Welcome to the fandom. You have been assimilated. Hurry up and finish your to-do list so you can read Sword, because based on this review I very much want to know what you think of it.
And it's also established that the Radchaai have medical technology at a level where secondary sex characteristics can be altered at will and they don't particularly care if the result aligns to any non-Radchaai norms
YES THIS. It amazes me how no one's been discussing this, even when Breq is being accused of habitually misgendering people by a two metre tall iron grey-skinned human being. Primary sex characteristics too -- in that conversation, Strigan asks Breq how Radchaai reproduce, and Breq mentions "have surgery so they can carry a pregnancy" as one of the ways Radchaai have children.
so even Seivarden appearing to have male gender markers to Breq-trying-to-pass-as-Nilt is pretty meaningless (and iirc Breq doesn't specify which ones those are - she might just be going by Seivarden having short hair and wearing pants...)
Agreed about what gender markers Seivarden has not being specified, but a small datapoint about Breq there: she doesn't pick the pronouns for Seivarden. Both times that happens (with the Nilters, then with Strigan) the other person genders Seivarden first, and Breq just goes with what they said.
no subject
Welcome to the fandom. You have been assimilated. Hurry up and finish your to-do list so you can read Sword, because based on this review I very much want to know what you think of it.
And it's also established that the Radchaai have medical technology at a level where secondary sex characteristics can be altered at will and they don't particularly care if the result aligns to any non-Radchaai norms
YES THIS. It amazes me how no one's been discussing this, even when Breq is being accused of habitually misgendering people by a two metre tall iron grey-skinned human being. Primary sex characteristics too -- in that conversation, Strigan asks Breq how Radchaai reproduce, and Breq mentions "have surgery so they can carry a pregnancy" as one of the ways Radchaai have children.
so even Seivarden appearing to have male gender markers to Breq-trying-to-pass-as-Nilt is pretty meaningless (and iirc Breq doesn't specify which ones those are - she might just be going by Seivarden having short hair and wearing pants...)
Agreed about what gender markers Seivarden has not being specified, but a small datapoint about Breq there: she doesn't pick the pronouns for Seivarden. Both times that happens (with the Nilters, then with Strigan) the other person genders Seivarden first, and Breq just goes with what they said.