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Sex, Gender, and Sexuality
Sex and Gender
Image from Steve Bowers
Some of the symbols used in certain cultures to represent different sex and gender possibilities. Thanks to medical, genetic and psychological therapy, many individuals in the Current Era routinely transition from one option to another

Terragen civilization began with the naturally evolved baseline human species (Homo sapiens). Over the last ten and a half millennia, Terragen sophonts have diversified enormously, and so have the forms that sex, gender, and sexuality take.

These traits originated with bionts and remain most common among them. However, a few vecs and virtuals have these traits or analogs as well, either as individuals or entire cultures.

Sex

Sex refers to the biological or embodied traits that relate to reproduction. It is present in many sophont and non-sophont organisms, from Earth and other garden worlds. Sex is most often biologically defined by what kind of gamete (reproductive cell) an organism produces. This typically aligns with an organism's primary sex characteristics (those organs used directly in reproduction) and its secondary sex characteristics (which are not directly involved in reproduction, but may have a role in identifying or competing over potential mates). These do not align in some cases, however, due to developmental variation or (in the case of sophonts) intentional morphological change.

Among many naturally evolved multicellular organisms as well as many neogens, there are two specialized types of reproductive cell. By nearly all definitions, the smaller and more motile one is male and the other is female. When these occur in separate morphs of the same species, these morphs are themselves called male and female. In some species, however, an individual organism can produce both cell types and play either role in reproduction (either simultaneously in the same morph or at different times in its life by changing its form); these are hermaphrodites. In a few species, there may be multiple prevalent size, shape, and/or color morphs within one or more of the sexes (that is, sharing the same reproductive equipment).

In addition to the wide variety among naturally evolved organisms (which is only very briefly summarized above), there exists a far greater diversity among sophont bionts like nearbaseline humans, provolves, and tweaks, as well both sophont and non-sophont neogenic organisms. For example, the Tensepathraa, a species of insectoid neogens, were designed with no less than 17 sexes by their creators, a team of bioartists from the Zoeific Biopolity. Each offspring has anywhere from 4 to 9 parents, with a complex system of compatibility describing which matings and in what order result in reproduction.

Throughout the Sephirotic Empires and aligned polities, and in many other places, autodoc and medisystem technology have for millennia allowed for near-total morphological freedom. Hence, just as one can alter one's own overall form and join another sophont species, it is trivial to alter one's sex, sexual morphology, or related characteristics, and many (though by no means all) do so multiple times in their lives. This ability also means sophonts may have traits that were rare or nonexistent among their ancestors, such as the Gon-ru tweak human species in which the women give birth to underdeveloped young which are then nursed in a pouch on the man's back.

Future genders
Image from Worldtree
Examples of variety of sex characteristics common among nearbaseline humans

On a societal level, Sephirotic-aligned civilizations often consider changes in sex unsurprising and ordinary, although which patterns each culture gravitates towards vary widely. In some cultures, most people follow a pattern of two sexes; in others, there exists a stable equilibrium of three to a dozen or more common sexes and/or morphs; in yet others, there exists a smooth spectrum of largely uncorrelated traits; in still others, nearly everyone is a single sex or has no sex at all and reproduces via cloning and artificial wombs or engenerator; and every other possibility. For many species and cultures, any one of these possibilities may have been the norm for thousands of years, while for others, the pattern itself changes over time, sometimes quite rapidly.

Terms for each morph vary widely between cultures, but a few for the most common possibilities are widely known. In addition to male and female, individuals who are both male and female simultaneously may be called cosex, or herms. Individuals with no sex characteristics are typically called neuts.

Gender

Gender consists of the psychological and social traits related to sex. It is generally considered present only among sophonts, although some researchers also include simpler precursor traits among sub-sophont sentient fauna.

Among the earliest human societies, gender was intertwined with a great deal of idealized and strict roles and stereotypes. In some places this is still the case. However, in the Sephirotic empires and aligned polities, gender is far less restrictive; for example, it may just consist of a simple description of one's identity as it relates to sex and perhaps a set of aesthetics for self-presentation. Additionally, a person's gender identity may be changed freely and easily with psychoware in a matter of minutes or less. At the most minimal level, in some societies sex characteristics are completely hidden or ignored outside of reproduction; this is most common among groups with little or no external differences between sexes and minimal sexual behavior. Gender is usually (although not always) absent among sophonts who lack a sex and sexuality, including many neuts, vecs, and AIs. However, some in these groups nevertheless present as having a gender despite their lack of sex characteristics and/or sexuality.

