: Re: How do I keep the gender of my main character purposely ambiguous? I'm a newcomer to this community, and have recently started giving serious thought to my first novel. I'm basically working

@Speyer920

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Lot's of answers, but I'll my [CO].02 in.

You really need to examine your reason for keeping the gender a secret. We real world humans are very tied to our genders, rather we admit it or not. The chemical processes, the needs and feelings, and of course the social norms and expectations. That's not to say a MC couldn't be trying to hid their gender, but even in real life, people identify so much with a gender that when they feel they have the wrong gender's parts they go cutting them off, or sowing them on. A very painful and lengthy process. Gender is at the very core of who and what we are.

Now your adding a third gender, but I don't see how that would vary things much. Your either in "Inny" with all that means, an "Outty" with all that means, or neither with all that means (and I suppose you could be a both, it's your world after all). But rather you pee sitting down or standing up, it's the pressures and expectation of society, along with a healthy dose of biological needs, that give gender it's meaning. If you a "neither" then you would also have expectations. You would still have pressures from society, and you would still have biological needs (or even a distinct lack of them)

In other words, you can't sidestep the influence of gender just by adding a middle ground. If that middle ground was normal enough to be considered a bubble you fill out on a census, then you would have pressures and expectations that would shape that person.

All of that said, you have a few options.

Rude to ask

In your society "neuts" (ya like that) may be considered undesirable but common enough. So it may be rude to ask. "I had a baby" doesn't get followed with boy or girl, because that's rude. Pronoun problems Like He/She don't get corrected because it's rude to force your gender on a neut. So as a whole while society cares about gender, all three of them, they don't talk about it because it's considered rude.

Neuts rule the world

With out all that sex stuff to get in the way, a neut is, instead encouraged to work on leadership and politics. Therefore a neut is someone that will have a lot of power one day, even if they don't now. If your MC is trying to pass as a non-neut, then they would stuff their pants, or socks in the bra, and try to pass as one other "lesser" genders.

I can be anything

There was a anime that I remember that had humans that were sometimes born a "neut" then later, when they fell in love they grew the parts needed to, ahem, participate. You could go that way.

Any way you play it

The fact that your MC is a neut, will make a huge impact on ner. Ne will have expectations and pressures that ne will need to deal with. Even if ne is trying to pose as something ne is not, ne will still need to be honest with ner self and and address those expectations if ne is going to get anywhere. And because ne is a MC ne will have to do it in front of the reader, even if ne and the reader are the only two people that know about ner situation.

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