One Gender Race - Television Tropes & Idioms

Harpies, the original One Gender Race

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 that Gender Equals Breed, rather than the offspring being actual hybrids; alternately you can get Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism where two One Gender Races are revealed to be the male and female versions of the same species.

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.

Examples

Anime

The Nameks of Dragonball. In supplemental information and games, they were officially described as descendants of plants (making the point moot) while many also shared an obvious design theme with mollusks (who have both sexes...)
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, though their owners tended to have an ironically non-sexual attitude towards them.
- Though rather a case of failing genetics for statistically significant periods of time when one considers that men have X and Y chromosomes, while women had two X chromosomes.
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) 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.)
- Uh, that isn't reproduction. If creating offspring is fatal, that's a zero sum game.
  - That and said individual will live longer than the original, thus continuing the species.
The Arume in Blue Drop are all female, and reproduce through technical means. They can even impregnate human women, which they find highly attractive, and actively steal from earth men, whether the women like it or not.
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...
Elfen Lied has the diclonius. While male diclonii exist they are incredibly rare and only two are ever seen. The male counterparts also lack the cool hand things which are the only way for diclonii to reproduce.
- Rumor (perhaps even Word Of God) has it that the two male people in the series with horns are not in fact, Diclonious and that there horns are due to an unrelated mutation. Even so, one them freely admits that his genetics are 'washed down,' making the diclonius an even odder example of this.
- It's worth pointing out that, unlike many examples here are proclaimed to be, Diclonii aren't a viable species at all. Except for Lucy, they're sterile, anyway. (Meaning the spread of the Diclonius vector may be The End Of The World As We Know It.) It may be better to think of them as a one-gender mutation, especially since they result from outwardly normal humans having children.
The Alpha Cygnans in Project A Ko are all female.
The titular Sekirei are overwhelmingly female (only 2 male ones have been seen so far, 3 if you count Homura).

Card Games

In Magic The Gathering, angels are always female. (There is one exception, but he comes from an Alternate Universe).

Comic Books

While this is not true in all Transformers comics, some (especially those written by Simon Furman) display the Transformer race as free of gender, with the only "females" being failed alterations or side projects. While this makes sense as they are sexless robots, it's noteworthy that they all look and act "male". Being as the fandom is male-directed, I think we can guess why.
- They act in a way which we perceive as male. There's no reason why a race of alien robots should conform or care about our gender constructs.
- What's more notable is the complete absence of "feminine" body structures or mannerisms. The only current female in the comics is Arcee, and the process of becoming female made her Ax Crazy. Someone's issues are showing.
- Funnily enough, the canon reason for why Arcee (and by extension almost all subsequent female Transformers in comics continuity) exists is because human feminists were upset with the fact that there were no "female" Transformers among the Autobots. Optimus tried his best to explain the whole "sexless robot" thing but ultimately gave in to public pressure and had Arcee built to appease human sensibilities. Unfortunately, feminist fleshlings were not amused by the fact that Optimus had given the "girl" robot a svelte and sexy figure with built-in high heels and a pink paint job. Just ain't no pleasin' girl-folk, is there boys?
The Amazons in Wonder Woman avoided the question by making their race immortal.
- In the original versions, the Amazons were an all-female society, but still human (they just don't age on Paradise Island). Post Crisis, this was changed to being a race created by the Greek goddesses out of clay (with the souls of murdered human woman!) They don't reproduce. Though a separate branch that left Themiskira reproduced normally, using enslaved men.
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.
- Didn't work by the way, thery're still Jerk Ass
The fairy-like Preservers in Wendy & Richard Pini's comic book series ElfQuest 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. When she describes the fact that it's possible to procreate with a female like her, the young man who acts as her translator is eager to try it (and she's fairly receptive, too). Unfortunately, the way the beings of this species procreate is by stabbing a giant snail-like creature in a special purple membrane, which causes babies of the tribe's species to bud off the snail (and also increases the numbers of the snails). The young man then brags to one of his elders that he's finally become strong enough to perform the ritual, the proof being outside his hut: a spear covered in red gore, as opposed to the purplish ichor of the snails.

