# A Book With A Character Of Undetermained Gender **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 7, 2009, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202 "2009-01-07T07:28:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/1 "2009-01-07T07:28:15Z")
I thought of an idea for a story told from a baby’s perspective. The thing I wanted to do is keep the baby’s sex undetermined. The sex isn’t important anyway, I just thought it would be fun to keep the baby as undetailed as possible. I didn’t even want to give it a name. The problem is after a paragraph or two it became annoying to write descriptively for the baby. It’s not a first person story. It sounds bad to say the baby looked hungry “Boy I’m hungry” baby said. That doesn’t work. And if you resort to pronoun use, of he or she, it kills the secret of the baby’s sex. So I got to wondering has there ever been a story, even a short story (which is what mine is) where a the main character has no gender determination and no name. That would disqualify the “It’s Pat” type of character. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/2 "2009-01-07T10:18:47Z")
The closest I can think of is Ursula LeGuin’s _The Left Hand of Darkness_, where the main character is the only one who has a determinate gender. All the other characters in the book are from a planet where there is only one gender and the narrator therefore describes them based on their personal characteristics instead. It’s an interesting read, but I have to imagine the idea of a gender-less society sounded better in the author’s mind than it does in the book. ---
**Author:** ![Timchik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@Timchik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Timchik)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/3 "2009-01-07T10:27:41Z")
Jeanette Winterson’s full-length novel _Written on the Body_ has a first-person narrator who is bisexual and of (deliberately) indeterminate gender. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/4 "2009-01-07T10:53:09Z")
> [@Telperion](#): > > The closest I can think of is Ursula LeGuin’s _The Left Hand of Darkness_, where the main character is the only one who has a determinate gender. All the other characters in the book are from a planet where there is only one gender and the narrator therefore describes them based on their personal characteristics instead. It’s an interesting read, but I have to imagine the idea of a gender-less society sounded better in the author’s mind than it does in the book. Well, and since neuter pronouns sound wierd in English she called all the Gethenian hermaphrodites “he” for about 90% of the book (excepting only the cases where they were specifically in a female sexual role) ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/5 "2009-01-07T11:21:15Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > I thought of an idea for a story told from a baby’s perspective. The thing I wanted to do is keep the baby’s sex undetermined. > > The sex isn’t important anyway, I just thought it would be fun to keep the baby as undetailed as possible. I didn’t even want to give it a name. > > The problem is after a paragraph or two it became annoying to write descriptively for the baby. > > It’s not a first person story. > > It sounds bad to say the baby looked hungry “Boy I’m hungry” baby said. > > That doesn’t work. And if you resort to pronoun use, of he or she, it kills the secret of the baby’s sex. > > So I got to wondering has there ever been a story, even a short story (which is what mine is) where a the main character has no gender determination and no name. That would disqualify the “It’s Pat” type of character. Could you consider writing it in the second person (cf. _The Last Detail; Cinderella Liberty; Bright Lights, Big City; Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas_)? ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/6 "2009-01-07T11:33:30Z")
Check out The Mermaid’s Child by Jo Baker. It does something very clever with this idea. It’s also a wonderfully well-written piece of literature. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/7 "2009-01-07T11:44:11Z")
Q: Is it wholly unheard of, in all flavours of English usage, to refer to a baby in the neuter gender? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/8 "2009-01-07T12:08:46Z")
Only if you’re Dave Pelzer’s mom. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/9 "2009-01-07T12:11:01Z")
> [@tschild](#): > > Q: Is it wholly unheard of, in all flavours of English usage, to refer to a baby in the neuter gender? If by that you mean “it”, then yes, that would be totally weird, and a little creepy. Even midwives, talking about a baby with undetermined gender, use the (oh-so-cutesy) “baby” rather than assigning a gender. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/10 "2009-01-07T12:11:42Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Could you consider writing it in the second person (cf. _The Last Detail; Cinderella Liberty; Bright Lights, Big City; Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas_)? I had no idea anyone wrote fiction in the second person outside of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/11 "2009-01-07T12:37:29Z")
