One-Gender Race: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:Namekians 2409.png|link=Dragon Ball|frame|As in...they don't ''have'' a gender.]]

 

Not a tribe, but an entire race or group of humanoids inexplicably made up of one sex. Male is usually the default, but females under the [[Cute Monster Girl]] rules are becoming more common and more obvious. The lack of the other sex is [[Hand Wave|handwaved]] briefly; Disaster wiping out the other half, or voluntary separation are two common reasons, although sometimes it seems they just don't appear.

 

{{examples}}

* The Namekians of ''[[Dragon Ball]]''. As described by [[Word of God|Akira Toriyama]], Namekians are designed after slugs, and in-show they reproduce asexually. That said, their secondary sexual characteristics are distinctly male (see the fellow in the moustache in the picture above).

* Angels{{spoiler|, Seeds of Life (Adam/Lilith), and probably the Evas themselves by extension}} in ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' are strongly implied to be hermaphrodites: the genome analyses shows that they have 24 chromosome pairs, which includes both Y and X sex chromosomes (meaning they have the karyotype XXYY).<ref>Probably counts as [[Art Major Biology]], considering the [[wikipedia:XXYY|known biological consequences of doubling up on sex chromosomes]]</ref> and that the very existence of paired Y chromosomes generates a bit of [[Fridge Logic]].

* The Kuja in ''[[One Piece]]'' may be this. It's not known for sure if they are merely a tribe on an isolated island, or if they are a race separate from regular humans. What makes them weird is that they do not have one-gendered reproduction, and they have to leave their island to get pregnant with a man. The child will then always turn out to be a girl. Furthermore, they seem to be better than other people to awaken and train their Haki, but appearance-wise they are similar to other human females.

 

* While this is not true in all ''[[Transformers]]'' comics, some (especially those written by Simon Furman) display the Transformer race as free of gender, with the only "females" being failed alterations or side projects. While this makes sense as they are sexless robots, it's noteworthy that they all look and act "male". Being as the fandom is male-directed, I think we can guess why.

* The Amazons in ''[[Wonder Woman]]'' avoided the question by making their race immortal.

* Leprechauns in ''[[Wormwood Gentleman Corpse]]'' are all male. {{spoiler|Even the queen.}} We aren't given details on how they reproduce.

 

 

* The Draks from the movie ''[[Enemy Mine]]'' are masculine ("I... am ''not''... ''a woman!''"), but reproduce asexually. The Barry B. Longyear books on which the movie was based stated that yes, Draks ''could'' have more than one child in their lifetime. The books also confirmed that Draks don't ''always'' reproduce asexually. And that ''falling in love'' could result in pregnancy all on its own.

* Closely related to this trope: pretty much all the Immortals shown in the ''[[Highlander]]'' movie ([[Fanon Discontinuity|notice that there is only one]]) are male. One theory is that since an Immortal must suffer a violent death to become... well, ''immortal'', and that in past times women were less likely to suffer violent deaths, there would be fewer female Immortals. At the same time, women were less likely to have sword training at the time of their death, and would find themselves more likely to lose a duel, even discounting any physical disadvantage. There are a number of female Immortals on the TV show, most of whom are [[Action Girl|skilled, tough and clever]] enough to have at least survived a few duels.

* The Hutts of ''[[Star Wars]]'' are hermaphroditic, but as a cultural thing, they alternate gender terminology between the periods when they are capable of reproduction and when they are not.

* While not exactly a single race or species, dinosaurs in [[Jurassic Park]] are all female to prevent uncontrolled reproduction. {{spoiler|Or that's what they thought.}}

* Possibly the Frost Giants from the movie version of [[Thor (film)|Thor]]. We only see the males but we do know that their king had a son with no indication of a mother.

 

* In Piers Anthony's ''[[Xanth]]'' novels: All-male satyrs mate with all-female dryads, and all-male fauns mate with all-female nymphs.

* Several examples in the ''[[Women of the Otherworld]]'' series. [[Witch Species|Witches]] are always female, and sorcerers always male, and both reproduce with humans. These are explicitly stated not to be male and female version of the same race. ( {{spoiler|Until Savannah came along, that is. There are some hints that the characters may be mistaken about that "not the same race" idea...}}) The werewolf gene only passes down to sons. Werewolves reproduce with human women, but their daughters are human. Lycanthropy can be caught via infection/attack, though until recently the werewolves thought no woman could survive the Change. An infected werewolf will pass the trait down to his sons. At the end of ''Broken'', {{spoiler|Elena, the first and only female werewolf, gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl. Both of them are lycanthropes, though they will not change until [[Puberty Superpower|adolescence]]. Since their father is also a werewolf, it is unclear whether sons inherit from fathers and daughters from mothers, or if mothers pass lycanthropy down to both genders.}}

** The Aes Sedai - men and women are born with The Power, but since Saidin was tainted by the Dark One at the end of (and in large part ''causing'' the end of) the Age of Legends, male Aes Sedai have been out of fashion - as in, hunted down and Gentled by the Red Ajah, out of fashion. Which makes them suicidally apathetic. Turns out, though, that the practice effectively culled the magic property from humans, in a pseudo-genetic way. Awkward.

