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Are Kholin males bi? XX?


ecohansen

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Until the last few pages of WoR, we had seen five examples of the Nahel bond:

 

Pattern, Wyndle, and Ivory were male, and had bonded to females.

Syl was female, and had bonded to a male.

Ym's spren was still early in the process, and was referred to as "it".

 

The probability that all four spren with confirmed sex would bond with people of the opposite sex if bonding was sex-neutral is 1 in 16.  So, at that point, we could say with 93.75 percent confidence that spren pair with opposite-sex people.

 

And then, within a few pages, Dalinar pairs with the male Stormfather, and Renarin pairs with the male Glys.

 

This could just be an effect of the small sample size used to reach the prior conclusion.  Or something more interesting is going on.

 

Maybe the spren count chromosomes when looking for a bondmate, and the Kholin males have de la Chappelle syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome) and are thus hereditarily XX instead of XY.

 

Or maybe the Kholins have as-yet unrevealed bisexual tendencies.  Will we see the Adolin-Shallan-Kaladin triangle be resolved into a loving polyamorous triad?  Dalinar could possibly be read as having a love-hate relationship with either Taravangian or Amaram.  Should we expect to see him invite either or both of them into his relationship with Navani?

 

I'll head back to my bridge now.  Thanks for reading.

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o.O O.o O.O Well, one thing about this is that, aren't Spren inherently genderless? and that it is the people's cognitive perception of them and in turn, their own, that makes them have a gender (?or perhaps an imitation of gender, given that they are just ideas/concepts)? That's how i thought it was anyway.

 

Although it hasn't been stated (or perhaps hinted at yet) but I don't think sexuality, in general or detail has been broached regards to a Cosmere work (i could be mistaken, but off the top of my head it hasn't) but i think it is something Brandon will be eventually doing at some point (even in SA i believe). 

Edited by ParadoxSpren
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I feel like you might be reading too much into this. There's very little data so far to see how "gender matched" the radiants and their spren are. Something you didn't mention, was that I believe that Ym's spren was male ish.

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The probability that all four spren with confirmed sex would bond with people of the opposite sex if bonding was sex-neutral is 1 in 16.  So, at that point, we could say with 93.75 percent confidence that spren pair with opposite-sex people

 

It's embarrassing but I wish I still remembered my high school statistics classes so I could provide the actual margin of error; suffice it to say that I'm fairly certain what you're calling 93.75% confidence does not work that way, and the actual confidence level is much lower because of the sample size.

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Please. I would totally be down with this.

I, however, don't think the spren do the opposite gender thing, or even have gender at all.

I would adore a queer Cosmere character. I'm fairly sure Brandon could pull it off. Wasn't there going to be a queer character in the Alloy of Law trilogy, though?

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Please. I would totally be down with this.

I, however, don't think the spren do the opposite gender thing, or even have gender at all.

I would adore a queer Cosmere character. I'm fairly sure Brandon could pull it off. Wasn't there going to be a queer character in the Alloy of Law trilogy, though?

There is actually a couple of gay characters in is his works (I'd completely forgotten about AoL and didn't know Drehy was but as I said, i believe it is a topic Brandon will approach in tactful yet possibly in-depth way that will do it justice when the time calls for it.

 

Minor AoL spoilers 

 

INTERVIEW: Jan 6th, 2015 QUESTION
Do you have any, or will you ever write a gay character into any of your books?
BRANDON SANDERSON
There are several. Drehy, in The Stormlight Archive, the bridgeman is gay, because he's based off a good friend of mine who's gay. Ranette in the Wax & Wayne books, the woman that Wayne's in love with, she's gay, and it's hinted at in the first book. By the second book, they're like "Dude, she's gay, just leave her alone." So yes, I have written gay characters. I've never written a gay main viewpoint character, maybe someday I will, it's not something I've done yet.

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Drehy the bridgeman and Ranette--the woman gun maker in AoL--are gay.

 

Rushu, the female ardent who wonders why only men have beards and why long hair is considered feminine, is oblivious to male advances, and suggested to be gay/bi, genderqueer or at the very least critical of Alethi genders as social constructs. One wonders how many gay Alethi are simply shoved into the Ardentia.

 

edit: Aaaand I got ninja'd.

Edited by yurisses
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Drehy the bridgeman and Ranette--the woman gun maker in AoL--are gay.

 

Rushu, the female ardent who wonders why only men have beards and why long hair is considered feminine, is oblivious to male advances, and suggested to be gay/bi, genderqueer or at the very least critical of Alethi genders as social constructs. One wonders how many gay Alethi are simply shoved into the Ardentia.

 

edit: Aaaand I got ninja'd.

