First, what's the shapeshifting like? You say that it's unintentional, but then say that somebody AMAB can shapeshift some pregnancy parts in order to carry a baby to term and shift back after labour without being emasculated...so, wouldn't that be voluntary? Is it more like Mystique from the X-Men who has to think about not being blue, or more like Nymphadora Tonks from the Harry Potter series whose hair defaults to always-changing, she can't be bothered to control it, and neither can her metamorphomagus baby (but she can become somebody else if she thinks about it)? Or can you get both types of shifters, and whether they shift between defined shapes, or whether the shape is defined by the shifting (that's always going to be something new even they don't expect and can't be bothered), is just how they be?
Second, gender roles as we know it don't exist...but how, then, do they exist to your fantasy race of people? You say that they see cisgender as default, but those are still "our" binary genders that they're cissing with, which is fine. The way you describe it, though, I'm getting the impression that Lawful (shifting between defined forms or from a default) or Chaotic (ever-shifting) might be more of a basis for gender in that society than body? Body might become more of a career track or nationality than a basis for gender, in a society of shapeshifters.
1.) Have those categories. 2.) Make it matter enough to articulate in ways the rest of society would understand. In modern Western civilization, the English language will still trip a person up with "he" and "she" and "sir" and "maam"; dress codes and color schemes are still associated with genders, the demographics of genres of media are usually gendered as well as aged in the marketing and rarely general (or else the work being advertised might get criticized as being dull or confused or even subversive)...
Where I'm coming from: I call myself queer but I'm still figuring out what that means. I'm Southeast Asian, and while the cities do have a lot of gender-binary cissexual concerns, many indigenous people have three to five genders in their communities and it ain't no big thing. I suspect that the way of explaining more than two genders still being through the filter of a combination/absence of two sexes/genders is cultural. I don't doubt that body dysmorphia around gender is a very real experience, but I don't believe it's the only indicator that gender is real (and that consequently being agendered is not a thing except from an impenetrable bubble of cis privilege...unfortunately I've had that argument) nor the only aspect of gendering that can be addressed (for example, the social construct approach along with the personal-relationship-to-body or as you say mental approach.)
edited 16th Jul '15 1:28:34 AM by Faemonic
A person living in a society that ignores gender would never even consider the possibility that they're a different gender to the one they've always believed, or that they're acting in a way that runs contrary to their gender, because they don't believe gender exists in the first place. At most, they might label themselves male, female or intersex based on their genitals (that being a discrete, biological fact), but they wouldn't assign any cultural or social meaning to that information.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I think this makes the most sense.
My faeries/demons are Gender Benders who are born male but have the ability to become "androgynous" and female at will. The reason they usually don't is because their culture is misogynistic. Of course, the difference is that in my setting sex, gender, and (sub)species are extremely interconnected; for example, women are a "race" of females descended from faeries/demons.
Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.
EDIT: Never mind.
edited 17th Jul '15 11:57:50 AM by Tungsten74
In my setting, I was thinking there would be a group of people who have done away with the concept of gender identity and roles. Basically, they were founded by a mono-gendered race (though they have many human immigrants). This makes their society rather confusing to the main character (who comes from a conservative, almost theocratic society).
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
To clarify, without explaining the complicated magical systems that it relies on, it'd best be described as kind of like a "Doctor Who -style regeneration thing," but with more body swapping. People with this ability rarely "swap" without being put in lethal danger, upon which they'd go to another body and their former body would be healed with the extra magic provided by their transformation and it usually would take in another person who had also "died" during this time. (obviously there's some things the magic can't cure [like decapitation or extreme blood loss] so that body would just be like any corpse you'd see laying around)
The swapping CAN be done voluntarily, but rarely is. People who are more experienced can to some degree seek out bodies (during involuntary swapping) that fit their preferences (such as bodies with sexual characteristics they're more comfortable with or younger, non-sickly bodies)
Also, a sizable portion of the population's setting either cannot transform like this or choose not to for whatever reason. They often have their own flavor of culture that sometimes rejects the people who transform (for reasons besides their ability to be Gender Benders
If a AMAB "cis" man was like "hey I'd like to get pregnant and have a child," he'd just have to swap into a female body, try his best not to "die" during gestation and he'd be good to go. (or likewise a AFAB "cis" woman could swap into a male body and knock someone up)
They don't have particularly strict gender roles (like men and women don't have hugely restrictive expectations put on themselves)
But would even "identifying as male" make sense in this setting? Like there would probably be people who expect to see a penis or vagina when they look down and don't, but would these people be considered trans?
