Are Kholin males bi? XX?

[ecohansen]

Mistborn/Warbreaker

One last observation: as a counter to nightblood, who is in fact genderless despite being initially presented as gendered, we have the kandra.  They do not reproduce sexually, and can adopt either male or female forms.  And yet they perceive themselves as inately gendered.

Edited July 6, 2015 by ecohansen

[Edgedancer]

Personally, I would at least wait until we have seen multiple Radiants from a single order before we make judgments, because as far as we know all Spren associated to an order identify as the same gender, so Kaladin bonding with a "female" spren might have nothing to do with Kaladin's sexuality but simply happens to all Windrunners, as all Honorspren (or the majority) might be female.

[Quiver]

I wanted to say this yesterday, but internet died...

 

Basically, more bisexual characters in general is a pop culture is a good thing; I think bisexuality is a lot harder to represent onscreen than hetero- or homo- sexuality (particularly since narratives might present a same-sex encounter as just someone coming out of the closet), but that's more reason why there needs to be more representation.

 

Especially bisexual male representation. I love Arrow, and I love the fact that their Black Canary is/was/spoilers a bisexual female... but "bisexual female" is a role which gets a lot more representation, probably because it let's producers do/suggest titillating girl-on-girl stuff while still having an (in effect) "straight" romantic arc. As fun as Lost Girl and Torchwood could be, I had a constant fear that the gay romance was going to be killed off/broken up/wahetevr to enable the BoDyson, or JackGwen hetero-romance stuff to happen.

Which... is fair, in a way; after all, bisexuality means being attracted to both, so it would be a fair resolution... but not one I think is entirely a good idea.

(It's why I like the fact that Black Canary's female love interest was genuine, but that's neither here nor there).

 

Bisexual males on the other hand don't seem to get very much attention at all, so...

..I don't know where I'm going with this. I can maybe see Renarin being bisexual -simply because he isn't a main PoV character yet- though I'm not convinced any of the Kholin men are.

[RenegadeShroom]

I don't really understand the leap from 'spren have genders' to 'spren gender is indicative of a surgebinder's sexuality'? I don't get why that would be reflected at all, actually? Is the implication that Surgebinders are necessarily attracted to their spren? Because I don't get that either.

 

One last observation: as a counter to nightblood, who is in fact genderless despite being initially presented as gendered, we have the kandra.  They do not reproduce sexually, and can adopt either male or female forms.  And yet they perceive themselves as inately gendered.

(Mistborn spoilers)

It seems reasonable to me that kandra still have a concept of gender, because the First Generation were once upon a time human, so they carried over an irrelevant social construct to their new species. Although, given how realmatics works, perhaps gender is more of a thing in the cosmere than real life thanks to cognitive realm shenanigans and perception...? Anyway, I feel like if it weren't for the First Generation being an active influence at any time in their history, the kandra wouldn't apply gender to themselves.

 

I'm personally holding out for more queer cosmere characters than just the ones we've had confirmed by WoB, and I hope that there'll be more diverse representation than just gay people and a fictional race that is asexual.

 

 "bisexual female" is a role which gets a lot more representation, probably because it let's producers do/suggest titillating girl-on-girl stuff while still having an (in effect) "straight" romantic arc.

 

Eurgh, yeah. It's this really gross kind of heteronormativity too, where two women in a relationship isn't as valid as a straight couple, thanks to this weird fetishisation of "girl on girl is hot." However, I'd disagree that it means that bisexual women aren't in as dire need of representation in media as bisexual men! Every example of objectified lesbians/bisexual women does plenty of harm in the real world, and needs to be addressed with actual decent examples, IMO!

 

Which... is fair, in a way; after all, bisexuality means being attracted to both, so it would be a fair resolution... but not one I think is entirely a good idea.

I think that this is a good example of how real life contextualises fiction, regardless of authorial intent! Like, the fact is that having a bisexual person end up with someone of the opposite gender has kind of... sketchy and unfortunate implications, despite how that is an actual thing that happens. But it feels sketchy and unfortunate because of stereotypes and ignorance about sexuality, so people who are savvy about this sort of thing might shy away from it -- although personally I'd emotionally shy away from it while rationally working out and encouraging others to see that yes, this is just as legitimate because this character is bisexual, not gay. But this is also the kind of problem that can be completely meaningless if people would just include more bisexual characters in their works so that they can show variety, rather than accidentally portraying stereotypes or accidentally employing bad tropes.

