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A race or group of humanoids inexplicably made up of of one sex. Male is usually the default, but females under the Cute Monster Girl rules are becoming more common and more obvious. The lack of the other sex is handwaved briefly, Disaster wiping out the other half, or voluntary separation are two common reasons, although sometimes it seems they just don't appear.
The severely slanted gender ratio is sometimes explained as an disaster or event rather than natural, but this should naturally even itself out over time. Most stable populations exist in a roughly 1:1 sex ratio, though in extreme cases the 'limiting sex' (those who pose time limits on having children, usually females) are what's important while the majority of males may never reproduce at all, so the female-slanted group makes relatively more sense... in small populations.
If the genetic stock is replenished by mingling with other 'races', you often get the strange explanation the Strong Family Resemblance is passed on exactly depending on the sex of the child rather than being a real hybrid.
Biology is really not the major issue anyway. This is really more about creating a unique culture without having to create an enormous amount of back story. For obvious reasons this used to be an easy device to soapbox gender issues, with all the associated political and social biases in place.
Sometimes the unspoken artistic explanation is the One Gender Race being based on a mythological creature who was always depicted as such. This may be subverted by including a creature of the opposite sex of that species.
In the right ( or wrong) subculture, expect Fanon concerning hermaphroditism, especially if the race is all-female.
See also Monogender Monsters, Gendercide.
Examples:
Live Action TV
- The original Green Skinned Space Babes, the Orion of the Star Trek franchise have bordered on this trope all along. Although we've had Orion females from the first pilot, it wasn't until Star Trek: Enterprise that we "officially" saw an Orion male. (Star Trek: The Animated Series tried to introduce Orion males, but that series soon faded from canon.)
- Well, saw an Orion male as an Orion male. "Journey to Babel" featured one in disguise. (One supposes it could have been an Orion female in more extensive disguise, but that's not quite parsimony.)
- Subverted in Star Trek Voyager: To the viewer every member of Species 8472 looks identical. However, in one episode the Doctor explains that they have, in fact, five different sexes. Given that they're a technologically superior genocidal society with nothing on its mind but the destruction of all life in the universe, one can only wonder how he found out.
- Star Trek The Next Generation has a more subtle subversion. The J'Naii are a species of androgynous/hermaphroditic beings. However, one identifies far more as female than male, and falls in love with Riker. As she explains, she's always felt more female than male, and is certain there are members of her race who feel the same way, or are more male than female. The ruling J'Naii, however, cannot accept this, and so have her "re-educated". The episode, of course, is a "thinly-veiled" metaphor for acceptance of homosexuality. (Or, at least, it's meant to be.)
- The Sontarans on Doctor Who are a militant all male race who reproduce through cloning. According to some of the Expanded Universe material their species originally reproduced normally & was far less war fixated untill the day a horredously narcissistic military man, one General Sontar started cloning himself & slaughtered the rest of the population. The canonisity of this is disputed, however.
- Ditto the Jem Hadar on Star Trek Deep Space Nine, genetically engineered by the shapeshifting Founders to serve as soldiers.
- On the new Outer Limits series, one of the episodes involved an all female post-apocalyptic society in which almost all males were wiped off the planet due to a scourge virus. They decided to not reintroduce the remaining men into the population because every time they took one out of stasis, it caused conflict in the society because the men pushed limits that the elders were not comfortable with, like building generators or stealing from other towns. Sucks to be male.
Film
- The Draks from the movie Enemy Mine are masculine ("I... am not... a woman!"), but reproduce asexually at some biologically determined point. The movie never pointed out whether this was a single child per Drak or possibly more. If it's the former, the movie also left open the question of how the race got multiple members in the first place, and how a one-for-one replacement rate manages to keep the populace viable, especially given the fact that they're embroiled in an all-out war.
- The Barry B. Longyear books on which the movie was based stated that yes, Draks could have more than one child in their lifetime. It's just that something went wrong with Zammis' birthing, and "Jerry" died of complications.
- This editor may have come to the wrong conclusion on the Draks, but the one-for-one replacement rate (or was it one-for-two?) is a fact for Kes's race in Star Trek Voyager, which brings up the exact same questions... minus the war.