Forget it, I made a booboo. ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/12 "2009-01-07T12:48:14Z")
All of Sarah Caudwell’s books feature a main character (Hilary Tamar, who is also the narrator) whose gender is never revealed. Very funny books; I highly recommend them. ETA–It’s probably easier to do from the first person. ‘I’ has no gender. And you can tell entire stories without revealing a character’s name; plenty of authors have done so. See, e.g., Dashiel Hammett’s ‘Nameless Detective’ series, also told from the first person (although of course his gender is clear). ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/13 "2009-01-07T13:29:12Z")
Didn’t Joanna Russ write a whole novel where you’re not told anybody’s gender? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/14 "2009-01-07T13:46:16Z")
Not a novel, but Russ’s story “The Mystery of the Young Gentleman” leaves the young gentleman’s gender a mystery. It’s in her collection **(Extra)ordinary People**. IIRC, it’s told in the first person by by the “gentleman” – who may be a woman posing as a man. ---
**Author:** ![JustThinkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@JustThinkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustThinkin)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/15 "2009-01-07T13:53:30Z")
\*\*Bone Dance \*\*by Emma Bull features a genderless person. This is a spoiler, 'cause you don’t find out the protaganist is truly genderless until near the end of the book. It’s a good read. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/16 "2009-01-07T14:09:57Z")
Does “X: A Fabulous Child’s Story” count? Maybe not, since it wasn’t meant to be subtle at all, and the whole point of it was that no one besides X and Xes parents knew Xes gender, and the chaos that created until everyone at school just got over themselves. Here’s an edited and paraphrased version that’s exactly the one I remember reading as a child: [X](http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:hO-XlX2JJzgJ:www.ksagclassroom.org/about/download/profdev/X%2520story.pdf+X:+A+Fabulous+Child%27s+Story&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us&client=firefox-a). ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/17 "2009-01-07T14:51:18Z")
The light-novel and anime series [Kino’s Journey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino%27s_Journey) has a central character (Kino) whose gender is unrevealed for some time into the story. In Japanese that’s fairly hard to do, because words meaning “I” tend to be either mostly used by females or mostly used by males. (I think Kino uses “boku”, which is usually used by males, but can be used by tom-boyish females). In English, it’s even harder, because of the he/she distinction. Kino starts the story aged about 12, so you can’t avoid the issue by treating Kino as a baby. Since the story has been translated into English, it might be worth looking at that to see how the translation solves the problem of not revealing Kino’s gender. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/18 "2009-01-07T14:57:05Z")
Vaarsuvius (the wizard in The Order of the Stick [The Order of the Stick - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_of_the_Stick)) is sexually ambiguous. To the nth degree. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/19 "2009-01-07T15:14:58Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Vaarsuvius (the wizard in The Order of the Stick [The Order of the Stick - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_of_the_Stick)) is sexually ambiguous. To the nth degree. It’s easier to do in that format, since the text is character dialog – only Vaarsuvius’s own speech needs to be kept gender-neutral, anybody else is simply making an assumption that may or may not be accurate (Vaarsuvius h\*\*self doesn’t seem to care enough to clarify or correct). ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202/20 "2009-01-07T15:32:08Z")
> [@Telperion](#): > > The closest I can think of is Ursula LeGuin’s _The Left Hand of Darkness_, where the main character is the only one who has a determinate gender. All the other characters in the book are from a planet where there is only one gender and the narrator therefore describes them based on their personal characteristics instead. It’s an interesting read, but I have to imagine the idea of a gender-less society sounded better in the author’s mind than it does in the book. Actually, almost everyone except for the narrator were capable of being male, female, or neuter. These people were neuter most of the time, but during their sexual cycle, they would become male or female, depending on various influences. People did not consistently go from neuter to a certain sex, either. An individual might be male during one sexual cycle, and female the next. There are rare individuals of this people who are always male or female, never neuter, and never changing sex. These individuals are known as perverts. 😃 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-with-a-character-of-undetermained-gender/480202.md?page=2)