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. The books also confirmed that Draks didn't always reproduce asexually. And that falling in love could result in pregnancy all on its own.
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 (notice that there is only one) 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.
A Garry Shandling vehicle named What Planet Are YOU From?, starring the comedian as a member of an all-male alien race sent to Earth to procure a mate.
The Hutts of Star Wars are hermaphroditic, but as a cultural thing, they alternate gender terminology between the periods when they are capable of reproduction and when they are not.
- Don't forget that the X'Ting switch genders. And then there are the Shards in NJO, who you would think would be asexual, but Luxum is female. And of course, Dorsk 81 is asexual. Strangely, Kyp/Dorsk 81 was the first Star Wars slash pairing this troper ever considered plausible.
Boogymen in the Disney Channel movie, Don't Look Under The Bed. This is reveled at the end when the Boogeyman turns into Frances' imaginary friend, Zoe who insists on using boogeyperson

Literature

In Piers Anthony's Xanth novels: All-male satyrs mate with all-female dryads, and all-male fauns mate with all-female nymphs.
In Kelley Armstrong's Women Of The Otherworld series, werewolves (much like witches and sorcerers) are born male and the werewolf gene only passes down to sons. Werewolves reproduce with human women, but their daughters are human. Lycanthropy can be caught via infection/attack, though until recently the werewolves thought no woman could survive the Change. An infected werewolf will pass the trait down to his sons. At the end of Broken, Elena, the first and only female werewolf, gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl. Both of them are lycanthropes, though they will not change until adolescence. Since their father is also a werewolf, it is unclear whether sons inherit from fathers and daughters from mothers, or if mothers pass lycanthropy down to both genders.
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?"
Jack Chalker's Well World novels (specifically "Quest for the Well of Souls") include, among 779 alien species (not counting inorganic life), the Yaxa, a race of giant scary butterflies of whom only females are sentient. (This helped make up for the presence of a different insect species in the first book which were severely patriarchal. Oh, and there are also the plant-people of Czill, who are completely genderless and reproduce by budding. He likes to play with these issues a lot.)
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 they don't interbreed with humans 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.
David Eddings' Belgariad has an all-female dryad race, who reproduce with human males and produce dryad daughters. Ce'Nedra has a dryad mother and is therefore a dryad, though this is played down publicly (Belgarath at one point remarks that they had enough trouble getting the Alorns to accept a Tolnedran princess without mentioning that she was non-human as well). It is unclear how dryad reproduction works, but from the fact that Ce'Nedra's family the Borunes descend from a human-dryad marriage, it is clear that dryads can have sons. It is specifically mentioned that many Borune women 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.
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.
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Although they are human and therefore don't really fit this trope, it is worth noting that in Stephen King's book Carrie, the gene for telepathy is prominent exclusively in females.
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.
- Even dwarfs can't tell the difference; dwarfish courtship mainly involves finding out what sex the other dwarf is. Even pregnancy isn't obvious, probably due to the many layers of leather and chainmail that all dwarfs wear.
- One of the interesting things about that is that it makes it a very literal example of "one gender race" - "gender" technically means whether one sees oneself as male or female, as opposed to sex, which means what naughty bits one has. Dwarfs historically all identified as male, even though they're not a One Sex Race.
