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Everybody’s Gay

gay worldToday’s topic comes from QSFer Beth Brock: “All gay societies – what do you think?”

I’ll elaborate a little. Most of us LGBT folks have, at one point or another, fantasized about a world where being gay was not just normal, but was the norm.

Some writers have tackled such a society – see Ethan of Athos – and such a society can be a great way to shine a light on the inequalities in our own society.

So my questions today – what would an all gay (or all lesbian, or trans, or bi) society look like? How would it work? How would reproduction be handled? And have you read any books that tackled this topic well?

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1 thought on “Everybody’s Gay”

  1. “What would an all gay (or all lesbian, or trans, or bi) society look like? How would it work? How would reproduction be handled? And have you read any books that tackled this topic well?”

    I think the best I’ve read were Ethan of Athos and Ammonite. If you count metamorphic species as trans, then add M.C.A. Hogarth’s Jokka (appearing in multiple short stories and novels, such as The Worth of a Shell) and Torn World’s Glifai culture (also appearing in multiple sources).

    I’ve done several of these myself…

    * The Freedom System in my main SF universe is a colony settled by the alternative sexuality front. They have a lot of immigration in current times. They
    have reproductive technology to assist same-sex or multiple parents, but it’s also pretty common for gay and lesbian couples to quad up with each other for procreative purposes. I think the bisexuals may have the edge in population, given the drive for heterosexual reproduction and the permissive environment. Pure heterosexuality is pretty rare, and I just wrote a poem, “Every Color of the Rainbow,” because someone prompted for it.

    * The Fifers are a species of birdlike aliens who have three types of male (subtly different in genetics) and two types of female (socially different). They tend to be different flavors of bisexual. This has lapped over to inspire some humans to try a similar, though not identical, relationship. The Fifers first appeared in “Faeder Way.”

    * Over in the Blueshift Troupers setting, I have a culture where children are typically born indeterminate in sex/gender and then polarize during puberty. In cases where that doesn’t happen or goes wrong, they can travel through a jumpgate to try and fix it — literally, the jumpgates can influence DNA passing through them, and the Hermes Gate is known as a gendermender. “What the Words Would Have Been” is a new poem about an agender protagonist. Being agender there is kind of like being truly homosexual in one of those societies where it’s considered a normal youthful fling but mature men are expected to marry women.

    * Another alien species requires bisexuality and incest to reproduce. One sessile sibling is produced per several mobile siblings. The sessiles can move somewhat in their youth, so at adolescents the sessile and one mobile sibling go settle somewhere new. The sessile grows to the size of a small house. Most mobiles are wanderers, some of whom find a mobile/sessile pair to settle down with. Breeding requires two mobiles to arouse each other inside the sessile and deposit their genetic contributions. The sessile does not contribute genes but does get to choose which of the available genes will be expressed in the offspring: a way of favoring the sibling’s genes but also using the new spouse to patch deficiencies or add improvements. This makes for some quirky courtship processes, but it’s quite effective.

    * I have one culture that started out as a women’s penal colony. Eventually they started to form a cohesive society, not unlike what happened in Australia, and retreated into caves to build technology safely out of sight. Once they had the reproductive gear in good working order, they built a massive cannon and blew the hell out of the prison ships trying to dump a fresh load of trouble on them. After a few rounds of that, nobody bothers them anymore.

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