[OB] 4 genders

[Darkness]

So this deserves a separate thread.

Some of the old spren used to have 4 genders because people didn't imagine them.

Parshendi have 4 genders. Male, malen, female, femalen.

That was cool. And significant. And oh bother... the spren had 4 genders originally because the Parshendi were the first ones responsible for directing their identity!

[Nymeros]

Why do you consider this significant?

[Yata]

3 minutes ago, Nymeros said:

Why do you consider this significant?

Because it's the first in world proof of the Roshar's life chronology and it also points to spren never saw/attracted by Humans

[Nymeros]

Ah, I thought it was commonly known that humans weren't native to Roshar but that Listeners were. Huh.

[Yata]

Just now, Nymeros said:

Ah, I thought it was commonly known that humans weren't native to Roshar but that Listeners were. Huh.

For us yes, but in-world I don't think it's a common knowledge

[Farnsworth]

Something interesting: usually, male humans bond female spren, and vice versa.

Quote

Interview: Jan 26th, 2016

Bands of Mourning Release Party

little wilson

Is the gender of a spren bonded to a surgebinder based on sexual preferences?

Brandon Sanderson

Not strictly. You're more likely to bond a spren of the opposite gender (or a spren that identifies as the opposite gender since spren have no gender), just like you're more likely, statistically, to be attracted to someone of the opposite gender. There is a correlation between the two but just because a male character has a male spren does not necessarily mean what some think it means.

What would parshendi perceive as their spren's gender? How to Parshendi reproduce, anyways?

[Calderis]

44 minutes ago, Farnsworth said:

Something interesting: usually, male humans bond female spren, and vice versa.

What would parshendi perceive as their spren's gender? How to Parshendi reproduce, anyways?

The have male, female, and male-neuter, female-neuter, genderforms. They reproduce the same way we do. 

That's kind of the purpose of naming Mateform as Mateform. 

As for their Spren's gender... I'm pretty sure the Spren would be the one to determine that. 

Edited September 12, 2017 by Calderis

[The Invested Beard]

I have nothing to add to this aside from the suggestion that all references to a spren's gender should be hereafter labeled "Sprender".

[Ciridae]

I'd love to know who or what these old spren are and whether or not they're still around. They would have to be Adonalsium spren, right? I'm still hazy on how many of the spren we see in the books actually come from Honor, Cultivation and Adonalsium. Right now most are probably a mix, but maybe Emotionspren primarily from Honor, Naturespren primarily from Cultivation? Then what type of spren belongs to Adonalsium? 

For Listeners I'm equally unsure. Male and female can reproduce, but malen and femalen can't? Or am I misunderstanding what those terms mean? What is the point of those two genders for a species if they can't reproduce to pass on their genetic information? Or am I misunderstanding and they can still reproduce but only in mateform? 

Do Aimians have four genders? Siah probably, not sure how Dysian would identify. What about all of the other fauna on Roshar? 

[Yata]

1 hour ago, Ciridae said:

For Listeners I'm equally unsure. Male and female can reproduce, but malen and femalen can't? Or am I misunderstanding what those terms mean? What is the point of those two genders for a species if they can't reproduce to pass on their genetic information? Or am I misunderstanding and they can still reproduce but only in mateform? 

The Forms are specialization. The Listener could reproduce both in Slaveform and Mateform but the Mateform is greatly better (notice this is need or the Parshmen were gone long time ago).

I think the Male-Female are only for Mateform, SlaveForm and maybe something more Form, while when they change to others Forms, they will become Malen-Femalen

[Ciridae]

@Yata You're saying that they change gender as they change forms? So there are forms incapable of reproducing, in which they would be malen or femalen and others, including mateform, in which they would be male or female. 

But the default is slaveform, and as you said they are capable of reproducing. If what you're saying were the case, wouldn't this mean that the species, without any bonded spren, they only have two genders? If without any specialization through forms, there are only male and female Listeners, I don't think it would be accurate to say that Listeners have four genders. It would only mean that some forms aren't capable of reproducing.

[Yata]

1 hour ago, Ciridae said:

@Yata You're saying that they change gender as they change forms? So there are forms incapable of reproducing, in which they would be malen or femalen and others, including mateform, in which they would be male or female. 

But the default is slaveform, and as you said they are capable of reproducing. If what you're saying were the case, wouldn't this mean that the species, without any bonded spren, they only have two genders? If without any specialization through forms, there are only male and female Listeners, I don't think it would be accurate to say that Listeners have four genders. It would only mean that some forms aren't capable of reproducing.

Yeah it was my point. I could be wrong but I think it's the most likely explaination with the informations we have.