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.
- It was mentioned in the second novel that this rule only applied in Lyra's world. Witches from some other worlds had men amongst their ranks, although neither male nor female witch lived any longer than humans.
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.
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 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."
Perdido Street Station and other Bas-Lag works feature the khepri, an insectoid race who appear to be solely female. That's because the males are barely-sentient grubs who are kept around by the females for breeding purposes.
The Clayr of Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy are mostly female. Male Clayr are mentioned in terms of their scarcity, but we never meet any. Children are typically fathered by casual lovers chosen from among the visitors to the Clayr's Glacier.
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.
A male example is used in the Cordwainer Smith story The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzal - they were created because all the females were dying out. Oh, and they reproduce... the normal way.
The Lyrans in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series have males for reproduction but they never appear and are described as short, stupid, and useful for only one thing.
In Rob Thurman's books featuring the Leandros brothers, pucks are a male-only species. They boink pretty much Anything That Moves, but how they reproduce is left a mystery.
- Since all pucks look identical, it's been implied that this is some kind of magical cloning (one character remarks that pucks "only consider [themselves] worth reproducing with".
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?
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.
Consider Her Ways by John Wyndham.
Possibly the Veela from Harry Potter; no males are ever mentioned, though the fact that characters are described as "part-Veela" implies there must be males as well, or else they would all be either part-Veela or full-Veela.
Used painfully (and deconstructed?) in The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce. All 'Immortals'—species which cannot die of old age or disease, but can be killed by physical or magical means—are born in the Divine Realms as the product of human dreams or nightmares. One such species, the Tauros, is essentially a race of minotaurs who exist to rape and kill women. Daine, the protagonist of the story, asks the god of the 'duckmoles' (platypuses), if there even are any female Tauroses. When he says no, she gets angry and basically says 'well no wonder they attack human women all the time! That's all they know to do without women of their own who can handle it!' Broadfoot, the duckmole, muses that she's right, and 'Someone should consult the Greater Gods about this...'
The Draconians from the Dragonlance novels are all male
- This is lampshaded in a later book as being done intentionally by the mages who created draconians (and didn't want them reproducing). Female draconians were created, but were put into a magical stasis. The protagonist's attempts to recover these eggs and protect the females form the meat of the books' plot
  - Presumably, draconians have become a conventional race by the Dragonlance "modern day"
The Hork-Bajir are originally seen this way, the only (externally noticeable) difference being the females have one less facial horn than the males (The free Hork-Bajir who relates this says that there are other differences as well, but refuses to share them).
The Otherworld books by Kelley Armstrong contain several one gender races. Witches are all female, while Sorcerers are all male. These are explicitly stated not to be male and female version of the same race. Hereditary Werewolves are also all male, a single bitten (turned) female werewolf exists. Each race reporduces with a garden variety human of the appropriate sex. Children of Witches and Sorcerers will always be the supernatural parent's race and have the appropriate gender. Werewolves can have male or female children, though only male children become werewolves at least so far in canon.