I could always have the "third-gender" be people who had ambiguous genitals at birth and if "identifying" as a gender wasn't really a huge factor they could continue on with their lives with no issue, even if in our world they'd eventually refer to themselves as "male" or "female."
Does that make sense?
edited 21st Jul '15 2:04:37 PM by TheMuse
Elementalist
I'll say this:
First of all, that's not shape-shifting. Not in the way people had thought it is when discussing it. I won't dispute the fact that technically it sort of fits because they do fit shape, but the choice of the wording was still a tad ... unfortunate, yes.
Second, you are still approaching it from the wrong direction. Rather than comparing what they have to what we have and using our terms for it, write an outline of how the mentality of those people would shape through time as they live with their abilities. Words like "cis-" and "trans-", "transsexual" and "transgender", all of those exist and are used by us because they mean something to us. But even then those words are closely linked to our inability to just change our bodies on a whim and to the indoctrination the society subjects children to based on their sex and presumed gender.
Which leads to third, people who change bodies in such a way would, most likely, become more distant from their bodies. Because the bodies they use are not their bodies, but rather just bodies that they happen to be using, body as nothing more than a tool that they happen to be using. And the lack of link between someone's sex and their inner whatever-happens-to-be-there (including gender), along with the fact that people could change to the opposite sex basically whenever, means that the gender dynamics as we know them would not have formed. So if gender dynamics are irrelevant because they don't exist, labels like "cis-" or "trans-" are also irrelevant; you either like the body you are currently using or you don't, and that's it.
There's also fourth, as lack of gender dynamics and stability regarding identity of the person inside a particular body means that marriage as we know it would also not exist for those people unless the very concept got forced on them by someone from the outside who had enough power to force them to adapt to it.
Adding to that is fifth, regardless of what you think or plan it's very unlikely for those "shapeshifters" and "normal people" to form one stable community. Different abilities and different mentality mean that there would be conflict, common enough conflict, that though the two kinds of people can live side-by-side, it's very unlikely that they'd be able to live amongst each other. Of course exceptions do happen, yes, but that's not the point; the point is, though those "shapeshifters" would be aware that the way they go at things is different from how those around them do, it's very unlikely that their abilities and mentality would be shaped similarly to how ours is just because there are people like us living near them.
So to sum it up, no, it wouldn't make sense for people who can change that way to identify as "male" or "female" or "man" or "woman". They might start using those terms when referring to the body they are using, but most likely there would be a clear line between the body and them. Normal people interacting with them might feel weird about it, and the very fact that they happen to be using those words (the ones that do use them, at any rate) might very well be a compromise related to that, but that's it.
The identification of one's partner is perhaps the largest obstacle to pair-bonding, it seems to me—but perhaps the setting includes some means of identifying a specific soul, rather than a specific body—perhaps something analogous to biometrics, but operating on spiritual elements.
My Games & Writing
Elementalist
Oh, life-long pair-bonding? Yes.
Marriage as mostly we know it, limited to a male–female couple and that's it? Not a chance.
Marriage as we know it is, by now, a legal joke. You don't need to be married to stay together (common law marriage isn't a thing everywhere, you know), and due to how ... under-educated, yes, that's the word, people are about how love and lust actually work, it's not the sacred thing people had once been making it out to be. Not to mention that marriage itself is something that is tied to the gender dynamics. So in a community of body-surfers marriage as we know it wouldn't be a thing, and though some people might do something of that sort to celebrate, that would be adopting celebrations and the culture surrounding the concept of marriage, but not the concept itself.
edited 21st Jul '15 4:46:25 PM by Kazeto
With what Kazeto mentioned about the difference between a "normal" people and surfers, yes there is often a great deal of conflict between the two groups, to the point where a major war occurred in recent memory because of it. A major conflict in the work itself is strongly related to this issue.
Many couples (whether they be man/woman woman/woman man/man) may never get married, but still cohabitate and such, but the society does have a concept of "marriage." Although it's not hugely seen as a vehicle to produce children and isn't necessarily viewed and needing to be totally monogamous (long term relationships/marriages usually have little probably with them being "open,") Marriage (especially as seen as a life-long commitment) is less common among surfers especially because they tend to have longer lifespans.
Exactly how marriage is recognized depends mainly on the area one lives in. If you live in a city with a strong centralized government, your spouse will have the right to inherit some of your spouse's stuff if they die. But if you live in a rural area with little to no centralized government, it's mainly a religious ceremony to get the gods to bless one's coupling and also an excuse to have a party.
