[Tlhingan-hol] Sex and Gender in Klingon

[Michael Roney, Jr.]

In the Learn Klingon group on Facebook, Maevis Petersdotter asked,  "I
wonder if Klingons have a recognition and word for transgender / third
gender warriors. Many Native American cultures do, and Okrand studies those
languages professionally. Despite the xenophobia portrayed in the series, I
like to imagine Klingons are just as progressive as the Federation, at
least within their own kind."

This got me thinking.

As far as I can tell, we have 4 words that are gender specific.
loD - man, male
be' - woman, female
maqoch - close male friend of a male
chaj - close female friend of a female

Oh, and I guess the kinship terms like aunt/uncle, mother/father.

All of the pronoun problems that trans* people have in English don't exist
in Klingon.
If my friend tells me that they're trans*, nothing changes in my speech.
I still use {ghaH}. I still use the same pronominal prefixes.

English has gender specific terms like waiter/waitress, actor/actress,
steward/stewardess.
Klingon doesn't.
{joH} equally means lord and lady.
{Qun} equally means god and goddess.

Male and female Klingons can equally serve in the military (which is pretty
much all of the Klingons we see on screen).
And they can both wear the same standard uniform.
And to my ear, their names all just sound Klingon.
K'Ehleyr doesn't sound like a girl's name. It just sounds Klingon.
98% of the time, we see no separation of men and women. They all just blend
together and do their jobs.

If you wanted to purposely misgender someone in Klingon, you would have to
straight out say "is a man" or "is a woman".
The chances of doing that by mistake are very slim. Most English mistakes
are due to pronouns.

While I'm all about new vocabulary, I'm not sure I want a word for "to be
transgender".
What if Klingons just don't care about gender?
Maybe they don't have a term for "tomboy" or "tomgirl" because they just
let people be themselves.
"They're rough". "They're gentle". "They don't want to be a warrior". "They
want to be a farmer".
We only coin terms for things when the need arises. What if the need never
arose?

If that was the case, we would only need 3 terms for sex (and zero for
gender).
male, female, and intersex.


So as much as I would love a page full of terms on gender, I would rather
have a culture that never developed the need for them.
Sure, that'll make some of my translations more difficult, but I'll deal.
Just give us a term for "intersex", and I'll be good.

~naHQun

--
~Michael Roney, Jr.
Freelance Translator
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