Worldbuilding 203: Alien Sexes & Society
Greetings and salvation! DAMN IT! I meant salutations… fuck. Oh well, Hi everyone! Once again your favourite alien, the glorious, noble, and wonderful Limax, Vivian, is back! This time continuing my discussion about alien sexes and how to make societies more interesting through how genitals work. But first, obligatory disclaimer!
Disclaimer: Within this blogpost I will be discussing sex and gender as it relates to worldbuilding and using the terms according to the definitions I provide. I am by no means saying they are accurate applications when it comes to real life social studies and situations. Using historical references and explanations is done for educational purposes and is not an endorsement of said historical social structures, nor is the discussion of sex and gender correlation and societal development an endorsement of having them tied in real life. People should be free to be who they are and take their place in society as they see fit in modern societies.
Sex vs Gender
I will reiterate, I am not going to use them in the same way as many will and do, and I am not trying to. The usage in speech as it is arising these days is valid, but for now, I will give specific meanings for this blog.
Sex: Refers to the biology of an individual and their role in reproduction when used as a description. As an action, it will refer to acts and actions necessary to produce a new individual for the population.
Gender: Refers to the social expectations surrounding the sex of an individual that are not directly related to direct reproduction or physiological difference between different sexes.
Again, I recognise there are issues here when compared to real world definitions, but again, it is for the purpose of this discussion only. I am not here to tell anyone anything about their gender, sex, or anything, and will not do it. Do what makes you happy, and enjoy the blog for what it is intended for!
Gender and Biology
As I said, I am using gender for societal expectations related to sex. You humans have a lot of expectations of each sex. What is “proper” conduct, what they “should” wear, what is “proper” jobs; as a Limax, I find it exhausting! But then again, we are not too terribly better, we do our 14 colours instead… okay, not going there.
Anyway, all these expectations are of course not related to the sex of the individual and sex itself… but a lot subtly does if you think about it reaching into eras long since forgotten. The ancient times before the intertubes! Think back on a lot of the views about how women should be more modest, not desire sex as much, and all that? It is very strange on its own, but if we go back in time, its origins are sensible from their perspective (but not modern ones necessarily).
Back before you had paternity tests and the likes, which of your sexes had no security that whatever child came was theirs? Well, as the mention of the test spells out, it is the father. The mother is certain that what came out is hers, but the father will always have this uncertainty.
What if she had sex with someone else, and it is not mine?
No, I am not going to go into morals about this now, but that existed, and for many, it is important to know. The only way to be even remotely “certain” to any degree was for the woman to not be promiscuous or sleep around. So a bit of mutual agreement of constantly keeping an eye on the women to watch out for that became a thing, and this has evolved into modern attitudes. These attitudes are of course shifting these days as you have tests, but it shows that biology plays a role.
We also have the issue of gestation, or pregnancy for you humans. If the female, or whichever sex does the final job, presuming you don’t use external fertilisation, can constantly get “knocked up” and is out of business for a significant time from hard labour, the expectation is for the other sex, males, to start doing more of the labour-intensive jobs to help the family. Do you see where an old idea some still hold is now coming from? Even if economic forces are destroying it today.
These are some examples, and as you can see, a minor thing in biology can quickly turn quite big in social contexts, and thus in gender. This is because sapient beings tie more and more together. You gotta stay home? Well, domestic jobs work fine then, and the kids of course. You gotta work harder? Well, you decide more because you do the “real labour” to feed the family. Quotation marks because both are doing different intensive jobs in this situation.
Some things are less tied to biology but can still tie a little. Men and women have different body shapes, so clothes need to be fitted differently in order to fit them. It is a minor thing, but remember what I just said? Yepp, things get blown up afterward with extra stuff. A lot of this extra baggage on top can be entirely irrelevant to the sex and become just a gender thing for no other reason than it could be, so it was.
So while gender and sex have a connection, not everything within gender does, and it is important to understand that. You can start with the obvious reproductive needs of a species and work outward from there: what are they likely to tie to it out of necessity, which is extra but related fluff, and which then is added just because you can?
Societal Views of Having Sex
Anne is strangely fixated on this for being her, but here we go! The view of sex has changed a lot over time, both in respect to genders and the sexes themselves. Here we get somewhat back to what I said about biology having an effect on things. What are some things that can happen when you have sex? Well, if we assume just normal humans and hetero– WE ARE GETTING TO THE REST! (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Damn it give me some time!