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.)
Star Trek The Next Generation has the J'Naii, 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.)
- Tribbles. One sex, seemingly born pregnant, according to Dr. Mc Coy ("Seems to be a helluva time saver!").
  - That's actually based on some real species. (The females still pair-bond, so lesbianism is indeed natural.)
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.
- Which is somewhat contradicted by General Staal's snide comments about women in The Sontaran Strategem. A militaristic culture might be male chauvinist, but would a culture with no women at all?
  - Remember that the Sontarans have found out more about humans by this time - in their first appearance in The Time Warrior, Linx is briefly confused by human biology, and assumes that Sarah Jane is of a different species to the humans he has met so far. On finding out the truth, he tells Sarah "It is an inefficient system. You should change it."
Ditto the Jem Hadar on Star Trek Deep Space Nine, genetically engineered by the 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.
Babylon 5: All the Pak'Mra you see are female ... like the real life deep sea-angler fish the male of their species is a limbless symbiote. That, as it turns out, is what the hump that some (but not all) of their species possess is. A Pak'Mra without a hump should be considered 'single'.
The centaurs in Xena Warrior Princess are all male. They reproduce with human women.
- ...ouch

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.
- Also includes male satyrs and male centaurs, the three female gorgons, and nature spirits like dryads, naiads, and oreiads, who are almost always depicted as female, but can interbreed with human men.
  - Though, technically, the gorgons were only all female because they were sisters who were cursed by Athena, not because they were a species.
  - Technically, there were female centaurs and satyrs, but these are unusual cases; kentaurides (the female centaurs) were barely spoken of in ancient Greek literature and only one example, Hylonome, is mentioned by name, while the satyresses (the female satyrs) are Canon Immigrants from late 15th/early 16th century poems and art, and didn't exist at all in the original classic works.
  - Originally satyrs were depicted as human men with beards, bald foreheads, pug noses, pointed ears and horses tails. Only the last two features set them apart from standard image of a 'wild man'.
  - Traditionally, Gods and Goddesses could reproduce with nearly anything, anyway, and Satyrs and Nymphs are generally capable of being seen as simply semi-divine beings (often offspring of lesser deities or greater deities and mortals whose divine blood are just too watered down) of one gender or another, with a wide divergence in their characteristics. (Nymphs are a very broad category of beings, Dryads, Hamadryads, Naiads, Well Nymphs, and other creatures are all just sub-categories of Nymphs.) Since the word for sex-crazed for one gender or another is Satyromania and Nymphomania, you can probably guess how prolific they were portrayed as breeding with one another in artworks over the course of Western Civilization.
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.

Tabletop Games

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.
In Dungeons And Dragons:
- All-male satyrs mate with all-female dryads, and all-male fauns mate with all-female nymphs. 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.
- 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.
- D&D medusas (based on gorgons) aren't a One Gender Race; male medusas are called maedars, and are bald humanoids with an affinity for snakes and an intristic stone to flesh ability. They're also extremely rare.
- There are four species of sphinx; three of which are always male (evil ram-headed criosphinxes, evil hawk-headed heirocosphinxes, and good human-headed androsphinxes) and one of which is always female (neutral human-headed gynosphinxes - they're the ones who like riddles). All three male sphinxes can mate with the gynosphinx, but gynosphinxes can only be born of an androsphinx father.
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.
Xevoz gets hit hard with this one - six races, with two more added later on, and every single member is male, or at least lacking any distinct female traits (one race is Energy Beings after all). Unless you consider that ony the drones in an insect colony are male, and the two character types under the Big Creepy Crawlies race are heavily implied to be soldiers rather than drones.
While not technically a "race" in the usual sense, Eclipse Phase's combat-tailored Fury biomorphs are almost all female, in order to reduce unnecessary aggression.
The Lizardmen in Warhammer are all males; they are born from spawning pools throughout Lustria, and were initially created by the Old Ones. Their war with the Skaven began when the Skaven poisoned one city's spawning pools.

