Works better with W/Z sex chromosomes (e.g. komodo dragons) where ZZ=male, WZ=female, and thus a lone female can parthenogetically create ZZs (also WWs, but nonviable) to at least get things moving without waiting for unrelated males to get stranded in the sams ecological backwater.
X/Y tends to strand you in XX-only totally female lineage, if you crack the virgin-birth bit.
But X/Y is basically a mammalian thing. W/Z is in many other things (crustaceans, etc), then there's haplodiploidal systems like XO and ZO (one X, or Z is one gender, two of that is the other; it may depend upon fertilisation to provide the bonus copy) or ignore all that and activate the desired sexual dimorphism by the temperature range the eggs is subjected to or other environmental factors.
(Or, indeed, the post-developmental switching from the default "born as" to whatever your species finds works best to fill in the gaps, there being both MtF and FtM lifecycles (for the oldest/largest creature, or maybe just the first to detect a paucity of the endgame-gender so unsuppresses the necessary hormones) as well as fully bidirectionally genderfluid in the ways already described.)
But not sure how close we could be to Usula le Guin's version of humanity (or subset of it) in LHoD.
Perhaps we could hope for merely an "it does not socially matter what gender you are, c.f. Ann Leckie's set of Ancillary books. The imperial Radchaai, at least... The society in Provenance merely delay setting a person's assigned gender in stone until they make a choice to be 'adult', IIRC, but are still not hung up on things that much. And, the fictional universe references all kinds of variations between ostensibly-human societies (never mind the Presgers).
...right, so a bit of obscure RL biology and a bit of an obscure book reviewing (or at least recounting, but I would in general recommend Leckie's works[1]). Hopefully you don't mind my sticking those two oars in again. Looks like a bit of a diversion, but meant it all to be informatvely relevent.
[1] At least for people who don't froth at the mouth at suggestions of genderfluidity... basically SF books with an interesting societal backstory to the setting, nothing 'lewd' and direct (relationships seem to be Discworld Dwarven in nature, and progeny clearly happen but might well be adopted if necessary, or similar) but you know how some people might decide to take offence at the mere idea. Not the kind of people who would calmly participate in this thread, however, so probably no worries there.
Author
Topic: LGBTQ+ Thread (Read 54197 times)