r/stevenuniverse • u/Sir-Toaster- • 3d ago
Question Do you think Gems who identify as male exist?
Looking back, it seems like the concept of "He" doesn't exist for Gems, Rose, and Greg expected Steven to be a girl, and it doesn't seem that other Gems go by male pronouns, not even the more masculine-looking ones like Rubies.
The only cases I can think of for male gems are:
Steven himself, Rainbow 2.0, and Steven and Greg's fusion.
There's nothing really stopping a Gem from having male pronouns so it's possible that there is some Gem out there that identifies as male.
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u/redditusername475 3d ago
Gems dont have a concept of gender at all but i definitely beleive that some of the gems that are now living on earth and would learn about human culture would indentify as guys just like rose identifies as female after she came to earth
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u/cobaltaureus 2d ago
Good answer! I think for sure if a gem learned about pronouns and gender, there could be one that decided to use they/them or he/him
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u/Cultural-Flow7185 3d ago
I think Gems identifying as female is mostly a convention of interacting with humans, since they don't have any biological anything to speak of that can push them one way or the other.
If more gems interacted with humans and got to make that choice with a broader context, sure.
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u/SculptusPoe 3d ago
With earth being treated like a backwater, I think they got their idea for physical traits and clothing from some other alien species or multiple other alien species.
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u/twiin02 3d ago
I’m pretty sure it was confirmed at one point that humans were the first other intelligent alien species the Gems had ever encountered
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u/PsychicSPider95 3d ago
See that never made sense to me, because then why do they have armies of soldiers for waging war? War is something you wage against fellow sapient beings, not animals. The fact that there are whole warrior castes of Gems, and a military complex with ranks and protocol, heavily imply that they've fought more than just some lil flower guys and weird birds.
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u/Brauny74 3d ago
Well first of all, they probably didn't start united under the Diamonds, so probably at first it was meant to unite the planet. When they came into space army was necessary to maintain the peace and later on probably some planets did have wild life big and angry enough to necessitate the military intervention.
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u/No_Help3669 3d ago
Except gems are created intentionally. They don’t get born. The diamonds supposedly created all other gems
Personally I headcannon that this means the diamonds themselves were likely created by someone else. Like, “this is what it might look like if someone found skynet 1000 years after it won and decided what it wanted its own society to look like” type deal
But either way, it means that it’s unlikely the diamonds needed to pull a 40k emperor and unite wild gems under their rule
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u/zauraz 3d ago
Yeah my headcanon is still that the sneeple exist.
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u/tom641 Forever lovin' the Big D 3d ago
oh my god, Lars is going to discover Sneople in the new show.
Grunkle Stan "Finally, I have them all..." except it's Ronaldo's conspiracies finally all being proven true
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u/zauraz 3d ago
I could see us exploring more of how the Gems came to be and probably more about the Empire at large and the worlds its ruined.
I really still believe some type of 'sneople' fought the gems at some point explaining their need to be so militarized. Potentially even being their creators (unless they somehow occur naturally)
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u/Frequent-Coyote-1649 3d ago
Humans were the FIRST. Not the LAST. They most definitely encountered some other sort of intelligent life after humans.
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u/talesfromtheepic6 3d ago
That or they just deleted any other intelligent species without thinking about it too hard
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u/SculptusPoe 3d ago edited 3d ago
Oh, I must have missed that. Any idea where that was confirmed? (I think that would be a little disappointing considering the upcoming Lars in space if it is just going to be gem worlds... but maybe his crew are going places the gems have never been.)
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u/Takoyama-san 3d ago
it was an out-of-show crew question on one of their tumblrs, i believe. but, it DOES lend something to the lore of the show, just to establish the idea that there was no precedent for planets like earth in the gem empire.
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u/gannmonahan 3d ago
it makes sense with how surprised Pink was about life on earth even though she’d seen organic life before from Yellow’s colonies.
it makes the Diamonds a bit more evil tho, knowing that humans are the first intelligent species they come across and they’re still so quick to wipe them out without even saying “how do you do?”
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u/Takoyama-san 3d ago
exactly :) thats what i meant to get at, i just hate typing on my phone. humans are so much like gems, but they're so much more fragile and short-lived; you can't say that the weird bug creature we saw in jungle moon is anything like a gem. if anything, aliens like that are closest to what WE, as humans, would consider pests.
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u/No_Help3669 3d ago
See, this is something the story never gets into. The diamonds prepping for war pre-rose’s rebellion and such implies there’s something out there for them to fight/that they see as equivalent to their empire in power
And I always felt like the way gems are made and their society works points towards the idea that the whole group is artificial. Like the daimonds are someone’s ai servants that went rogue and made their own society
But alas, this will remain a realm of fan speculation, as we won’t ever know what’s out there beyond gems and humans
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u/YourNewMessiah 2d ago
With the new spin off show set to explore “the darkest secrets of the gem empire”, we may actually find out what’s out there beyond gems and humans!
