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Chapter Text

Trolls originally didn’t have gender as we envision them cause, why would they? Even ignoring that their bi-sexed species isn’t like with human (with the mother-grub rarely if ever being sapient), trolls are compared to humans are quite a(nti)social. Division of labour was a lot easier to enforce by hemo-type when they did work together in pre-history.

This changed with the jades.

Now gender wasn’t created in one day, nor did trolls across the planet all agree on the same ideas. Many historians (legal & otherwise), disagree on the exact origins of gender. But gender as an idea came about once the jades were made to care for grubs & the mother-grub.

Many groups of trolls have in their prehistory put their mother-grubs on islands. This is theorized to maximize the grubs that would survive into juveniles as they were less likely to get eaten by predators. Jades at various points were sent to care for the mother-grub & the grubs/younger trolls. Reason for it often believed to be their relatively smaller groups + resistance to their planet’s sun. Regardless of the truth, jades at the those times became a social regiment of their own, often respected and feared by the trolls who knew them.

At various points, trolls would consider the jades to usually have a personality archetype different from most trolls. Though since it was less stratified, this idea of this personality archetype, later has become known as “female”, began spreading to other trolls who exhibited similar personality, modes of dress & behavior of the jades.

The male gender often (though not always) evolved later on. Often conceptualized as a “companion & shadow-gender” to female, males ended up often characterized as soft-spoken, weaker, less competent & followers. But even then gender tended to not be binary: when ideas of gender spread among different troll groups, other genders were often conceived and shared between trade and migration. Other common genders pre-empire were neutrois (often understood to be a gender between male & female), flora-genders & lusus-genders.

Even to this day gender isn’t binary in either Beforus or Alternia. What genders are popular are in flux and ever-changing, and even genders that aren’t at their beginning considered “real genders”, they often become accepted depending on how many adopt then afterwards & other factors. Though the most common genders across both Alternia & Beforus are: female, male, neutrois & lusus-genders.

When/if in contact with humans, trolls have to them a strange definition of transgender. Within the modern day, cisgender is simply whatever gender you were assigned by your lusus (which can be any gender your lusus is aware of). Once a troll changes, adds, or removes part of their gender, they’re considered trans. Even transitioning back to your original gender is considered trans to trolls, making it that to them, there’s no difference between transitioning, de-transitioning & re-transitioning. As trolls would say “you are still changing your gender”.

While this system of gender seems more fluid, and it can be, its in some ways more rigid. Trolls very much subscribe to the idea that you preform your gender. If you claim to be a specific gender, you are expected to dress like it, talk like it, behave like it, etc etc etc.

Because of this, as said by my friend Swamp, nonbinary-hood & Gender Non Conformity (GNC) are the same thing to trolls (because it causes confusion in the current system of gender of trolls). Swamp has coined this gender to be “quantum-gender”, as trolls who are this are viewed to be in between states of gender, and thus are performing gender “incorrectly”.