Well, babies are a natural consequence then. Which for women is a huge burden to carry, and then the many years of caring and such which the man has to help with. So babies are both a blessing and a curse. But we have of course also… STDs. You might have no antibiotics, no condoms, no cures, nothing at all to help, and even before HIV and AIDs, it was dangerous and painful! So rampant sexing around (take that, Anne!) was viewed negatively because it is not only a detriment to the individual in case of STD, it is a huge issue to EVERYONE the infected person has sex with and those they have sex with in turn.
This of course has contributed to the view that sex out of wedlock (a proper confirmed announcement to the public of pairing) is a bad thing. This also adds to all I said before. The sexual liberation of all sexes can only occur if you have some means to not only deal with the child issue but the disease one as well. As long as one remains, it is likely to continue to be viewed badly. But after, sex is likely to become less stigmatised.
The whole thing about it being a close important thing between two people comes from the fact that humans, like all apes but especially bonobos and chimpanzees, use sex for social bonding. Hormones and more are released to make it an intimately personal event that isn’t just “pleasurable” but to make it special between the individuals in order to facilitate their social bonding. If a species does not use it as such, and sex is purely reproduction, orgies might be much more prominent and common, for example.
Now for the British thing that Americans cannot say: queers! Okay, I am just going to focus on homosexuality and bisexuality for simplicity’s sake, but I acknowledge there is more and am not dismissing it, I just don’t have the space, I’ll do a bigger post later I promise! Anyway, the views of everything queer have varied through time. Some societies have been incredibly inclusive and non-caring. Some have been what you would call… oddly specific in what they accept. For example, good old Romans! Sure, hetero was still the most prominent, but a peculiarity for male homosexuality was that it is fine! ...As long as you’re not penetrated. Yes, not bottom, penetrated. I use the other word because to Romans, it was not a top or bottom or position based, it was whether you were the one being penetrated! It was a highly patriarchal society and, I am saying this to imitate the Romans, to “be penetrated like a woman is deplorable”. So we have sexism tied into this view as well! So the act was fine, but not other things. You can make societies just as peculiar. If you do one where females are more dominant, maybe it's the reverse? Lesbian sex is fine as long as you’re not the penetrator! Or maybe both homosexualities are fine as long as you are the one taking on the role that is “natural for your sex”, and the other is the bad one! Who knows what you can come up with.
Gender & Power
As we all know, power is not equally divided in society. In any form of division of humans you make, one of the groups will have more power. Power in this context refers to someone's ability to have things happen either through influence, force, or other means. When it comes to sexes and genders, power is not equally divided. You know how you have it in the west, and you know how it has been. Men have had all the power, and it is only in the recent century women have started acquiring any power. There are of course historical counterexamples in the west where a woman has had power, but that is the thing, only an individual woman.
So one can ask, was it a fluke that men got the power? Did it come from the Romans? Was it just the religion? What caused this? Well, given how prevalent patriarchies have been throughout history, you know where I am going. It is partially biological. No, I am not saying that by biology someone DESERVES power, only that due to how early civilisations worked, biology was a determining factor with some examples going against it to varying degrees, but the amount of pure matriarchies historically is, as far as I know, zero. If I am wrong, please comment below with a link, and I will update!
Here is a list of characteristics that contribute to why a specific sex and gender might acquire power in any given species and their societies:
Better for war
Being less hindered in reproduction
Being more numerous
Being physically stronger
Bring physically faster
More durable
More dexterous
Better at acquiring resources
Better at channelling or absorbing magic
Possessing specific abilities others lack
As technology progresses and a lot of these traits become less and less of an issue, the power discrepancy should over time lessen. Again, these are observed trends along with ideas and suggestions to make your worldbuilding better, and if you want other sexes to be the ones in charge, not saying anything is right or moral. And I strongly advise, as a worldbuilder, against any of you using power imbalances to make personal or political statements without proper justifications within your world. It is fine wanting to make statements, but make them feel like as a consequence of your world, not of you.
Gamy
I named this one such because of the suffix which comes from ancient Greek for marriage. So here we go!
Monogamy
Monogamy means there is one partner other than oneself. So a grand total of 2! Rather underwhelming, even with the factorial. This is quite popular due to how you humans form strong emotional bonds with whoever you call your partner. The same is true with many other species that form strong bonds. All so that they can together raise the bloody screaming thing to adulthood!