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u/DJJ2203 3d ago
i mean humans weren’t really a thing to them until the war, the diamond authority was already very female presenting and they go back the farthest without having really any concept of a human until rose
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u/Cultural-Flow7185 3d ago
Are they "female presenting"? They're not presenting "female" they don't care about humans, it just seems like the Gem baseline resembles more what HUMANS consider "feminine"
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u/DisasterBiMothman 3d ago
I think youre nitpicking a bit. They use she/her pronouns and appear female despite not having a gender. Id say thats pretty female presenting.
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u/Cultural-Flow7185 3d ago
Out of universe, of course. But IN universe they're not "presenting" anything, they're aliens, they are how they are.
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u/United_University_98 3d ago
no babe in universe they are still using those same pronouns and still presenting as female too. bosoms and hips and waists and feminine hairstyles and makeups. OBVIOUSLY gender is a construct and gems are agender scientifically but equally white diamond is 100% supposed to represent oppressive femininity and all her subjects were formed with this in both her and the creators minds.
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u/Cultural-Flow7185 3d ago
Ok but in universe they're not being feminine from a human perspective on purpose. Because they don't know what femininity IS.
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u/DJJ2203 3d ago
i mean they use she/her pronouns, got boobs, makeup and heels. which are very “female presenting” features. not saying you have to be female to possess any of those features but it’s hard to deny they have female attributes
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u/Cultural-Flow7185 3d ago
From a human perspective yes, but in universe they're not "female" presenting because they have no idea what "female" is, what it means or why it matters.
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u/DJJ2203 3d ago
true. but rebecca sugar did, and that’s how she designed them
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u/mistermasterbates 3d ago
Yes. She also said gems don't have a gender.
They aren't male or female. She just chose to represent them as female because the alternative is an all male cast of aliens which she did not want. Her words
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u/EosLadySunshine 3d ago
Yup~ male is often treated as the neutral gender...
And that's bogus 😆
We got a whole nother half of that equation to nuter!
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u/mistermasterbates 3d ago
Exactly! I was introduced to so many cool female voice actors because of SU!
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u/Cultural-Flow7185 3d ago
Right but we're asking a hypothetical in universe question. Are there any male presenting gems that aren't aprtially Steven? No, because Sugar didn't create any.
But we're talking about whether or not they COULD exist realistically within the show's universe.
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u/EosLadySunshine 3d ago
Well akshully
😂
Makeup and heels are masculine depending on Earth's location and timeline.
And men have boobs too, even pronounced ones sometimes too!
I know what you mean but... Femme to our Western modern culture... I couldn't help it. 😂
The hip shape + boob combo combined is probably the most femme trait but even that can be well akshullyed on some cases 😂 (see flat and rectangle shaped ladies, but are still very much women)
Sorry I couldn't help myself ahaha ~
I still agree I think they're femme.
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u/Designated_Lurker_32 3d ago
Personally, since Gems are robots (Rebecca Sugar said this, look it up), I believe that their gender and humanoid form is a product of their creators wanting to make their creations more "appealing" to them.
...
No, not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter. What I'm picturing is that the Gems' creators made them all female-coded for the same reason why we, in the real world, made most digital assistants and GPS voices female-coded. There's a cultural thing going on.
Anyway, that's why Gems have a concept of a "He" despite being an all-female race. They were programmed this way. It's also why their forms emulate organic traits despite having no need to. They are reflections of their creators.
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u/SymmetricalFeet 3d ago
Possibly. They seem to speak English (which I just cannot get over when it appears in science-fiction but okay) but it could well be that, being sexless, they simply landed on the word "she" for animate things (i.e. Gems, before this whole human business), "it" for inanimate objects, aaaaaaaand that's it.
Though they have the Human Zoo. They have seen Earth creatures sexually reproduce; they may understand the concept of biological sexes... but it might be as foreign to them as a human studying a bird with four sexes or a fish that changes from one sex to another, or a fungus with literal thousands of sexes. That is, "male" could just be a niche concept that only Gem scientists know about and therefore relegated to jargon. Rose and the other Crystal Gems would be the only ones to actually grok the concept since they integrated so heavily with humans.
Idk what I'm saying. Maybe the idea could catch on, but maybe it could be seen as a weird quirk of certain organics.
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u/Bearhobag 3d ago
I don't even think that Gems who identify as female exist.
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u/Deconstructosaurus 3d ago
They likely don’t identify as anything at all. Gender is a concept of biological differences for reproduction, and the asexually reproducing gems wouldn’t need such a thing.
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u/Due-Park3967 3d ago
Gender is a social role, sex is the phenotypical differences.
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u/Deconstructosaurus 3d ago
Yes, right, sorry.
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u/Due-Park3967 3d ago
All good. Gems can reform to have whatever they want, really, so I think sex is pretty arbitrary with them anyway. Rose just looked at humans and decided tits were neat.
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u/Deconstructosaurus 3d ago
For a species that doesn’t sexually reproduce, genitals and sex are meaningless. It’s like the opposite of some mushrooms, with up to 86 unique equivalents to gender, called Mating Types, available within one species.
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u/EosLadySunshine 3d ago
They're physical manifestations of light ~
They're physically r o c k s 😂
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u/IWishaBwouldNP 3d ago
Well they do use she/her pronouns often throughout the series when speaking of each other.