- A common explanation this troper has encountered for the one-for-one offspring is that a species overpopulated their planet, and as a result evolved this. Never mind the fact that this would take millions of years, if ever, as birthing one offspring is a competitive disadvantage. If the species has interstellar travel, why not move off world? Or better yet, invent condoms.
- Or invent war. Overpopulation is a leading theory on why humans go to war.
- Memorably subverted with the male ladybug, Francis, in A Bugs Life.
- Closely related to this trope: pretty much all the Immortals shown in the Highlander movie (Discontinuity) are male. One theory is that since an Immortal must suffer a violent death to become...well, immortal, and that in past times women were less likely to suffer violent deaths, there would be fewer female Immortals. At the same time, women were less likely to have sword training at the time of their death, and would find themselves more likely to lose a duel, even discounting any physical disadvantage. There are a number of female Immortals on the TV show, most of whom are skilled, tough and clever enough to have at least survived a few duels.
Videogames
- Mithras and Galka in Final Fantasy XI, where players can create only female and male types, respectively. The Galka reproduce by reincarnation, with it suggesting that the number of Galka in the world is a fixed figure (or decreasing, if being killed before their time prevents reincarnation). Even with no need for sexuality, the Galka still seem to fall in love with females of other races, though. Among the Mithra, it was initially implied that the males suffered a large Gendercide during the Crystal War and as a result, have been forced into protective status (probably not too enviable a position, with them most likely being treated as little more than objects and forced into passionless sex for reproduction only on a constant basis). Doesn't really change that Wings of the Goddess (which takes place during the Crystal War) just ignores this and keeps the mostly female motif present in the modern day (giving us one token male that just seems to exist as Square telling people to stop asking questions about the males at conventions).
- Later, an all-female enemy race called the Lamia was added to the game, though their status as a One Gender Race may be justified by the insinuation that they're actually an artificial race used as biological weapons...and because the mythical creatures they're based on are always depicted as female.
- A similar example exists for games taking place in Ivalice (among them, Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, with the creatively dressed Viera.
- Final Fantasy XII tries to justify this by saying the male Viera are extremely reclusive
- On the other hand, no Bangaa is evidently female, and female Bangaa are never referred to, and nobody seems to think they're all male. Much the same can be said for the Nu Mou or Moogles or Seeq. Viera are the only race where the issues of gender are addressed at all. All depicted and playable Viera are female, and, according to the canon, male Viera Stay In The Kitchen.
- One of Ba'Gamnans gang is referred to as female.
- Actually, there ARE female Seeq. They're the ones with their chests covered, in bra-ish fashion.
- One quest in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance involves a male moogle trying to get a girlfriend, so we know they come in both genders. No female moogle is ever seen adventuring, though.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics A2, there is a bangaa who claims to be female, but is treated as male for purposes of the law against harming the opposite sex.
- For that matter, the Garif all appear to be male, with no mention whatsoever of any female Garif.
- And the only members of Cid's race seen are Cid himself and the auction house guy.
- Cue one more game from Ivalice, Final Fantasy Tactics A 2, with the winged dragon-like all-female race the Gria. Unlike Viera, they're explicitly identified as only-female.
- Even all Humes are referred to with masculine pronouns in class descriptions... even though there are a few playable female humes. Oh, and the fact that since humes are humans, we know there are female humes, anyway. The only playable female Hume in the original FFTA, Ritz, had Viera classes, which only complicated matters.
- Nu Mou are very gender-neutral in appearance. Where that puts them, however...
- Just because they don't have any human secondary sexual characteristics does not mean that they don't have them at all, or they could lack sexual dimorphism
.
- The Gerudo from Legend Of Zelda are an entirely female race of warrior-thieves. Even though they're apparently human, only one Gerudo male is born every hundred years (the only one known is Ganondorf and is destined to become king. In fact, the gossip stones found in the game reveal that the Gerudo often visit the town for the purpose of finding a man to borrow in order to make more little Gerudo. There seem to be no Goron women, though this is difficult to tell based on their strange appearance.
