Trek lit references to the J'naii?

[chrinFinity]

Hello.

I am looking for any trek-lit references to the J'naii... Soren's people, the "androgynous" species where individuals expressing a gender identity are seen as deviants and forced to undergo treatments (TNG "The Outcast").

I recall Burgoyne mentioning them in an early NF novel, but that's it. I checked Memory Beta, and they don't even have Burgoyne's reference listed.

Anyone remember something from other books? Or familiar enough with all of them to state with some authority that there aren't any?

Thanks

Christin

 

[CaptainDonovin]

Had to think for a moment, thought this was the Genii from Stargate Atlantis.

 

[bok2384]

Apart from the reference you recalled from Into the Void, I couldn't find much, apart from the appearence of a J'naii character, Dr. Dovan, in the New Frontier: No Limits short story, "Oil and Water" by Robert T. Jeschonek.

 

[JD]

^That's the only J'naii appearance I know of.

 

[chrinFinity]

Apart from the reference you recalled from Into the Void, I couldn't find much, apart from the appearence of a J'naii character, Dr. Dovan, in the New Frontier: No Limits short story, "Oil and Water" by Robert T. Jeschonek.

Wickedsauce, I thought I'd read that whole anthology... maybe I forgot about that one. I'll go re-read it.

 

[chrinFinity]

[double post]

 

[F. King Daniel]

Had to think for a moment, thought this was the Genii from Stargate Atlantis.

Ditto. For a second I envisioned some sort of Colm Meaney face off.

 

[bullethead]

Crap, I thought it was pronounced "Ja Nai" like the Japanese phrase when I saw the title, then I realized it was the Genii and I had to remind myself it wasn't the Stargate folks.

 

[captcalhoun]

it's pronounced Juh-Nigh

 

[chrinFinity]

Okay, well I read Oil and Water a few days ago, from the No Limits anthology. I found the author's decision to use the pronoun "it" to describe the J'naii scientist to be offensive. "It" was used not only in dialogue, but in the narrative prose as well.

There are acceptable gender-neutral pronouns in English (to say nothing of "Federation Standard" or of the Universal Translator) that could have been used. If PD went to the trouble of making up pronouns for the hermats (eg. "s/he"), then the least that the author of Oil and Water (whose name escapes me) could do in describing the J'naii would be to use alternative gender-neutral pronouns which already exist (eg. "ze").

 

[chrinFinity]

I was grateful ze didn't get a sunburn in the story, otherwise I'd have to put up with "it put the lotion on its skin." I mean, come on.

 

[JD]

But doesn't the it thing come from the episode with them?

 

[Christopher]

But doesn't the it thing come from the episode with them?

Just the opposite, in fact:

http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/217.htm

RIKER: Okay. For two days I've been trying to construct sentences without personal pronouns. Now I give up. What should I use? It? To us, that's rude.
SOREN: We use a pronoun which is neutral. I do not think there is really a translation.
RIKER: Then I'll just have to muddle through. So forgive me if a stray he or she slips by, okay?

It's a little hard to believe the Federation has never had occasion to come up with a gender-neutral pronoun before, though.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Can't they just use the same ones that they use for the Hermats? It works for them well enough.

 

[Therin of Andor]

to use alternative gender-neutral pronouns which already exist (eg. "ze").

Never heard of that one.

Can't they just use the same ones that they use for the Hermats? It works for them well enough.

When reading "No Limits", I did notice Robert T. Jeschonek's use of "it" - and it seemed (to me) to be used deliberately as a harsh contrast to the Hermat "s/he", both in that story and elsewhere in the volume. To use "s/he" for both species would have watered down the purpose of the story.

Nobody's updated the Memory Beta page for novel references to the J'naii:
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/J%27naii

 

[captcalhoun]

the ST encyclopaedia uses 'One' iirc...

 

[DS9Continuing]

"S/he" refers to Hermats, who are both male and female at the same time. J'naii are neither at any time, so "s/he" doesn't apply.

Also, "it" is the perfectly accepted pronoun for the neuter gender of Damiani, apparently, alongside the usual he and she. So if it's good enough for them, why wouldn't it be good enough for the J'naii?

.

 

[datalogan]

Some groups and individuals have used non-standard pronouns, hoping they will become standard. Various proposals for such changes have been around since at least the 19th century. For example, abbreviated pronouns have been proposed: 'e (for he or she) or 's (for his/hers); h' (for him/her in object case); "zhe" (also "ze"), "zher(s)" (also "zer"), and "zhim" (also "mer") for "he or she", "his or her(s)", and "him or her", respectively; 'self (for himself/herself); and hu, hus, hum, humself (for s/he, his/hers, him/her, himself/herself). The American Heritage Book of English Usage says of these efforts:

Like most efforts at language reform, these well-intended suggestions have been largely ignored by the general English-speaking public, and the project to supplement the English pronoun system has proved to be an ongoing exercise in futility. Pronouns are one of the most basic components of a language, and most speakers appear to have little interest in adopting invented ones. This may be because in most situations people can get by using the plural pronoun they or using other constructions that combine existing pronouns, such as he/she or 'he or she'.
​

The neologism that received the greatest partial mainstream acceptance was Charles Crozat Converse's 1884 proposal of thon:

Thon was picked up by Funk and Wagnall's Standard Dictionary in 1898, and was listed there as recently as 1964. It was also included in Webster's Second New International Dictionary, though it is absent from the first and third, and it still has its supporters today.
​

 

[datalogan]

Historically, there were two gender neutral pronouns native to English dialects, 'ou' and 'a', but they have long since died out. According to Dennis Baron's Grammar and Gender:

In 1789, William H. Marshall records the existence of a dialectal English epicene pronoun, singular "ou": "'Ou will' expresses either he will, she will, or it will." Marshall traces "ou" to Middle English epicene "a", used by the 14th century English writer John of Trevisa, and both the OED and Wright's English Dialect Dictionary confirm the use of "a" for he, she, it, they, and even I. This "a" is a reduced form of the Anglo-Saxon he = "he" and heo = "she".
​

 

[Christopher]

English has had a perfectly good, commonly accepted gender-neutral third-person pronoun for centuries: singular they. It's been pushed out of favor by grammatical prescriptivists in the past couple of centuries, but it was used as far back as Chaucer and was also used in Shakespeare and the King James Bible, so it's older than the Modern English language, and thus it's ludicrous to argue that it's not "correct English." It's simply part of English usage that "they" can function as both a singular and plural third-person pronoun, analogously to how "you" is both singular and plural. (And like "you," it takes "are" as a verb in both singular and plural.)

The problem, for the purposes of this conversation, is that singular they is intended for referring to an individual of unknown or unspecified gender, rather than as a personal pronoun for an androgynous or asexual individual. So I'm not sure it really works for this.

In my original SF writing, I tend toward the convention of using "she" for any sex that can bear young and "he" for any sex that can't, so that I'd refer to a hermaphroditic alien as "she" and a neuter as "he." That has its own problems and limitations, but I really don't care for neologistic pronouns like "zhe" or awkward constructions like "s/he."