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Greetings, and a few questions - Siberys777 - 01-22-2020
Hello world,
So I've been browsing Encyclopedia Galactica for what feels like decades, and wasn't sure where to ask this question. I really appreciate some of the terminology used by writers in the Orion's Arm project, specifically in relation to gender and intersex conditions.
Referring to humans as "Hu" is an elegant solution that completely takes the gendered suffix "Man" out of the equation.
When it comes to gonads, (Bear with me here) it makes far more sense to classify an individual organism as merm, herm etc. for the purposes of procreation.
Did the Orion's Arm writers come up with these concepts? Is it okay to refer to Homo Sapiens in my short stories as Hu?
Thanks in advance
RE: Greetings, and a few questions - Drashner1 - 01-22-2020
Hi There - Welcome to OA!
If you have any questions about any aspect of the setting, please don't hesitate to ask. Feel free to join any forum discussions that catch your interest or create a new thread if there's something you'd like to discuss that we aren't currently.
(01-22-2020, 01:04 AM)Siberys777 Wrote: Hello world,
So I've been browsing Encyclopedia Galactica for what feels like decades, and wasn't sure where to ask this question. I really appreciate some of the terminology used by writers in the Orion's Arm project, specifically in relation to gender and intersex conditions.
Glad you like
At some point or other - when I can dig out from under my 87 other OA projects or feel inspired to just sit down and do this one regardless of where it is in the queue - I'd like to either expand our existing articles on pronouns and/or genders or generate a new article that more fully encompasses the scope of this area (and the area of sexual orientation and substrate - what kind of body a sophont may choose to have at any given time) as it operates in the OA 'present day' (10,600 AT or so). The short version is that people in the Civilized Galaxy of OA can (and do) change sexual orientation (and what we would probably term 'preferences' as they relate to appearance or activities) as easily and casually as you or I might change our computer's wallpaper or screensaver (literally for the majority of the population who are software based) and change gender/species/substrate as easily and casually as you or I might get a new couch or bed for our home. Some cultures have genetically engineered their citizens to be able to make such changes as a natural biological ability, while others just use available medical technology - although even the people who can do it naturally often use the tech since it can make the changes faster than biology can manage (a difference of a couple of days to do a complete body change vs weeks or months to do it naturally). Add to this that all people have conscious control over their fertility (all the parents (and there can be more than two) have to actively want to produce a child for a pregnancy to occur), the elimination of all STDs, the elimination or massive alteration of what we might term 'gender roles' and angelnets and other systems making it all but impossible to coerce anybody to do anything they don't want. Plus the Sephirotic Empires tend to really like diversity (at the level of 'the ruling gods really like diversity and not just in the 'giving lip service to it' kind of way).
Figure that this situation has existed for - let's say 5000 years or so. To the point that most of the issues/stigmas our real life society has around the area of sexual orientation, gender, and sexuality - not only don't exist but would be near incomprehensible to the average person in Y11k. For most of them it is simply 'the natural order of things' that if a person is happy being a certain way or wants to change the way they are (whether for an hour or hundreds of years at a time), they should simply do so. The idea that anyone would find such a thing problematic - in general or especially to the point of violence - simply does not compute and requires significant education simply to begin grasping the idea that this sort of thing was once considered a big deal by their barbarian ancestors of near prehistoric times.
In this area Terragens can pretty much be anything they want for as long as they want whenever they want - and the novelty around all this wore off so long ago that this being the norm has persisted for longer than a major chunk of real life human history.
That's how I envision it working anyway. If you (or anyone else) have additional thoughts and notions, please share
Speaking more generally, if you come across anything that looks like it's out of sync with something else or our general take on this, please let us know. OA has been around a long time and is constantly growing and evolving, which means that sometimes something slips through the cracks and we need to go back and fix it later.
(01-22-2020, 01:04 AM)Siberys777 Wrote: Referring to humans as "Hu" is an elegant solution that completely takes the gendered suffix "Man" out of the equation.
When it comes to gonads, (Bear with me here) it makes far more sense to classify an individual organism as merm, herm etc. for the purposes of procreation.
Especially given the massive level of capability (and options arising out of that capability) that most parts of the OA civilization simply take for granted.
There's also the factor that gonads are simply one of several options that Terragens have when it comes to procreation and childcare.
(01-22-2020, 01:04 AM)Siberys777 Wrote: Did the Orion's Arm writers come up with these concepts? Is it okay to refer to Homo Sapiens in my short stories as Hu?
Thanks in advance
Some of the terms were developed by the founding members of the OA project back around 2000 or so. LINK. Looking at the Development Notes at the end of the page, it appears they in turn were inspired by/based them on the Spivak Pronouns.
The most common pronoun set that gets used in the EG and forum discussions is probably the e/eir variant, but others get used as well.
Hope this helps and once again - Welcome to OA!
Todd