 

... Er, to get somewhat back on topic though, I personally don't think that any of the Kholin men are bisexual. Brandon's said he's still in the process of learning about this sort of thing -- queer issues that is -- plus has only confirmed two queer characters outright. While I would expect that that number doesn't include every character under that category because he might not want to reveal sexualities of some characters for whatever reason, I think it's safe to say that from a meta standpoint, it's unlikely that any of the Kholin men are queer, sadly.

 

Still holding out for asexual Jasnah though. d:

 

EDIT: Just want to clarify, I'm not offended by anything anyone else has said in the topic so far! If any part of the post comes off as aggressive/angry, that's totally unintentional on my part, sorry.

Edited July 6, 2015 by InsurrectionistFungus

[Oudeis]

Renarin in many ways reminds me of one of my good friends, who is asexual. Until we see him express the least romantic interest in anyone, that's my head!canon.

 

Mistborn

Apart from the First Generation, every kandra started off their lives as a mistwraith. Kandra have negligible senescence, but mistwraiths have a lifespan of about fifty years. They reproduce sexually. It's unclear if kandra give up possession of biological sexual characteristics, or if there's any longer a difference between males and females once they are Birthed into kandra. However, they all at least used to possess sex, so it's not strange they might have carried that over into their self-aware lives.

 

I thought I had WoB on all this, but now I can't find it. I'll keep looking.

[ParadoxicalZen]

Well it is explained in-book in regards to Kandra gender;
 
Mistborn Spoilers

I remember TenSoon explaining to another character (Vin or Saze i think) that Kandra determine gender by scent/pheromones (can't remember exact passage/book but there is a WoB explaining it that I just found.
 

Interview: Nov 8th, 2011
Alloy of Law Midnight Release (Verbatim)

Zas678

How do Kandra decide gender? Is it just intellectual? Or are there subtle physical differences?


Brandon Sanderson

Kandra have a specific gender that is associated with scent- you can tell if a kandra is a boy or girl depending on how they smell. There is more to it than that. They also know who they are attracted to.

 
Is that the WoB you're referring to Oudeis?
 
That last part makes it sound like it is possible for Kandra to be attracted to both genders (perhaps this should be moved to another forum given the expanding ideas?)

Edited July 6, 2015 by ParadoxSpren

[ecohansen]

Oudeis:

Mistorn:

Do we have WoB that mistwraiths reproduce sexually rather than via something like asexual budding?

 

My basic position was that there seems to be some correlation between Spren bondmate choices and gender.  Assuming spren sex is preexisting, it seems like they must be influenced by one of the following, although I don't know why.

 

1. Biological sex.  This would imply that the kholins are XX, hermaphrodites, or intersex.

2. Gender orientation.  This would imply that the Kholins are gay or bi.

3. Gender identity.  I am sorry I neglected this one.  This would imply that the Kholins are transwomen, and self-identify as lesbians.  This could perhaps be supported by both Adolin's and Dalinar's preoccupation with fashion (in, as Sadeas pointed out, opposite ways).  However, I don't really see this either.

 

Those are all the options I can see.

 

So, if we find all of them unlikely, do we conclude that we have proved that non-anthropoid spren sex is only perceived?

 

edit: add'l speculation One speculation on why spren might choose to have this criterion: they want to maximize partnership and minimize rivalry, and so choose bonds that minimize the nastiness we commonly observe between hetero members of the same sex

Edited July 6, 2015 by ecohansen

[Eerongal]

I wanted to say this yesterday, but internet died...

 

Basically, more bisexual characters in general is a pop culture is a good thing; I think bisexuality is a lot harder to represent onscreen than hetero- or homo- sexuality (particularly since narratives might present a same-sex encounter as just someone coming out of the closet), but that's more reason why there needs to be more representation.

 

Especially bisexual male representation. I love Arrow, and I love the fact that their Black Canary is/was/spoilers a bisexual female... but "bisexual female" is a role which gets a lot more representation, probably because it let's producers do/suggest titillating girl-on-girl stuff while still having an (in effect) "straight" romantic arc. As fun as Lost Girl and Torchwood could be, I had a constant fear that the gay romance was going to be killed off/broken up/wahetevr to enable the BoDyson, or JackGwen hetero-romance stuff to happen.

