Misleadingly titled in a way that has attracted natter (new crowner Sept 29): No Gender

This trope name may sound simple, but the vast majority of the examples describe characters that are neither male nor female in terms of sex, some of whom do have a male or female gender identity. Given that there are real-life individuals who have No Gender and do have a distinct sex, and that I just removed an entire paragraph of natter one added to the page, it might be best to find a better name for this trope. (No Sex sounds misleading, and No Genitals might be overly formal, but I'm hoping someone can think of one of those "witty" trope names to apply here.)

Also, should we cut the examples of characters that literally have No Gender but do have a distinct sex? I don't think there are enough of them to spin them off into a new trope.

edited 22nd May '11 10:01:23 PM by feotakahari

I'd suggest Ba, but that won't make sense unless you know the work.

I'm fine with No Genitals myself.

Ah, the Vorkosigan Saga. That one should probably be added to the page. I do agree, not a name that makes sense. I'm good with No Genitals.

edited 22nd May '11 11:02:07 PM by shimaspawn

Tickles me, that there are people out there who would get "ba."

But yeah, not so universal a reference.

edited 22nd May '11 11:12:09 PM by FastEddie

Anatomically Ambiguous? (playing off "anatomically correct")

Well, you did recommend the books yourself. I read them before I got here.

nvm

edited 23rd May '11 7:36:07 AM by peccantis

Strata's idea is good as they don't always have a Barbie Doll Crotch. They just don't have male or female genitalia. They can still often use the bathroom though.

edited 23rd May '11 9:39:12 AM by shimaspawn

For better or worse, under standard TV Tropes usage (as reflected by Gender Bender and various related tropes) "gender" is a synonym of "sex." One could argue about whether that's a good or bad thing, but it'll certainly never change, due to those tropes having eleventy kajillion inbound links and thus immunity from renaming.

Which is a roundabout way of getting to my point, that No Gender seems reasonably consistent with TV Tropes taxonomy, if not outside sources.

How about No Sexual Dimorphism, as a counterpart to Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism? That leaves it wide enough to count 1) things with sex but no gender (assuming they're physically androgynous, anyway), 2) things with neither sex nor gender, and 3) things with gender but no sex. Given that they're all closely related concepts and I don't think there are enough examples to warrant splitting them, that seems like the best solution to me.

That sounds like a redirect for One-Gender Race. Or a race where males and females look superficially like each other.

edited 23rd May '11 10:03:01 AM by shimaspawn

How about No Gender Race or Zero Gender Race, then?

It doesn't need to be a race though, just an individual. That would be misleading. And it still sounds like One-Gender Race where the gender just isn't specified.

More often than not this trope applies to one and only one character in a work. It's hard to have a race of these because 90% of the time it's a single sterile individual of a race that otherwise has genders.

edited 23rd May '11 11:16:42 AM by shimaspawn

I think both "No biological sex" and "No gender identity" are valid tropes. Soft split.

edited 23rd May '11 11:52:38 AM by deuxhero

I dunno, looking through the examples, there seem to be a decent number of races. Card Captor Sakura's magical guardian people (granted, there are only two in the series), angels (in Sandman, Dogma, Good Omens, and Myths And Legends), golems from Discworld and warforged from Eberron, some species of Pokemon...

Anyway, Genderless Being or something works just as well for a trope title.

ninja'd: Sounds like a plan to me. I'd rename it to Genderless Being and soft split it between genderless individuals and genderless races.

Pseudo-edit: I also just realized that I started used gender and sex interchangeably. D'oh. Well, you know what I mean.

double-ninja'd: would we soft split it between the categories I listed earlier (sex, no gender/no sex, no gender/gender, no sex) or between individuals vs species, or both?

edited 23rd May '11 11:55:52 AM by NativeJovian

Between "No biological sex" and "No gender identity"

Technically people whose gender is neither male nor female do have a gender identity, it's just outside of the usual binary. But I guess Non Binary Gender Identity is a bit of a mouthful.

Snowclones seem to be frowned upon but perhaps Some Humans Lack Attributes to tie in with Nonhumans Lack Attributes?

That's about not having visible genitalia so as not to offend. Not about actually lacking genitalia. Also, there are almost no human examples for this trope.

edited 23rd May '11 8:00:32 PM by shimaspawn

Is this name actually causing misuse? As mentioned above, in the eyes of most people, gender = sex, and it's not our place to correct that. There's 73 wicks to check, which isn't too bad.

Also, No Genitals can't be used as a name, as No Genitalia, the proper term, is already a redirect for Anime Anatomy.

... and that's what I get for reading the forum instead of the trope itself.

in my mind

They may identify with a specific gender for reasons other than the physical, or they may identify as something else entirely.

seems to be the most important part of the trope, so could Chosen Gender work?

Chosen Gender doesn't quite click for me... Self Assigned Gender, maybe?

No Genitals is terrible, because it

1) Makes me think it's talking about Anime Anatomy, and

2) Anime Anatomy already has a redirect called No Genitalia.

This trope is describing a character who, for the purposes of the story, explicitly has no gender, correct? This has nothing to do with gender identity, it's for characters whose physical sex is 'neuter', in the original latin sense of 'neither'.

Genderless Person?

Either way, there should be some disambiguation on both pages between each other.

edited 25th May '11 11:29:59 AM by savage

The trope is a person who has no physical sex (as in, is not biologically male or female). Their gender (as in, personality) may be masculine, feminine, or androgynous. If they consider themselves to be a man or woman, it's for reasons unrelated to biology.

Why not just call it No Biological Sex, then?