Wow, just realized all of the walls are text I'm making. Sorry. Just wanted to make sure you can see where I'm coming from.
Char!
How much is a "sizeable portion of the population" who can't/won't* body surf?
So, anyway, for surfers I guess bodies become more like clothes and fashion. Some people are more invested in how they present themselves (be it by sub-culture, hygiene, whatever), some don't care so much, and some people have different sets for different situations? Plus you probably have elements of not wanting to misrepresent yourself (like when straight guys won't wear clothes that make them look "gay"). Meaning that there's probably visual cues (mostly uncodified and changeable) for saying whether you surf, preferred bodies, etc.
I have some concerns about the mechanics now that you've revealed a bit more of them. Are there bodies known to surfers as, for lack of a better word, traps? Bodies which have for whatever reason landed in a lethal - but not regen preventing - location. Like at the bottom of some sadistic torture hole that stabs the corpse through the heart every half-hour? So body keeps getting killed sending its inhabitant off somewhere else, but healing up to take in a new soul, just in time for the trap to kill it again?
Your setting is also going to be a bureaucratic nightmare. How do you prove that your yourself when your face changes? What happens when your new body is in a new country? Does this mean that there's more of a global language? Do non-surfers keep up local dialects to exclude foreign surfers?
You must agree, my plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity! My Tumblr
In any case, a fantasy universe can very easily have forms of familiar things quite different to what we have—this doesn't mean that those things don't exist, merely that they're different. A magitek universe, for example, may have forms of and approaches to technology that are very different to ours—they might have computers but not refrigerators, for a minor example—but they do still have something that might be recognised as "technology".
[edit]
However, it occurs to me that this is somewhat of a tangent, and The Muse has described the setting's take on marriage. I'll thus leave this argument here for my part, I think, in order to avoid derailing things further.
edited 22nd Jul '15 9:12:55 AM by ArsThaumaturgis
My Games & Writing
Experienced surfers can usually avoid bodies that are in continued peril, (such as being trapped underwater or such) as they need some time to "recharge" before surfing again because if they are "killed" before this period ends they are Killed Off for Real.
I'm not exactly sure how one would prove one's identity, but each person does have a unique "aura" that can be tracked, so it would probably involve that. And on the question of "what if they end up in another country," surfers don't have that far of a range (picture within the range of moderately-sized North Eastern US states) And if they somehow ended up in the middle of nowhere and had to surf they would be Killed Off for Real.
And to get a bit more on topic: Would it make sense for someone who was AMAB go as a "he" for his entire life although he might not necessarily see himself as a "man." Or would it not make very much sense for pronouns to exist period?
edited 22nd Jul '15 10:00:39 AM by TheMuse
Elementalist
Yes, it would. Pronouns are like names, and though we use pronouns that we are more comfortable with if we can choose, in the end they're not unlike names or nicknames in a way. Which means that no matter what your feeling about it are, unless you consciously rebel against it each and every time, you'll simply get used to it.
And for people who can switch bodies, for whom the exact pronoun is, in the end, barely of any relevance, and for whom their bodies are not something that would define who they are, replying to the pronouns people use when referring to them because of their bodies is something that will happens simply for the sake of convenience. If anything, I can see many of them having a "he, she, whatever, use either one" approach regardless of which one they'd prefer, and getting annoyed by use of "it" instead.
Of course, the country itself might get their own pronouns instead, if they had their own language. But if they used the same language as the people around them then they'd adapt to what they have because it's just language and thus no big deal and it's really more convenient that way.
And I'll just add this while I'm at it, though it's not really on topic:
Please do note the word "mostly" that had also been there in the original wording. Mostly, in many places over the world, it is strictly male–female. That some places allow same-sex marriages is something I am aware of, but that does not mean every place does, and in fact most don't. Sure, it is changing, but it is changing now, and that is quite an important detail.
And going on a tangent looks really bad if it's clear that you don't really see what exactly you are replying to. Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against you or your tangent (I like tangents), but slipping on a quote near the beginning is ... well, bad form, yes.
Because same-sex marriage is a rather recent thing for the most part (we are ignoring certain exceptions in certain parts of the word for now, because they are exceptions), and a lot of how marriage is now or was up until fairly recently are things shaped by the culture and mentality of people of the past times. Including the gender dynamics, yes. Many things are influenced by other things that nowadays we think have no meaning, but somewhen (and yes, I am aware that "somewhen" is not actually a word that exists) they did mean something, they did mean enough. Do take a look at the history of marriage and the origin of the whole concept if you have time, it's potentially boring but quite useful at finding out just how it was back then.
