u/DropFunk2029

I'm writing a solo tabletop roleplaying game in which the player assembles a polycule of lovers, companions, and rivals on their adventures, all set in a pastiche of mythical Greece. The ruleset uses playing cards to resolve situations with uncertain outcomes and generate random situations and characters from tables.

One of the NPC generation tables determines the character's gender identity and gender presentation. The suit determines identity:

  • Spades = masculine (exactly where on the spectrum is up to the player)

  • Clubs = gender neutral and/or agender (I haven't decided which)

  • Hearts = feminine (exactly where on the spectrum is up to the player)

  • Diamonds = non-ternary (again, player's choice).

Meanwhile, the card's rank determines how closely their gender presentation corresponds to their gender identity. So far, I have six degrees of gender presentation, in order of in-universe prevalence:

  • Completely conformist: The character presents the same as their gender identity. A character with a masculine identity would present masculine, a character with a feminine identity would present feminine, and so on.

  • Exaggeratedly conformist: The character presents as an over-the-top example of their sex. For example, a masculine character could present as a swaggering Manly Men, and a feminine character could present as an ultra-girly "lily of the field".

  • Slightly nonconformist: The character mostly presents traits of their gender identity but also displays some traits of different gender(s). For example, a masculine character would display 60-95% masculine traits and also display 5-40% feminine, gender-neutral, agender, and/or non-ternary traits.

  • Equally conformist and nonconformist: The character presents as gender-conforming and as non-conforming in roughly equal proportions. For example, a masculine character would display 50% masculine traits and 50% feminine, gender-neutral, agender, and/or non-ternary traits.

  • Mostly nonconformist: The character mostly presents traits of a different gender from their sex. For example, a masculine character would display 60-95% feminine, gender-neutral, agender, and/or non-ternary traits and display 5-40% masculine traits.

  • Completely nonconformist: The character does not present as their gender identity at all. For example, a masculine character would display any combination of feminine, gender-neutral, agender, and/or non-ternary traits but no masculine traits.

The trouble is I can't think of simple one-word terms to describe degrees of gender conformity and non-conformity. The idea itself came from degrees of gender identity like gender -> paragender -> demigender -> libragender -> agender, but as far as I know, those don't have corresponding terms for gender presentation. Do you know of any fitting single-word terms? Or should I use a different way of classifying gender presentation entirely?

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u/DropFunk2029 — 21 days ago