Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27774
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

This is not uncommon these days, particularly in fantasy and science-fiction (no doubt driven by the popularity of role-playing games in these genres, which can't assume the main character's gender and can't afford to record essentially two entire scripts with one set of pronouns swapped). Several best-selling fantasy and science-fiction novels have deliberately kept the genders and races of some of their characters vague - Lock In, by John Scalzi, even went so far as to sell two different versions of the audiobook with a male and female voice, and the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie uses 'she' as a non-gendered pronoun, to reflect the protagonist's inability to distinguish gender. It won a Hugo, so it's clearly doing something right.

Here's how those novels and games avoid needing to refer to the gender of the protagonist:

1. **Use names that aren't clearly gendered.** In fantasy and sci-fi, this is easy, but you run the risk of making an unpronounceable or alien name. Avoid vowel endings for made-up names, as these are usually coded 'feminine'. There are lots of names that aren't gender specific, so you can give your character an evocative name like 'Morgan' or 'Robin' while keeping the gender of your character ambiguous.

2. **Let your audience draw their own conclusions.** If you deliberately write around a character's gender, it'll be distracting as readers will be reading closely to build up a mental picture of the protagonist for longer than you want. Throw them a bone, by describing enough for readers to fill in a good enough picture - build, clothing, some charming specifics - and your readers will assume the rest. To help things along, have your character perform some task that readers who invest heavily into gender roles will read as gendered. It's like that riddle about the father and son who get into a near-fatal accident, and the doctor refuses to operate on the child because it's the doctor's child. Many people will assume gender, and be satisfied, if you have your character do something like practice swordplay, or do household chores.

3. **Think about how other characters will refer to them.** This is why people often suggest to write androgynous characters in first-person, to avoid the narrator having to give the game away. Games with ambiguously gendered protagonists like Sunless Sea do so by asking players to choose their own term of address; 'sir', 'madam', 'Captain', 'whelp', among others. You can borrow this technique: if most of your characters address each other referring to position, you can easily disguise the gender of your protagonist by using a non-gendered title. Similarly, other characters might look down on your character and refer to them by insulting phrases, and these can be very easily non-gendered. (You could even invent an insult - for example, call them "blanks", and later reveal that they call your androgynous characters "blanks" not just because they're devoid of personality, but because they don't have a gender.) Terms of address amongst equals tend to be gendered, so you'll have to avoid them.

4. **Lean into it.** There's always the option of having one character misgender the protagonist. If it's normal for androgynous characters to exist in this universe, disguise the insult from misgendering by having this character both insult them and misgender them. This way, when you do the reveal, you can have a sympathetic but naive character make the same mistake, and have the reader and this sympathetic character find out at the same time. This softens the sense that you've been holding back a mystery and helps the reader bond with the character who made a careless assumption, and with your protagonist, who's treating the mistake with tact.

5. **Get a sensitivity reader.** These are people who have a better awareness of social issues and can pick up unintentional racism or sexism. Finding a sensitivity reader who can check you're not gendering your character unnecessarily will be a big help, and with their help you'll also be able to stretch your work in other ways, like identifying stereotypes in other parts of your writing that can help you make people and cultures that feel fresh and unique. You don't have to be perfect at this, especially on your own!

It's a challenge, definitely, but it's a great way to stretch your writing and make sure you think about what you're doing, which is valuable to do even when not specifically writing in this way.

Original score: 5