the Finnish fantasy writer Maarit Verronen, where the protagonist has a made-up name and it's impossible to infer his/her gender from anything s/he does. [[spoiler:It turns out the protagonist lives in another world where gender doesn't even exist the way it does in ours.]]

* In ''PhoenixWrightAceAttorney:Justice For All'': [[spoiler: everyone in court refers to Adrian Andrews this way while the assassin De Killer is listening to proceedings, because in one later testimony he refers to the [[GenderBlenderName (female) Adrian as 'him']], thus revealing that he did not meet her in person.]]

* This was done in ''Dragonlance'' for the Blue Dragon Highlord, is later revealed to be [[spoiler: Kitiara uth Matar, the half-sister of Caramon and Raistlin, and Tanis's former lover.]]

** Played completely straight in Jack's recruitment mission, though. The writers were careful not to use any pronouns when referring to Jack (and they talk about Jack a ''lot'') until TheReveal. It probably would have worked, too, if it weren't for the fact that [[TrailersAlwaysSpoil she was featured in one of the trailers.]] Oops.

* Invoked in the playbills for most all professional productions of the musical ''{{Chicago}}'' with the character [[spoiler: Mary Sunshine, who's actually a guy. In addition to the Gender Neutral Writing for his bio, the person playing "her" will always be referred to with his first name shortened, for example D. Sabella or M. O'Haughey.]]

** A few people from Valve accidentally (or not) ''failed'' to do this once in an interview, and most of the player base now [[WordOfGod assumes]] that the Pyro is [[spoiler: oh, come on, guess.]]

* Chris Claremont's ''Sovereign Seven'' had a character named Indigo, whose gender nobody could work out. [[spoiler: This was another example that turned out to be gender-neutral.]]

* In ''[[KingdomHearts358Over2Days Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days]]'', almost nobody but Roxas refers to Xion by gender. This is understandable, since [[spoiler:as a clone basically made of memories, it really has no gender, and furthermore they don't know how Roxas sees it.]]
* An episode of ''HowIMetYourMother'' revolves around Marshall telling his friends anecdotes about a CrazyAwesome workmate of his; when it turns out she's a she, he reveals he carefully avoided specifying her gender so his wife wouldn't disapprove of his hanging around with her. All the {{Flasback}} clips show him [[LastNameBasis only referring to her as "Jenkins"]], and never [[PronounTrouble using any pronouns at all]]. Must have been difficult to carry on any kind of extended conversation like that...

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** Surprisingly enough, this was an EnforcedTrope at BioWare. David Gaider showed up on one of the fan boards and said they ''hadn't'' given a canonical gender - then proceeded to write that he thought Revan was ''female.'' The canonical gender was decided by Leeland Chee well after the fact. MassEffect and JadeEmpire also go as gender neutral as you realistically can. The BiTheWay status of some of the love interests works in their favor, too.

** Surprisingly enough, this was an EnforcedTrope at BioWare. David Gaider showed up on one of the fan boards and said they ''hadn't'' given a canonical gender. Leland Chee pulled that BaseBreaker out later. MassEffect and JadeEmpire also go as gender neutral as you realistically can. The BiTheWay status of some of the love interests works in their favor, too.

* The [[{{PPC}} Official Fanfiction Universities]] occasionally have some joker sign up with their gender written in as "N/A". [[RuleOfFunny Naturally]], this is taken [[LiteralGenie literally]] by the admins and the student in question finds him/herself lacking any...erm...parts to speak of upon arrival. They end up being referred to with the made-up pronoun "xie" and possessive form "xir".

*** Villains are weird. And actually, this troper, an avid player of the game, has noted that they've started averting it recently, with [=NPCs=] that note your character's gender (especially noticeable in Cimerora, the zone explicitly based on Roman culture).
*** It's been straight up phased out in the recent updates. The Mission Architect gives the option of using gender-specific pronouns.

* This troper once read a pornographic short story that conceals from the reader that [[TomatoSurprise the narrator is a gay male, not a woman]] until the last paragraph. And it works.
** I once saw a similar one where it turned out one of the girls was a transvestite. All references to genitals until about halfway through the story were [[FromACertainPointOfView not so much cleverly ambiguous as deliberately misleading and convoluted]].

** A slightly less obvious example is when it's mentioned that Diana is going out with someone named Alex. This troper only realized it on his second reading, but no gender is mentioned for Alex.

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* In ''[[KingdomHeartsThreeHundredAndFiftyEightOverTwoDays Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days]]'', almost nobody but Roxas refers to Xion by gender. This is understandable, since [[spoiler:as a clone basically made of memories, it really has no gender, and furthermore they don't know how Roxas sees it.]]

* In ''[[KingdomHeartsThreeHundredAndFiftyEightOverTwoDays Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days]]'', nobody but Roxas refers to Xion by gender. This is understandable, since [[spoiler:as a clone basically made of memories, it really has no gender, and furthermore they don't know how Roxas sees it.]]