 

Probably as many as gay young men/women were shove in the orders in our world back in the day....

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...

The math that proves your theory also disproves your theory... if the odds against 4-in-a-row opposite sex pairing are so low, then your own math says that the next random pairing also being opposite sex paired is extremely low.

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Well, there are a few things to consider/ponder;

 

Spren's 'gender' in and of itself: Are Spren originally born/created without one and it is the Obeserver's Cognitive perception that decides/influences the gender? If so, what happens when multiple perceptions come into play and they don't all perceive the Spren in same way?

 

If the opposite is true, is it possible that the 'gender' of Nahel Spren and that of their respective species influences the decision of potential Radiant candidates and their genders (meaning is their some benefit from bonding same gender/cross gender pairings)? Are even all of one Spren species even the same gender?

 

Does the Spren receive any influence from their Radiant's mind like the Radiant does and would the result be any different if they had bonded a member of the opposite gender (akin to the way a Shard shapes the holder's mind to a much lesser extent)

 

Given how long each Radiant has initially been bonded, especially in the case of the females, which seem to be a lot longer than the males, is there any particular reason for this or was it just happenstance and down to governing bodies of each Nahel Spren's species?

 

Or perhaps it is purely just a result of Vorin/Rosharan cultural influence that the Spren are simply perceived as such?

 

wow that got philosophic really quickly....

Edited by ParadoxSpren
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The probability that all four spren with confirmed sex would bond with people of the opposite sex if bonding was sex-neutral is 1 in 16.  So, at that point, we could say with 93.75 percent confidence that spren pair with opposite-sex people.

 

This probablility is 1 in 8, not 1 in 16. It's 2x4 not 2x2x4 as I assume you're calculating. 1 in 16 would be the probability of all of 4 radiants and their spren being e.g. female. 

 

Furthermore the probability for them binding with same sex is exactly the same. So what's the point of this calculation at all? 

 

Also, there is this rule in statistics to not to make statistics (well, mean is fine, but nothing more complicated) on groups smaller than five, because the statistical error is just crazily high, and there is high probability of the results being totally wrong. I mean... your test group is so small that if you make the ratio can be considered high (twice as much opposite pairings) and low (just one person difference, to get 1:1 ratio). And Chi square test also says the difference between these numbers is not significant (p=0.41), though that's not surprising, given the small sample size. So I really think you're trying to find here something that is really not here. 

 

An I also think that Renarin got spren way before Dalinar, we just didn't know about it. So it's not "then, within few page". 

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Pestis,

The null hypothesis is that spren pair without regard to sex.  The null hypothesis is therefore that there is a 50% chance that any given spren will pair with the opposite sex, and a 50% chance that they will pair with the same sex.

 

Therefore, under the null hypothesis

The probability that the first spren will pair opposite-sex is 1/2

Independently, The probability that the second spren will pair opposite-sex is 1/2

Independently, The probability that the third spren will pair opposite-sex is 1/2

Independently, The probability that the fourth spren will pair opposite-sex is 1/2

 

Probability is multiplicative. If we assume that spren bond randomly, then the probability that all four will pair opposite-sex is (1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2)=1/16 It's not 2*4, it's 2^4.

Also, you imply that the scenario is two-tailed, but it's one-tailed.  We're not looking at the probability that spren-radiant bonds will either be all same sex or all opposite sex, we're just looking at the probability that all bonds will be opposite sex.

 

Paradox, the same math works with your scenario.  Assume that any given Radiant has a 50% probability of percieving an (actually genderless) spren as being the Radiant's own sex, and a 50% chance of percieving the spren as opposite sex.

 

The probability that the first radiant will perceive its spren as opposite-sex is 1/2

Independently, The probability that the second radiant will perceive its spren as opposite-sex is 1/2

Independently, The probability that the third radiant will perceive its spren as opposite-sex is 1/2

Independently, The probability that the fourth radiant will perceive its spren as opposite-sex is 1/2

 

Probability is multiplicative. If we assume that radiants perceive spren sex randomly, then the probability that all four will percieve opposite-sex is (1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2)=1/16.

 

In both cases, we conclude that the null hypothesis is possible, but unlikely

 

yurisses and Pestis,  the reason they say not to do statistics on groups smaller than 5 is that 2-category categorical data is the best case scenario, and 4 independent observations in a one-tailed scenario yield p=0.065, which is not significant at the p=0.05 level ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value#Five_heads_in_a_row). So I couldn't publish this thread in a peer-reviewed journal.  I can, however, point at a 1/16 probability, and wink suggestively.

Edited by ecohansen
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Okay but... then you tie this all directly into, "So they're probably bisexual"? This is the part where you lose me.

