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Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Difference between revisions
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Tends to go hand-in-hand with [[Bizarre Alien Biology]]. See also [[Cute Monster Girl]], [[One-Gender Race]], [[Humanoid Female Animal]], [[Mister Seahorse]], [[Ugly Guys Hot Daughter]] and [[Bee People]]. For a (relatively speaking) more subtle sex difference, see [[Tertiary Sexual Characteristics]].
Taken to the logical extreme, this leads to [[
Do also take note that this trope, in spite of its name, is [[Bizarre Sexual Polymorphism|not limited to species with binary sex systems]].
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* We reiterate: See [[Cute Monster Girl]].
* This also ''appears'' to be the case for the plants in ''[[Trigun]]'', with the girls in bulbs with the big strange eyes and all, and the only two guys walking around looking like blond men. But later manga material shows that Vash and Knives really are just mutants (probably throwbacks; the odds that the people who engineered the plants didn't use human DNA are vanishingly small), because some female independents come from space; the twins are just even weirder.
== Comics ==
* [[Green Lantern|The Zamarons and The Guardians of the Universe]]. The [http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/File:Zamarons_01.jpg Zamarons] are the female member of the race, and they look like human women. The [[wikipedia:File:Guardians by Igle.jpg|Guardians]] look like blue midget old men with white hair. They used to be identical, but the two races separated and continued to evolve ([[Lamarck Was Right|without reproducing....]]) into their present form. The Zamarons were later [[Retcon|retconned]] to have always [[wikipedia:File:Zamaron.jpg|been blue skinned, black eyed, hairless and almost noseless]] (think tall, blue, female [[The Greys|Roswell Greys]]). And they are still almost three times the size of the Guardians, so the trope still applies since the two are either the same species or offshoots of the same species, [[Depending on the Writer]].
** Even more confusingly, there are ''also'' female Guardians who look like Guardians. They originally came to be when Kyle Rayner (possessing at the time the godlike powers of Ion) recreated the Guardians years after Hal Jordan (at the time possessed by evil entity Paralax) wiped them all out. Of course in the current series all this is ignored and the guardians are shown in flashbacks to have been always both sexes. Don't ask where that means the Zamorans came from. [[Sarcasm Mode|Aren't retcons a wonderful thing]]?
* In Phil Foglio's ''[[XXXenophile]]'', Martian females are all gorgeous, buxom, four-armed women, and the males are tiny, squat, furry, mostly shapeless (and, incidentally, ''non-sapient'') hexapods with disproportionately large sex organs.
** This is then given an extra twist at the end of the story. After making "First Contact" with a human explorer, a giant [[Humongous Mecha|battlesuit]] bursts into the room- and the Martians assume that the giant robot must be a human female.
** Huldra (female [[All Trolls Are Different|trolls]]), in the story ''A Beautiful Tale'', were [[Super Strength|scary-powerful]] [[Cute Monster Girl|Cute Monster Girls]] with [[Cute Little Fangs|cute little]] ''[[Cute Little Fangs|shark teeth]]'' and long tufted prehensile tails. We never actually see a male troll... but a human character who [[Take Our Word for It|has]] infers that humans must not look dimorphic at ''all'' to trolls. (She's wrong; the huldra is fully aware that she's female and ''still'' wants to marry her. [[Les Yay|With all]] that [[Girls Love|that implies]].)
* The Badoon, a ''[[Marvel Comics]]'' alien race, have scaly reptilian males and fur-covered females. The females are also stronger and tougher, but less violent and cunning than the males, and the sexes don't interact except during their once-in-a-lifetime mating frenzy. The females also have [[Non-Mammal Mammaries]], despite laying eggs, though it's possible that they do suckle their young.
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== Films -- Live-Action ==
* The Devaronians of ''[[Star Wars]]'' (See picture [[media:200px-Devaronians.jpg|here]]). The males look like devils. Hairless, with pointed teeth and large triangular horns. Also kind of small. The females are tall, hornless, covered in thick fur, and look like humanoid lemurs.
** Some artists, especially the great Jan Duursema, draw female Devaronians that look a little like the lemurs shown above, and more like hornless versions of the males (or red skinned humans with black spots), as seen [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sian_Jeisel here].
*** Female Devaronians vary a lot, from the fairly hairless Sian Jeisel to [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Aven%27sai%27Ulrahk Aven'sai'Ulrahk]. [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Image:DarthMaladi.jpg Darth Maladi] looks like she was fairly hairy at one point (the picture does not show it clearly, but she sports impressive side burns) but the fact she sports Sith Tattoos indicate she might have undergone some epilation.
