One-Gender Race: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

== Anime ==

* 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).[[hottip:*:Probably counts as [[Art Major Biology]], considering the [[wikipedia:XXYY|known biological consequences of doubling up on sex chromosomes]] and that the very existence of paired Y chromosomes generates a bit of [[Fridge Logic]].

* Fairies in ''[[Maze Megaburst Space]]'' are all female, and reproduce with human men on the one day when they're human-sized.

* The Taraks (males) and the Mejare (females) from ''[[Vandread]]''; both races (Humans that were deliberately separated by gender) reproduced by couples mixing DNA to create [[Designer Babies]].

* The Zentradi in ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'' (and the first part of ''[[Robotech]]'') segregate themselves into single-sex units and reproduce by cloning, and in [[The Movie]], they're even at war with one another.

* The Koorime, or ice maidens, from ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]''. They usually give birth to an identical daughter every 100 years via parthenogenesis; however, {{spoiler|they can have sex with various male demons, and, in that case, a boy will be born who looks like his father. This boy is called a "forbidden child," and will get dropped off of the floating island where the Koorime live, in the hopes that the fall will kill them. Hiei is just such a child}}.

* More in the Manga: ''[[Pet Shop of Horrors]]'', {{spoiler|with the Count and family}}. Fandom makes it a business of figuring out how they truly do it...

* The titular [[Sekirei]] are overwhelmingly female (only 2 male ones have been seen so far, 3 if you count Homura).

* The Mazone in ''[[Captain Harlock]]''.

 

== Card Games ==

** The card art only shows females ([[Most Writers Are Male|Most Artists Are Male]]). The art directors once required an artist to redraw a card after he turned in a painting of a male angel. According to the books and text materials, there are plenty of male angels (Serra, at least, made sure of it for her realm).

 

* The Guardians of the Universe in ''[[Green Lantern]]'' comics were all male, because the females of their race thought the whole "guardians of the universe" project was misguided, and took themselves off to found an all-female society somewhere else. (They were [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]], and practically immortal, so the continuation of their race was not a consideration.) When they died and were resurrected by Kyle Rayner, he intentionally made half of them female, to give them back that perspective(it didn't really work).

* The fairy-like Preservers in Wendy & Richard Pini's comic book series ''[[Elf Quest]]'' [[No Biological Sex|are neither male nor female]]. Surprisingly, all the characters who encounter any given Preserver seem to know automatically use the gender-neutral "it". The one known exception is from futuristic series ''The Rebels'' which has an apparently female elf-sized Preserver named Rosie, who has some percentage of human DNA because the Preserver DNA was not complete enough to clone a real Preserver.

* In a story written by [[Alan Moore]], a female alien anthropologist discovers another alien race composed entirely of males, with a tribal culture. When she describes the fact that it's possible to procreate with a female like her, the young man who acts as her translator is eager to try it (and she's fairly receptive, too). Unfortunately, the way the beings of this species procreate is by [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|stabbing a giant snail-like creature in a special purple membrane]], which causes babies of the tribe's species to bud off the snail (and also increases the numbers of the snails). The young man then brags to one of his elders that he's finally become strong enough to perform the ritual, the proof being outside his hut: a spear covered in red gore, as opposed to the purplish ichor of the snails.

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

== Film ==

* 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.

* A Garry Shandling vehicle named ''What Planet Are YOU From?'', starring the comedian as a member of an all-male alien race [[Mars Needs Women|sent to Earth to procure a mate]].

* 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.

* Boogymen in the Disney Channel movie, ''Don't Look Under The Bed''. This is reveled at the end when the Boogeyman {{spoiler|turns into Frances' imaginary friend, Zoe who insists on using boogeyperson}}

* 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.}}

 

 

== Literature ==

* 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.}}

* [[Lois McMaster Bujold]] has a male one of these in ''[[Vorkosigan Saga|Ethan of Athos]]'', where [[Designer Babies]] are created from a bank of ovarian tissue from the initial settlement of the colony. Several generations later, the plot culminates in a representative (Ethan) leaving the planet for the first time, meeting women and the awkward diplomatic question, ''"Would you care to donate an ovary to Athos?"''

* Jack Chalker's Well World novels (specifically "Quest for the Well of Souls") include, among 779 alien species (not counting inorganic life), the Yaxa, a race of giant scary ''butterflies'' of whom only females are sentient. (This helped make up for the presence of a different insect species in the first book which were severely patriarchal. Oh, and there are also the plant-people of Czill, who are completely genderless and reproduce by budding. He likes to play with these issues a lot.)

* Joan Slonczewski's [[A Door Into Ocean]] is about an all female race on an ocean world Shora who reproduce by parthenogenesis. They are master genetic engineers.

