Everybody Wants the Hermaphrodite

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Hermaphrodite equivalent to Even the Guys Want Him and Even the Girls Want Her.

When a Hermaphrodite (or intersexual) character is so attractive that they inspire worship and desire in both males and females. Even those who are normally 100% turned off by the idea of dating/being in love/having sex with a person who possesses same-sex "plumbing", if not explicitly abhoring hermaphrodites / intersexes want them.

There may be some overlap with Even the Guys Want Him or Even the Girls Want Her if they appear to be a fe/male with extra bits. Shapeshifters count as Attractive Bent Gender instead unless one alternate form is a bona-fide Hermaphrodite.

Cousin of the Ladette, Bifauxnen, and Dude Looks Like a Lady. Usually plays up the sexy side of Ambiguous Gender.

No real life examples, please; since asexuality exists in Real Life, there will never be a person who Everybody Wants.

Examples of Everybody Wants the Hermaphrodite include:

Anime and Manga

  • Boku no Futatsu no Tsubasa's title character, who looked like a boy as a child, but grew up to become a very gorgeous and buxom "woman". Turns out she's an alien and being intersex is normal for them.
  • Yoite from Nabari no Ou.
  • "Afterschool Nightmare" was basically how a gender-confused intersex man (female on the bottom, male the top up) Mashiro was unfortunate enough to have unwanted romantic relationships between a Broken Bird, who due to a rape in her childhood, has a very strong Does Not Like Men personality before meeting the main character, and a male student who is intent on trying to protect him/her after discovering his/her gender, whose big on Stalker Crush and a small hint of rapist undertones. Oh, and did I mention he/she and all the other students must go to the world of dreams in their school to complete a game so they can ascend to some ambiguous fate in order to graduate while taking different forms representing their deepest part of their souls, with Mashiro's form taking the form of himself but wearing a female school uniform, unable to hide his gender identity to the other transformed students?
  • Essentially the gist of some works in the "futanari" subgenre of hentai. The main character's nearly always a girl with a big penis (male futa exist but they're much more rare), and, roughly 90% of the time, Even the Girls Want Her because of the big dick energy she gives off. Cue the futa filling non-futa(s) with gobs of cum.

Comic Books

  • Shaalis, the Sacred Androgyne from Michael Manning's comics (The Spider Garden, Hydrophidian, In a Metal Web). Hir body is depicted with two sets of genitals, BTW.
  • Desire from Sandman, the embodiment of the idea of desire, is implied to be every sex at once, possibly based on whatever the viewer wants to see. Nobody ever calls Desire a hermaphrodite or intersex, presumably because even those labels would be too restrictive. People tend to talk about Desire with paired terms like "Sister-Brother" and careful avoidance of pronouns.

Film

Literature

  • Earth's Children: Hermaphrodites (not that they're called that) are drawn to being mamuti (medicine people) statistically moreso than average, since they're already marked as "special" by the Great Earth Mother; and they're considered quite attractive by both sexes.
  • The classical Swedish novel The Queen's Tiara by Carl Jonas Love Almquist (also made into a 1970 movie with the title Tintomara) is about a beautiful hermaphrodite, Azouras Lazuli Tintomara, who becomes involved in a love pentagon. It ends in death or madness for all involved.
  • The Cornelius Chronicles: Cornelius Brunner, the bodily fusion of Jerry Cornelius and Miss Brunner and the proclaimed Messiah of the Age of Science, is this in spades.
  • Okoya in The Star Shards Chronicles. In the third book, s/he makes enough money selling hirself in the streets of Amsterdam for three days to buy first class plane tickets and rent a room at a luxury resort.

Music

  • Tila Tequila was rumored to be a hermaphrodite for awhile. This actually bolstered her fame as more people wanted to have sex with her.
  • There are faked videos of Lady Gaga that supposedly show she has male genitalia. It hasn't done anything to detract from her popularity.

Oral Tradition, Myths and Legends

  • The Ancient Greeks believed in Hermaphroditus; a being with an ideal combination of male and female traits, child of the beautiful gods Hermes and Aphrodite. Yep, everyone wants hir!
  • Hindu have the Hijras, a priest class. Having sex with them is considered normal or even an honor.
  • Older Than Dirt: The priestesses of Ishtar: intersex or transsexual individuals who dressed as the goddess. Having sex with this "avatar of Ishtar" was considered the sacred duty of both men and women.

Tabletop Games

  • This is one of the "gifts" that Slaanesh can apply to its followers in Warhammer 40,000.
    • Heck, Slaanesh qualifies as well; alternately called "The Prince of Excess" and "She Who Thirsts", Slaanesh is either portrayed as half male/half female (split down the middle, his/her left side is female) or androgynous but stunningly beautiful. Kind of helps being the Chaos God of decadence, his... her... its very presence puts out a psychic/pheromone blanket of utter bliss, and you will very happily be chanting its name as it invokes all the horrors that a living embodiment of Squick, Fetish Fuel and Sense Freakness can give.
    • Unfortunately Matt Ward has Jossed this more recently, making her male from the waist down, female from the waist up, and having a horrible crab-thing for a head.
  • In Dungeons & Dragons, Invoked by Malcanthet, queen of Succubi, using a combination of shapeshifting, spells, and phermones. Some people are aware that she is a hermaphrodite and seek her out because of it.

Web Original

  • In Furry Fandom, there are many Fan Service characters that are hermaphrodites.
  • Doug Winger is famous for his "Girls", Pup and Pandora, as well as his Minevera Mink look-alike. He seldom is asked to draw single-sex characters because people like his hermaphrodites so much.
  • Very, very common with Chakats and their mono-gendered lovers. At most they tend to be momentarily surprised. Possibly because of their mild empathic abilities.