Ok, I just had a crazy idea come to me like five minutes ago, and since I’m here at my computer, I’m going to write it down.<\/p>\n
You know how we sometimes say that men and women are practically members of two different species?\u00a0 Well, what would an alien race look like if that were actually the case?\u00a0 What if the males of the species looked so indistinguishably different from the females that, to a human observer, they were<\/em> two distinct different species?<\/p>\n Of course, this is a question that has been asked many times before.\u00a0 Just now, though, I had a really weird idea that might lead to a new take on the question: what if the males got pregnant with the males of the species, and the females with the females?<\/p>\n The males would have short lifespans and reproduce very frequently, with very large litters.\u00a0 They would only have to have sexual contact once to get pregnant.\u00a0 The females, on the other hand, would have very long lifespans and bear only one offspring at a time, with a very long gestation period.\u00a0 They would have to have sexual contact multiple times, possibly from multiple partners, in order to acquire the genetic material to reproduce.<\/p>\n But wait?\u00a0 In this reproductive cycle, who’s the “male” and who’s the “female?” Couldn’t it be the other way around?\u00a0 Or really, can our human concepts of gender even describe this species–or rather, these two<\/em> species?<\/p>\n What would a society of these beings look like?\u00a0 What kinds of gender roles would arise from this kind of a life cycle?\u00a0 What kind of philosophy would arise from it?\u00a0 What kind of society?<\/p>\n I haven’t written a lot of science fiction with alien species, but this idea is cool enough that I just might have to do it sometime.\u00a0 What’s your take on this idea?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ok, I just had a crazy idea come to me like five minutes ago, and since I’m here at my computer, I’m going to write it down. You know how we sometimes say that men and women are practically members of two different species?\u00a0 Well, what would an alien race look like if that were… Continue reading Speciation of the sexes–what the crap is this?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-story-ideas","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-4u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}