 

You also assume that gender assignments would happen at random. That any given Radiant, presented with a gender-less spren, will have an equal chance of assuming either male or female. I do not think this assumption bears up. My friend did a study in college, and when told of an entity but not given actual clues to gender, almost all participants assumed male, as indicated by exchanges such as, "What do you imagine the bus driver wearing?" "He'd be wearing jeans and a t-shirt," using the male pronoun by default. So Lyft's assumption about Wyndle, and Shallan's assumption about Pattern, perhaps Renarin's assumption about Glys, it's not safe to assume that any of these were decided with the toss of a coin.

 

So, basically, we've got Kaladin and Jasnah who seem to have bonded a spren that self-identifies with the opposite gender, and Dalinar, whose Nahel bond we already know is atypical of other Radiants, bonding a spren that self-identifies as male. If Jasnah and Kaladin both did bond opposite their own sex, it's the odds of tossing two quarters in the air and having them both land heads. Not outside the realm of possibility.

 

Do you have anything else to support your theory that every non-Kholin has bonded the opposite gender, or anything at all to support your assertion that this somehow implies that all Kholin men are biologically bisexual? Despite the fact that of the three Kholin men we've seen show any romantic interest at all, all have been firmly heteronormative? If you're just trying to imagine Adolin in bed with Kaladin, I'm sure you'll have no difficulty searching tumblr for some fanfiction.

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I'm not being serious.  I know the WoB that implies that Drehy is the only semimajor SA LGBT character to date.  As far as I can tell, I'm pretty much straight hetero myself.  However, I noted a statistical oddity, and I'm aware of the WoB that coincidences are uncommon in the cosmere, and thought I'd have some fun stretching both statistical and gender horizons.  I'll start looking for exact quotes, but I'm absolutely positive Wyndle and Pattern are referred to as "he".

 

Does anyone have a serious explanation for this statistical anomaly?

Edited by ecohansen
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Nope, Eco was pretty specific.

Ah, must have skipped that. My bad.

I still don't think sexuality would have anything to do with spren/gender matchups.

I'm surprised that it took this long for someone to start turning Stormlight into a yaoi. :P

I once found drunk Kaladin/Adolin modern AU fic and I read it and cried it was the most hilarious thing I'd read in a year Edited by LarkoftheRiver
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I just explained it. Yes, they are referred to as "he". I'm not saying we, the readers, were never told and assumed maleness. I'm saying Shallan is presented with an intelligent entity, has no framework to consider gender-neutrality, and without conscious thought assigned it a male gender.

 

Your math assumes that there was a perfectly even chance that they'd randomly be assigned male or female. I disagree with that premise. That said, you are right, this might warrant thought. I think however that by tying it based on practically nothing to a hotbutton issue like sexual preference, you're derailing what might be a serious discussion before it can ever even start.

 

As you suggested in your very first post when you talked about your bridge, you just seem to be trolling.

 

Warbreaker.

There's WoB that Nightblood is fascinated by gender and does not actually self-identify with either one; Vasher started calling him "he" and Nightblood didn't care enough to insist on "it". So, there's precedent for gender-neutral entities being assigned gender in the cosmere and deciding just not to make waves.

 

 

I once found drunk Kaladin/Adolin modern AU fic and I read it and cried it was the most hilarious thing I'd read in a year

 

I found once a story where someone had clearly just written a story set in modern-day Seattle where two guys went on a boring date, and the author just renamed the characters Kaladin and Renarin despite absolutely no similarities, in a veiled attempt to get cosmere fans to read their original story.

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I noticed a process (Nahel bonding) that seems to sort people into opposite-gender associations.  There is another very obvios process (sexuality) that generally does exactly the same thing.  Before we can move on to other options, we have to dismiss the obvious one.

 

As I said, I'm having fun with wild speculation.  I'm also very drunk.  I should probably shut up.  I apologise.

 

So if we assume that sexuality of non-anthropoid spren is only percieved, then we've got our explanation.  If we assume their gender is innate, We could also move the  null hypothesis in the other direction.  Most of Brandon's characters are male.  Therefore, the chance that two randomly-associating characters would be same-gender is higher than 50.  Therefore, the fact that the first 4 nahel bonds are opposite-gender is even more striking.

Edited by ecohansen
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Minor nitpick here: Ym's spren is described as having a female voice

 

"Sh-shoe . . .?" a voice asked. Like that of a young woman, soft, with a kind of chiming musicality to it.

 

-WoR, Hardback first edition, Pg. 172

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It is an interesting subject, if a slight tangent. I do think it is a little bit early to be drawing conclusions just yet but I wonder, in the case of Spren's gender being assigned by the bondee/Observer, if cultural/environment influence plays apart (main example being the Stormfather)

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