EDIT: I checked on Coppermind and It seems my point is valid as there are WoB on Listener gaining/losing gender as they change Forms.
Unluckly I could not see those Wob directly as Reddit is blocked in my Work's network

Edited September 13, 2017 by Yata

[Ciridae]

36 minutes ago, Yata said:

Yeah it was my point. I could be wrong but I think it's the most likely explaination with the informations we have.

EDIT: I checked on Coppermind and It seems my point is valid as there are WoB on Listener gaining/losing gender as they change Forms.
Unlikely I could not see those Wob directly as Reddit is blocked in my Work's network

The WoBs say that most of the forms are asexual. I haven't informed myself on sexual orientation and its relation to gender enough to judge whether or not the change from for example mateform to an asexual form constitutes, or is equivalent to, a change in gender. 

But as I understand it, and please, someone more educated on the subject correct me if I'm wrong, you could be a male asexual, male being your gender, and asexuality being your sexual orientation. So if I understand correctly, the two are are not one and the same, and the WoB does not imply a change in gender, but a change in sexual orientation.

[Yata]

19 minutes ago, Ciridae said:

The WoBs say that most of the forms are asexual. I haven't informed myself on sexual orientation and its relation to gender enough to judge whether or not the change from for example mateform to an asexual form constitutes, or is equivalent to, a change in gender. 

But as I understand it, and please, someone more educated on the subject correct me if I'm wrong, you could be a male asexual, male being your gender, and asexuality being your sexual orientation. So if I understand correctly, the two are are not one and the same, and the WoB does not imply a change in gender, but a change in sexual orientation.

The terms are tricky here, in our world the sexuality is categorizated like:

Sex= biological sex ( male, female)

Gender= the sex you feel your (in this category will fall asexual if you don't feel male or female)

(gender and sex used to have the same meaning until those last years where thanks to recent change of view. The world started to understood that this topic are more complex than a binary possibility)

Sexul Orientation= What sex you are attracted from (here gay, lesbian, straight,...)

The last one is hardlly part of this discussion and as most of the Forms carry with them the impossibility to reproduce. The Listener changing Form could change their sex as there is an explicit biological change.

Edited September 13, 2017 by Yata

[Ciridae]

@Yata Asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction though, so it should fall under sexual orientation by the definitions you provided. So you could theoretically feel that you are any one of the Listener genders, be in a form that is capable of reproduction, and still be asexual. This is why I believe that all four genders exist in all forms, and why I am so confused about how the species benefits from malen and femalen genders from an evolutionary point of view.

[Calderis]

@Ciridae @Yata according to Brandon, the form changes are enough physically based for them to be counted as a gender difference.

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=1088#16

Quote

QUESTION

Have we seen all four of the genders for the Parshendi?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes. Malen, femalen, male, and female. Basically there is a male neuter and a female neuter, and then a male and a female. And if you can't tell, the malen and femalen are both asexual, completely.

The asexuality is linked to their forms, so combined with that WoB it's pretty clearly a physical difference. 

[Ciridae]

@Calderis Thank you, that makes things clearer. 

[Lightspine]

Guys I have some cool thoughts

One of the few things we've heard about the Nightwatcher is that she's female according to a certain scholar but a lot of people say she isn't female. What if she's actually so old that she is femalen? 

On a fun side note, are the spren imagined by Dysian Aimians genderless? Do they have a gender? On that note, how do they reproduce to make more Aimians. Is there a special hordeling for that???

[Calderis]

45 minutes ago, Lightspine said:

On a fun side note, are the spren imagined by Dysian Aimians genderless? Do they have a gender? On that note, how do they reproduce to make more Aimians. Is there a special hordeling for that???

Considering they're a hive mind, I think they physically contain all possible genders, and mentally have none. 

To reproduce, they'd again function like a hive. Produce a queen equivalent cremling and allow it to start a new hive. As the hive grows and the interconnection of the cremlings in the Spiritual Realm become more complex a new mind begins to manifest. 

I think Dysians could reproduce without a need for a second entity, as they are individually multiple entities. 

Edited September 13, 2017 by Calderis

[Farnsworth]

Can malen and femalen go into mate form? Spren are very connected to the emotion a person is feeling and what they think about the world. If a parshendi doesn't feel like they are a gender, it would seem like they would have a hard time bonding mateform spren. 

[Calderis]

7 minutes ago, Farnsworth said:

Can malen and femalen go into mate form? Spren are very connected to the emotion a person is feeling and what they think about the world. If a parshendi doesn't feel like they are a gender, it would seem like they would have a hard time bonding mateform spren. 

Note that they are still masculine and feminine genders. The only difference is capability of reproduction. They don't cross the masculine feminine line via form shift (although, considering their closeness to the Cognitive Realm and body changing, I suppose it wouldn't be impossible. Although that also probably means Gender confusion probably isn't a thing for them as they would be the gender they feel is appropriate). 