** Another ''[[Star Wars]]'' [[Expanded Universe]] example are the Cathar. Men look very much like saber-tooth lions who happen to be bipedal and have opposable thumbs. Women tend towards the [[Catgirl]] end of the scale.
*** Though, rather humorously, female Cathar looked just as animalistic as the males until they decided [[Catgirl]] Juhani in ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' was a Cathar. Perhaps explainable due to the two being subspecies of one race.
** Not to mention the Twi-leks, where the men range from "mildly ugly" to "monstrous" while the women are almost all attractive.
** Maybe a case of [[Beauty Equals Goodness]], seeing as nearly every male twi'lek seen is a corrupt evil bastard, while all females are good people or at least innocent slaves.
*** Probably the case, as looking at some "good" male Twi'leks, like [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shado_Vao Shado Vao], shows them to be good looking.
**** Unless of course it's Darth Talon, because [[Evil Is Sexy]]. Only for females, though. Which brings us full circle back to the [[Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism|dimorphism trope]].
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* Theodore Sturgeon's "The World Well Lost" centers on a pair of fugitive "[[Yaoi Guys|loverbirds]]" from the planet Dirbanu, which has shunned contact with Earth. The loverbirds are initially assumed to be a male and female, but they manage to explain, via some illustrations, that male and female Dirbanu are vastly different in appearance. In fact, the main reason why the Dirbanu dislike humans is due to homophobia, because they perceive all human relationships as being homosexual.
* The Cygnans in the novel ''The Jupiter Theft'' had human-sized females and insect-like parasitic males that were permanently attached to the females.
* ''[[Ringworld]]'': The Kzinti are [[Beast Man|catlike people]], and while the males are of humanlike intelligence, the females are not. The Puppeteers, who are already fairly strange looking, have three "sexes", one of which is non-sentient, technically a ''different species'', and serves as a host for a the embryo created by the two others.
** However, ancient Kzinti females ''were'' entirely sentient -- their current state is the result of intentional breeding for unintelligent women, with the help of genetic engineering technology. That's what happens when you uplift a bronze age species.
*** Strangely enough, Kzinti (in Man-Kzin Wars) consider the human sexes to be separate alien species, based on behavioral differences. A human female (Manrrett) is considered to have apparently faster reflexes, higher pain tolerance, and greater intellectual insight, than a human male (Man).
** Don't forget Grogs. The adult females are large furry cones with a mouth, which cannot move from the rock they attach themselves to. Young females are something like alien bulldogs, and young males are akin to chihuahua, neither of which are sentient. Adults telepathically control the young into breeding, and use the same telepathy to force prey animals to leap into their mouths, since giant immobile cones aren't good at hunting.
* In ''[[Flatland]]'', men are polygons (whose number of sides and symmetry indicates their social class) and all women are single lines-- hysterical, dangerously sharp, and not too bright. (The blatant sexism and classism is a satire of the attitudes that people actually had when it was written, as explained in a foreword added by Abbot when people missed this.) Other details of their physiology, including how they reproduce, are never explained.
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** In the sequel, ''[[The Scar]]'', there is a race of mosquito people, the Anophellii, whose women are vampiric winged creatures that have fang-like protuberances that extend from their mouths to penetrate their victims. The extremely passive males have mouths that are described as being like anuses. [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|Yeah ...]]
* The dominant race of the Empire of Azad in Iain M. Banks' ''[[The Culture/The Player of Games|The Culture]]'' has three sexes: One is male, the 'apex' has ovaries and "a kind of reversible vagina", and the female has a womb. The only non-sexual difference between the sexes is the [[Kick the Dog|eugenically bred-in]] lowered intelligence for non-apices. Sexism here sees females as breeders and domestics, males as workhorses and disposable soldiers.
* In [[Larry Niven]]'s Draco Tavern stories, all the Chirpsithra were female. There are males, but the Chirpsithra won't talk about them.
** In one of the stories, the Chirp males are revealed. {{spoiler|They're the "red demons", essentially mindless beasts.}}
* [[Jack Chalker]]'s ''[[Well World]]'', in all its glory. Too many examples to list.
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* Similar to Discworld, ''[[Lord of the Rings]]'' inverts the trope with the dwarf race, with it being stated that female dwarves are often mistaken for men due to being similar to the males in voice and appearance. As every male dwarf we encounter in the book has a prominent beard, some readers have interpreted this as meaning that the female dwarves even have beards.
