Washrags & Monsters

In General

In the world of Washrags & Monsters, there are five recognized genders. You reveal which gender is yours at age eight, usually in conjunction with what we might call a 'gender reveal party'. Afterward, your gender is marked on your forehead in something like henna paint. This is where people look to know what gender you are. Nowhere else. Clothes, body type, voice pitch, none of it matters except aesthetically. The only thing that matters about gender is that mark. This does mean that the cultures portrayed in this book tend to not have bangs.

Pronouns

While there are more than five genders that exist both in this world and in ours, for narrative and practical reasons I decided to only use these for the 'official' gender+pronoun pairs, if there can be such things. Each gender is also paired with the symbol that would be on the forehead of anyone whose gender it is.

To those of you whose gender isn't here, I hope you can forgive me for leaving it out. For those of you who take issue with how I have defined these genders, feel free to let me know so that I can do a better job of defining them in the future.

Child / Unknown they them their

Man/Male (1) he him his

Woman/Female (2) she her her

Agender (3) ve vir vis

Demigender (4) ze zim zir

Bigender (5) ke kir kir

Webster's Dictionary defines "man" as "an adult human male." It's usually regarded as "opposite" to the 'woman' gender, existing as a twinned counterpart to it, and that's all I'll say on the matter.

Webster's Dictionary defines "woman" as "an adult human female." It's usually regarded as "opposite" to the 'man' gender, existing as a twinned counterpart to it, and that's all I'll say on the matter.

"Agender" is when you don't feel that you identify with any gender. You exist, you might have a label because, in our world, you grew up with one, but overall gender is more something you hang on a hook next to your coat once you get home or an odd curio that you set on your desk and look at than it is an intrinsic, fundamental part of your life and existence.

"Demigender" is when you feel that you identify with the other genders in various states throughout the day, week, or month. You never feel FULLY one of them. You are a lava lamp and your gender are the globs in it that float from end to end. While you might have one end that you float towards more often than not, at the end of the day you are still demigender. (Note: While I have done my best to call it 'demigender' in this story, there are instances where the word 'genderfluid' has made it past the edits. Please forgive me those mistakes)

"Bigender'' is the opposite of "agender" in the same way that "man" is the opposite of "woman." You constantly and fully identify with all genders (excepting agender for obvious reasons) You are man, woman, and demigender all at once. You are, in essence, a dragon, and gender is what you hoard.

Modes of Attraction

This isn't something this book DIRECTLY deals with, but there is SOME romance and such so I figured it would be a good thing to mention.

Since gender isn't something assigned to you at birth in most cultures, what we might consider to be "traditional" attraction doesn't really exist either. The labels of "Straight," "gay," and "bi" don't make sense when you choose what gender you are from five different genders.

Additionally, the existence or nonexistence of attraction does not dictate what gender you are, nor is the reverse true. If someone is agender, it means they're agender, and that's ALL it means. It does NOT automatically mean that they're asexual and / or aromantic, both of which are known about and occur separately in the cultures of the world of Washrags & Monsters, just like our own world.

Trans gender Individuals

You might have noticed that there are some smaller cultures in this book that use (gasp) a simple bi-gender divide. Those cultures tell people from birth what gender they are. Oftentimes, this does not last upon contact with Aamand and the nations that support it, except in certain isolationist communities, but sometimes it does. In those instances, individuals will take years to realize that the gender they had been raised to be is not the gender they identify as. If they have not yet taken a mark, they might now take one. If they have taken a mark, they might change what it is.

To be clear, this is not talking about individuals who come from isolationist cultures and, upon contact, realize that they have other options. That is a discovering of gender. This is talking about the folks who come from those isolated cultures, assumed that the gender role they'd been told was theirs WAS theirs, and only later, usually after deep introspection, realize that this was, in fact, incorrect.

This is usually when someone might change their name, as the old name tends to be very attached to the person they thought they were, rather than the person they realize they are now. It doesn't mean that the old name is bad, just that it isn't who they are anymore.

Very rarely does this affect their job or lifestyle (as an author, I tried to write a world where such things avoid being affected by gender), but it certainly does affect how they view themselves. Both people who discovered their gender in short order after contact and people who are trans gender will have trouble with their pronouns, upon realizing their gender. The goal is the striving and desire towards getting it right, not in perfect every time, although people who get it right each time are nice.

Related, but undergoing HRT, be it magically or medicinally induced, does not make you trans gender. It simply means that you are using hormones to correct an imbalance in your body's biochemical makeup. Nothing more. In our world, a man who went on feminizing estrogen-HRT would still be valid if, afterward, he still identified as a man. He might be a man with a rockin' set of tits and a great ass, but he would still be a man if he identified as such.

There is only one character in this story that I am aware of who is actively trans gender, but they are there.