Which... is fair, in a way; after all, bisexuality means being attracted to both, so it would be a fair resolution... but not one I think is entirely a good idea.

(It's why I like the fact that Black Canary's female love interest was genuine, but that's neither here nor there).

 

Bisexual males on the other hand don't seem to get very much attention at all, so...

..I don't know where I'm going with this. I can maybe see Renarin being bisexual -simply because he isn't a main PoV character yet- though I'm not convinced any of the Kholin men are.

 

Off topic, but have you ever watched the showtime TV show "Penny Dreadful"? It's set in a victorian-era london setting, and it has the character Dorian Gray from "The picture of dorian gray" and is a pretty good depiction (IMO) of a highly charismatic bisexual male character, though he is highly promiscuous and flirtacious. 

[FeatherWriter]

 

Ah, must have skipped that. My bad.

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

 

 

Quick mod note: Guys, I know it's fun to make fun of stories that you thought were not good or amusing to you, but please remember that these kinds of comments can be very hurtful, especially to the original writers of those works. The cosmere fandom is still a pretty small place, and there's a good chance the those writers could see your comments. I know you weren't intending them to be mean, but please be considerate. If you don't like a story or a pairing, then that's okay, but please don't go bashing it where you think the author won't see. Let's support fan-writers and artists and stay positive please. /end mod note

 

Okay, so more on topic. I actually got Word of Brandon (though vague word of Brandon) on this subject at the WOR midnight release. I know, I should have written it down, but it was my first real signing and I was young and naive and didn't do that so... whoops. So, I don't have exact words for you guys. That said, I asked Brandon if there was significance in the fact that Renarin had a male spren, when most of the rest of the Nahel bonds were opposite-gendered. His response was (if I recall correctly) was that yes it was significant, but maybe not in the way that I was imagining. (Though, I'm not entirely sure what he thought I was imagining, so.)

 

So, I can confirm that there is something to the gender relationship between spren and Surgebinder, but that's about it. Serves me right for giving Brandon an easy "yes or no" answer that he could duck like that, I suppose.

 

EDIT: Since I see there were some more posts thrown in here while I was typing. Considering that Pattern didn't understand how eating worked, I'm going to go ahead and posit that the spren's "biological" functions (if we could even say that a being of almost purely cognitive form has "biology" at all) do not resemble humans' at all, much less that spren would have anything resembling physical, reproductive sex. I mean, spren are thoughts given sentience. I can't imagine that they're even really physically or chemically "alive" by any kind of human definitions.

Edited July 6, 2015 by FeatherWriter

[Kestrel]

Quick mod note: Guys, I know it's fun to make fun of stories that you thought were not good or amusing to you, but please remember that these kinds of comments can be very hurtful, especially to the original writers of those works. The cosmere fandom is still a pretty small place, and there's a good chance the those writers could see your comments. I know you weren't intending them to be mean, but please be considerate. If you don't like a story or a pairing, then that's okay, but please don't go bashing it where you think the author won't see. Let's support fan-writers and artists and stay positive please. /end mod note

The story I was referring to (not sure about the other one) was meant to be a joke fic.

[FeatherWriter]

The story I was referring to (not sure about the other one) was meant to be a joke fic.

 

Ah, alright, thank you. Yeah, laughing at a joke fic that's meant to be funny is different than laughing at a fic that you simply thought was done poorly. One is okay (and encouraged!) and the other is not. Thanks.

[Kelek's Breath]

If all we had seen were Vorin Surgebinders, I would have guessed that it was because of Vorin custom, just like a Lighteyed officer needs a wife to have as a scribe. so here goes a different theory.

 

Well, what if the potential Radiant/surgebinder is choosing the spren gender subconsciouly, because of some 'need'? And maybe they project this cognitively on the spren that wants to bond with them? Once it manifests, it is locked in, in that gender. E.g. Syl appears female to all the members of Bridge Four.