- The Gorons themselves seem to be comprised solely of males... or are not sexually discernible.
- Female Gorons appear in the Ocarina of Time manga, where they are much slimmer than male Gorons and tend to have large breasts. The manga isn't considered proper canon, however...
- Koroks don't seem to have any gender at all, for that matter.
- ... That would be because they're plants. Plants don't need gender.
- In the Star Control computer game series, the Syreen are a race of (to human eyes) stunningly attractive blue-skinned women. In the sequel it is explained that the Syreen race is still recovering from the destruction of their homeworld, which wiped out most of their population and left them with a marked gender imbalance since most of their space force were women (Only Syreen females have their species' telepathic abilities, and their space combat tactics rely heavily on that telepathy). The relatively few Syreen men are kept at home (offscreen) in the hope of not losing any more of them.
- In the game Startopia, all alien species are identical, except the sexy Dahanese Sirens - beautiful humanoids with angel wings whose role on the station is to "love" other beings. They have two models, one brunette woman in a racing swimsuit, and one blonde, shirtless man.
- The Asari from Mass Effect are a literal one-gender race, who reproduce through parthenogenesis. Of course, they're also among the wisest and most ancient races in the galaxy, powerful users of Biotic techniques, and the founders of the Citadel Council, which governs 80% of known space. But the player is likely to be more interested in their ability to 'merge' with anyone, regardless of race and gender... this process requires a lot of direct skin-contact, but since the Asari are also a race of Blue Skinned Space Babes, nobody's got a problem with that. The Salarians keep gender balance: they are said to be a race where males far outnumber females, who occupy a revered social role (i.e., reproduction), and so are kept in "safe" places. They can't mate with just anyone, but since they're a race of anthropomorphic frogs, nobody's got a problem with that, either.
- Possibly the silliest example is Gender Wars, in which humanity has separated along gender lines into two warring factions of exaggerated stereotypes, both of which reproduce through technology.
- A number of Pokemon are all-male or all-female (Jynx and Kangaskhan, for example), while others are simply male and female versions of each other (Volbeat/Illumise and the Nidoran family), or evolutions that cut across gender lines.
- And some of them all look like one gender but can actually be either, such as Lopunny or Gardevoir. The latter was later given a male-only counterpart named Gallade; however, Gardevoirs of both genders can still exist. Hell, there can be male Bellossoms and female Mr. Mimes.
- The Dremora from The Elder Scrolls are all men, except for one (randomly generated) Dremora lord from Oblivion. There's also the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers of the Expansion Pack, both of who have a similar but reversed gender ratio, though there are considerably more male Golden Saints and Dark Seducers than female Dremora.
- Though, it's proclaimed by an in-game book as justified, saying that Mehrunes Dagon (creator of said Dremora) sees females as inferior in war. No one said he was politically correct.
- Both straight and subverted in World Of Warcraft, where there are both male and female dwarves, orcs, elves, undead (don't ask), even dryads. However, harpies and various types of demon are all one gender or the other.
- Additionally, several races have both genders according to the lore, but only one (male) is depicted in game. Ogres, for example, due to the females being beyond hideous
◊; and Broken and Lost Ones, though a half-finished female Broken model exists in the game source. Literally half-finished.
- Actually, the "female ogre" image has never been directly confirmed as such; there are also rumors that ogres simply lack dimorphism. Ditto Lost Ones...although, considering their original forms, that seems rather unlikely. (And if "beyond hideous" were a barrier to inclusion in the game, there wouldn't be Lost Ones.)
- Rumor has it that Harpies reproduce by copulation with a captured humanoid race, preferring elves and humans, but as said, is only a rumor.
- The Warcraft D20 monster manual states this explicitly.
- In the MMORPG Trickster, Cats, rabbits, foxes, and sheep are female, raccoons, dragons, lions, and bulls (well, duh) are male.
- Except all the characters are really humans with costumes consisting of a headband and a tail.
- In Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, several of the playable races can only be male. This has an in-game justification of the females of certain races being deliberately sheltered and do not go adventuring. The real reason was technical; there was not enough room on one CD for all the sprites required to have females for all the races.