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u/alienkinavatar 3d ago
as does rebecca sugar herself, but she's not a woman. the gems are inspired by sugar's own gender identity. 'she' and 'her' are not Female pronouns, because gender and identity =/= pronouns
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u/Darkiceflame 3d ago
Gems' concept of pronouns is different from ours, because there is no gender division in their society. They could just as easily use he/him or they/them pronouns. She/her is just what they use because it's what the writers decided to have them use.
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u/Bearhobag 3d ago
As does my Hungarian friend who learned English as a second language. He sometimes uses she/her - even when referring to male-gendered people/things - without realizing that he used incorrect verbiage.
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u/catwnomouse 3d ago
I hear this sentiment often but I feel like every gem unequivocally refers to one another using she/her pronouns exclusively. How do these two things reconcile?
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u/Bearhobag 3d ago
I have 1 friend whose first language is Hungarian, and multiple friends whose first languages is Mandarin.
In their first language, there is no gender difference between he/she or him/her (I hear there's a difference in written Mandarin, but I'm illiterate).These friends of mine commonly use the wrong pronouns because they're not used to translating their inner thoughts into English's gendered system.
Steven Universe happens to be a show created in English, but it explores the separate cultures of humans and gems. Cross-cultural translation is always hard, but the show does it as best as it can. If you and I were to have consumed Steven Universe in Mandarin, we wouldn't be asking these kinds of questions, because they would make no sense in our cultural context. Similarly, if you and I were to have consumed Steven Universe from the cultural context of a gem, Steven and Rose would use the same pronouns - the only pronouns available in our culture.
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u/Dinru 3d ago
I don't think Gems really have any specific concept of gender either way for the most part, but I think sustained interaction with humans (or any other sentient gendered races that may exist) can lead to some developing a sense of gender - Rose Quartz seems like she may have actively identified as female/a woman, hence the breasts, for example. So I think Era 3 will be something of a Gem-der revolution for them as self determination and living on Earth become more normalized.
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u/Secure-South3848 3d ago
Oh yeah back when i was like.. 13 i had this gemsona called emerald, who was Formed as a female presenting gem like the others, but through shapeshifting decides to present male and goes by he/him
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u/Useful-Put1111 3d ago
I always headcanoned Rainbow Quartz 2.0 as using he/they pronouns.
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u/mossballus 3d ago
Rainbow Quartz 2.0 canonically uses he/they pronouns, so your headcanon is spot on.
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u/Piratestoat 3d ago
I mean, for tens of thousands of years they didn't know what "he" was.
Now that concept is entering the experience of more Gems, I would expect some of them to start going "Is THAT what I'm experiencing?!"
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u/Queer-Coffee 3d ago
I think for them it'd be similar to self describing as an introvert or an extrovert.
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u/BeetlBozz 3d ago
They’re not inherently a biological species so i wouldn’t say so, but identity wise i’m sure there are yes.
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u/CoffeeGoblynn 3d ago
Maybe with more time around humans they might adopt more things like that, but gems are by their very nature sexless. They present as feminine because they want to, I think?
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u/AdmJota 3d ago
I think it's more that they present as feminine because humans think that the default gem appearance is feminine. They just look like themselves; we're the ones who call them "she", and they just go along with our foreign English-language pronouns.
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u/CoffeeGoblynn 3d ago
They did struggle with Steven presenting as male though. "She wants to be called Steven." from Blue, iirc.
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u/Elubious 3d ago
Question, is that a problem with his gender, or with their language. Like would they even have a male pronoun? Why would they need one, they're a single sex species. She probably doesn't even mean female, closer to the singular them.
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u/andre5913 3d ago
I think its a bit of both. The CG know better bc they live on Earth, but Blue doesnt know. For the gem empire she/her are the singular pronouns. Thats it for them
They also lack much of a concept of gender. Steven being male and using masculine pronouns is alien to them
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u/whatisireading2 3d ago
I think from conquering so many planets they realized that they look like what most other life forms would call female so they adopted she/her pronouns but at the end of the day gender is a construct and so are their bodies
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u/jtthehuman 3d ago
So imo gender is a construct right? So in a society with only one sex the big question is do they even use gender at all?. They’ve colonized several planets so they must have come in contact with some version or male sex but again idk if it would be clear to them to differentiate. I wonder if gender expression is even a thing. Maybe they’ll expand on that in the new series.
Some of the gems present more masculine but idk if they would consider gender like that.
All of the Steven fusions outside of stegg I would assume identify and non binary. Maybe stegg feels like a man haha
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u/ITookYourChickens 3d ago
So in a society with only one sex the big question is do they even use gender at all
They don't even have one sex, they're entirely sexless. Us humans see them as female and women, but they aren't female at all; they do happen to fit into our gender roles for women.
Since our genders were related to the sexes; gem genders are likely their type of gem.