Polygamy
This one has been more popular in societies where people help raise children together. This is when there are more than 2 people in said official relationship. This one can be very popular if you make species that more naturally form strong bonds with groups, or maybe have many sexes in families or similar.
Societal Views of Relationships
When it comes to you humans, you have made the officialisation of couplings quite important, and also in any society where specific pairings (or groupings if you do poly!) are of significance. But even within these official kinds of relationships, there are expectations depending on gender. So let’s explore it some!
Types of relationships
There are many types of committed relationships that people can have, especially when it relates to sex. Here is a minor list of ones in western cultures. If you have your own ideas from your culture, comment below, and I will add! The last 3 here are Swedish terms with the final one, Särbarn, being one I made up. It is not culturally recognised here in Sweden.
Dating
Friends with benefits (FWB)/Fuck Buddies
Engaged
Married
Divorced
Widowed (still together in spirit)
Remarried
Transactional
🇸🇪Sambo/Living together (no marriage planned)
🇸🇪Särbo/Officially together but living apart and no plans to move together
🇸🇪Särbarn/Share a child but not together
Before the Relationship
Courtship! As it is often called in more technical terms. This one is, of course, going to be highly dependent on reproductive dynamics, but not entirely! For example, in a lot of human cultures, despite the fact that women are the ones investing the most energy into reproduction and are the bottleneck for reproduction, they have throughout countless independent cultures been… rather low valued unfortunately.
So what kind of courtship rituals can be had? Broadly speaking, it can be divided into two categories. First, the arranged kind, where it is generally the parents that decide which kiddos will marry when they are coming of age. Variations we can do there naturally are for example that the grandparents decide instead with greater wisdom. Or the Roman way, where the patriarch or matriarch (if you go opposite of Romans, see earlier). Maybe it is something the entire village decides together? One can be creative here! Yes, it is a form of abuse as it robs the individuals of agency and forces them into things, potentially against their wills, but society and life are nasty things and sometimes nasty things in fiction are interesting.
The other is, of course, when the people involved pick for themselves. This of course will involve various forms of unstated rituals, and is extremely dependent on cultures. In the west, it was often the man trying to impress the woman: paying for everything, doing more, etc. This is slowly changing, but your culture could be quite different. Maybe it is the female? Maybe it is one of your three sexes that has to impress the other two? What is considered impressive to them in your culture? In my Raixhen culture for example, having served in the fleet is generally considered a prerequisite to proper coupling, otherwise you’re a disloyal coward! Well, for ultimales at least. You’ll find out more in my upcoming practicum about them!
A very common, but now slowly disappearing, expectation has been related to sexual experience. In the old days, it was entirely expected that both were meant to not have any experience before a formalised relationship, marriage. Sex outside of wedlock is a sin! And all that jazz. But as that sinful thought disappeared, it has evolved into one where men are expected to have experience while women are expected to have little to no experience. Some still hold onto these ideas, but they are, in western societies, slowly disappearing. This is of course just related to sex; when you build your society, you can do similar things, different things, and such. Maybe in your culture it is expected that you have at least tried out homosexual sex in addition to heterosexual sex to be certain what you feel? Be creative and weird!
During the Relationship
Alright, a relationship has started. Maybe it is marriage already, maybe it is something unique to your culture, or maybe it is in the above list! Now, what are the expectations? What is each member expected to contribute to the relationship? Well, that is up to you to decide!
In western cultures, for a long time it was expected that the man was to bring money and the woman to do household related things, which I will repeat again is a kind of job! This however has also changed over time, and now in the west, it is getting divided differently and more according to the specific couple.
But that is boring! We want interesting stuff and gender expectations are more interesting than pure true freedom of choice! Muhahahaha! Maybe in your culture the man is expected to be the one to get up at night to deal with crying babies because the mum does it all day. Or if we do queer ones, maybe the bottom and the top, or “penetrator” and “penetrated” if we go by Roman views, are expected to do different things if the culture is queer positive but still have cultural expectations? You can do a lot of interesting things there, maybe the penetrator, whether man or woman, is expected to be the breadwinner and the other to do domestic work? Or maybe it is reversed? Maybe both, whether queer or hetero, are expected to earn money but then divide domestic work differently?
You have of course who is expected to be the instigator of sex, who is going to do it more, and such. You have so many choices, and they only increase with the number of sexes and types of relationships that are considered normal to your culture.