 

Renarin for example, really wants to be a fighter so his father can approve of him. He even holds a screaming Blade to prove his point, thus Glys is male. Lift doesn't mention knowing a father, so Wyndle could be a father figure. Shallan loves her father, but maybe even before her mother tried to kill her, her father was distant or violent, and thus Pattern is male. Ym feels guilty about the woman he poisoned and thus the spren is female. Dalinar bonds the Stormfather, because his whole life is dominated by Gavilar's death. Kaladin is the only difficult one to place, due to the female spren. Is it because Hesina always cheered him up or was supportive? is it because of Laral, or that other woman (name escapes me) that he let down?

[Oudeis]

...

Quickly let me say: as someone who writes a lot of fanfiction, and reads a TON of it, I wasn't trying to just dish on "a story I didn't like," I'm legitimately offended when people pull a stunt like this and pass it off as fanfiction. Whether I liked the underlying story or not is irrelevant. Many fanfiction sites have rules stating that you're not allowed to write a story, then post it in a dozen different sections just by changing the main character's names to names of dramatis personae, and for very good reasons. I can understand wanting people to read your original works, but people go to these sites because they want to read fanfiction. Tricking them into reading your work by using search-and-replace to change some names is as honest as me putting a band-aid on the ear of a Mario sprite and passing off a livestream playthrough as the documentary, "Super Van Gogh Bros."

 

Believe me, the fanfiction I write is the absolute worst, and no one who writes legitimate fanfiction will hear a single harsh word from me; I even feel guilty offering constructive criticism. It's the people who abuse the system and crowd out people trying to do actual fanfiction I have issue with.

 

That said, I asked Brandon if there was significance in the fact that Renarin had a male spren, when most of the rest of the Nahel bonds were opposite-gendered. His response was (if I recall correctly) was that yes it was significant, but maybe not in the way that I was imagining. (Though, I'm not entirely sure what he thought I was imagining, so.)

 

Interesting. Also, yeah, totally been there. My buddy asked him once, "Are there beings native to the Spiritual Realm the way spren are native to the Cognitive Realm" and his reply was yes, but not the ones you're thinking of. And my buddy was like... but I wasn't thinking of any...

 

I can't imagine that they're even really physically or chemically "alive" by any kind of human definitions.

I'm actually going to extend this. I think that Syl is going to prove to be one of the more "human" spren we meet. I think most of them will just be alien. Someone like Wyndle, if he really is associated somehow with plantlife or cultivation, might understand gender a bit better. But does "Truth" have gender? Does "Law"?

 

@Kelek: Yes, that's basically what I've been trying to get at. Hansen's assumption is that the only options are, gender is assigned at total random, or gender is assigned based on sexual preference. As I've pointed out, and as you expanded upon beautifully, there could be a ton of other reasons. I've long suspected that at some point Syl stopped being a spren of "the idea of honor" and became the spren specifically of Kaladin's honor. That's why his broken promise killed her; if Kaladin loses his honor, and she is his honor, he loses her. As you pointed out, there could be a ton of reasons he personally personifies his own honor as female. Maybe she represents the women he'd like to protect. Maybe, being Vorin, he just grew up seeing male-female pairings being two people who get one job done (an interesting quirk shared by the listeners). Presumably, even if a man were other than heteronormative, any man he's attracted to still wouldn't be able to read, or do sciences, or do any of the other things he'd need in a business partner, so when envisioning someone to be a partner in a non-romantic endeavor, a Vorin would be likely to select a woman.

[Kelek's Breath]

@Oudeis. Sorry hadn't really gone through all the posts and would have given you credit for expressing the same idea before me. I did forget about Jasnah, because we really don't know much about her. It could be that she was physically hurt by a man (and thus views them all in a bad light) and maybe because Ivory first presents himself as threatening and attempts to kill her in Shadesmar, that's why he's male.

Edited July 6, 2015 by Kelek's Breath

[Oudeis]

No no, it's cool, you put way more thought and effort into it than I did. Never apologize for agreeing with me.

[ParadoxicalZen]

I like the idea of how the Spren itself (and perhaps as a further event, the majority of the species would follow should they bond) is becoming/transitioning/reflecting the personal trait of the respective Radiant, further emphasising Syl's statement about how she's only as dead as his Oaths were. Nice thought Oudeis! I like that idea, Kelek's Breath, especially as it could fit with the idea of other possible side benefits from the Nahel Bond (apart from each order's relative passive ability).   

[Titan Arum]

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.