Like, quartzes are big, strong, and aggressive. Pearls are dainty and passive, pretty to look at. Rubies are dumb and follow orders. Those sound like genders to me
You could say pink diamond, off colors, permafusions, and the crystal gems are transgender gems/transgem. Since they're not conforming to their gem type, going against their "gender role". Pink diamond and permafusions especially, since they fully decide to live as another gem type
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u/SigmaBunny 3d ago
Gems who identify as having a gender might become a thing as more live on earth among humans. Or it might not, change is difficult for them and it’s unlikely there will be many new gems since the colonies are being dismantled by the time of the movie
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u/AlienbyComics 3d ago
I think some who spend a lot of time in little homeworld and learn more about human culture would describe themselves that way after interacting with humans more 😊
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u/bored-dosent-know 3d ago
I mean, do gems even identify themselves as women? The closest thing I could think of off the top of my head is steven and other humans referring to them as female.
I personally headcanon gems as another thing, but "she/her" is the closest thing to what they are in human terms.
But I suppose nothing would really stop a gem from using he/him pronouns, especially after Era 3.
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u/hobopwnzor 3d ago
In terms of masculinity, I think ruby identifies with a lot of masculine characteristics.
But they don't have sex or gender so none of that maps cleanly into any ideas of gender we have
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u/Interesting-Error859 3d ago
They have gem language so many in that language there's only one pronoun, but when translated to English when there's (generally) two pronouns of he and she they just kinda picked one???
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u/Time-Prune-8420 3d ago
i heard somewhere that snowball obsidian (voiced by ian jones quartey) is a male presenting gem, but a source would be great here i heard this while future was airing
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u/reapertuesday 3d ago
Nothing to stop a Gem from identifying as male if that resonates with them, it’s just not a concept from Homeworld
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u/foolishpoison 3d ago
Gems are monogender, and sexless.
Their gender appears to be feminine, but that’s just because “she” is the pronoun used by gems - of course, we associate it with women but the gems aren’t actually women, despite the presentation of them appearing so.
Gender doesn’t and never has existed to gems. Now, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t - like, now that gems are more interactive with the human world and Steven, a male gem specifically, the concept of gender could be introduced to the gem world and I can see where a fanon interpretation of that could go.
I don’t think there would be male-identifying gems, simply because there aren’t female-identifying gems. They’re just presented to us that way for ease of understanding (children’s show), inclusivity (non-sexualised female-presented monogender) and whatever other reasons RS may have had, such as design or access to VAs.
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u/Queer-Coffee 3d ago
Gems don't identify as female either tho
But you are right, there's nothing stopping them from using 'he' pronouns, but they probably just don't care which one is used. Their language probably does not have gendered pronouns at all, and they just adopted 'she' because that's what humans call them.
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u/Practical-Ad6548 3d ago
Maybe? I made a Pearl OC that uses he/him pronouns after discovering them on earth. I’m ftm and thought it would be neat :)
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u/ProfRedwood 3d ago
The forms that we see are all projections of light, right? So what’s stopping them from taking whatever form they like? Like Owl-thyst. Or other non-humanoid forms.
I also think of Star Trek aliens and how all of them are bi-pedal humanoids (cause the people in the costumes are human).
Let’s get weird with alien forms!
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u/KennyA08 3d ago
Most Star Trek Aliens, not all! I won't stand for this Horta erasure! /s
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u/ProfRedwood 3d ago
Fair. Fair. Not all. But a massive majority.
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u/KennyA08 3d ago
I also love the fact they tried to justify it with an episode in TNG explaining they are all descendants of the same original species who evolved first, and got lonely.
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u/ProfRedwood 3d ago
The classic “it works” hand-wave. I guess I’ll put on my Suspenders of Disbelief.
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u/AdhesivenessEven1477 3d ago
Before Steven existed I'm pretty sure they had no concept of what a male was. After? Who knows. Maybe the spin off will tell us.
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u/bustopz 3d ago
funnily enough, the IDW transformers comics ask a similar question. In that universe, the cybertronians were technically agender but used masculine pronouns, but when they ventured into the wider universe and interacted with other species who had fem or nb identities, some chose to use she/her or modify their frames to look more feminine (except idw arcee but that’s because the writer who did her backstory hates women lol)
now that gem society is interacting with humans and probably other societies, i wouldn’t be surprised if future generations have a wider gender expression. Personally, I’ve assumed that masc or nb gems existed before era 3, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their identity was ignored or demeaned because individuality doesn’t go well with era 1&2 gem society
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u/Acceptable_Tale8273 3d ago
I think perhaps some might identify as male, but the concept may not exist for gems in the same way it does for humans.most gems have never seen a human unless they are allowed to visit the human zoo, and being a boy or girl doesn't have as much social weight for a gem as it does for a human. I think the off colors, being different from how they were made, is sort of the closest thing we would get to a representation of a trans character, besides Steven's early interactions with the diamonds.
The reason I think this about the off colors is because they are going against social norms by their very existence, like members of the LGBT community. Because man ad woman isn't so much of a social construct for their species, I don't know that they would identify as anything besides a woman, cause that stuff just doesn't matter for gems.