Also, the fact that marriage right now gives legal thingies but is in no way linked to anything pertaining to emotions is precisely why I perceive it as a legal joke. It's supposed to be the culmination of a pair's feelings, and in the end it is anything but (well, it still can be, but it's more about the legal shenanigans than it is about the other part).
If you still disagree with that, then just leave it be, please. I am aware of your viewpoint as you'd presented it, and I only added this one for the sake of clarification; I am perfectly capable of simply agreeing to disagree about this and leaving it at that. If there's something you feel you have to clarify then feel free to do so, but I simply don't think that will be the case (because as far as I see it, you made your opinion about it clear enough not to need to do that).
So essentially some surfers might have a specific pronoun or body type they prefer, but an amount would likely not care about which pronouns are used to refer to them?
And how much would this realistically affect the communities of people who don't surf? They would intermingle to some degree (for example, a surfer eventually deciding they don't want to surf anymore so they can grow old with a non-surfing partner or other partnerships related to business or trade) but would non-surfing people likely see their sex and/or pronouns as part of their identity?
Like a surfer who prefers bodies we would refer to as "female" and likes to be called "she/her" because that's what she grew up with (people can't surf until they become adults) would likely not think of herself as a "woman" but a non-surfer who was raised in a similar situation would be more likely to visualize herself as "female?"
edited 23rd Jul '15 8:51:37 AM by TheMuse
@Kazeto:
(I do agree that marriage would likely not be limited to heterosexual couples in such a society as is being discussed.)
Looking at your arguments, I suspect that the main cause of our disagreement is that you're looking at "marriage as a legal institution", while I'm more concerned with "marriage as lifelong pair-bonding". That said, I'm a little dozy today, so my apologies if I've missed anything.
I won't say that sham-marriages don't exist, and I won't say that the legal benefits of marriage don't have their problems (I'd like to see them become less restrictive for one thing, I think)—but then the latter, at least, I see as more a problem with legality in general than a problem with the laws around marriage, specifically. I'm more arguing that "real" marriages do exist, and that some form of that—regardless of whether it involves legality at all—might still exist within a society of body-changers.
Anyway, yes, unless you have further to add in response to my post above, I'm happy to leave this at "agreeing to disagree".
My Games & Writing
Elementalist
Pretty much yes, TheMuse. Because the inability to change our bodies to the bodies we'd truly want to have is a major reason why gender dysphoria is actually a think; if we had the ability to change our bodies to the bodies we'd want to have, even if not exactly but close enough, then many less people would be that uncomfortable with it. Not to mention that the gender dynamics and the preconceptions about how men and women must behave, combined with the automatic linking of male–man and female–woman, are another major reason for gender dysphoria; in a society with much gender dynamics that are close to non-existent because anyone could be anyone, that's that one out of the way too.
Without those two reasons, though it's not exactly a non-issue for everyone, it's mostly a "for as long as I know you are talking to/about me" thing, and all but the few (if that) people with the most extreme opinions about the topic of pronouns and gender identity would simply get used to it to some degree regardless of what they prefer.
The most accurate comparison would be if you imagined someone with a weird name who's always insisting that people use some nicknames or some variant of the name that's not that weird. They might not particularly want people to use the name itself, and they might not be the most used to it, but in the end they know it's about them and that's what matters.
Hmm ... a good question, that. The answer is: it varies.
Generally, it depends on how common it is in any given part of the community to get body-surfers living amongst them. You know, the standard "one is an exception, two are an oddity, three are a minority" thing. Of course, it's not literally referring to those values, but the point is, for any given outside-community group intermingling with any community, if there are few enough of them they are generally ignored by most, if there are more of them then they start being treated as their own group of outsiders, and then as there are even more of them they might start to get treated as a foreign but still sub-part of the community itself. And likewise, the influence of the group on how things are is higher the more of them and the tighter-knit with the community there are.
As far as the personal decisions and feelings go, that depends from person to person. Some would be accepting, some would be not, some would feel guilty that the surfer chose to be with them at the cost of what defines them, others wouldn't feel guilty at all.