** In the films this became a rather comedic scene where Gimli humorously explains this phenomenon to a human woman. The human woman (Eowyn) then turns around and looks at Aragorn to see if Gimli is pulling her leg, and he mouths, "It's the beards," and gestures at his chin.
** Confirmed in ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', which says "For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike."
* [[Bruce Coville]]'s ''[[My Teacher Is an Alien]]'' series mentions one species that requires "seven genders [sic] to produce an egg, and three more to hatch it".
** Averted with Kreeblim, a female alien who looks very different to the previously introduced male one, Broxholm. The human narrator initially assumes this trope is in play, but it turns out that they are of completely different species.
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* In ''[[The True Meaning of Smekday]]'' by Adam Rex, the heroine meets one of the Boov who are invading Earth and assumes he's a boy. When she thinks about this, she realizes that he could be a girl, or even that his species might not ''have'' boys and girls. When she asks, he tells her she's right, he ''is'' a boy...and then he proceeds to explain that his species has seven genders and "boy" is only one of them. They translate in English to: girl, boy, boygirl, girlboy, boyboygirl, and boyboyboyboy.
* In [[Frank Herbert]]'s ''[[Dune]]'' series, {{spoiler|Bene Tleilax females have been genetically altered, and serve as their axlotl tanks, basically giant wombs on life support}}.
* In ''[[Planet of Adventure|The Dirdir]]'' by [[Jack Vance]], the titular Dirdir race has a complex sexuality. A male will be born with one of twelve different sex organs, females one of fourteen. Each type matches one or more of the others. Mating is complicated by the great secrecy surrounding sex: no-one wants to be "outed" as a particular sex since there are a host of restrictive sexual stereotypes waiting to be applied.
* In the ''[[Star Trek]]'' novels by Diane Duane, there is one race, the ''Sulamid'' that is described as a bundle of bright purple tentacles about six to seven feet high, topped off with a sheaf of pink-stalked and tentacled eyes with triangular pupils and a purplish, "bloodshot" look. According to Dr. McCoy, they have twelve sexes, and ''all'' of them claim to be male, ''especially'' the ones that bear the children. The ''Enterprise'' has at least two of them among the crew, Mr. Athende in Maintenance and Lt. Meshav, from Data Management.
** And in the ''[[Star Trek Expanded Universe]]'', Andorians have four sexes, based on a throwaway line in ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' about Andorian marriages involving four people.
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* In Edgar Rice Burroughs's ''[[Tarzan]]'' series, the people of the lost city of Opar consist of a tribe of stunted, hairy, almost apelike men ruled over by a beautiful, entirely human-looking woman. It's implied that the inhabitants degenerated by mating with great apes, but somehow the degeneration didn't affect females the way it did males.
* In ''[[Man After Man]]'', one species of post-''Homo sapiens'' hominid developed the ability to hibernate. As males slept for most of the year, whereas females remained awake to nurse their young except in the depths of winter, the sedentary males wound up having a lifespan several times as long as that of the nomadic females.
** [[Dougal Dixon]]'s work has a lot of this, like the Matriarch Tinamou, Bardelot and the Common Pine Chuck from ''[[After Man a Zoology of The Future]]'' and the Dingum in the New Dinosaurs
* [[John Varley]]'s ''[[Gaea Trilogy]]'' features a dimorphic intelligent species in which the gas-inflated males are living blimps and the deep-diving females are organic submarines. They begin life as sexless, snakelike animals, then choose which adult sex to metamorphose into when their consciousness and race-memory emerges. Mating takes place at the ocean's surface, aside from which the two sexes never interact.
* In [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''[[Spectrum]]'', the main character meets several members of a race of [[Reptilians]] (according to the book cover, they look like [[Babylon 5|Narns]]). Later, his [[Love Interest]] explains that the non-sentient animals they travel with are actually their females, as she saw one of the aliens mating with one of the animals. That or [[But You Screw One Goat!|something else]]. The cause for this appears to be an ancient cataclysm that affected all known races, causing many of the bizarre biological and psychological features of the aliens.