Videogames

Guild Wars contains two races that fit this category as of the Eye of the North expansion: Dwarves and Charr. In the case of the latter, it has been explained why this is the case, and in the case of the former it is lampshaded by one of the dwarf character's random lines.
- 'How do you know you've never seen a female dwarf? Eh? Eh?'
- Similarly, the Harpies appear to be this, as all 3 humanoid forms are female.
  - Though the griffins that accompany them could possibly be their males...
Mithra 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, males are rare 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).
- Considering that the only male Mithra we've seen (in Wings Of The Goddess) was practically treated like a celebrity/pimp by the girls (in addition to being a Casanova Chessmaster), being a male Mithra doesn't seem like such a bad deal.
- 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.
Also in the Final Fantasy franchise, the various incarnations of Ivalice (aside from the all-human original Final Fantasy Tactics) feature all-female Viera and Gria. Except for humans, most other races are effectively all-male, as well, but it appears simply because they have no alternate gender appearance, and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 has a Luck Stick vendor and exchanger who are described in-game as male and female, respectively, in spite of appearing completely identical.
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...
- In Twilight Princess the Zora race is almost all female, as heard by their feminine voices. This excludes the Zora princes, contrary to Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask, where most of the zoras are (presumably) male aside from the princess. Heck, in Majora's Mask, one of the Zora try sneaking into the (Gerudo) Pirate Base for the sake of hot women.
  - This only raises further questions!
In the Star Control 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 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, females run the place, etc), and so stay on their homeworlds most of the time. They can't mate with just anyone, but since they're a race of anthropomorphic salamanders, nobody's got a problem with that, either.
- That and Salarians can't develop romantic feelings due to the way they reproduce.
- It should be pointed out that while Asari and Salarians get quite a bit of explanation about why there are never any males or females of their species shown, all the other alien races are represented in-game as entirely male (or female for the one Quarian), with absolutely no explanation. This is presumably because they simply didn't want to have to go into the effort of creating male and female models of every alien race (although with aliens of highly different biologies, or creatures like the Volus, living entirely in a pressure suit, there needn't be any difference at all, anyway... we aren't expecting Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism, anyway), or, more likely, becaues it would require hiring more voice actors.
  - If you actually talk to the Quarian, you find out that the reason the only one you see is female is because they're a nomadic race that has little contact with other species, and she's on a "Pilgrimage." She will also mention her father several times. Also, female Krogans are mentioned in several Codex entries, with the reason none are seen being they're either all dead, on their way to dying, or kept in harems in hopes of them being fertile.
Valkyria Chronicles (probably) has the titular Valkyria, a Proud Warrior Race actively worshipped by basically everyone. While we only see two living examples in-game, being that the Valkyrur are something of a lost culture, the directions to open a Valkyrur ruin addresses the observer as "sister", and no mention of male Valkyria is ever made. Given that Valkyries of Norse myth, which they're based on, are always female anyway, it's probably a safe assumption that the Valkyria are as well. Of course, we later find out that they're really a bloodthirsty race of walking hydrogen-bombs who are also Magnificent Bastards, it's probably not as benevolent an example as one might think.
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, Toros/Miltank, 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.
  - "Mr.Mime"'s Japanese name is "Barrierd" which is a combination of barrier and weird; it is obviously gender neutral.
  - Breeding a male only creature (We'll say Tauros) with anything (apart from Ditto) will never, ever get you another Tauros. If you breed it with a Ditto, the implication seems to be it became a female bull. Sort of. Why do Ditto want to have sex with everything, anyway?
  - Maybe it's the other way around - maybe everything wants to have sex with Ditto, and being not-particularly-powerful Normal types, they don't have much say in the matter.
The Dremora from The Elder Scrolls are all men, except for one (randomly generated) Dremora lord from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. In addition, both the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers of the Expansion Pack 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 the god of war was politically correct.
- Dremora are entirely immortal and entirely sterile, technically not even making them a species at all. As they have no interest in sex at all, and may not even be equipped for that in the first place, gender is more of an aesthetic concern, anyway.
In World Of Warcraft 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, with an exception being the succubus) is depicted in game. Ogres, Broken and Lost Ones, for example...although a half-finished female Broken model exists in the game source. Literally half-finished.
  - If the macro system's Unit Sex() function is to believed, some of the 'all male races' such as Ogres do have female individuals in the game. Apparently the player characters just can't tell the difference.
- The Warcraft D20 monster manual states explicitly that Harpies reproduce by copulation with a captured humanoid race, preferring elves and humans.
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.
The Kremlings of Donkey Kong Country were like this for a long time, with only males depicted (there is a throwaway reference to a wife for K. Rool in the third game, however). It took them until Donkey Kong Barrel Blast to finally introduce female Kremlings to the series.
Only male Grendels and either male (in 2) or female (in 3) Ettins occur without player intervention (or breeding, once you have both genders) in the Creatures games.
Neireids in Soul Nomad And The World Eaters are all female, and reproduce with Human (and possibly Sepp, who can breed with humans) males, producing neireid offspring. All the Redflanks that appear in the game are males and all the Sky-people females, but in their cases it's never stated that they are one-gendered.
- It's mentioned by Grunzford that the Redflank females died out awhile ago, which is why there are fewer and fewer Redflank as time goes on, as well as why the current population always appears to be older.
Archers from Disgaea are always female and created by their World Tree. Then there are the succubi and catgirls...
- There are, as of Disgaea 3, male "archers", although they are titled rangers. Since each class is gender-specific, there are duplicate male and female counterparts of most classes. Since the "monster" classes are all gender-specific, as well, but monsters are, through Mediators, capable of marrying and even producing offspring, it's safe to assume that Gender Equals Breed.
Every race except Poms in Neo Steam. Even the Humans. Humans are all male, with a female counterpart race in Taxn Humans. Lupine and Tarune are all male, with an all-female counterpart race in the Lyell. Elves are just plain all female, with no male counterpart. They're not actually stated to be all male or all female, but those are the only options available to P Cs, and we don't see any NP Cs contrary to this pattern, either.

