Single-Gender Races

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness has a single sex species. But sex is biological.

No, it's made very clear that Gethenians are androgynous most of the time but take on fairly conventional binary sex roles during their monthly estrous, though it can be either sex for any given person each time.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Proteus

In my Vergilius setting (fantastic late-Republican Rome), the minotaurs from Crete were renowned pirates... but were only male. They mated with captives and slaves, though that ownership / access was a limited commodity and thus an indicator of status. Male children were born as minotaurs; female children were fully human, but sterile.

One prominent NPC, Mnisthea, daughter of the warlord of Kato Zakro, was unusual as a daughter nevertheless given responsibility and prominent place. The fate of most other such children was generally understood but left unspoken at the gaming table.

PCs also heard of minotaurs on Crete who would become courtesans or companions, even carving their horns scrimshaw-style to indicate an abandonment of attempts at social or physical dominance.

It was an odd culture, and one I never got to develop fully before life scattered the players to the four winds.

Minbari religious caste seem to carve bones but that has nothing to do with gender or the status a given gender has.

[RyanW]

A fantasy post-apocalypse setting I cooked up had magically mutated/uplifted animals, one of which was the all-female New Mexico whiptail.

[dcarson]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

One possibility is a race that regularly alters biological sex. They have no concept of gender because everyone plays each role in turn.

Or they have very strong gender roles since you are not going to be in it forever.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Or they have very strong gender roles since you are not going to be in it forever.

I had elves that did that once ... and it was part of the reason that they were going extinct: most of their population had become male due to the pressures of extended conflict and it had played hob with their already low birthrate.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

No, it's made very clear that Gethenians are androgynous most of the time but take on fairly conventional binary sex roles during their monthly estrous, though it can be either sex for any given person each time.

Which means there aren't per se men and women. Gethenians can be either so that functions as being one sex.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

http://humoncomics.com/side-blotched-lizard

Side-blotched lizards have three types of males. Sexually dymorphate two and you have a single species producing two "single-gendered" races and one non.