First off, props on knowing that a Chi^2 is inappropriate for a one-sided test. Second, a Chi^2 test would be inappropriate with a sample size of 4 if we are looking at a two-sided test. Instead, the best test for such a small sample size is Fisher's exact test.

 

However, I think you're wrong that we should look at a one-tailed test. A one-tailed test is only appropriate when we want to test one direction of results because we don't think the other direction is important. We already know for a fact that this is not true because we have two observations of same-sex spren bonding, which means a one-tailed test is not valid. Thus, we'd want a two-tailed test to see if the bonding is biased in either direction. 

 

Your link to the Wikipedia article showing the results of 5 heads in a row is indicative of why a one-sided test is inappropriate. Would we want a one-sided test if we only flipped the coin 5 times and got heads 5 times in a row and decided to stop testing the hypothesis at this point? If so, we'd have to reject the null hypothesis of the coin being fair, when we know for a fact that the coin is fair. This is what is called a Type 1 Error in statistics, or a false positive. So the question comes down to this one from you:

 

Does anyone have a serious explanation for this statistical anomaly?

 

Cliff notes version answer: we don't need any explanation other than randomness, assuming that there is no actual link to a gender-based nahel bond.

 

I know that FeatherWriter has since said that there is something to the gender and spren situation (and I agree that spren are probably gender-less and that the characters are projecting gender onto their spren), but let's continuing answering your question for the sake of understanding.

 

First off, in my line of statistical work, a sample size of 4 is not nearly large enough to yield anything meaningful. I'd argue any correlations we see at this point are just noise, simply because of the low sample size. In my work, I need at least 30 or 40 observations to make any meaningful comparisons, and usually I need 900 to 1200 observations to find statistically significant differences between groups (because I usually try to detect VERY SMALL deviations). If I don't get a large enough sample size, my statistics are under-powered and and significant results could just be superfluous Type 1 errors. In our spren case, we first see four or five cross-gendered bonds. This in my opinion could be due to coincidence/randomness, because it's such a small sample size. Thus, a false-positive. 

 

Given this, let's have a quick conversation about what probabilities are and what they mean. Probabilities simply look at the percentage likelihood of a certain outcome. In this case, the probability of four cross-gendered nahel bonds is simply (1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2) = 0.0625 = 6.25%, as you stated. If we were to take a random draw with replacement of two possibilities (cross-gendered or same-gendered), we'd expect that 6% of the time we'd get four in a row that are cross-gendered. It is a low probability, but it definitely is none-zero. Thus it's not impossible that we'd see this (though unlikely). In fact, if we were to do this exercise (choosing 4 draws with replacement) 100 times, roughly 6 times we'd see this outcome. 

 

Finally, if we exclude what FeatherWriter says (because there is something up with the gender, which implies that our understanding is not independent of the outcome), we'd assume that these draws are independent of each other. Thus, it is possible that we get two draws of four cross-gender pairwise bonds one after the other. The probability of this is (1/16)*(1/16) = 0.0039 = 0.39%. Yes, it is low, but it's still non-zero. 

 

I guess my point is that, statistically, we wouldn't need an explanation for this anomaly other than it could be purely random....assuming that there isn't something up with these cross gender bonds. 

 

All of this, though, makes me think of how people commonly misinterpret probabilities and odds. Just because you live on a 100 year flood plain (odds of 1 devastating flood over a 100 year period) and you had a flood last year, that doesn't mean you won't get a flood this year as well. The floods are independent of each other...basically on average over a long period of time, floods occur every 100 years. In probabilistic terms, this means that in any given year there is a 1/100 = 0.01 = 1% probability of a flood and that the probability you get two of these floods in a row is 0.01%. Highly unlikely, but it can and does happen in the real world.   Basically,  don't complain to nature that you had a flood last year if you get another this year because nature doesn't care about the odds or the short term. 

[ecohansen]

Oudeis, I'm not saying that the only two options are random gender association or association based on sexual preference.  In the first post, I gave biological sex as an option, and in my last post I added gender identity.  If nahel bonds didn't consistently result in opposite-sex pairings, I would have no reason to assume that sex or gender entered into it at all.  But, in the order we were given evidence, they do: Thanks to Emerald's input, the probaility of the null hypothesis is now 1/32, which is statistically significant.  A process that yields gender-sorted outputs must take sex or gender or some co-correlate of sex or gender into account at some stage.