Comic Books
- While this is not true in all Transformer comics across the board, many (especially those written by Simon Furman) tend to display the Transformer race as free of gender.
- In the Marvel comics, the only female-like Transformer is created to appease the protests of human feminists that the Transformers were sexist. However, she looked weak and was pink and the Straw Feminist contingency was still not satisfied.
- The recent comic Spotlight: Arcee shows that the Transformers were monogendered until the mad scientist Jhiaxus messed with Arcee's CNA, introducing gender to the Transformer race by making her female and incidentally driving her homicidally mad.
- The Amazons in Wonder Woman avoided the question by making their race immortal.
- The Guardians of the Universe in Green Lantern comics were all male, because the females of their race thought the whole "guardians of the universe" project was misguided, and took themselves off to found an all-female society somewhere else. (They were Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, and practically immortal, so the continuation of their race was not a consideration.) When they died and were resurrected by Kyle Rayner, he intentionally made half of them female, to give them back that perspective.
- The fairy-like Preservers in Wendy & Richard Pini's comic book series Elf Quest are neither male nor female. To this editor's vague surprise, all the characters who encounter any given Preserver seem to know automatically use the gender-neutral "it".
- Well, the preservers are all nude (except for those flower or leaf hats they wear (which incidentally last for centuries without ever decaying)), and have no genitalia, and elves have very good eyesight!
- The futuristic series The Rebels has an apparently female elf-sized Preserver named Rosie. This editor never got the explanation, if in fact one has been given, beyond "The child must be protected" and possibly something to do with cloning.
- The explanation is that Rosie has some percentage of human DNA, because the Preserver DNA was not complete enough to clone a real Preserver.
- Nearly every mammal species on Earth becomes a One Gender Race in Y The Last Man, after a strange event somehow kills off every male mammal on Earth except two, a human and a monkey. (The "on Earth" part becomes important later, as the International Space Station wasn't affected)
- In a story written by Alan Moore, a female alien anthropologist discovers another alien race composed entirely of males, with a tribal culture. She can't figure out at all how they reproduce, so she lives with them. When it still eludes her, she simply asks one, who describes an activity vaguely until she asks if she can do it with him, believing that he wants to mate with her. Instead, he kills her, and two small boys start to grow out of the carcass.
Literature
- Dwarves/Black Elves were originally described as spawning from stone. Tolkien eventually put a much-copied twist on this. Only about one female is born to every three males, and to untrained eyes, their women look very similar to men. They also dress in such a manner to add to the confusion.
- Lampshaded in the movie:
Gimli: It's true you don't see many dwarf women. And in fact, they are so alike in voice and appearance, that they are often mistaken for dwarf men.
Aragorn: [whispering] It's the beards.
- The surviving long-lived ents in The Lord Of The Rings are all male, due to a complicated estrangement causing the "Entwives" to wander away thousands of years ago (symbolically, the ents represent untouched wilderness, the entwives cultivated land), never to be seen again. Note that this was probably just because the heroes happened to run into the ents instead of the entwives, since both are supposed to be pretty much impossible to locate under normal circumstances.
- Actually, Tolkien never stated whether any Entwives are even alive anymore...
- In the Discworld series, this is taken to the point where there is no obvious physical difference between male and female Dwarfs; for example, dwarfs of both sexes tend to have long beards. Socially-speaking, there is no issue of gender in Dwarf society, and all dwarfs are treated the same. This leads to an interesting interpretation of real-life feminism, in which female dwarfs begin campaigning to be treated differently. Wearing a skirt or even using female pronouns is subversive. However, not even the most radical feminists would dream of losing the iron helmets or shaving their beards.
- Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
- The witches in Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials constitute a separate, entirely female species. They breed with human men, but generally don't get too emotionally attached, since-- compared to the witches-- humans have such very, very short lifespans. The children of these witch/human couplings might be male or female, but only the daughters are the same species as the mothers, the sons are short-lived humans like the fathers.
- Consider Her Ways by John Wyndham.