* In ''[[Marion Zimmer Bradley]]'s Fantasy Magazine'', there's a story about a race of women who reproduce by parthenogenesis. They can interbreed with male humans, losing their "family quirk", and they think of themselves as humans. Or at least they did until {{spoiler|one of them tried to give birth to a Vulcan son and almost succeeded.}}

* In the ''[[Discworld]]'' series, this is taken to the point where there is no obvious physical difference between male and female Dwarfs; for example, dwarfs of both sexes tend to have long beards. Socially-speaking, there is no issue of gender in Dwarf society, and all dwarfs are treated the same. However, this has the added side-effect of making even ''talking'' about a dwarf's individual sex obscene, and female dwarfs are forced to remain closeted as males. This leads to an interesting situation where female dwarfs begin campaigning to be treated ''differently''. Openly admitting to being female, wearing a skirt, or even ''using female pronouns'' is subversive, but not even the most radical of them would dream of losing the iron helmets or shaving their beards.

** Even dwarfs can't tell the difference; dwarfish courtship mainly involves finding out, very tactfully, what sex the other dwarf is; once they're married, it's just sort of assumed the married dwarfs know which is which (or even if they ''are'' different sexes). Even pregnancy isn't obvious, probably due to the many layers of leather and chainmail that all dwarfs wear.

* ''[[Perdido Street Station]]'' and other Bas-Lag works feature the khepri, an insectoid race who appear to be solely female. That's because the males are barely-sentient grubs who are kept around by the females for breeding purposes.

* The Clayr of Garth Nix's [[Old Kingdom]] trilogy are mostly female. Male Clayr are mentioned in terms of their scarcity, but we never meet any. Children are typically fathered by casual lovers chosen from among the visitors to the Clayr's Glacier.

* Part of Joanna Russ's novel ''The Female Man'' is set on "Whileaway", an utopian alternate future Earth where the entire male population was killed off by a plague generations earlier, though it's implied in a couple places that the men may have in fact been killed off by the women in a world wide war of the sexes. She explores what the ramifications of a single-sex society might actually be (well, when she's not in the middle of an [[Author Filibuster]] about how women are oppressed): on Whileaway, for instance, the greatest sexual taboo is cross-generation, getting involved with someone old enough to be your parent or your child.

* A male example is used in the [[Cordwainer Smith]] story ''The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzal'' - they were created because all the females were dying out. [[Mister Seahorse|Oh, and they reproduce... the normal way.]]

* In Rob Thurman's books featuring the Leandros brothers, pucks are a male-only species. They boink pretty much [[Anything That Moves]], but how they reproduce is left a mystery.

** Since all pucks look ''identical'', it's been implied that this is some kind of magical cloning (one character remarks that pucks "only consider [themselves] worth reproducing with".

** The process is elaborated upon in ''Doubletake''. Every thousand years or so all the Pucks meet up, count how many remain and generally catch up before, naturally, engaging in an orgy with the only creatures not terrified of that many Pucks in one place. They then choose a number of Pucks by lot and order them to reproduce, which consists of somehow generating a clone completely identical to themselves, including all memory and experience. The cloning is strictly mandated, a death sentence the alternative.

* In the novella ''Houston, Houston, Do You Read?'', {{spoiler|astronauts from the present (all male) accidentally travel through time to the future Earth. Eventually, they discover that plague wiped out most human life, including all the males. The surviving women reproduce through cloning and have no interest in bringing back males, though they do want some genetic material to produce a few more templates to clone ''from''. They also have no intention of allowing the men to disrupt their way of life, and aren't going to keep them prisoner; much more humane to simply kill them.}} It was Tiptree, what do you want?

{{quote| "No Man nor Elf has ever seen a beardless Dwarf unless he were shaven in mockery, and would then be more like to die of shame than of many other hurts that to us would seem more deadly. For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike." - from ''The History of Middle-earth Vol XI, The War of the Jewels''}}

** Lampshaded in the movie:

* Used painfully (and deconstructed) in ''[[Tortall Universe|The Realms of the Gods]]'' by [[Tamora Pierce]]. All 'Immortals'--species which cannot die of old age or disease, but ''can'' be killed by physical or magical means--are born in the Divine Realms as the product of human dreams or nightmares. One such species, the Tauros, is essentially a race of minotaurs who exist to rape and kill women. Daine, the protagonist of the story, asks the god of the 'duckmoles' (platypuses), if there even ''are'' any female Tauroses. When he says no, she gets angry and basically says 'well no wonder they attack human women all the time! That's all they know to do without women of their own who can handle it!' Broadfoot, the duckmole, muses that she's right, and 'Someone should consult the Greater Gods about this...'

