[Tlhingan-hol] Sex and Gender in Klingon

[nIqolay Q]

I've wondered occasionally about the topic of Klingon LGBT terminology, on
the off chance it comes up with my LGBT friends who know I speak Klingon.
(To date, it has not.) I'm not convinced that Klingons don't care about
gender. For instance, a number of proverbs talk about sons and men
specifically, rather than using gender-neutral words, and remember that
{maqoch} and {chaj} are considered insults if addressed to the wrong
gender. If I recall the shows correctly, inheritance is mainly patrilinear,
and there's probably other examples from the movies and show that I'm
forgetting. Without explicit canon one way or the other, I figure it's a
reasonable assumption that Klingons are similar to modern-day society --
some of them would take it as a grave insult if their child transitioned,
whereas others would just think "who cares? son, daughter, either way they
can still hold a bat'leth."

So far the best term I've come up with for talking about transgender people
is something along the lines of {choHta'bogh be'} for a trans woman or
{choHta'bogh loD} for a trans man ("woman/man who has changed it"), with
the unstated object being the (currently unknown) word for "gender" (which
incidentally parallels with how the phrase "trans woman/man" doesn't
include the "-gender".) {choH'eghta'bogh be'/loD} ("woman/man who has
changed his/herself") and {choHta'wI'} ("person who has changed something")
might also work.


On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 5:00 PM, Michael Roney, Jr. <nahqun at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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