- The Belgariad has another case of an all-female dryad race, who reproduce with human males and produce dryad children. The character Ce'nedra has a dryad mother and is described as part dryad, though by the story's standards she should be considered all dryad; at one point, she herself simply calls herself "dryad" without any modifier. It is unclear how dryad reproduction works, or how you can get "half-dryads", but from the fact that Ce'Nedra's family the Borunes descend from a human-dryad marriage, it is clear that male sons can be born from dryads. It is specifically mentioned that many females of the Borunes are dryads and that any attempt to harm the dryad forest would result in them abandoning their husbands and sons. Since dryads live as long as their trees, many of those Borune dryads are likely still around.
- In Storm Constantine's Wraeththu novels, the eponymous post-humans are hermaphrodites who appear male. In the first few books, they reproduce by transforming human males into Wraeththu via blood transfusion, then having sexual intercourse with the "initiate" to set the change. Like many other One Gender Races, the Wraeththu have a female (or, in this case, feminine hermaphrodite) counterpart; and, like many other One Gender Races, the two species don't get along very well.
- Roald Dahl does it twice. In The BFG all Giants are male, the BFG explains that giants simply come into being. Conversely in The Witches all Witches are female (though unlike in Pullman, they don't interbreed and are all evil), they are demons and not humans so it doesn't matter. That book also mentions barghests and ghouls to be all-male.
- The Lyrans in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series do have males for reproduction but they never appear and are described as short, stupid, and useful for only one thing.
- The Carpathians (a "pre-vampire" species) in Christine Feehan's series of the same name have very few females, mostly due to them not being born very often, or not managing to survive the transition between drinking mother's milk and drinking blood. This leads to male Carpathians either fighting it out for the few females, or finding telepathic human females to mate with.
- The novel Summerland subverts this with a female Sasquatch.
- Part of Joanna Russ's novel The Female Man is set on "Whileaway", an alternate future Earth where the entire male population was killed off by a plague generations earlier (though it's implied in a couple places that the men were actually killed off by the women in a world wide war of the sexes). She explores what the ramifications of a single-sex society might actually be (well, when she's not ranting and raving about how "the man is keeping me down;" Yes, she actually uses that phrase.): on Whileaway, for instance, the greatest sexual taboo is cross-generation, getting involved with someone old enough to be your parent or your child.
- In the novella Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, astronauts from the present (all male) accidentally travel through time to the future Earth. Eventually, they discover that plague wiped out most human life, including all the males. The surviving women reproduce through cloning and have no interest in bringing back males, though they do want some genetic material to produce a few more templates to clone from. They also have no intention of allowing the men to disrupt their way of life, and aren't going to keep them prisoner; much more humane to simply kill them. It was Tiptree, what do you want?
- The quintessential example of this is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The inhabitants of the planet Winter are humans that have been genetically engineered to spend most of their time in an androgynous, sexless form, with monthly periods of "kemmer" in which they develop sexual dimorphism (any individual can manifest either sex) and interest in intercourse. The alien impact this has on a biologically male outside observer is a major part of the plot.
- In Rob Thurman's books featuring the Leandros brothers, pucks are a male-only species. They boink pretty much anything, but how they reproduce is left a mystery. (Given how all pucks look alike, this troper guesses cloning.)
- In Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Underworld series, werewolves (much like witches and sorcerers) are born male and the werewolf gene only passes down to sons. Lycanthropy can be caught via infection/attack if you're of either gender. (At the end of Broken, the lone female werewolf gives birth to boy/girl twins. It is unknown as yet if either child inherited lycanthropy or not, since both parents were infected rather than genetic werewolves.)
- A male example is used in the Cordwainer Smith story "The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzal" - they were created by alien meddling.
- Lois Mc Master Bujold has a male one of these in Ethan of Athos, where Gattaca Babies are created from a bank of ovarian tissue from the initial settlement of the colony. Several generations later, the plot culminates in a representative (Ethan) leaving the planet for the first time, meeting women and the awkward diplomatic question, "Would you care to donate an ovary to Athos?"
- Chelonians, in Doctor Who Expanded Universe novels by Gareth Roberts, are a race of hermaphroditic humanoid cyborg turtles. They all self-identify as male, but parents and offspring are referred to as "mothers" and "daughters".
