So I was talking to one of my friends about this, and its not so much if there could be trans sirens, but more so would they would be FtM or MtF, so what it really comes down to is are sirens born with their power or get it later in life. Given that Lillith says that she had her tattoos as a child during the B&B dlc I’d say they are born with them, and thus a siren could be a trans man who would have to hear “Wait, i thought only chicks could be sirens” all the time. If they get them later in life somehow, it could happen that a trans woman is made one and then is just constantly validated in her gender.
They have to be born GENETIC females.
XX and XY aren’t the only combinations of sex chromosomes. 46XX/46XY, 46XX/47XXY and 45X/XY are phenotypes in the which the sex type is both. There are also other mosaic phenotypes in which the five criteria that determine sex type do not match, as well as genetic sex types which may include either functioning or non-functioning sex organs, either internal or external, that do not match a single sex type, or sex hormones that don’t match the sex organs. The sex of the first set of phenotypes is both. The sex of the second can be indeterminate. For all these people, gender, which is not sex-type, is a choose your own adventure kinda thing.
Borderlands is set in a fictional universe. It’s possible that every character has a rare or mosaic phenotype, or a fictional genotype. Or maybe, as they’re rare, sirens have rare phenotypes or fictional genotypes. Maybe they’re packing a full load, or maybe everyone is.
It really doesn’t matter. I’ve played games as aliens and have no idea which sex the character was: male, female, both, neither, or if the creature even reproduced sexually, or reproduced at all. So, it’s entirely possible that the sirens are ‘genetically female’ and are still packing, but it doesn’t really matter (unless a siren penis becomes part of a skill tree in BL3).
That’s not bad. I was thinking more along the lines one of those one point skill augmentation type skills - some type of phase blast emanating from the penis maybe . You put a point into the skill and you get a little phase blast weapon that targets enemies on it’s own when the action skill is activated - maybe a phase blast utilizing a speicific or variable elements - that kinda thing. But I like your idea better, although the whole penis-as-a-weapon thing probably isn’t exactly PC, given history. On the other hand, sirens are ‘genetically female’ apparently, so that might mitigate a bit of that kind of fall-out.
TLDR: Sign me up.
I’m not trying to exclude intersex people from being sirens either, but given that in the game it was said they’re all female I assumed that they would either be born female or fully identify as female. That’s also assuming that all the sirens are human, not aliens that could have different gender signifiers and genital structure then humans would. It doesn’t really matter to me what genitals the siren characters have, and it would be no ones business, and if a trans character was included it would be best handled not to confirm or deny what genitals they have because it needs to be drilled into peoples head that thats not an ok thing to ask trans people about.
It’s just something that I, as a trans person myself, think about. How people like me would or would not fit into particular universes. So yeah, it kinda does matter. Not because it should be a big deal what gender the characters are, but because if it wasn’t a big deal people like me would get to see more characters like us included in games. Borderlands is particularly great at including diverse gender, sexuality, body types, and races, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they included trans (or even intersex or nonbinary) characters in their next installment, but I highly doubt it would be as high profile a character as a siren, but it does matter to some people.
Every single Siren is unequivocally female. There are a LOT of gay/lesbian relationships in the borderlands world, but with the possible exception of grandma torgue I don’t think there are trans people. Would YOU go to Dr. Zed for something like that?
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