Basically the male/malen and female/femalen difference. Other than a minority who may Transition, the lines between masculine and feminine genders is probably not crossed. 

[redbishop]

On ‎9‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 1:32 PM, Farnsworth said:

How to Parshendi reproduce, anyways?

--ahem--  Well, when one Parshendi loves another Parshendi very much...

I doubt the issue of gender identity comes up very much.  As we've seen in Eshonai's POVs, the Listeners don't have the same issues resulting in being in mateform all the time that humans do.  From what we have seen of Listener society, I don't see much to imply that there is much difference beyond the biological and the offshoots of pair-ponding between malen and femalen forms.  Without a significant difference, I don't see a source of conflict.

I love that we are discussing this in an open, clinical and speculative fashion, though.

[Stark]

Syl's little one line reveal has left me with tons of questions about spren gender.  We knew at least some spren had gender, purely from our interactions with Syl and Pattern, so that is not big surprise.  Finding out that the listeners had four genders made Syl's reveal less of a shock and more of a facepalm-duh-I-should-have-seen-that-coming moment.  What has my mental wheels spinning is some of the implications of what she said, mixed with some of what the Stormfather said at the wedding.

 

Personification of an object can affect the gender of its spren?  Based on the idea that some of Kaladin's spears were female, but not all of them.  Really cool.  But how gender fluid are the spren?  If a relative of mine has a personified object, lets go with a boat.  He refers to it as a female, by its name - does the spren of the boat take the name and gender he has assigned?  Now, lets assume that same relative falls behind on payments, or encounters some financial difficulty, and is forced to sell the boat, or its repossessed, or stolen, whatever.  The new owner starts to refer to it as male, and maybe changes the name.  Does the identity of the spren change?  Does the spren transition to male gender with a name change, or does the boat get a whole new spren?  Or, if the original identity had been in place for many years, does it remain for a period after the change in ownership because the identity has been that of the previous name and gender for so long?  How quickly does that transition happen?

 

This is fascinating to me.  Never mind the Theseus paradox (applying to the spren of the various changed pieces, if I remove the engine to service it, is it still part of the boat's spren, or does it get a temporary engine spren?  What if I replace it entirely, what then happens with the spren?  Or does it only matter how I perceive it, as just an engine, or the boat's engine determine the spren count and gender?)

 

Now to tie in with the wedding.  Oath's belong to true spren over subspren.  Does gender apply the same way.  Can a spren be genderless?  If an observer assigns no gender to an object, and no gender has ever been assigned, to say a specific rock, does the rock's spren remain genderless?  What if the observers differ in opinion, and the perception of the object's gender is divided, what happens to the spren?  Does gender only apply to true spren?  If not, can it be more fluid in subspren, who seem to be more easily influenced?

 

So much fascinating discussion to be had, but I would not be surprised to learn that there is actually five genders for the spren, the fifth being the neutral gender, and that the genders are fluid based on perception in subspren, but less so in true spren.

 

Final thought for the shard number theorists out there.  The listeners were not originally of Honor or Odium (theorized numbers 10 and 9 respectively).  While they did fave a council of five (I think five has been theorized to be Endowment), the longest running number I can think of being linked to them is 4, for their genders.  Any theories on which shard is linked to the number 4 yet?  Might give us a hint as to what shard was the listeners original patron.

[kiapet]

Gender is actually socially constructed and has much less to do with physical sex than what most people assume. (Sorry, sociology student here.) So whether malen or femalen Listeners are physically capable of reproduction doesn't affect whether they are malen or femalen, because the Parshendi as a people still conceive of them as different enough to be a different gender. This is especially important regarding spren as their genders are based purely on perception.

[Salkara]

2 hours ago, kiapet said:

So whether malen or femalen Listeners are physically capable of reproduction doesn't affect whether they are malen or femalen, because the Parshendi as a people still conceive of them as different enough to be a different gender.

Actually, I think it does affect them. When reading the Parshendi, we have to remember that Brandon intends them to be an alien race. We could make an argument that gender as a social construct in humans is driven by our biological need to reproduce. Malen and femalen Parshendi do not have that need as they are asexual.

Moreover, I believe Syl used the term 'gender' in reference to reproduction. Male and female can physically reproduce only with members of the opposite gender. Hence she would say that humans have 2 genders. For the Parshendi, she adds another 2 genders: malen and femalen, which cannot physically reproduce but can change biologic gender to male and female, respectively, for reproductive purposes.

I'm not saying that gender lines are absolute. There are likely spren which regularly appear as a different gender than that with which they identify; however, it's difficult to extrapolate our understanding of gender to an alien species with additional genders.