* The Draconians from the ''[[Dragonlance]]'' novels are all male in the earlier works. This is explained and expanded on in a later book, ''[[The Doom Brigade]]''. Very short version, Draconians were a created race, and the creators decided at the last minute not to allow the draconians to breed, and put the eggs containing the female draconians into magical stasis. They were eventually freed.

* The short story The Matter of Seggri in the collection 'The Birthday of the World' by Ursula K. Le Guin dealt with a planet where males are a rarity, with something like 12 females for every one male. The story subverts this somewhat by being specifically about the anthropological ramifications of having a species like that, and how it affects the planet. It is written like a study.

* In ''The Faery Rebels'' faeries are an all-female race, who leave an egg containing a new faery when they die. Later in the book, it is revealed that {{spoiler|this isn't supposed to happen. Faeries would marry human men and have their children, then bring back any daughters they had the be raised in the wyld as faeries.}}

 

== Live Action TV ==

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

** The Drahvins, from the William Hartnell story "Galaxy Four" are a seemingly all-female race. They use the few males only for breeding. Their commanders are naturally born and their footsoldiers are clones.

** The Carrionites are all female from what we see of them, and can apparently engage in [[Homosexual Reproduction]].

** The only race on the Dalek's home planet Skaro that definitely has two genders is the Thals. We've never seen a female Kaled.

** TARDISes apparently. {{spoiler|TARDIS herself said that the planet was filled with the corpses of her sisters.}} [[Fridge Brilliance|Of course vehicles are female.]]

** [http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Captive_Pursuit_%28episode%29 Word of God] states the Tosk were created by the Dominion as a gift to the race that hunts them.

* 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.

* The centaurs in [[Xena: Warrior Princess]] are all male. They reproduce with human women.

 

** According to one supplement, the the Gene-Seed—the stuff that makes [[Space Marines]] grow to nine-foot tall poison-drinking, car-lifting supermen—is [[Artistic License Biology|only compatible with male genetics]].

* ''[[Transhuman Space]]'' features a few [[Straw Feminist]] geneticists trying to engineer an [[One-Gender Race|all-female human subrace]].

* While not technically a "race" in the usual sense, [[Eclipse Phase]]'s combat-tailored [[Amazon Brigade|Fury]] biomorphs are almost all female, in order to reduce unnecessary aggression.

* The Lizardmen in ''[[Warhammer]]'' are all males; they are born from spawning pools throughout Lustria, and were initially created by the Old Ones. Their war with the Skaven began when the Skaven poisoned one city's spawning pools.

* [[Dungeon Siege|Dungeon Siege II]] has the Dryads. Quoted from page 40 of the manual, "These creatures resembled Human females in many ways. (If there are male Dryads, they keep themselves well-hidden. None has ever been seen." Also, "No one knows how they reproduce (any enquiries on the subject are met with hostile silence)".

** 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.}}

** Later, an all-female [[Always Chaotic Evil|enemy race]] called the Lamia was added to the game, though their status as a [[One-Gender Race]] may be [[Justified Trope|justified]] by the insinuation that they're actually an [[Biological Mashup|artificial race]] used as biological weapons...and because the mythical creatures they're based on are always depicted as female.

** Officially there are male Viera, though none have appeared in any games. According to canon sources, they live separate from the female half of the species and the two populations only meet when it's babymaking time. A young, spoiled Viera appears in a series of missions in TA2, and wants the player to help her capture a Wyrm so that she can take it home and impress her father. So far, Gria have only appeared in one game of the Ivalice series, and their role was tertiary at best, so no word yet on how their society functions.

** Tactics A2 plays with your expectations a little, with the Duelhorn Boss, Night Dancer. From first appearances you might think she's the only female Bangaa character and therefore is safe for your Viera unit to hit under the "No Harming Opposite Gender" law. But no, she's a got a pickle surprise.

** Gorons all identify as male, referring to each other as "Brother." This could be the case of identity (like ''Diskworld'') or [[Asexual Reproduction]], since all cases of child Gorons seen in the series only have fathers and mothers are never mentioned. The manga of Ocarina of Time has a few female Gorons that are only visibly different due to long eyelashes.

* In ''[[Startopia]]'', all alien species are [[Ditto Aliens|identical]], except the sexy Dahanese Sirens - beautiful humanoids with angel wings whose role on the station is to "love" other beings. They have two models, one purple-haired woman in a racing swimsuit, and one blonde, shirtless man.

** Additionally, several races have both genders according to the lore, but only one (male, with an exception being the succubus) is depicted in game. Ogres, Broken and Lost Ones, for example...although a half-finished female Broken model exists in the game source. Literally ''half''-finished. If the macro system's UnitSex() function is to believed, some of the 'all male races' such as Ogres do have female individuals in the game. Apparently the player characters just can't tell the difference.

