Practicum: Tsxobjit Queerness
Greetings and somatognosis! Well, we all need that when something is wrong with us; do it with a doctor only and not with quackers! Anyway, this ties somewhat nicely into what I will do today, namely queerness! Yeah, I did it before, but you know what? I can do a practicum for it as well! And given it was just my birthday and my first one out of the closet, it is extra fitting!
As per that post, I am pro-queer–I am queer myself–but my understanding is not perfect despite it. All corrections if I make mistakes are welcome; bigotry will never be tolerated. And what I used in my old post and here are only for worldbuilding purposes and do not define or dictate anything in real life or what makes or doesn’t make a person queer.
But I will say I am doing this to help envision new ways of being queer as a pet peeve of mine, as stated in my queerness post, is when people use our own view of queer to call aliens queer when it is the norm for them.
Beginnings
Let’s do a refresher on all the components needed for this blogpost: the first one is, how do I define queer for worldbuilding and other species? Well, same as I did over a year and a half ago.
A character is queer if they deviate from the involuntary, innate psychological components required for the activities involved in reproduction that are biologically required for their species, with consenting adults.
Which, short version, is that if they don’t have the thoughts, feelings, and desires required to propagate the gene pool, they are queer. This is naturally a sliding scale because some people can be slightly off, and others can be way off. Again, this is not saying reproduction is everything, only that I find this the best universal way to think of it in terms of what is species-specific. This definition also includes intersex people in my eyes because, due to their development, there is no way they cannot fit in here.
Second, this is for my species, the Tsxobjezn. I recommend reading my post on them before continuing, but the short version is this: octopus-inspired species. They have two sexes, but they cycle every 3 months from one sex to the other over a 1 week period. They feel terrible during that time because their entire body and organs reshape quickly to fit the new biology. A fun fact is that children do not have a sex or gender before they hit puberty, which I guess would make them neutroises. Now, we can move on!
Baseline
As I define queerness in terms of straying from a baseline, I need to define what the baseline for the Tsxobjezn is. As said, they cycle between the sexes normally and spend about 83% of the time as either male or female–the remaining 17% they are transitioning. Tough life. This is why they often use old-school analog circular clock metaphors and manners to view themselves. You can think of it like a hand that goes around: one region shows male, one region female, and between both, there is a transition. Actually, look at this image!
A picture tells a thousand words. But this is their biological sex; what about sexual attraction? They have to be attracted to the opposite sex to produce baby Tsxobjez. Well, that works in a similar manner where it shifts, except the arrow here points in the opposite direction to show what they are attracted to instead. Gender, romantic attraction, and gender expression are also viewed as hands on the clock that normally are very close to the sex hand. I am just going to call them sex/gender/expression/attraction/romance hands so we are all on the same page that they are all considered distinct even if, in the norm, they are either opposites or on the same spot.
For couples, this, over time due to pheromones, results in them actually going to the opposite of each other. If you spend a lot of time with people, the group will shift so that there is about a 50:50 split between males and females, and when you live with your partner, they are the one that influences you the most, so you two almost always go to the opposite end of the clock to each other.
This is the baseline for their species and an introduction to how they view it all and metaphorically conceptualise the spectrum in a way that fits them. So let’s dive into how they can be queer!
A broken watch
…is still right twice a day, or how is it the saying goes? Anyway, a way a Tsxobjez can be queer is simply by having one of those 5 clocks broken so they don’t turn. It can be one, or it can be many. These individuals are usually called arretics, arret meaning “stop” plus the classical suffix of -ic. Let’s take an example: a sexual arratic Tsxobjez. This means their sexual attraction hand is stuck; let’s say it is stuck on woman attraction. That means that when they are a virphont–which means man, a word I coined to be more universal and allow building more genders while reducing addressing someone by their sex, where -phont comes from sophont and means a sapient being, the vir- I have forgotten.
Anyway, when the Tsxobjez is a virphont, they are attracted to a safphont, a woman equivalent. But when they themselves are a safphont… that doesn’t change. They are still attracted to safphonts and not virphonts. Basically, to put it in Earth terms, when they’re a man, they want women, but when they’re a woman, they also want women. We’ll be using safphont and virphont for the rest of the post, as when we explore more aliens, it will get messy fast without them.
Now you can imagine that this creates a complicated situation for them trying to pair up with someone else. Though if they pair up with a sex/gender arratic Tsxobjez who is always safphont, it will be great for both! So you get constellations of queer Tsxobjezn that are not the same, but they together fit better than any other.