- Chief Engineer Burgoyne 172 in the Star Trek: The New Frontier novels is a member of a hermaphroditic race called the Hermat. S/he dismisses comparisions to the J'Naii by explaining "They are neither. We are both."
Tabletop RPGs
- In the paper-and-pencil RPG Castle Falkenstein, Dwarves are, in fact, exclusively male. They mate with the females of other Faerie-kind; male offspring are Dwarves, while female offspring are the same kind of Fae as their mother.
- Ditto in Dungeons And Dragons and Piers Anthony's Xanth novels: All-male satyrs mate with all-female dryads, and all-male fauns mate with all-female nymphs. In D&D, the two races are close enough to immortal that it doesn't much matter anyway; both can also mate with humans to create Half Human Hybrids.
- Also from Dungeons And Dragons are the all-female race of hags. Hags mate with male humans (and subsequently kill and eat them) to either produce a female hag or a male hagspawn which have almost none of the magical abilities of their mothers.
- The Orks in Warhammer 40000 (and possibly the Orcs in Warhammer) seem to be all male, early non-canonical references to female Orks notwithstanding; however, since Wh40k Orks are actually a type of animate fungus that reproduce via spores, attempting to assign a gender to them is basically an exercise in futility.
- Transhuman Space features a few Straw Feminist geneticists trying to engineer an all-female human subrace.
Anime
- The Nameks of Dragonball all identify as male, and reproduce by spitting eggs out their mouths (which technically makes them all female, but whatever) or by "soul fission".
- Fairies in Maze Megaburst Space are all female, and reproduce with human men on the one day when they're human-sized.
- The Solnoids from Gall Force were all female, and reproduced by cloning. Their enemies, the Palenoids / Paranoids, were androgynous but ostensibly male (as far as the viewer can tell; they look more like living suits of armor, but all the voices are male). The Half-Human Hybrid created from combining Solnoid and Paranoid DNA was a human boy, who was used to set up the ending of the original OVA.
- In the Saber Marionette series, the human inhabitants of Terra II were all male, cloned descendants of the six male survivors of the colonization mission. The Marionettes were a 'race' of Robot Girls that served as Replacement Goldfish because they were not apparently able to create females this way.
- The Taraks (males) and the Mejare (females) from Vandread; both races (Humans that were deliberately separated by gender) reproduced by couples mixing DNA to create Gattaca Babies.
- The Zentradi in Super Dimension Fortress Macross (and the first part of Robotech Robotech) segregate themselves into single-sex units and reproduce by cloning, and in The Movie, they're even at war with one another.
- All mermaids in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch are female. They reproduce either the normal way in their human forms with other races (although this is incredibly rare if not anathema, given their strained relations with anyone else) or by having their pearl placed in a giant magic shell when they die to create a successor. (Strangely enough, the only time we see this, it creates a six-year-old, both mentally and physically. It is assumed that they stay that way for the next six years and then age normally.)
- The Arume in Blue Drop are all female, and reproduce through technical means. They can even impregnate human women, which they find highly attractive.
- The Koorime, or ice maidens, from Yu Yu Hakusho. They usually give birth to an identical daughter every 100 years via parthenogenesis; however, they can have sex with various male demons, and, in that case, a boy will be born who looks like his father. This boy is called a "forbidden child," and will get kicked off of the island where the Koorime live, and his mother will be put to death. Hiei is just such a child.
- More in the Manga: Pet Shop Of Horrors, with the Count and family. Fandom makes it a business of figuring out how they truly do it...
Western Animation
- While not a concrete example, female Transformers are exceedingly rare. In fact, in some continuities, they don't exist at all. Why a mechanical race even has genders is a frequently-debated topic, as are... how to put this delicately?... other questions related to gender functions.
- This Troper has always considered it this way: Being a sexless race, the Transformers are defined solely by personality traits. From there, it's just a matter of matching personality traits to preconcieved notions of gender. They've been known to mimic other human behaviours as well, it's not a stretch to assume that this is what they've worked out in this case to make it easier to interact with humans.
- And since the ones we see are mostly giant battle robots that are designed for various forms of violence, it stands to reason that their personality traits will mostly match humans' preconceived notions of "male."