* Justified with the Confessors in Terry Goodkind's ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series, since male Confessors don't have the recovery time after using their powers that their female counterparts have, they turn into absolute tyrants. {{spoiler|Male infanticide has been practiced since the last male Confessor was killed, and YMMV on whether it's made more or less horrifying by the Confessed lovers of Confessors having to do the killing.}}

 

* ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' has the J'Naii, a species of androgynous/hermaphroditic beings. However, one identifies far more as female than male, and falls in love with Riker. As she explains, she's ''always'' felt more female than male, and is certain there are members of her race who feel the same way, or are more male than female. The ruling J'Naii, however, cannot accept this, and so have her "re-educated". The episode, of course, is a "[[Anvilicious|thinly-veiled]]" [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|metaphor for acceptance of homosexuality and transgender identities]]. (Or, at least, [[Broken Aesop|it's meant to be]].)

** Tribbles. One sex, seemingly born pregnant, according to Dr. McCoy ("Seems to be a helluva time saver!").

* On the new ''[[Outer Limits]]'' series, one of the episodes involved an all female post-apocalyptic society in which almost all males were wiped off the planet due to a scourge virus. They decided to not reintroduce the remaining men into the population because every time they took one out of stasis, it caused conflict in the society because the men pushed limits that the elders were not comfortable with, like building generators or stealing from other towns. Sucks to be male.

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'': All the pak'ma'ra you see are male ... like a [[Gender Flip]] of the real life deep sea-angler fish, the female of their species is a limbless symbiote. That, as it turns out, is what the hump that some (but not all) of their species possess is. A pak'ma'ra without a hump should be considered 'single'.

 

* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: [[Greek Mythology]] has many humanoid beings that appear to be of a single sex, such as female harpies, male satyrs, male centaurs, and female nymphs (which are minor deities that can interbreed with human men). This has inspired many of the other examples on this page. In late Classical works there were female centaurs and satyrs, but these are unusual cases; kentaurides (the female centaurs) were barely spoken of in ancient Greek literature and only one example, Hylonome, is mentioned by name, while the satyresses (the female satyrs) are [[Canon Immigrant]]s from late 15th/early 16th century poems and art, and didn't exist at all in the ancient works.

** Originally satyrs were depicted as human men with beards, bald foreheads, pug noses, pointed ears, horses tails, and constant erections. Technically, only the tails and ears set them apart from standard image of a 'wild man'.

** [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Centaurides#:~:text=The%20Centaurides%20(Ancient%20Greek%3A%20%CE%9A%CE%B5%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%B1%CF%85%CF%81%CE%AF%CE%B4%CE%B5%CF%82,Greek%20art%20and%20Roman%20mosaics. With centaurs,] it was [[Depending on the Writer]]. The poet Philostratus the Elder gave a brief description of "Centaurides" in the story ''[[Imagines]]'', and [[Ovid]] mentioned one named ''[[Metamorphoses]]'' named Hylonome, in a passage where she was mourning her mate Cyllarus who had perished at the battle against the Lapiths occurred after Pirithous' wedding. [[Shakespeare]] himself briefly mentioned them in ''[[King Lear]]''.

 

* In the paper-and-pencil RPG ''[[Castle Falkenstein]]'', Dwarves ''are'', in fact, exclusively male. They mate with the females of other Faerie-kind; male offspring are Dwarves, while female offspring are the same kind of Fae as their mother.

* In ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'':

* The Medusas of ''[[GURPS Banestorm]]'' are all female. They mate (carefully) with humans, elves, and orcs' males to produce offspring. The kids are usually medusas, but some are boys with a recessive medusa trait.

** [[Word of God]] says that the world of the Banestorm also has ''Euryales,'' a small all-female reptilian race, whose eggs are fertilized by eating their dead; and ''Sthenos,'' a much bigger all-female reptilian race, produced by a virus that infects human (or orc or elf) women, and spontaneously transforms them if they are violently injured.

 

** 'How do you know you've never seen a female dwarf? Eh? Eh?'

** Similarly, the Harpies appear to be this, as all 3 humanoid forms are female, and while never directly explained it's implied the griffins that accompany them could possibly be their males.