* In ''[[The Steerswoman]]'' series, female demons are tall, spray acid from under their arms, and can make sculptures (out of a wax-like substance that their bodies produce). Male demons are much shorter and cannot make these sculptures. {{spoiler|Since these sculptures are how demons communicate, this is a major social barrier.}}
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* In ''[[Castle Falkenstein]]'' there ''are'' no female Dwarfs. Dwarfs always mate with Fairy women-if the child's male, it'll be a Dwarf like dad, otherwise, it'll be whatever sort of Fairy mom is. (There are male Fairies.) See [[Gender Equals Breed]].
* The ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' second edition ''Monster Manual'' implies that the [[Always Male]] satyrs and the [[Always Female]] nymphs are male and female of the same species.
** Let's talk about sphinxes shall we? There are technically four sexes: Androsphinxes (male human head) Gynopshinxes (female human head) Criosphinxes (ram's head) and hieracosphinxes (hawk's head) of respectively [[Lawful Good]], [[True Neutral]], [[Chaotic Neutral]] and [[Chaotic Evil]] alignment. Gynosphinxes are female, the others are [[Always Male]]. A gynosphinx mating with a hieraco- or criosphinx always produces hieraco- or criosphinxes as offspring, while if mating with an androsphinx they produce twins, one of which is a gynosphinx and the other an androsphinx. This means that, for obvious reasons, gynosphinxes don't like mating with crio- or hieracosphinxes much, which means that the other two reproduce pretty much entirely through ''rape''. Androsphinxes on the other hand don't like mating at all much, and it is noted that gynosphinxes will pay adventurers handsomely for the location of an androsphinx. In other words, ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' monsters are screwed up.
*** And very likely going extinct, if gynosphinxes aren't having enough daughters to replace themselves each generation.
** There are also medusae--complete with snake hair and petrifying gaze--and maedars--which look more-or-less like bald human men--which are the male and female of the same species. Since 4th Edition this dichotomy in dimorphism has lessened; while male medusas are still bald (and have a gaze that poisons anyone that it falls upon rather than a petrifying gaze) they are quite obviously recognizable as members of the same species as the females.
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** Averted with the Gnomes and Goblins, where the dimorphism is comparably normal. The male and female gnomes stand at the same height and have almost the same proportions. Goblins have the same posture, noses, ears, size and proportions; the only major diference is that the women have lighter and smoother skin.
** It should be noted, a lot of the dimorphism in playable races comes mostly from the playerbase complaining, Trolls, Tauren, and Blood elves were '''extremely''' close to one another in body shape in their early alpha models, granted, female trolls were ''terrifying'', Tauren women were...meh. and Blood elves were actually very good looking (The males became dimorphic because players were complaining about them being too skinny... [[Reality Is Unrealistic|nevermind the fact of all the human-like player races, they had the most normal body shape]]). We didn't know if this would have applied to female worgen, as at the time they weren't even playable in alpha, and the player responses were ''already'' negative.
** More or less averted with the Blood Elves. Both male and female have long, beautiful hair, similar postures, facial features/proportions, etc. The main difference is that the males are significantly more muscular and sometimes have facial hair (never more than a small goatee, though) and females have a mild form of [[Hartman Hips]] and a "thinner" face.
** And now we have Worgen: the men are big, bestial wolf-men; women look like characters out of a furry webcomic.
* Every species in ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'', except the Humans and the Liir (who are hermaphroditic), have some kind of this or another. The Hivers are [[Bee People]] so this is to be expected (not to mention that workers and warriors are sexless to begin with); Zuul females are approximately three times the size of the males and animalistic while the males are weedy [[Psychic Powers|psionic]] [[Mind Manipulation|masterminds]] with a specialty in [[Mind Rape]]; Tarka males that become fertile (which only about one in a thousand do, and which can only be accomplished by eating unfertilized Tarka eggs) approximately double in size; and Morrigi females are basically dragons while the males are more akin to birds.
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* In the now-long-defunct webcomic ''[http://evilish.pensandtales.com Evilish]'', mermaids have fish tails while mermen have legs with fins. This makes the former jealous because only the latter can leave the sea to venture on land.
* In ''[[The Mansion of E]]'', male Motihauls have tentacle-like growths on their heads, while the females look more like furless cats.
* In ''[[Draconia Chronicles]]'' while the Dragons and Tigers females that are most prominently featured are anthropomorphic, the males of their respective races are actual full feral formed [http://www.2wconline.net/draconia_033.html Dragons] and [http://www.2wconline.net/draconia_101.html Tigers]
* In ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'' one character is a barn-sized [[Giant Enemy Crab]] while her mate is the size of a large-ish lobster.
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