First, Disclaimer:
As a non-binary pansexual with family members and friends who are part of the complex and varied LGBTQIA+ spectrum, i am accepting, loving and open-minded.
If i say something that can be seen as offensive, it was not my purpose, I'm just bad with words.
If you do not want to talk about it, you do not have to participate.
Just please, don't report the post for blocking/deletion in the first 5 min.
Read this thoroughly.
Be respectful.
Thank you very much.
Now, Topic:
It's a question that came to me when is saw the Bicentennial Man movie.
And I now ask it to you, Characters/OC Makers.
.Let's say you are pioneers, you and your group on advanced technology, and you have revolutionized and normalised artificial lifeforms, looking like humanoids and living among us.
Would you think of assigning/putting anatomical genders on them ?
.The fact is, binary females and men have physical gender differences, only because of the implied reproductive purposes for the race's prosperity.
When it comes to the body, only the breast/chest area and the hips/waist area are/have the real defining differences, because of what the baby needs when they form and then arrive.
Of course, our bodies aren't invitations to reproduction by default, it's our choice after all.
.But for androids, they do not reproduce by insemination of seeds into an incubating membrane.
(Unless it's their exact surrogate purposes, but it's more medical than social.)
So, unless the only real explanation are fetishes/kinks (which i do not condemn nor judge), artificial lifeforms should not have gendered anatomies.
It is irrelevant to their life, as they don't/won't reproduce by dancing the horizontal tango.
Unless, in the story, they develop a sexual identity.
.Of course, some of these questions aren't as relevant, ever since the popularized Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics in socio-physiological concepts.
Where even male Omegas have wombs. and female alphas have sperm-producing organs.
For me, when i make Artificial Characters, i never use genders and designate them by it/they-them.
Because they aren't there for my eyes or my readers', they are here for the whole "Not birthed, made, but still alive.", approach to group's composition/dynamic.
And because androids are simply awesome in aesthetics.
What about you?
What is your opinion on the matter?
Both for your own characters and those you have seen in fictions.