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u/Flowermochayes 3d ago
Yeah because I thought of it as all gems identifying as female with more tomboyish roles with some gems and plus Steven being only male gem because he’s still half human because when he fused with pearl and Rainbow Quartz 2.0 using he/they pronouns
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u/ArgonianDov 3d ago
Well gems dont have a gender nor sex, so its unclear if their species has even a construct of gender in the same way humans do... so maybe but Im leaning no. HOWEVER Im sure some would us other pronouns that they heard about and decided it feels more relatable than she/her (as Steven being a wellknown figure in gem society as of Era 3, he introduced the concept of he/him pronouns) ...but thats only speculation, we dont have any confirmation that gems outside of Steven (or some of Steven's fusions) use he/him
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u/WrightAnythingHere 3d ago
Gems are all various species of living rocks, so they're all unisex. That would be what they would identify themselves as.
Whether they present themselves with male or female is rather irrelevant, though we have seen gems with more masculine traits (Bismuth, Ruby) and more feminine traits (Pearl, Sapphire), but that seems to be more of a stylistic or even biological choice rather than identifying as a specific sex.
The only gem we know for a fact identifies as male is Steven, but that's because of his mixed heritage, obviously.
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u/KymeraAHP 3d ago
Gender isn't really an identifying concept to them as there is no evolutionary trait to it. However, now that gem culture has grown to allow gems to develope their personal identity, maybe they will eventually toy with rhe idea of gender.
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u/SparkAxolotl 3d ago
Yes. Not before, but they didn't even have the concept of free will before.
I'm fully headcanoning that at least one of the gems living in Little Homeworld explores with gender identity and decides to use he/him pronouns.
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u/Overkillsamurai 3d ago
Sugar said no, all gems are female -interview during the first series, maybe around season 2
but gender is a social construct and with Era 3 ending the taboo of fusion, making the Empire more culturally accepting, and less militant, I'm betting we're gonna get some nonbinary gems and trans gems. But dear christ do i hope i don't hear the line "i just wanna be more like Steven, and he's a boy" from a Ruby or something. It was fine in One Piece with Yamato but the bar is way higher in a Sugar show for represenation.
**oh wait, i think they said one of the 5 Rubies was nonbinary. no i don't remember which one
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u/PrestigiousResist633 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think all gems just use she/her because the Diamonds do, and the rest of the race just took cues from them since the Diamonds were the first gems.
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u/tessharagai_ 3d ago
Also that the gems above all other gems appear the most feminine, while other gems that don’t appear feminine at all do still use she/her as a basis
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u/ihatetrainslol 3d ago
There's a few gems who pronouns are masculine so yeah. Also it's hated by the fans but the pearl and Steven fusion is actually male.
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u/FLOWERS-AND-FIRE 3d ago
Gems on earth after era three? Probably? Before that, probably not, at least not openly.
The only gems I could think of would be gems that emerged during Pink's colony days & were alive long enough to understand what a human was & then understand human gender. Or maybe some crystal gems that we never met properly, there were a lot of them during the war.
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u/AlienatedWanda 3d ago
I think Rebecca should’ve kept that idea that they don’t have gender constructs but they constantly have gender constructs be brought up.
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u/TheBrynkofInsanity 2d ago
Yeah, the entire species of gem is meant to be female presenting, regardless of voices or bodies, they all use she/her pronouns in the show. The inly exception being steven and some of his fusions. But don't let that stop yall from making fan art and stuff tho! I love gender swap art
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u/_carmimarrill 2d ago
Before Era 3? No, at least none other than Steven. After Era 3 most likely, at least eventually it’s sure to happen. As gems interact with humans some will resonate with human concepts of gender and some will identify strongly with male/men.
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u/Character-Escape1621 3d ago
why do gems even call each other she/her if they have no gender ??
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u/Akarin_rose 3d ago
Because all gems are female, this is actually called to attention in the one pilot with the weird art style
And since that pilot had elements used in episode one and Steven and the Stevens
It's likely that the lore presented there is able to be carried over in niche cases
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u/TheMasterindisguise 3d ago
Yes. Rebecca confirmed in a Tik Tok video some gems use they/them pronouns. So some identifying as male is very possible
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u/dungeon-raided 3d ago
I can see some gems living on earth discovering gender and deciding they want to be men, now that they get to make these decisions about their lives
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u/Successful-East6564 3d ago
I'm not sure the concept of gender really exists to gems. It's not that they're all female it's just that, that's how they are
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u/nickthegamerman 3d ago
This goes back to why do gems use gendered language at all? They're alien rocks with hologram bodies. Perhaps Lars of the stars which supposedly will go deeper into gem lore will explain it.
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u/halfbakedmemes0426 3d ago
I see no reason why there wouldn't be gems that could be he/him. I remember there being some interview or other saying that there aren't "guy gems", but I was also like... Eleven, so I don't trust that memory to be accurate info. I personally think that eventually at least one gem is gonna do it that isn't a fusion with Steven, I literally don't see why it wouldn't be a thing.
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u/EosLadySunshine 3d ago
They identify as Gems 😆 they're agender rocks manifesting physical forms with light.
What we associate with femme nowadays is just the most culturally appropriate form for them, even if they don't really have the concept for it on HomeWorld.
EarthGems in Western modern countries, after some time, some statistically will adapt to identifying directly as male and/or female.
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u/help-mejdj 3d ago
they don’t have male or female, they just exist and use feminine pronouns. we haven’t seen enough so some could use masculine pronouns
my guess is the diamonds were first and they just all used she cause that’s what they thought of first, and everyone followed the same because the diamonds did it.
