[Tlhingan-hol] Sex and Gender in Klingon

[lojmIttI'wI'nuv]

Keep in mind that in terms of language, sex and gender are not the same thing… except in English, where gender is completely defined by sexual identity. Nouns are masculine, feminine, or neuter depending on the nature of absence of sex organs. French, by contrast, has two genders. One has male sex organs, or none at all and the other has female sex organs or none at all. Most French masculine nouns are neuter in English, and most French feminine nouns are neuter in English. One of the most tedious chores for English-speaking people learning French as a second language is to memorize which neuter nouns are masculine and which neuter nouns are feminine.

German has masculine, feminine, or neuter, but these are not consistently applied according to sexual identity. “Girl” is neuter in German.

Some languages have one gender for newer words and a different one for older words, or one for native words and another for borrowed words. See Danish or Japanese. In most languages gender is not differentiated by sexual identity. This consistency between sexual identity and gender of nouns is one of the more unique characteristics of English.

Since a lot of English speakers don’t speak any other language, we ignorantly think all languages are like this.

Klingon essentially has three genders: body parts, beings capable of using language, and everything else. Gender is a classification of nouns that is reflected by affixes or helper words used with those nouns. There is no masculine or feminine gender in the Klingon language. There are only a small number of nouns that are explicitly for males and another small number of nouns that are specifically for females. {loD} and {be’} are nouns, not affixes, even when they are used in compound nouns.

Likely, Klingon culture has many features in terms of attitudes toward sexual identity that are similar to our own, and others that might be quite alien to us (being literally alien to us). Violence seems to be much more normal in their daily lives and courtship, though likely the human trend of male violence toward women is not reflected in Klingon culture, since Klingon women appear to be capable of dishing it out at least as much as they take it. You can be chopped in half by a female SuvwI’ as easily as you can by a male.

We have not yet seen a girly girl Klingon woman yet. No pink boas. No gold lamé. It’s not all that clear what fashion statement a trans Klingon would make in order to identify with the other sexual identity. Aside from cleavage, there’s really not that much difference between how a male or female Klingon dresses. In courtship, aside from who might typically start growling first, I don’t know that there’s all that much difference in sex roles…

… except that usually the men recite poetry while the women throw large, heavy objects at them, and the men prove their agility by ducking and dodging.

Face it. There’s a lot about Klingon sex identity that we do not understand, and research into this would likely be dangerous. There are things that outsiders can’t just step in and do without serious consequences. 

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Mar 9, 2016, at 1:10 AM, nIqolay Q <niqolay0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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 <mailto: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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