: Re: How do I present a future free of gender stereotypes without being jarring or overpowering the narrative? My story takes place in a relatively near future setting where gender stereotypes have

@Deb2945533

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Men do wear skirts: kilts, sarongs, hakamas, fustanellas... If your world is culturally diverse, any and all of those might have become common enough. In sci-fi stories in particular, new fashions is something we take in our stride.

But skirts are not really the focus of your question, they're just an aspect, an example. For the broader question, to write a gender-free world, I would just write a gender-free world. There's nothing weird or startling about it: it just means that one treats every person as a person, regardless of gender, and that gender doesn't enter into one's decision-making process (a.k.a you don't hear "boys shouldn't do X" and one doesn't think "I should do Y because I'm a girl").

In fact, I would suggest you look around the world - some of us already live in far less gendered societies than others. You can start with those, and then take your world the rest of the way. (By 'societies' I do not necessarily mean countries as a whole. That's part of it, but living in a big city vs. small town, economic status etc. also have an effect.) As an example, the first time my gender entered into my decision-making process was when I decided against an academic career, because I'd have had to do a post-doc in either Europe or America, and I was afraid to be a Jew in Europe and a woman in America. Until then - school, military service, academy, hobbies - I thought of myself as a person, not a 'woman'. As far as gender was concerned, there were 'sexy single guys potentially interested in me' and 'everybody else'. Two distinct genders. :)

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