- Of course, Deathsaurus has a wife and many children (Here, the one with "the personality traits humans associate with 'female'" is the one who gave birth to babies nine months after having sex with her husband)... And attraction between male and female transformers isn't anything new, either... and Rattrap has made clear the existance of strip clubs on Cybertron... and makes a joke about sexual positions... and "ball bearings" an such correspond to testicle... and...
- Similarly, The Smurfs do have some females... three in fact, but at least two of them weren't "natural" members of their species but rather the results of Gargamel creating golem-like beings to infiltrate the Smurfs, and Papa Smurf subsequently making them "real". Smurfs appear to reproduce by stork.
- The Pixies from Winx Club are a female-only race. They don't need males since they are created by a magical tree in their village. Amore (the pixie of love) got realy sad when this was pointed out to her by Jolly.
- My Little Pony actually made more sense without the "big brother ponies," when the ponies appeared to be a One Gender Race that reproduces via parthenogenesis, resulting in babies physically identical to their mothers.
- The Amazonians from Futurama, who ousted their male population under the compulsion of the mysterious Femputer.
Webcomics
- For a very long time, the webcomic Freefall left it apparent that all of the robots (whose enormous population forms a major part of the cast) were considered male by default. Only in strip #1,403
does the question finally come up. Disappointingly, the explanation is as stereotypical as it is silly: the robots determine themselves to be male or female based on how much talking they do.
- The Uryuoms in El Goonish Shive don't normally have genders, per se; any two Uryuoms can form an egg together, and they can use DNA from any living species to fertilize it, including Half Human Hybrids of course (surprisingly, they aren't The Virus, being relatively benign and somewhat whimsical). Those living on worlds where gendered species are dominant will generally adapt to the local customs; on Earth, they generally choose their own gender at some point, though some have one chosen for them by their parents.
- In Angels 2200
, the Humans have become (almost) entirely female after a mysterious plague wipes out 99.5% of all males on Earth. The few surviving men are carefully protected to ensure the survival of the species.One of the major questions of the series is whether this affected the colonies as well, as it occurred during a major insurrection (and may have been a caused by a biological weapon).
- Msfhigh, http://www.msfhigh.com
has the Legion, who are a race of Green Skinned Space Babes, who reproduce by converting other races into Legion. They used to be similar to the Borg, but now they act nicely, and retain free will. They're still a bit love-crazy, though.
Internet games
- Funny to say, in Neopets
, all humanoid faeries are female, and their reproduction is based in a powerful and ancient magic the Faerie Queen uses every time it's needed, since they are almost immortal due to extremely slow aging and magic powers.
Real Life
- Dogs are boys, and cats are girls...
- Hence, there are many, many Cat Girl characters, but few catboys.
- Yaoi and similar materials are exempt from the above rule, for obvious reasons.
- The Teiidae family of whiptail lizards includes many species that are either all-female or nearly so.
- And in case anyone is asking the obvious question "How?": parthenogenesis induced by sexual stimulation. Yep, hot girl on girl action producing babies. How wicked can nature not be?
- There are some species of fish that are only female, reproducing solely with the males of another certain species (one which has both males and females).
- To assure that I Am Not Making This Up: Those species work this way because either the act or the presence of sperm will stimulate egg production. Genetically, the offspring are the mother's.
- There is a species of all male fish (see http://eobasileus.blogspot.com/2008/03/male-chauvinist-minnows-form-all-male.html
)
- This editor remembers reading about a virus (right now confined to insects) that kills all mature males, turns all other males female and allows females to have virgin births. Here's to not spreading to humanity!
- That's wolbachia
. Actually, a huge number of species now have it incorporated into their genomes pretty much permanently. Disturbing, no?
- This troper thinks that a human version of this virus would be cool.
- There are no girls on the Internet.
Religion and Mythology
- Greek Mythology has many humanoid monsters that appear to be of a single sex, such as female Harpies. This makes this one Older Than Dirt.
- The original Greek depiction of the very human Amazon civilization variably implied they replenished their numbers the way most warrior cultures did, from invading villages.
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