: 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

I think you have got into a "Don't mention the war!" mindset over this (ref: the John Cleese / Fawlty Towers comedies).

If "rules about appropriate clothing, activities, professions, hairstyles, mannerisms, etc. simply no longer exist" in your fictional world, then they don't exist. and I guess you don't want to have a David Attenborough-like "outsider" character, or your narrator, pointing out the non-existence of them.

Whatever creates enough tension between the characters in your world to make your story interesting and therefore readable, it is neither gender stereotyping nor the absence of gender stereotyping.

Think this through a bit more. If appropriateness isn't an issue, then you characters are not going to be spending their time thinking or saying "X is wearing something really appropriate (or inappropriate) but in this wonderfully egalitarian world we live in, I don't care and neither does anyone else." They are simply not going to be thinking about the issue at all. So there is nothing there for you to write about!

The absence of stereotypes will made some aspects of your world tangibly different though. Consider how the entire clothing and cosmetics industries would function, when nobody wants to copy "the look" of celebrities, etc because nobody cares what anyone else looks like. Now that might be a way into a story that illustrates your world without preaching about it...

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: 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

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