Breakups/Divorce
Things are not working out. You have grown apart. One wants to bail to get freedom. Anne is just complaining too much to maintain my own sanity. Something is the reason, or many things are, but separation has to be done. So what are the traditions and expectations around it? Historically there have been many options.
NO BREAK UP! Has been one popular one. Because of social standing, agreements, deals, and such (due to being arranged), separating is simply not an option. How would one deal with this? Well… you can find a new arrangement within the relationship that limits the issue so you can maintain an outward appearance to make everyone happy. But what about sex and such? Well, maybe that still works! Maybe it doesn't, so you just do it to get the heir that is expected. How is cheating looked at here? Maybe it is somewhat expected to have an affair! After all, an old saying was
The wife is for money and connections, the mistress is for love.
Not supporting it obviously, but it was a thing in some cultures. I will get into cheating later.
But if the culture allows separation, how does it do it? Can you just leave and be single? That's how it is in the west. But maybe your culture has it such that after a point in life, being alone is simply unacceptable. So maybe two couples trade partners so they can try someone new and then remarry directly and never be single.
Or you can do like the Moclans from the series The Orville (I want my ad money for this!) and kill off your partner and it is perfectly fine. Personally, I am not a fan of these extremely outrageous practices, as I currently cannot imagine any way this is sensible as it is a loss of labour and much else. But hey, duels for honour was a thing, so I don’t know, maybe you can imagine a sensible way to make it?
Benefits of cheating
Before I continue this, I want it to be perfectly clear: I do not support, condone, practice, nor enforce cheating on anyone. I am merely recognising that in certain societal situations and biological circumstances, it has a benefit from a certain aspect. I am a straight shooting Limax who prefers honesty.
Biological
As I discussed in my previous post on sex, it is about genetic variation to help mixing genes and getting a good combination of genes. Along with of course making it harder for microbes to destroy entire populations. Being monogamous has the benefit that both partners pull resources together for the young, so it is less strain on each individual, even if the female (or whichever speculative sex you come up with) puts in more during gestation.
So you know what makes it even more beneficial? To be monogamous AND have more genetic diversity by cheating! Sure, the male is not going to be happy wasting resources on another male’s child, but who are they to decide such things! ...Wait, why are they running off to someone else? NOOO!! Yeah, even males have that incentive because they can spread genes around more for the same reason and hopefully NOT have to invest resources raising it. In fact, they have even more incentive because it costs them almost nothing!
Again, I am talking strictly biological, and I am not including the sophisticated nature of how sapient beings would behave because it gets complicated. This is just to illustrate the evolutionary explanations while there is always a small incitement to cheat for both sexes. For sapient, sentient, and conscious entities, it is still a choice that they make, and they are not mindless beings following predetermined directives. Which is why I excuse no cheaters.
Societal
Beyond a genetically healthier population, can cheating benefit society as a whole? Well, yes. If it allows it, that is. As I stated before, unhappy relationships might not be allowed to separate and such, but society might turn a blind eye to the pair cheating on each other as long as it is discreet enough. You know, the secret everyone knows, but no one talks about because it is not obvious enough.
Society might also excuse very peculiar cheaters, such as higher ups that for some reason cannot get a child with their partner. It is their power and standing that makes it acceptable because the intended end result is worth breaking normal social rules. The end justifies the means and all that. After all, what is worse? You not having a child to continue the lineage and continue the millennia old traditions and ways and thus it ends, or you cheating on your wife that keeps getting girls only?
Often, cheating is frowned upon in societies, but there are cases where there is a general opinion of “Let’s not speak about it as long as they don’t make a show out of it”. Where is it your society draws the line for when cheating is silently considered okay?
Summa Summarum
So we come to the end. BYE! Just kidding! As I have discussed, there are a lot of things tied around reproduction, sex, gender, society, and the likes, and we are just barely scratching the surface! I hope I have given you some ideas and food for thought to enrich your cultures. Make certain that things connect and feel like they are a coherent whole of a culture and not a jumble of ideas, and most importantly, do not make it look like you are making a statement with your culture and people. If you want to make a statement, be my guest, but hide it behind a fine coat of paint of worldbuilding that makes it believable! Good luck!
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Copyright ©️ 2023 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as forms of relationships, means of separation, and ideas for cultures are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific ideas such as Raixhe, and Limax the species and their cultures and all language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain 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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