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, 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.
Not So Distant's Albategna (of which the main character Sadachbia is one) are hermaphroditic. In english the pronoun "he" is used to refer to Sadachbia simply as a default, because "it" would be rude and English hasn't used the pronoun "ou" since the 13th century.
Carbo-silicate amorphs are, for all intents and purposes, a One Gender Race, and their reproduction process is explained in some detail in the comic, but is basically an interesting example of how parthogenesis could produce offspring which differ from the parent.
The Elves of Fetch Quest: Saga of the Twelve Artifacts are in danger of becoming this, especially with factors both genetic and historical.

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.
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 really 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.
This troper use to think this was the case with Lorwardia before Warhok appears in the Grand Finale.

Real Life

Dogs are boys, and cats are girls...
- Hence, there are many, many Cat Girl characters, but few catboys.
  - Exception: Shugo Chara. Almost all transforming characters are girls, except the king and the Catboy.
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 : 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 )
The wolbachia virus (right now confined to insects) kills all mature males, turns all other males female and allows females to have virgin births. Many species now have it incorporated into their genomes pretty much permanently.
There are no girls on the Internet.
- Except the ones who write fanfiction.
The barramundi is a species of fish where all start as male and slowly change to female throughout their lifecycle (resulting in the vast, vast majority of large fish being female).
- There's another fish species that does the opposite, starting female and turning into male.
Aphids reproduce solely by parthogenesis, and they are indeed born pregnant. Think your life sucks? Count your blessings— you're not an aphid. I hope.
- Not quite. Some aphids do have males and sexually reproducing females at certain times, such as in the fall so that they can produce eggs that can survive through the winter.
  - Indeed, alternation of generations is more common in nature than parthenogenesis. Mutation just isn't a good enough way to create new gene sets for most species, which is why sexual reproduction is a common strategy. Water fleas such as Daphnia longispina are common research subjects that reproduce this way. And don't even start this troper on plants and fungi, which have sex lives (or asexual lives) of absolutely mind-boggling complexity.
  - Which is why some scientists think that the survival of otherwise entirely partheonogenic complex animals (fish, amphibians and reptiles) have only stuck around as long as they have because of occassional and extremely rare successful mating with males of another species introducing new genes into the pool. To my knowledge this hypothesis has not been confirmed.
While there are female bees and male bees (drones), as a general rule the bees you'll see are female. Only the queen reproduces in a beehive, and she can choose whether to make sterile female workers (diploid), another queen (diploid individuals fed royal jelly for thirty days), or a drone. Drones are haploid, meaning they were not fertilized, and there sole purpose is to mate with the queen to give her a lifetime's supply of sperm. Once they mate, they are cast out of the hive and die.
- They die regardless, thanks to their genitals being ripped out of them after intercourse.
Mycocepurus smithii, a species of ant, was recently discovered to be entirely female, reproducing asexually.
While angler fish have both males and females, the males attach to females and start to bond with them until the male is little more than a lump of flesh on the female.