Runs a little early or after
Of course, if said hands can be still, they can also be out of sync. Normally, hands would either walk in lockstep with each other with some on the opposite side of the metaphorical clock. But this is reality, or the reality we are making, and the odds of that are close to 0 for 5 different arrows, and for most, it would be reasonable that they would be fairly close if not perfect.
But we’re doing queer here, so naturally, we are not settling for being a few minutes off, we are doing much more! This is also where what you humans would consider homosexuality would enter. Those would be individuals whose sexuality hand is 180 degrees off from the norm, or it walks in lockstep with the sex hand. But here is the thing, it can be maybe 90 degrees off instead, which means early on, when they are a safphont or virphont and the sexuality hand is behind the sex hand, you are attracted to the opposite gender. When your sexuality hand moves to be ahead of your sex hand, you are attracted to your own gender. Then, later, within the sex you are, it shifts, and you become attracted to your own gender, or the opposite if it is ahead.
Though that assumes gender and sex hands are walking together. If we separate them, we can get binary trans people. If it’s 180 degrees off, you have a “pure” trans Tsxobjez. I say pure because, in this model, they are always trans no matter what, not to say any trans is less than any other. Though, like sexuality, you can be at different angles, meaning your gender and sex align periodically and then don’t align. So, for their trans community, there is talk about how many degrees off one is.
Now, we can add this to romantic as well; imagine losing romantic desire for your partner because their gender suddenly doesn’t align. This has to be really annoying at a 90-degree offset. Again, this makes it so pairing constellations can be quite unique to find a person that matches your own hands' needs. Individuals with early or late hands would technically be called Desynchronic.
Look at it go
The previous section assumes all hands move at the same pace around the metaphorical clock. But everyone who has owned a clock knows that it can always go faster or slower. Normally, we don’t want that in a clock, and it is not as common here either, but we are doing nature, and nature is not perfect, so for some Tsxobjezn, the hand(s) do, in fact, move at different speeds!
Some hands can move slower than usual, and some can move faster. Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that your sexuality hand–yeah, I know I focus on it, but that is because, to most people, it is the easiest one to conceptualise–goes twice as fast as normal. Normally, it would be that you spend 2.5 months within one gender, and your sexual attraction gender lasts just as long; well, now it is 1.25 months, and then it starts flipping to the other one. So during your entire time as a virphont, you are at one part attracted only to other virphonts, but at the other part, you are attracted to safphonts.
For humans, this could be considered a form of bisexuality, but for the Tsxobjezn, bisexuality like you humans imagine would be nonsense. Though with this, if it goes at half the regular speed, that would mean you go 6 months being attracted to the same gender before it changes, and in that time, you have been both genders and sexes. What a journey to be on, am I right? And these individuals would be called Heterochronic.
Hand fell off
Of course, we gotta include people like myself, those where the hand fell off the clock, and you’re missing one or more of them. If the sexuality hand fell off, you’re asexual. If it is the romance hand, you’re aromantic. Though both of these are generally viewed as a spectrum; can our metaphor handle that?
Of course it can. Think of it like a shorter hand or somewhat bent hand, and you get the spectrum from pure asexual to only slightly. Though this also extends to gender, where we now have agendered individuals included. Though our metaphor here does break down on demisexual people. I’d say it's a broken hand, but it is not off the clock; it just points straight out, so it has to be understood differently.
But for the fallen off hands, we do have one that relates to intersex people for you humans. Namely, Tsxobjezn with no sex hand. They might have hit puberty, and then they never developed into either sex, and no amount of pheromones will get them to develop in any direction, so they are forever literally sexless. Which differs from most intersex individuals who generally develop partially in some, either, or both directions. These Tsxobjezn simply do not develop anything sex-related: no sexual organs, no secondary sexual characteristics, no sex hormones, nothing of the sort. A fun fact is that because of this, they are generally viewed as looking “juvenile,” like children, despite having adult proportions.
Individuals missing one or more hand would be called Absichronic.
Extra hands
I hinted earlier that some could be viewed as bisexual but that the Tsxobjezn wouldn’t think of it as such, and honestly, neither do I. Where we get a parallel to human bisexuality, pansexuality, polysexuality, omnisexuality, and all those, and of course bigender, etc, all those where there is more than one at once, is in this section. Normally, the metaphor works with each kind of hand having only one well… hand. But here is the thing: they can have MORE than one hand in each type.
Again, I’ll focus on sexuality because it's the easiest, but this applies to all. Imagine having 2 hands for sexuality. If they are 180 degrees off, it is regular bisexuality, but imagine if they are only 90 degrees of each other, and one of the hands is the usual 180 degrees off your gender. That means at certain points, you would be heterosexual, either beginning or end of one gender/sex part. But at another part, you would find yourself bisexual and want both genders.