 

I have no idea why it yields these results, but i do know (with what is now 97 percent certainty) that explanations of the nahel bond won't be complete without explaining this gender assortment.  So if all spren of a given order are the same gender, (all honorspren are female), then we still have to explain why they consistently choose opposite-gender radiants.  If spren gender is chosen based on the psychological needs of Radiants, then we still have to explain why those needs so consistently manifest as opposite-gender.  I don't know the root process, but I do know that the process must take gender {or something closely correlated with gender, if someone wants to propose what that might be} into account somewhere, because it gives gender-sorted results.

Edited July 6, 2015 by ecohansen

[Peng the Just]

I think the spren are gender-free and gain the pronouns used for them based on the characters they form for themselves.

[VindicationKnight]

I think the spren are gender-free and gain the pronouns used for them based on the characters they form for themselves.

 

I disagree slightly, I think some species of Spren do have gender just like they have a standard appearance but that that gender is defined by how they are view by people on the large scale so Syl is female and would think of herself that way, but only because the Alethi currently perceive windspren as being feminine, so her gender and spren concepts of gender in general might change as a result of changing cultural perceptions.

 

Nightblood canonically finds the entire concept of gender an alien but fascinatingly 'human' thing, he's only a 'he' because Vasher doesn't want to call him it  (The Halladren frame of reference is probably a bit limited for this.)

 

For kandra I'd assume that a lot of their society and psychology is still very human influenced, but unlike us transgender or agender individuals can adopt the body and social position they like, cause shape shifting.

 

On topic, I don't think we can conclusively say anything about the Kholin men save that Adolin and Darlinar are at least attracted to women. The sample size we have is simply to small to be statistically meaningful.

[StormingTexan]

Couldn't it be just as possible Spren are predominately male or female depending on their type? Or at least I should say we haven't seen enough from the same type to know one way or the other. 

 

Oh and I am sure this was tongue and cheek but by this logic wouldn't Lift, Shallan and Jasnah be bi too. 

[VindicationKnight]

Couldn't it be just as possible Spren are predominately male or female depending on their type? Or at least I should say we haven't seen enough from the same type to know one way or the other. 

 

Oh and I am sure this was tongue and cheek but by this logic wouldn't Lift, Shallan and Jasnah be bi too. 

All three of Lift Shallan and Jasnah have opposite gender identifying spren though...

[ParadoxicalZen]

On topic, I don't think we can conclusively say anything about the Kholin men save that Adolin and Darlinar are at least attracted to women. The sample size we have is simply to small to be statistically meaningful.

That and we know little of Rosharan culture's stances on these subjects. Another question that occurred to me which no-one has pointed out because it might have been a bit too obvious; we've been assuming that, hypothetically (from the looks of it anyway), Orders are only made up of one gender, which is understandable given our limited examples but given the size of Radiant Orders in the past, there must have been some diversity between Radiant/Spren Genders

[VindicationKnight]

That and we know little of Rosharan culture's stances on these subjects. Another question that occurred to me which no-one has pointed out because it might have been a bit too obvious; we've been assuming that, hypothetically (from the looks of it anyway), Orders are only made up of one gender, which is understandable given our limited examples but given the size of Radiant Orders in the past, there must have been some diversity between Radiant/Spren Genders

I'm reasonably sure we've seen Knights of the same order but of different genders, in the Feverstone vision perhaps? Assuming that speaking the oaths upholding the ideals having some form of past trauma and being lucky enough to attract a spren are the only requirments to be a Surgebinder none of those are inherently gendered entrance requirements.

[ecohansen]

I hate to keep riding this, but vindication, by the very definition of "statistically meaningful", it IS statistically meaningful.  Our sample size is now five.  We have one-tailed, two-category categorical data, and a spread of 5-0.  Our p-level is therefore 0.03; the probability of the null is 1/32, and by the commonly-accepted definition of statistical significance as "significant at p=0.05", our data simply IS statistically significant.

 

And now we have WoB that spren gender is significant.

 

I don't know what this means aout Renarin, but by WoB, it means something.

 

I am certainly not convinced that the Kholins are intersex or LGBT. But if the easy explanation goes away, can anyone propose an explanation that accounts for the consistent opposite-sex assortment early on, and also account for the same-sex assortment with the Kholins?