** Half Giants are all male, though they can procreate with other races. A quest explains that {{spoiler|they originated when a group of Agallan giants betrayed their kin and for this they and their offspring were cursed to be small. There were no women among the traitors, so all Half-Giants are male.}}

* Mithra and Galka in ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'', where players can create only female and male types, respectively. The Galka reproduce by reincarnation, with it suggesting that the number of Galka in the world is a fixed figure (or decreasing, if being killed before their time prevents reincarnation). Even with no need for sexuality, the Galka still seem to fall in love with females of other races. Among the [[Catgirl|Mithra]], males are rare and as a result, have been forced into protective status (probably not too enviable a position, with them most likely being treated as little more than objects and forced into passionless sex for reproduction only on a constant basis). Doesn't really change that ''Wings of the Goddess'' (which takes place during the Crystal War) just ignores this and keeps the mostly female motif present in the modern day (giving us ''one'' token male that just seems to exist as Square telling people to stop asking questions about the males at conventions).

* Parodied with the Dreamboat Kingdom in ''[[Xolga and Mr. Toko]]''. For our protagonists, said kingdom is composed exclusively of males, but the Dreamboaters claim that they ''do'' have different sexes, is just that their females are [[Bishounen]]-[[Uke|looking]] while their males look [[The Bear|muscular]] but [[Camp Gay|very]] [[Macho Camp|campy]]. Not that Xolga is entirely convinced about it.

 

* For a very long time, the webcomic ''[[Freefall]]'' left it apparent that all of the robots (whose enormous population forms a major part of the cast) were considered male by default. Only in strip ''[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1500/fc01403.htm # 1,403]'' does the question finally come up. Disappointingly, the explanation is as stereotypical as it is silly: the robots determine themselves to be male or female based on how much ''talking'' they do.

* The Uryuoms in ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'' don't normally have genders, per se; any two Uryuoms can [[Bizarre Alien Biology|form an egg]] together, and they can use DNA from ''any'' living species to fertilize it, including [[Half-Human Hybrid|Half Human Hybrids]] of course (surprisingly, they ''aren't'' [[The Virus]], being relatively benign and somewhat whimsical). Those living on worlds where gendered species are dominant will generally adapt to the local customs; on Earth, they generally choose their own gender at some point, though some have one chosen for them by their parents.

** If you count unit classifications as racially distinct (this world runs on tabletop strategy physics), there are known all female-vampire subraces, although there are also regular female vampires.

 

** And apparently if you try to get into the contests or "Neopian Times" (weekly site newspaper) with a story about a male faerie, it will get rejected solely because of that - the staff doesn't seem to want to endorse any mention of male faeries at all.

 

* While not a concrete example, female [[Transformers]] are exceedingly rare. In fact, in some continuities, they don't exist at all. Why a mechanical race even has genders is a frequently-debated topic, as are... how to put this delicately?... [[Slash Fic|other questions related to gender functions]].

** In the Generation One cartoon, the Transformers were built as civilian and military hardware by the Quintessons for sale to other species. Though the Quints themselves are a One-Gender Race, they know and understand genders and built their products to appeal to their clients. Another thing to note is that for the longest time there were only female Autobots, the civilian line. Female Decepticons (the military line) were unheard of, and we only began seeing female villains in the sequel series ''[[Beast Wars]]'' (Blackarachnia) and ''[[Beast Machines]]'' (Strika). Both of whom might not have been Autobots or their descendants: Blackarachnia was a reprogrammed Maximal (Autobot descendant), and Strika is a revived spark, of unknown original side.

* ''[[My Little Pony]]'' actually made ''more'' sense without the "big brother ponies," when the ponies appeared to be a One-Gender Race that reproduces via parthenogenesis, resulting in babies physically identical to their mothers.

** According to one of the comics, little ponies reproduce by looking in a [[Magic Mirror]] and wishing for a baby, hence the identical babies. The real question is, where did the babies without an adult counterpart come from? The "old way," maybe?

* The Amazonians from ''[[Futurama]]'', who ousted their male population under the compulsion of the mysterious Femputer. The other men died from [[Out with a Bang|crushed pelvises from Snu-Snu]].

* The rolling stock from ''[[Thomas the Tank Engine]]''. Passenger cars such as Annie and Clarabel, Henrietta, and Old Slow Coach are always female, while freight cars such as the Troublesome Trucks, the Spiteful Brakevan, Hector the hopper car, and Rocky the repair crane are always male.

* ''Star Wars: Droids: The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO'' just ''might'' have ''one'' female droid among the entire cast. The droid is pink, but the series consistently averted the [[Pink Means Feminine]] rule. If the droid isn't female, then all robots in this cartoon are male.

 

* The Teiidae family of whiptail lizards includes many species that are either all-female or nearly so. This is made due to parthenogenesis induced by sexual stimulation. Yep, hot girl on girl action producing babies. How wicked can nature ''not'' be?

** There are also lizard species that require sperm to reproduce, so they seduce men of other species.