Spren Object Gender?

[Voidlit Man he/him]

In the 3rd book, I think, Kaladin remarks that it feels weird to swing around a girl weapon, and Syl says that roughly half of all of his spears have been female. This seemed strange to me, because I feel that since more soldiers are men, people would tend to think of spears as more masculine, thus skewing the spear gender ratio towards male.  Does spren gender have anything to do with how people view the object? For example, are ships more likely to be female because the vast majority of sailors seem to think of their boats as female, or is that also half-and-half? 

[Treamayne]

8 hours ago, Voidlit Man said:

In the 3rd book, I think, Kaladin remarks that it feels weird to swing around a girl weapon, and Syl says that roughly half of all of his spears have been female. This seemed strange to me, because I feel that since more soldiers are men, people would tend to think of spears as more masculine, thus skewing the spear gender ratio towards male.  Does spren gender have anything to do with how people view the object? For example, are ships more likely to be female because the vast majority of sailors seem to think of their boats as female, or is that also half-and-half? 

I think there are two points to consider. Here's the actual quote (OB Ch 7):

Spoiler

“I am. I don’t like the idea of swinging you about, smashing you into things.”

She sniffed. “Firstly, I don’t smash into things. I am an elegant and graceful weapon, stupid. Secondly, why would you be bothered?”

“It doesn’t feel right,” Kaladin replied, still whispering. “You’re a woman, not a weapon.”

“Wait … so this is about me being a girl?”

“No,” Kaladin said immediately, then hesitated. “Maybe. It just feels strange.”

She sniffed. “You don’t ask your other weapons how they feel about being swung about.”

“My other weapons aren’t people.” He hesitated. “Are they?”

She looked at him with head cocked and eyebrows raised, as if he’d said something very stupid.

Everything has a spren. His mother had taught him that from an early age.

“So … some of my spears have been women, then?” he asked.

“Female, at least,” Syl said. “Roughly half, as these things tend to go.” She flitted up into the air in front of him. “It’s your fault for personifying us, so no complaining. Of course, some of the old spren have four genders instead of two.”

“What? Why?”

She poked him in the nose. “Because humans didn’t imagine those ones, silly.” 

1. I don't think that seeing a weapon as "male" would be at all common. At least IRL, males tend to personify weapons (and cars) as female far more often than male.
   • Theorized to do with emotional attachments, so for most people the personification may be influenced by their romantic attachment preferences, though for "traditional" metaphorical assignments (such as Ships) the tradition will usually trump any personal preference
   • My note about weapons is mostly based on personal experience - after over 20 years in, and working with, the military (since 1996), I have yet to hear a male refer to their knife or firearm with a masculine pronoun - though feminine pronouns are common (as are neuter pronouns)
2. The quote seems to imply that it's not about how a specific weapon is personified - but how Spren, as a category, were personified. Most spren imagined by Humans have human-like genders* (see non-binary WoBs), while those old enough to have formed based on Singer imagination display the Singer primary four gender system. 
   • So, at least for True Spren, their identified gender is based on how they perceive themselves once they achieve sapience

WoBs:

Spoiler

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

More naturally, the spren is opposite gender but it doesn't have to be. It's not a indication necessarily of homosexuality, but sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. More often, you'll attract spren of the opposite gender, but spren genders are very fluid anyway. You're not supposed to read anything specific into that.

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

-what some thinks it means. How about this you are more likely to bond a spren of an opposite gender-- a spren who identifies as an opposite gender, because spren don't actually have gender. But you are also more likely, statistically, to like members of the opposite gender. Those things have a correlation. Whether they have a causation is not a thing I am canonizing.

Quote

mooglefrooglian

Are all spren of a single type (eg. honorspren) going to be the same gender?

Brandon Sanderson

No. But some do skew one direction or another.

Quote

Kogiopsis

We were wondering about spren gender and if spren can have non-binary genders.

Brandon Sanderson

That is certainly possible... After all, I should mention this, since the Parshendi have non-binary genders. Because they have four genders.

 

 

Edited January 20 by Treamayne
SPAG/Links

[Voidlit Man he/him]

Thanks for the thoughts! That makes sense

[Returned]

There are some other interesting patterns that could affect things like this. Quite a while ago I read a write-up of some linguistics research concerning different languages with gendered nouns but which used opposite-gender forms for the same objects. The example I remember was key: in Spanish, it's la llave (feminine) and in German it's der schlüssel (masculine).

When participants in the study were asked to describe words they associated with their language's word for "key" the most common responses followed the gender of the noun: Spanish-speakers tended to say things like "slender", "graceful", "delicate", and similar-- things which the researchers described as coded more to the "feminine" concepts in the participants' cultures. The German-speakers tended to say things like "heavy", "solid", "sharp/jagged", and other words which the researchers described as coded more to the "masculine" idea of the participants' cultures. I might be misremembering some of the details, like the specific associated words, but I'm confident I recall the thrust of the study correctly.

So even though the participants were describing the "same" thing with a word, the grammatical gender assigned to that thing was associated with emphasis of features that correlated with that gender more generally. It wasn't really about the properties of the object being described but rather the association of gender with an inanimate object leading to what properties they focused on. We might imagine that the study participants were imagining very different keys (like, a key for a diary or small box versus a cartoon prison key), but that kind of split wouldn't apply to a single type of spren.

I don't know how applicable any of that is to Roshar, given the variety of languages (especially over time), the enduring nature of individual spren, the capacity of spren to be changed by shifting conceptualizations after their creation, and the ability of spren to change themselves. As expressed in the text, Alethi seems to be similar to English and not assign gender to nouns as Spanish does. Rock's Alethi speech seems to carry over some degree of gender for nouns, but we don't know how gendered the language is, nor if it's prescriptive or descriptive. But at least I can imagine an Alethi looking at a spear and thinking of it as lethal, dangerous, or a two-handed weapon, while another might see it as precise or a one-handed weapon. None of that touches on how a spear might think of itself, or why, but that hasn't been much explored yet.