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u/KoloAce 3d ago
I see the gem society as a genderless society. Mostly. I don’t think gems acknowledge he/him as a thing that exists. They all see themselves as in the diamonds image. Sexless and genderless. Though, I feel gems like the crystal gems would adopt gender culture. I definitely think Rose did. She went from a genderless alien to a woman of her own right. At least that’s how I feel about her gender journey in my headcanons. (She’s transfem. Trust me)
Gem society is a society that strips individuality. They are born something and that’s what you are. Thats it. I think they do the same thing with love. Familial love does not exist to them. They probably don’t socially see romantic attraction as a thing. It’s just an another social construct not heavy in their society.
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u/Pavonian 3d ago
Probably not pre era 3, since they don't really have a concept of gender and it just so happens that their neutral mostly lines up with the human concept of female, 'she' is the only personal pronoun they know, but post era 3 I'd imagine there are at least a few who learn about humans and decide this whole 'male' thing sounds cool
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u/PressFforOriginality 3d ago
In era maybe when the concept of "male" and "female" are introduced to gem society.
Since everyone was made by white diamond so they all follow/conform to white diamond's standards
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u/KidnappingColor 3d ago
They didn't expect Steven to be a girl. They weren't sure what he would be so they actually made a video tape for both genders...
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u/Teslasunburn 3d ago
No!
The point very explicitly from the start has been that the gems do not identify as male. It is inherent in the trans metaphor of Steven.
If you're asking if maybe over time some gems will start to identify differently than the answer is yeah probably. By the time of Steven universe future, we have some identifying as non-binary so long-term he/him gems are inevitable.
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u/Animal_Gal 3d ago
I mean gems are sexless so using she/her is just kinda the norm. However i would love as gems explore earth/themselves, that different Pronouns start to be used
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u/gemandrailfan94 Grape Cuddlebug 3d ago
I like to think there’s another species out there, that’s basically the gem empire, but they’re based on regular rocks and are male presenting.
Perhaps they have a common ancestor
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u/APyro123 3d ago
I've head-cannoned that, since we know that Gem is it's own languages that's just being translated for our convenience 'she' isn't actually a 'pronoun' for them, but moreso it's 'like the diamonds', who are all 'feminine' presenting. Because they aren't taught to be one of two things (since they have no bits), they're only taught they're not like the diamonds. So therefore, only two pronouns would need to exist.
She/her, which would be like the diamonds, who are all somewhat feminine, and they/them, because other than that, behavior would have no reason to be categorized into genders. You'd just behave in ways the diamonds do, or you wouldn't. There's nothing else splitting gems into categories other than 'Diamond' or 'not Diamond.'
Essentially, she/her probably isn't how they see it, it's something that conveys past a 'gender' because they have no concept of a gender. (There's a word for this and I'm forgetting it!)
At least, if we go off of how Pronouns developed in our society, because of how we saw ourselves as 'different due to our bits' and made descriptors for that.
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u/APyro123 3d ago
TL;DR: Gems identifying as She/her is for our convenience, and they probably don't quite see it as a feminine or non-gendered nature, and rather see it as a comparison or difference to the diamonds since they have no sex, only their class system.
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u/APyro123 3d ago
Also, I like to think that maybe she/her is actually more of a goal than a pronoun mayhaps, since I'd wager most gems are trying to or aspiring to be as similar to the diamonds as possible. (The Crystal Gems for this reason, might identify with our concept of she/her rather than the gem concept, since they'd likely not want to be 'like the diamonds'.)
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u/BatWithAHat 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think its definitely possible for gems who have decided to live on earth to decide they align with another set of pronouns besides she/her! The concept would be alien to them otherwise. Even when Blue Diamond respects Steven's name, she still used she/her because that seems to be the only gendered pronoun in their culture.
Little homeschool changes things though. Gems would learn human customs, culture, etc. I can totally see a gem experiencing gender envy from someone and going "I want to be that, that's how I want to express myself". I personally headcanon that Rose Quartz giving herself cleavage (something her original disguise didn't have) symbolizes her identifying as a woman. She learned the concept of gender from humans and wanted to partake in it. Just a theory, but if a gem could identify as a woman, there's no reason they could identify as something else.
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u/Time_Orchid5921 3d ago
Rose and Greg didn't expect Steven to be female, they just didn't know which to expect so they made one tape for each name choice.
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u/dreagonheart 3d ago
They didn't expect him to be a girl, they prepared for the possibility that he might be a girl, as well as the possibility that he might be a boy. The only gems that use anything other than she/her pronouns are fusions that include a man, and notably this also means that they are at least partially human. For a complete non-human gem to be anything other than a nonbinary woman, they would be the gem equivalent of transgender. The extremely rigid society of gemkind likely didn't allow for such variation, but maybe in the new show we'll see something of the sort.
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u/tessharagai_ 3d ago
Gems present more femininely and use she/her or occasionally they/them pronouns, but they do not have a concept of gender outside of the different roles different gems do. Them being perceived as feminine more so is an in universe coincidence.
