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A young apparent-woman opens the door.
"...Hello?" she calls, seeming confused but not necessarily surprised. "Hello, is anyone here?"
When no answer is forthcoming, she walks over to the bar and sits down, puzzled.
Aurin and Pletha in Milliways
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The first concept does see more use than the second, but no, not particularly.
"...What do you mean that the first concept sees more use than the second?"
A plurality of patrons are accustomed to a two-gender system; an outright majority experience a bimodal distribution. Six is rare.
"Oh."
middlingalong
"What other arrangements are there?"
A non-exhaustive list: mono- or non-gendered species; cultures with bimodal sex distributions but no gender roles to speak of; three-sex arrangements, either similar to the sprites of your world or differently balanced; species in which sex and/or gender changes over the lifespan; cultures in which distinctions other than gender strongly overlap with and affect the gendered expectations; species with numbers of meaningfully distinct sexes as high as (in my current span of memory, which is not infinite) 512.
A non-exhaustive list: mono- or non-gendered species; cultures with bimodal sex distributions but no gender roles to speak of; three-sex arrangements, either similar to the sprites of your world or differently balanced; species in which sex and/or gender changes over the lifespan; cultures in which distinctions other than gender strongly overlap with and affect the gendered expectations; species with numbers of meaningfully distinct sexes as high as (in my current span of memory, which is not infinite) 512.
"That's a lot. I think I'm glad I belong to a species that has a number of sexes that are easier to work with than that."
middlingalong
Aurin represses a snort, then asks Bar, "And you have genders you like picked out in all of these?"
Where they affect pronouns or social expectations in ways relevant to me, yes. The species I am thinking of with 512 sexes would not particularly benefit from assigning me one, as I am made of pleasingly geometrical wood.
Where they affect pronouns or social expectations in ways relevant to me, yes. The species I am thinking of with 512 sexes would not particularly benefit from assigning me one, as I am made of pleasingly geometrical wood.
"The difference between six and five hundred and twelve is an order of magnitude larger than the difference between six and two."
"Well, there is that."
middlingalong
"And the prolonged confused experimental years in adolescence. Yeesh."
"Pfff. Not everyone goes through experimental phases, you know."
middlingalong
"You'd have to, if there were five hundred and twelve options! What if you'd just never met anyone of gender three hundred and eighty-two besides one grandparent and a glimpse of the postal commissioner through a window? What if your cut-rate education only covered seventeen through ninety-five because they needed the rest of the class time for other things? You'd have no idea!"
"If you've never met someone of gender three hundred eighty-two I'd love to know how you plan to experiment with them."
"But how would you know to go looking in the first place if your education was so lacking?"
middlingalong
"Because your textbook on genders seventeen through ninety-five mentioned it was abridged, of course."
"For three hundred and eighty two in particular, I mean, and not the rest of ninety-five through four hundred. Four hundred and one through five hundred and twelve being the ones you've met outside of class, of...course...shit, I just realized we're being super racist against some species neither of us is ever going to meet."
middlingalong
"I think assuming they didn't have a sense of humor would be worse, frankly."
"Yeah, but we're making fun of a difference between their species and ours. I don't think they have to lack a sense of humor to have a right to be offended by that."
middlingalong
"Well, I wouldn't do it if they were here, I'd just ask them instead of speculating."
"Still feels rude."
"I've never really gotten the point of experimenting, myself," she says thoughtfully. "How do you not know in advance whether you want to kiss someone?"