Forums » Smalltalk » Mixed Character Sex Characteristics

So here's a thing I just found out about, and I encourage further research before using it.

Someone came up with a term for fictional characters who are not technically trans or intersex and not necessarily hermaphroditic, with the goal of having a non-offensive, non-fetish term: altersex. It simply refers to a character having a sexual anatomy which differs from what we, as humans, would typically expect.

You can read more about it here: altersex.

It does also seem to be used by some real people, but it seems to be mostly for characters at this point.

Thanks for sharing this! This is a really amazing article.

Ooooh! Thats a great term. I like that. It would apply well to a character my friend has. (At least i think. I cant really say that given that its not my char. I am going to show them this article tho)

That article was very informative. Thanks for sharing Zephyr:

Thank you for sharing, this is quite interesting! I'm currently reading through the comments on that post, and I'm wondering if this term could apply to original species as well as individual characters. If so, I guess that means I might want to switch over to using altersex to describe my varsit species, as opposed to describing the species as hermaphroditic. I've never been satisfied with that term, to be honest, because it has unpleasant connotations and really shouldn't be applied to people as opposed to, say, snails. Plus that word never really captured how different varsit reproductive biology is from that of real creatures, but I'm neither in the furry community nor the "erotic art" community, nor am I super involved in the online queer community at the moment, so I never knew of any better terms to use.

I don't see why not. It's geared at mostly describing a character outside human standards, and if it applies to one, it can probably be applied to their whole race!