Third Gender - Art and Literature

Art and Literature

• In the 1980s science fiction book trilogy Xenogenesis, by Octavia Butler, the extraterrestrial race has three sexes: male, female, and Ooloi. They also have sexual relationships with humans and interbreed with them.
• In the world of Carolyn Ives Gilman's 1998 novel Halfway Human, all children are born with indeterminate sex, and develop into male, female, or "bland" in adolescence. Blands are a neuter category lacking sexual characteristics, who are disparaged and treated as servants – the "halfway humans" of the book's title.
• Literary critic Michael Maiwald identifies a "third-sex ideal" in one of the first African-American bestsellers, Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (1928).
• The Third Sex, a 1959 lesbian pulp fiction novel by Artemis Smith.
• The Third Sex, a 1934 film directed by Richard C. Kahn, based on a novel by Radcliffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness.
• Anders als du und ich ("Different From You and I"), a 1957 film directed by Veit Harlan, was also known under the titles Bewildered Youth (USA) and The Third Sex.
• Mikaël, a 1924 film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer was also released as Chained: The Story of the Third Sex in the USA.
• In David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus there is a type of being called phaen, a third gender which is attracted neither to men nor women but to "Faceny" (their name for Shaping or Crystalman, the Demiurge). The appropriate pronouns are ae and aer.
• In Clive Barker's Imajica, one of the characters, Pie 'oh' Pah, is called a mystif, and has the characteristics of a third sex that is neither male nor female but whose body can change according to the desires of a sexual partner, thus enabling them to either fertilize or bear children. Pie marries the male character Gentle, but says ze prefers not to be called his wife.
• Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five identifies seven human sexes (not genders) in the fourth dimension required for reproduction including gay men, women over 65, and infants who died before their first birthday. The Tralfamadorian race has five sexes.
• In C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, the solar system has seven genders (not sexes) altogether.
• In Matt Groening's cartoon series Futurama, "smizmar" is used as a term for a third sex, the name for the individuals whom inspire the feeling of love (and thus conception, for that species), regardless of genetic relationship, to Kif Kroker's species, the Amphibiosians. This is explained in the episode "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch".
• Arthur C. Clarke's novel Rendezvous with Rama depicts an alien civilization with three genders.
• Ursula K. Le Guin's 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness posits a world called Gethen, on which humans are androgynes, effectively neuter 12/13 of the time, and for up to two days per month are said to be "in Kemmer," that is, openly available to enter either male or female state as per pheromonal contact with a potential mate.
• Distress (1995) by Greg Egan is a widely known for its postulation of not just one but five distinct new genders.
• Middlesex (2002), the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Jeffrey Eugenides
• The musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch includes a song called "The Origin of Love" which appears to be a lyrical adaptation of Aristophanes' creation myth.
• Iain M. Banks' novel The Player of Games features a third sex known as Apex. They are the dominant sex of the civilization portrayed in the novel.
• In Stephenie Meyer's novel The Host the narrator describes an alien race she has encountered who are similar to dolphins and have three distinct sexes, all of which are required for reproduction and have separate societal roles.