Those who chose to forgo surfing just to be with someone ... well, whether they see themselves as men or women or something else is their personal choice if not simply the way they feel about it and that's it, but generally they'd get used to pronouns; I mean, if they had anything against using their current body that was a big enough issue that they couldn't get used to the pronouns, they wouldn't forgo the surfing in the first place. Though, of course, it is possible for a surfer to forgo it and only after the fact discover that the community they are going to be living in expects people with the body the person is using to conform to certain behavioural patterns that they don't really care about conforming to, but the result is more likely to be some variation of a Tomboy or whatever the opposite gender case is called, rather than a "trans" person.
Again, personal choice. Some people would do that, some other people would simply go "I'm myself, gender/sex irrelevant", some others would automatically link their body to what their supposed gender is and try to make that a part of who they are (which is going to have them walking in mental circles after a few jumps). But mostly, their identity will start with who they are and the gender/sex will be somehow attached to it rather than an integral part of it. Which doesn't stop them from thinking they are men or women, mind you, and some might cling to the labels of their youth until much later in life. Heck, there's probably going to be people who are vocal about how others should think the same way about it that they do (because every group of people has stubborn morons).
But in the end, yeah, no set approach. So if you need a character who feels this-or-that way about it, it's probably all fine to make the character that way.
@ArsTraumaturgis:
Eh, I really don't have a problem with the omission, ArsThaumaturgis, nor did I have it at the time. A mistake it was and I know where you were coming from and what you were trying to say, and the blunt referral to it as "bad form" is just so that you'd be more careful in the future, in case you talk to some verbal pyromaniac and they take offence to the mistake. As far as I see it, you are quite a pleasant person to talk with and the "bad form" comment is just that, a comment (like "oh, I think that was bad form; not that I care, just letting you know"); if I come across as harsh, it's because I spend much of my time at work explaining things to people as if they were stupid because that's the one way that makes them all (well, most, not all) get it, so I'm kind of used to being a bit more blunt than would be necessary, and the people I work with are used to simply pointing out the mistakes just for the sake of letting the other person know (well, sorry about that anyway, I should have made it clearer that that's just what I'm doing).
To be honest, it's not like I can actually criticise you for mistakes in communication, seeing as how I sometimes reply "yes, chieftain" to my boss which is so out of it that there are just no words. Though, of course, given how my ramblings tend to go into a direction that is close to all-out complaining, I see why some people think I'm doing that.
And yes, I presume that that is indeed the case for the disagreement. Though I'd say that, as far as my opinion goes, it should be both but more of the latter and that it's mostly former nowadays is what irks me about it. Then again, I do acknowledge that I am simply too familiar with the Arranged Marriage trope and the related stuff to not be biased there, so that's that. I can say that I've seen "real" marriages though, so that's that, but there's a lot less of them than there are of ... mishaps that are called marriages, yes; and that's just sad, really. And maybe I'm a bit more bitter about the whole topic than I thought myself to be ... I'll have to think about it.
Also, yeah, something like marriages would no doubt exist. Not necessarily marriages themselves or anything even close to it, but something that symbolises bonding of some sort between two people, sure, I'm with you on that one. So yeah, in the end I think we ended up agreeing more than disagreeing, which I think is nice; just the difference in perspective and experiences as far as the disagreements go.
edited 23rd Jul '15 10:17:00 AM by Kazeto
I'm not exactly sure how one would prove one's identity, but each person does have a unique "aura" that can be tracked, so it would probably involve that.
For body-surfing and the huge inherent problems with visual identification, maybe you can have them retain the same blood-types? Then you'd just need something like the diabetes test where you give them a pin-prick or a little cut, put it on a testing device, and see if it comes up with the right type in a couple seconds. Of course it wouldn't be PERFECT, but it's still some sort of limit.
Or maybe they retain certain features (tattoos, scars, and birthmarks).
edited 23rd Jul '15 3:11:35 PM by Sharysa
It's not a setting with a huge amount of technology so that wouldn't be an option. But some cultures in the setting have members who get tattoos that vary somewhat from person to person (which retain with the person as they surf) so that's also an option. It would make sense in developed urban areas for people to have tattoos for identification so I think I'll do that.
Something I was also thinking about was whether "sexual orientation" as we know it would even exist in this setting. Even when I visualized the setting to be more gender binary-y, their society basically assumed bisexual with some preference as the default. But now, it seems like some folks might prefer dealing with a certain kind of genitalia in a sexual partner, but when a majority of the population probably wouldn't straight up refer to themselves as male/female.
It would make sense for them to have a concept of asexuality, but other than that, the labeling of one's sexual orientation wouldn't make very much sense, right?