Gender is conceptually distinct from sex, as a sophont's embodiment at any given time may differ from their gender, although this is rarely the case due to morphological freedom. Still, a person may embody temporarily in a sex other than the one corresponding to their gender identity for a variety of reasons; likewise, their gender presentation may differ from their sex or their gender identity.

In most societies, there exists, at minimum, a gender corresponding to each sex common in that culture. Additionally, there also often exists a category (or more than one) for those whose gender is in between these other genders, or consists of multiple genders at once, for people who do not identify with any gender, and variations thereof. The proportion of the population within such categories varies from culture to culture and sometimes over time.

Gender is sometimes marked in language, with some languages having different noun classes, personal pronouns, inflections, or other traits for each gender. In such societies, DNIs can typically identify the gender of others based on public metadata when ambiguous, so the user knows how to refer to someone. However, in many cases, gender is ignored in a language's grammar, even if present or highly salient in the culture otherwise; this was the case for many languages and cultures even on Old Earth.

Sexuality

Sexuality, or sexual orientation, involves a pattern of romantic and/or sexual attraction to particular kinds of other sophonts. Romantic and sexual attraction may themselves differ from each other for some individuals and societies, although most commonly they are aligned. As with sex and gender, in Sephirotic-aligned places and many others, one's own sexuality can be freely altered if so desired.

Due to the wide variety that sex, gender, and other traits can take in Terragen society, terms to classify sexuality are necessarily somewhat imprecise. Nevertheless, a variety of terms to roughly classify sexuality are used to aid understanding.

Heterosexuality is typically defined as attraction to the sex(es) or gender(s) with which one is reproductively compatible, or would have been ancestrally even if actual reproduction has been transferred to such things as artificial wombs. Homosexuality is attraction to members of the same or similar sex or gender as oneself. Bisexuality may refer to attraction to all sexes or genders of one's species, which can also be called pansexuality. Pansexuality may also be attraction that is regardless of sex or gender rather than to particular sexes or genders. Bisexuality may also refer to attraction to two or more, but not all, sexes or genders of one's species; this may also be called polysexuality, especially in species with 3 or more sexes. These labels generally apply to sophonts attracted to their own species, though such individuals may be attracted to individuals from sufficiently similar sophont species as well. Omnisexuality refers to attraction to all types of sophonts regardless of sex, gender or species.

A sophont's sexuality may also be described by indicating which particular sex(es), gender(s), trait(s), or species that they are attracted to, for which there have been coined innumerable terms, generally taking the form "(trait)sexual". Someone might be attracted specifically to neuts or to cosex people, or to any sophont with a particular trait regardless of other traits, or to all members of a particular sophont species or group of species, even if that species differs from one's own. These groupings can be extremely specific or very broad, such as attraction invoked solely by a particular intricate plumage pattern, or to all vecs, for example.

In some societies in which almost all individuals belong to a single sex and gender category, such as being neuts or cosex, any individual may be attracted to any other; as a result, terms to distinguish different sexualities may be uncommon.

The degree to which a sophont experiences sexual attraction is another axis of variation. Asexuality is the absence of sexual attraction. Additionally, some individuals have a significantly reduced but not absent sexuality relative to others of their species or culture, or it may activate under more limited circumstances. Conversely, some individuals and groups, such as erotogens, experience intensified sexual desire.

Although asexuality sometimes occurs by nature in humans and some other species, some sophonts have deliberately made themselves asexual (at least temporarily) so as to dedicate themselves to some goal or vocation that makes pursuing a sexual relationship difficult or, in their opinion, distracting. There is significant, but not total, overlap between neuts and asexuals; many asexuals have a sex and gender, and some neuts have a sexuality.

Asexuality is also not to be confused with asexual reproduction, such as through fission, budding, parthenogenesis, and so forth. Sophonts from clades that reproduce asexually also typically have an asexual orientation, but not always. Likewise, many sophonts with an asexual orientation nevertheless can reproduce sexually, and experience platonic love and enjoy raising children.

The prevalence of each type of sexuality, as with sex and gender, varies across cultures and often over time. In cultures that mainly use natural reproduction, heterosexuality and/or sometimes bisexuality tend to be most common, but even this is just on average. A person's sexuality may be changed as often as they desire, though many maintain stable preferences.