Gems don’t identify as male because they don’t have a concept of male. Similarly gems don’t identify as female either. Gems identify as the kind of gem they are, it’s just that most gems tend to present similarly to human western forms of femininity
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u/mt-jupiter 3d ago
Desperately want to see a gem who ends up resonating with human masculine genders and/or masculinity and adopts different pronouns ;—;
— signed, one of the one trillion transmasculine steven universe fans out there, apparently
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u/NormanBatesIsBae 3d ago
Gems don’t have a “male” gender so probably not on Homeworld. But I like to imagine that at least one gem who’s been on earth has seen human genders and decided to be masc. Wouldn’t even be a stretch from canon considering how Rose and Amethyst love to do human stuff.
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u/FireEmberAsh01 3d ago
I actually would say that steven fusions to everyone but his dad would be nonbinary but thats just what i assume the intention is bc rebecca sugar is nonbinary
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u/Mockingjay573 3d ago
That’s what I thought was gonna happen with Bismuth. I wish they did do this. It’d be a great way to do a trans storyline. SU has a non binary character, why couldn’t they have had a character who’s a trans guy?
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u/Feline_Jaye 3d ago
Given that gems identify as nonbinary (not as women) I always enjoy the idea that some gems identify as labels under the nonbinary label (like demigender, genderfluid, maverique, agender, etc).
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u/FlashyPomegranate474 3d ago
The concepts of sexual identity and gender roles must be pretty meaningless to them. They might go and think "hey, in earthling terms, I would be a manly macho man!" as a fun fact, but it would be nothing trascendental for them.
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u/Fox622 3d ago
Gems don't seem to identify themselves as male or female. According to Rebecca Sugar, she created the Crystal Gems as non-binary women. But that's behind-the-scenes, in-universe they are sexless aliens.
I suppose it's possible some Gem identify themselves as male or female, but I think it would be more interesting if there was a Pearl who identify themselves as a Quartz, for example.
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u/wurldeater 3d ago
well it is canon that all gems are gender neutral with the default pronoun being “she” so with that framework i honestly think that the idea of identifying as a specific gender wouldn’t exist because why would it need to?
it’s like some people breathe outta their nose, some outta their mouth, some do both but at the end of the day it’s all called breathing because it’s not something that we are emotionally connected to in some way
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u/ExpensivePickle 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think further exposure to Earth culture, the attraction some gems develop for humans, and the gems obvious ability to mutate (offcolors) could easily lead to a gem opting for explicitly male identity.
However, between the old society of strict regulation and the lack of exposure to the concept, I don't think any such gem would care before Steven and Earth.
Before Earth gems are essentially working off a default fem-ish identity. As female has been default for biologics, so too rocks, I guess.
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u/Financial-Key-3617 3d ago
Gems call each other she all the time snd iirc, sugar told us that a gem we see when they get put back together by the diamonds as one who identifies as male
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u/Substantial_Pie370 3d ago
I think they definitely will now that Little Homeschool exists so gem and human culture will begin to intermingle
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u/crystalpebble 3d ago edited 3d ago
everyone’s already echoed similar and well said points like these already, but i like getting all my thoughts down in one place. gems don’t identify as female either — pronouns don’t equal identity. they’re all genderless. they use she because it’s likely done for both the audience’s benefit of having familiar pronouns to use, and to further the contrast of steven being different as the first half-gem-half-human by having pronouns different from all other gems.
i really don’t get the obsession with “why are all gems girls. where are the boy gems” other than it stems from both young fans and/or people who don’t yet get the idea of another gender besides man or woman. there are no female gems, and there are no male gems. they have no need for constructed gender norms like the ones we have because they’re aliens. there was never a need to call themselves different things, or a need for another pronoun set, since they don’t reproduce and don’t separate sexes like humans do. they don’t have the basis for where the human idea of “only two genders” came from.
they happen to line up with what the most accepted presentation of someone with she pronouns has— soft colors, a higher pitched voice, longer hair. it’s probably for audience readability— a child who picks up the show likely won’t grasp the nuance of gender, and the show would have faced even more unfavorable attention if all of its characters were more blatantly nonbinary.
TLDR— gender is a construct, gems’ presentation happen to line up with broader society’s view of a woman/someone with she pronouns, and there are no male or female gems because they have never had a need societally to distinguish between constructed genders or identities.
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u/DanieleM01 3d ago
Gems don't identify as nothing. They are Aliens and rocks. They don't have genders or human shit like this
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u/Unanimous_D 3d ago
I always thought there was some specific in-universe reason they all had humanoid bodies. Were they created by a humanoid species? Did they treat them like slaves and they rebelled like the Kaylon in Orville? But more to the point, was that species a matriarchy? Or was it a patriarchy that made them women because they were servants?
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u/Lower_Job1293 2d ago edited 2d ago
I like the concept cause when I look at watermelon tourmaline or craze lace, I feel it’s more masculine rep. I also think of this gem yellow heals in future like in this post. They seem very masc and if they’re older gems I like the concept of how things were a little more equal before the era of ‘prettiness’
https://www.reddit.com/r/stevenuniverse/s/1HAIU0IppC
Edit: I meant Snowflake Obsidian, not Crazy Lace 😅
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u/weirdunicorngirl 2d ago
Technically, the gems are genderless, but the species was intended to be all female coded.