@The Muse: Forgive me if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I'm curious about something:
You've said that people sometimes temporarily body-surf for the purpose of pregnancy: where do the female bodies come from? Does doing this rely on arranging for a suitable corpse to be available, and where would one get such a thing?
... Come to that, do you have many cases of couples body-swapping, whether to allow both to experience something (as in pregnancy) or for other purposes?
@Kazeto: Fair enough, on all counts. ^_^
Regarding the "bad form" thing specifically, I think that we had a bit of a clash of personalities there: one thing that tends to get my back up is being accused of intentional ill-will. With me, personally, simply pointing out the mistake would likely have been enough. However, you were of course not in much of a position to know that, and if your experience elsewhere has inclined you to act otherwise, then, well, we have significant potential for just such a clash as this.
My Games & Writing
^Someone could wait until they surf into a suitable human body OR there are rituals that allow one to bypass the whole "dying" thing to get a new body, which is done for other purposes as well and but isn't extremely common. (And if you were curious, it's not possible for them to surf into a body that's already pregnant because they situation that caused they body to be vacated (in almost all cases: dying) almost always puts enough stress on the fetus to make it miscarry)
One religious sect in the setting puts a big emphasis on experiencing the world from as many different "experiences" as possible before moving on to the next world. This would include stuff like blindness, various body types, and siring/bearing children.
At least in one case I was planning (in a later installment of the series) one of the main characters giving birth to two of he and his wife's children (she had the first one) partially due to her entering a position where being incapacitated by pregnancy would be very impractical. (This may or may not make it into the final draft, but if someone asks I'd consider it Word of God) Other than that I haven't really thought of it that much.
And they do have some tools to experiment sexually with partners (like strap-ons and shit. It's plausible because dildos existed since forever) they also have the ability to mix things up by having sex as different sexes and stuff like that.
Yeah, they found a suspiciously dildo-shaped phallic device in a cave somewhere—the concept of sex toys is REALLY old.
As to sex toys, I wasn't asking about that, but rather whether it's common for couples to surf into each other's bodies—in other words, a ""Freaky Friday" Flip"—for any reason (such as in order to experience pregnancy, or even just to experience life through each other's eyes).
edited 25th Jul '15 8:18:24 AM by ArsThaumaturgis
My Games & Writing
It basically involves close contact between two people while performing a ritual.
Let's say Dana is currently in a healthy female body with wide, childbearing hips and meanwhile Sandy and Sam want to have a child, but they don't have a female body between them. Dana and Sam meet up, hold hands, and bam, they're swapped Freaky Friday style.
But couples pulling a Freaky Friday to "see how the other half lives" or something like that wouldn't really make sense from their perspective because they don't really identify their bodies as an extension of themselves because they see them as temporary vessels. So doing that would be seen less as "seeing what it's like to live as the other person" and more "being in a body that's really tall" or something like that
My fantasy setting features a segment of the population unintentionally shape-shifting, occasionally into the opposite sex. For reasons that are mostly unrelated, a majority of the societies in their setting have the belief that Gender Is No Object and gender roles as we know them don’t really exist. Their society overall still sees cisgender people as a default (mostly due to them being more common than anything else), but wouldn’t bat an eye if someone who was AMAB and identified as male shapeshifted into a female body to have a child and then turned back. Their society also recognizes a third gender (which in our world would be considered nonbinary people) that very few people have any issue with. This isn’t a huge focus of the plot, but someone in the main cast happens to be of this third gender as are a few other minor characters in the series. However, due to the fact that many of the Secondary Sex Characteristics one would traditionally associate with gender expression aren’t really seen as such in the setting, I’m trying to figure out exactly how one would realize one doesn’t exactly fit into the category of “man” or “woman.” Sure it simplifies the existence intersex people (specifically the ones that are born with unclear primary sex characteristics) when their setting has no way of doing genetic testing to find out how many X’s and Y’s are in one’s chromosomes (as they could just say “this baby has be designated as third-gender by the gods and we don’t give a fuck. REJOICE!”)
But then that raises the question of whether nonbinary-ness should be seen as a mental state that often includes signs of gender dysphoria or more like some other cultures’ attitudes that it is connected more to spirituality or such and usually doesn’t reference gender dysphoria.
Ordinarily I’d resign myself to the fact that whatever you do you’re probably going to end up upsetting at least one person, but as the series also features other LGBTQIA themes and nonbinary people rarely get any representation period, I’d like to do my best to do a good job with this.
If anyone could offer suggestions for this (if you’re also nonbinary/transgender, that would especially be helpful) I’d really appreciate it. Thanks.