Non-Bionts

The vast majority of Terragens are virtuals, and most embodied Terragens are vecs. For these groups, their societies left biology behind long ago, or were created without it. Quite often they consider sex, gender, and sexuality (if they consider them at all) to be obsolete and of no concern. However, some virtuals and vecs do have some or all of these traits. Their sexes, genders, and sexualities may be close analogs of those found among bionts, or they may be highly abstract and divergent, sparking debates as to whether the traits in question should even be understood within this framework.

Typically, vecs and virtuals reproduce through copying, personality generation, mixing-and-matching traits of any two or more individuals, and so forth. There are usually no separate reproductive types. Still, some groups have adopted equivalents of the biont experience in these methods. There may exist multiple stable reproductive types akin to sexes and genders, or the act of copying and remixing bits and pieces of the parents' neural networks may be experienced as highly pleasurable, rather than utilitarian as is often the case. Additionally, biont-like sexes, genders, and sexualities are relatively common among those who primarily live as bionts but are temporarily in vec or virtual form, as well as newly uploaded humans or other bionts, and some vecs who take a humanoid or other biont-like form. They are also the norm in a few virches, such as some of those hosting naturally evolved alife, ril-like environments, or with long-standing upload communities. Vecs and virtuals may also take on biont-like traits out of personal choice and desire to experience them even if not ancestrally present. Changing these traits is usually even easier than for bionts, so such changes are made even more often for some vecs and virtuals who partake in them.

Whether or not there is any connection to reproduction, some vec and virtual societies have traits or forms of interpersonal interaction that are quite divergent from biont sex, gender, or sexuality but nevertheless bear some experiential, psychological, or social similarities to it. How to define these things can itself be highly debated, and they may be very abstract. For example, in the Technorapture moon-node 54Hiph, inhabitants travel between different environments of complex space, choosing one they prefer and inhabiting it for an extended period, gradually merging with it. Then, in a single ecstatic moment, they split into several hundred new environments and new sophonts, each seeking a new environment. Whether this lifestyle or others equally diverse should be classified as a sexuality has stoked many debates among scholars.

Collective Minds and Transapients

The sex, gender, and sexuality of group minds can be difficult to define. Their bodies may be identical in one or more respects, or they may vary widely, regardless of whether the members of the collective have some distinct consciousness of their own or if they are fully subsumed into a single mind. The hive mind may define itself as the collective of the properties of its members, and thus have fractional traits (e.g., 72% male, 15% female, 13% neut). However, it may instead define itself in a single way despite its bodies varying amongst themselves.

Transapients and archailects commonly arise from lower beings who have ascended, but some also reproduce among themselves. Although a full understanding of this process is not comprehensible to modosophonts, it appears that it generally bears similarity to common processes among modosophont AIs, whereby new beings arise from copying, are designed de novo, or are created by recombining toposophic traits to form a new individual.

Nonetheless, a small minority of transapients and archailects present themselves as having sexes, genders, or sexualities. The Athenaeids, a species of humanoid biont S1 beings, have sexes and genders and reproduce sexually; a few other transapient groups, embodied and not, also apparently have some or all of these traits. Additionally, some transapient cultures may have these traits, or very complex analogs of them, without it being evident to modosophonts.

Some transapients and archailects use avatars or proxavs with these traits, but this is generally circumstantial and dependent on what sort of modosophont is being communicated with. A few transapients and archailects consistently present themselves as having a gender without a sex or sexuality, such as GAIA and Zoe. In such cases it is commonly hypothesized that this is primarily an aspect of how they engage with modosophonts rather than central to their full self-conception, but there is no way to know for sure.

 
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Development Notes
Text by ProxCenBound
Rewritten 24 April 2026; see below for detailed history
Initially published on 07 October 2001.

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Text of original articles by M. Alan Kazlev & Daniel Eliot Boese - Initially published October-December 2001.
Charts and symbol illustration added in 2011 by Steve Bowers.
Previous revision by Michael Beck with additions by Steve Bowers.
Human illustration added 2017 by Dfleymmes.
Updated by Todd Drashner 29 May 2018.
All six sex articles combined, edited, and gender + sexuality sections added in November 2020 by Dfleymmes.
 
 
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