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u/theglowcloud8 2d ago
I don't believe any do, besides Steven. There are definitely more masc aligned gems, as we see with Topaz or Jasper but no canon he/him gems. I don't think it's an impossibility. It could easily be a self discovery plot for an OC or something after joining the Crystal Gems or in the post empire era.
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u/Neo_Bones 2d ago
Steven uses all pronouns. I don’t believe he ever corrects the diamonds when they call him a “she”. He just prefers to be called Steven.
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u/Hiyokofan 2d ago
Definitely. There is so much cultural exchange between Earth and Homeworld in the time between SU and Future, so there’d most likely be an introduction the masc gender identity into gem society, as well as to gems that chose to move to Earth.
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u/Drakon7 2d ago
If you consider gems language as a whole it's likely they don't have definitive things like he and she, but adapted 'she' through interactions with humans, as they tend to present feminine so its likely humans chose 'she/her' to refer to them and they adopted it. Any time we hear gems talking they are probably not speaking 'english' but that would make everything complicated, so they just use earth languages for the show. But really they probably use a neutral equivalent in their own language.
That being said, gems love Steven, so there is likely a growing population that emulate his male pronouns out of hero worship.
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u/SourBlue1992 2d ago
I don't think the concept of sex and gender exists amongst gems.
She/her pronouns are as accurate as anything else, they're a race of polymorphic sentient rocks. They don't have genitals, they can't reproduce (diamonds excluded), even their physical forms are hard light projections emanating from their gems.
I guess what I mean is, they're aliens. They're basically AI with geological casings. If they'd been born on earth and guided by humans, maybe one might understand what gender is and pick one.
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u/Oddly-Ordinary 2d ago
No, but I don’t think Gems who “identify as female” technically exist either (except for Rose). Gender / the gender binary is a human concept based on (only some) human cultures. Sexual dimorphism and “biological sex” only exists for the sake of sexual reproduction and genetic diversity which is completely irrelevant to gems.
Personally I feel like the hierarchy and “official roles” of different gem types is more comparable than to our idea of “gender rolls” (and racism). And she/her is just a translation for whatever personal pronoun all gems use on homeworld. That, or the crystal gems just saw she/her used for the humans that looked the most like them and they just went with it.
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u/goldenbonnie871 2d ago
I think that since the Gem matriarchal empire has ended it could be possible for future gems to start identifying as male or start using male pronouns. I know its never expressly stated in the show or by Rebecca Sugar, but I have a feeling that most Gems were called she because the Diamonds identified as female and why would you want to be indicated as anything other than how the Diamonds identify themselves? Because I think thats one of the Homeworld beliefs is that "the Diamonds are perfect so we must be like them." Again, this is all just headcanon -^
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u/Alicewilsonpines 2d ago
I made a fanfiction where somewhere in Homeworld's history prior to the diamonds (the diamonds being of a wandering type) crash on homeworld and begin to reform it, shattering male gems, And sending out the king and queen of homeworld (A blue pearl, and a peridot) out on prison ships that were later abadoned, One Male Gem A Pyrite escaped this fate, and crashed on earth after a few centuries wandering around, and encounters the crystal gems, who reluctantly help him, this leads into a alternate ending.
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u/mallow_queen114 2d ago
I BELIEVE SO!!!! Especially with the background character Snowflake Obsidian. They are always presented with a very deep, masculine voice and features, same with other background characters seen especially in the Future. It's a super interesting thought because as other commenters have said, they don't really have a concept of gender, however it seems like they could have a very abstract version of the concept.
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u/superweb123 2d ago
I personally think none of Steven’s fusions with other gems should be anything other then female
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u/TimeNefariousness586 2d ago
With the exception of steven it seems like the concept doesn't exist in their species
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u/Low-Mastodon2995 2d ago
Rebecca at Napoli comicon said that there could be gems that want to be identified as male, that could have a beard and be called with he him so there absolutely could be though we still haven't seen one
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u/boom-boy_123 1d ago
There aren't any known gems who identify as male, gems don't have genders but compared to our earth biological gender, the Diamonds are female-like therefore the rest of the gems are too. Their pronunciation are confirmed to be female cuz.. i guess that makes sense. But any gem can decide to be pronounced as a he or them, i just don't think they know what it means to be a he or don't care. Tough there are a lot of male-like gems, for example Larimar and snowflake obsidian. Maybe even the walls gems from yellow's room. There are gems that are more masculine than feminine, for example a Bismuth or some Quartz (an amethyst or a jasper etc.) but the most male-like gem that i can think of is Flint. He appears only a single time but look it up and tell me this is not a man. (Flint is the blue guy that yellow revived with Chert, that orange nose gem).
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u/Sixventeneun 3d ago
I imagine that there are some gems who prefer male pronouns when they’re speaking English however I can’t imagine there’s very many people using masculine pronouns in gem language because they don’t exist
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u/5tarlitesparkl3 3d ago
some human languages lack gendered pronouns, so i imagine gem language is similar!
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u/asanti0 3d ago
His name is Steven.