Of course, this goes to gender as well; at some points, you are monogendered because both hands point to the same gender, but at other times, you can be bigendered. Or depending on factors, any number of other non-binary possibilities. There are even possibilities that the sex can have multiple hands, which result in intersex-like states when they don’t point at the same sex. All of these individuals would be called Polychronic.
Hands are independent
Throughout all these possibilities, I have talked about only one hand at a time, mostly sexuality, because it’s the easiest. But it is important to understand that for the Tsxobjezn, like humans, all 5 of those are independent of each other. So, an individual can be sexually polychronic, but with gender, they are absichronic, and for sex, they are heterochronic.
This means then that they have a very wide and different form of spectrum to humans. Sure, humans can all be very diverse in all these aspects and more, but here, we have many more options to explore and have fun with.
Tsxobjit society
Before I wrap it up, how do the Tsxobjezn view their queers? Well, I am sure you all, my beloved readers, know I am not one to shy away from making people different from my own views, but when it comes to here, I tend to be pretty consistent. Namely, that queer has become a non-issue in almost all societies. When you fly between the stars and encounter other species and have multi-species star nations… being largely bigoted against queers of your own species seems too trivial. At least they are your own species!
But no society will ever be perfect, and as much as Anne loves the Tsxobjezn–I do love them too–they are not perfect. They have various stereotypes of all kinds of queer types we’ve gone through here and do group people a bit too much on it despite the fact that they should know better. But people are people even if I make them alien, so they will group people because stupid brains do stupid things stupidly.
How severe is it? Mostly annoyance level at worst of times, but of course, there are ALWAYS bigots who will take it further, and the Tsxobjezn, being socialist, generally don’t take kindly to people breaking the social cohesion. One for all, all for one, and all that jazz.
Queer life
I have hinted at it quite a bit already, but this system does mean they can form quite peculiar constellations and face particular problems. Let’s give a few examples.
A couple is gay, meaning their sexual hand points along with their sex and/or gender arm constantly. Now, for humans, being homosexual is not an issue; you both have the same gender, and it is static from there. But for the Tsxobjezn, it gets complicated. If said gay couple starts living with each other, their pheromones will start to cause their bodies to go out of sync so that they are male/female at opposite times. That means that when one is a virphont, they are attracted to virphonts, but the other will be safphont and be attracted to safphonts. So, living together causes them to phase out of each other's preferences. So a lot of “homosexual” Tsxobjezn actually avoid living together, and when they are not with each other, they spend a lot of time with the opposite gender to compensate for the pheromones of their partner.
However, it is possible for Tsxobjezn to have pheromone production as an additional hand, though it’s almost always tied to the sex hand. But as we say in Sweden, almost doesn’t shoot the hare.
Some families even go into polyamory, polysexuality, and much else because they find living in groups where everyone will be attracted to at least one person at all times to be the best way to satisfy all needs as the cycles move on. It is not easy to be queer and find a good fit, given the huge span of possibilities, but you can usually find someone.
Summa Summarum
With a very simple metaphor for the Tsxobjezn to use to conceptualise queerness, I was able to come up with a lot of queerness that humans simply do not have equivalence for. This metaphor is by no means perfect, and when it comes to some human queerness that most certainly would have some equivalence for them, it fails to account for it.
But the point was never for this post to be able to capture all the possibilities that the Tsxobjezn experience in their existence. When it comes to the beauty of life in all its glory of diversity, no method of classifying and conceptualising will ever be accurate in capturing it all. It is simply not feasible; at best, we can find something that is good enough for a sufficiently large quantity of people, accept that our little boxes and ideas won’t capture all, and as long as we respect them for who, what, and all they are, it probably will be good enough for now, even if we should always strive to be better.
The point of this was to have a conceptual framework to imagine a lot of new forms of queerness for people to explore through my writing. And to give you all ideas on how you can spice up your own aliens, or fantasy beings, so that they are a little less ”humans with forehead ridges” but genuinely different enough to be fascinating.
I hope this little journey has given you all some ideas on how to go from a method of reproduction to finding new ways to be queer. So, I will end this the same way I did last time:
Happy queering, everyone!
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Copyright ©️ 2025 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as clocks as a means of understanding sexuality are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. We’d love for you to play with it in your own work, though! However, specific ideas such as the Tsxobjezn and all details about them, plus all language or exact phrasing, are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain about what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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