Time to settle the greatest mystery in the OOTSverse for once and for all! Notice there’s no option for “I don’t know” or “The question is meaningless, because the Giant will never tell us.” Give it your best (worst) guess!
For extra credit, tell us what Inkarius is as well.
Currently, I’m leaning towards both V and mate to be females, and both of them have one child, possibly by the same man. I can’t give any cites, it’s just a feeling that I have. I have not participated in the poll yet, and I doubt that I will, unless I get more info.
My default setting for V is “male”. It’s just the gender I register on first glimpse.
Is Schrodinger’s cat dead or alive?
What I mean is that it will never, ever be resolved, because that would neither be funny nor serve any storytelling purpose. And as it will never be resolved, for all effects and purposes V is male and female, both and neither, and always will be.
In other words: V doesn’t care about gender. Why should we?
In the Oots books the author comments that he didn’t initially intent for V’s gender to be a mystery. I suspect that a careful review of the earliest comics would reveal a default pronoun or two. I’ve never done this, because I enjoy the ambiguity.
V DOES care to not state gender, though. In the prequel On the Origin of PCs, V fills out an application form, and carefully places an ink blot where the gender blank is. When Roy calls this to V’s attention, V claims that it was a quill malfunction, and suggests using owl feathers in the future. When Roy asks V to write in the correct answer next to the blot, V tells him to feel free to put it in himself, if it’s that crucial. Roy decides that it’s really not that important.
In other words, V prefers to keep the knowledge of his/her/its sex to him/her/its self.
V is drawn from a male template, that is, females definitely have waists, hips, and breasts, and their bodies are drawn in curved lines, while males are drawn with straight lines in their rectangular bodies.
I voted “female”, if only because, a number of years ago, Rich had a few guest strips…in one of those, the artist did an anime-style V who stripped off to take a bath…and he/she was hot. 
I concur.In #009, Roy calls Vaarsuvius “V-Man” and in #020 Roy tells Vaarsuvius “It’s all you, dog.” which does not seem to be things Roy would say to a woman. And while Roy was worried about a sexual harassment lawsuit if Haley saw Elan naked, he had no concern about Vaarsuvius seeing him. So in the early strips, Roy apparently treats Vaarsuvius like a man.
That’s why.
Vaarsuvius’s name is clearly modeled on classical Roman names. Roman names ending in -us are invariably male. Quod erat demonstrandum. Obviously, the same goes for Inkarius (that’s V’s spouse, I take it?).
While Burlew insists on ambiguity, each character has decided for themself what V’s gender is and they refer to V by that. Nobody ever brings it up or corrects anyone else, so V might be referred to as male and as female in the same conversation, even the same panel, with nobody batting an eye.
For me, my first impulse was female, mainly because of the ponytail. But with the Fair Folk, who ultimately knows? [i.e. Secondary sexual characteristics may not be reliable markers] So I went with option 3, as that seems to be the author’s intention.
Burlew does that now. He has said he didn’t do it at the beginning of the strip because he did not originally intend for Vaarsuvius to be ambigously gendered.
Not my idea. I wish I remember who said this, so I could give credit:
Yeah, that’s pretty much my thinking, too. If it had been an option, I would’ve voted for #4, “Unknown, purposefully ambiguous, and very unlikely ever to be reliably disclosed.”
I’ve got proof that she’s female. In that comic the party is listening in on her and Haley through the walls and they hear V say “I do, actually, but they are not nearly so large”, believing that she’s referring to her breasts. If V was a dude, I think they’d be more than a little freaked out hearing him talk about his boobs.
But the idea is that none of the others know V’s gender either.
I was glancing through Don’t Split the Party, and the three ambitious hooded nasties who did a Soul Splice are watching V…and they refer to V as she. This isn’t iron-clad proof, but I think that entities that do soul splicing might know something about their victims.
I guess Burlew is just going to have to throw us a little fanservice here. We’ve already seen Haley in the tub in On the Origin of PCs.
These two were going to be my references.
For my more personal tastes, I would point out that a second female is needed to balance out the five-man band. You need both the chick, and some girl who is not defined by her femininity. V is perfect for that.
Another reason I was going to give is the same thing I said about Carol Stream–My experience is that females tend to be more likely to care about the whole “not revealing their preferred gender” thing. I can’t for the life of me explain why, but that just seems to be the case.
The final is that every person I know that uses V as an avatar is female.
Still, I must point out that being referred to as she makes her female in gender, not in sex. I could still see V as being transgendered. And I must admit that, in my mind, I go back and forth sometimes, despite what I believe the evidence shows. For some reason, I often hear her voice as a British effete male, when I don’t hear it as Raven from Teen Titans.
Maybe not, but they assume V’s male, as when the bard is running around naked and it’s mentioned that even V was interested in his sword, the comment was “I alwayssuspected…” which could only make sense as a gay reference. Doesn’t mean they KNOW V’s male, but they’re assuming V is. At that point, anyway.