** The Warcraft D20 monster manual states explicitly that Harpies reproduce by <s> copulation with</s> raping a captured humanoid race, preferring elves and humans.

** Even in [[World of Warcraft]], there are many more female Night Elves than male. This is probably a [[Rule of Sexy]] choice by Blizzard and the players, and the (Handwaved) reason for this is probably that many males are still trapped within the Emerald Dream. If players are ever allowed to visit the Emerald Dream, one can bet that there will be plenty of female Night Elves running around.

* In the MMORPG ''Trickster'', Cats, rabbits, foxes, and sheep are female, raccoons, dragons, lions, and bulls (well, duh) are male. Less so than most examples in that all the characters [[Little Bit Beastly|are really humans with costumes consisting of a headband and a tail]].

* Only male Grendels and either male (in ''2'') or female (in ''3'') Ettins occur without player intervention (or breeding, once you have both genders) in the ''[[Creatures]]'' games.

* Neireids in ''[[Soul Nomad and The World Eaters]]'' are all female, and reproduce with Human (and possibly Sepp, who can breed with humans) males, producing neireid offspring. All the Redflanks that appear in the game are males and all the Sky-people females, but in the case of the Redflanks it's mentioned by Grunzford that the Redflank females died out awhile ago, which is why there are fewer and fewer Redflank as time goes on, as well as why the current population always appears to be older.

* Archers from ''[[Disgaea]]'' were always female and created by their [[World Tree]] until the third game, but the males were referred to as "rangers" instead. Then there are the succubi and catgirls. Since each class is gender-specific, there are duplicate [[Spear Counterpart|male]] and [[Distaff Counterpart|female]] counterparts of most classes. Since the "monster" classes are all gender-specific, as well, but monsters are, through Mediators, capable of marrying and even producing offspring, it's safe to assume that [[Gender Equals Breed]].

* ''Every'' race except Poms in ''NeoSteam''. Even the ''Humans''. Humans are all male, with a female counterpart race in Taxn Humans. Lupine and Tarune are all male, with an all-female counterpart race in the Lyell. Elves are just plain all female, with no male counterpart. They're not actually stated to be all male or all female, but those are the only options available to [[PC|PCs]], and we don't see any [[NPC|NPCs]] contrary to this pattern, either.

* The Valkyries in ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]'' are a female only race due to a long emigration from their home planet. It took them hundreds or thousands of years, and all the men were killed for failing to stop and ask for directions.

* The Kaka clan of ''[[Blaz Blue]]'' are at least close to being a {{spoiler|genetically engineered}} [[One-Gender Race]] that reproduce via parthenogenesis. Kaka males are mentioned as being incredibly rare, and none are seen in game.

 

== Webcomics ==

* In ''[[Angels 2200]]'', the ''Humans'' have become (almost) entirely female after a mysterious plague wipes out 99.5% of all males on Earth. The few surviving men are carefully protected to ensure the survival of the species.One of the major questions of the series is whether this affected the colonies as well, as it occurred during a major insurrection (and may have been a caused by a biological weapon).

* [http://www.msfhigh.com Msfhigh], has the Legion, who are a race of Green Skinned Space Babes, who reproduce by converting other races into Legion. They used to be similar to the Borg, but now they act nicely, and retain free will. They're still a bit love-crazy, though.

* [[Not So Distant]]'s Albategna (of which the main character Sadachbia is one) are hermaphroditic. In english the pronoun "he" is used to refer to Sadachbia simply as a default, because "it" would be rude and English hasn't used the pronoun "ou" since the 13th century.

* [[Bardsworth]]: The faeries are all female and the demons all male. New faeries are born by combining magic and a [http://www.bardsworth.com/archive.php?p=186 tree]

** 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.

* The Phoenix A species of ''[[DMFA]]'' is [http://www.missmab.com/Demo/HG07.php only female], and don't reproduce conventionally since there are always a certain amount of them at any given time, and their method of "reproduction" is to essentially [[Reincarnation|reincarnate]].

* [[Neopets]] has numerous types of faeries with different elements and alignments, all of which are all female. No explanation is ever given.

** 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.

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* 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]].

** The idea of Transformers being a genderless race seems to have been thrown for a loop by the new [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Aligned_continuity_family Aligned] continuity introduced by Hasbro; in which, one of the [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Thirteen_original_Transformers Thirteen Original Transformers], Solus Prime, is explicitly revealed to have been female (and thus the first female of their race).

* Similarly, ''[[The Smurfs]]'' do have some females... three in fact, but at least two of them weren't "natural" members of their species but rather the results of Gargamel creating golem-like beings to infiltrate the Smurfs, and Papa Smurf subsequently making them "real". Smurfs appear to reproduce by [[Delivery Stork|stork]].

* ''[[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 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.