Not the gender you thought they were

[Iscah]

Ah yeah, I meant to mention the sylphs but I forgot in the end. Also I didn't mean Ananta needed different appearances to differentiate gender, just that in general it's weird to have these characters with human faces but they all look completely identical. (I guess we can blame it on Allagan cloning...)

It does make sense to label them as female though - aside of their appearance, they're able to [get pregnant / lay eggs, I forget which]. There are some animals that can actually do this, if I remember correctly.

Also it bugs me that the sylphs' "seed-bearing gender" is considered male, because that's the opposite of how plants are normally labelled. Not all plants have a difference of course, but some species will differentiate between flowers that grow into fruit and those that only produce pollen to fertilise the fruit-flowers. They are considered female and male flowers exactly because they correspond to female (child-bearing) and male roles in reproduction.

It at least makes a little more sense from the lorebook explanation that talks about the sylphs not really having male and female genders, but something else entirely (though still doesn't explain why they would pick up those labels 'the wrong way around'). The in-game description for the sylph minion doesn't go into any of that, and just says it's the males that produce seeds. Which they shouldn't, because that means that group should have been classified as the "female" gender in the first place.


Random trivia - it seems that beast tribe names only get capitalised if they're a specific race name, not a generic fantasy creature. eg. "Ixal, Sahagin, sylphs, Amalj'aa and kobolds" is correct.

[Eloah]

snip

The thing about the Sylph though is you can't think of them as plants, but rather, plant like animals. What defines male and female isn't how the reproduction is done, it's just which reproductive cell they produce; males produce sperm cells and females egg cells. Keep in mind there are a few animal species where the male is the "female" to us, seahorses being the most well known.

Also I can't believe I forgot to mention the goblins and the sylph with their naming conventions.

[Iscah]

Keep in mind there are a few animal species where the male is the "female" to us, seahorses being the most well known.

Male seahorses are still male and still produce the sperm, not the eggs. They just have a pouch that the female lays her eggs into. [Wikipedia link]

[Eloah]

Male seahorses are still male and still produce the sperm, not the eggs. They just have a pouch that the female lays her eggs into. [Wikipedia link]

I think you missed my point