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It has a tetrapolar mating system with each cell containing two mating-type loci (called A and B) that govern different aspects of the mating process, leading to 4 possible phenotypes after cell fusion. Each locus codes for a mating type sublocus (α or β) and each type is multi-allelic: the A locus has 9 alleles for the α type and an estimated 32 for its β type, and the B locus has 9 alleles each for both its α and β types. When combined this gives an estimated 9 × 32 × 9 × 9 = 23328 potential mating type specificities. This does not mean all different mating types are compatible with one another, because compatibility between haploid individuals exists only when for both the A and the B mating-type locus at least the α or β are different. Strains are thus compatible with ( 1 − 1/ (9 × 32) ) × ( 1 − 1/ (9 × 9) ) ≈ 0.984 = 98.4 % of the population.
Imagine how much easier dating would be if you’re default compatible with over 98% of the population. Making me jealous.
“Look, I’m glad someone’s having fun, but I’m not memorizing that set of pronouns!”
When you have that many sexes, I think everyone would just use they/them. Don’t want to assume incorrectly.
That was my thought as well. That many sexes, if they can be called sexes, basically means everyone would have a single indeterminate sex. Imagine filling a form and selecting your sex among a 20K list of names.
You wouldn’t be choosing between 20k it’s in four sets of 9, 32, 9, and 9 so each would have four descriptors that would make up their mating configuration
Excuse me, but that’s like saying “my sex is 20x10x10x10”. The combinations are still in the thousands even if you use different notation. It’s like representing male/female as 0/1 and saying it only uses one bit, but everyone still hast to remember the name and expectations associated with that bit.
A sentient species with so many sex combinations would not bother to name each one, or attach specific sociocultural traits to all of them. Humans, for example, know like 10-20k words, passing sex ed would be like reaching master level in a foreign language. It would be a tag with less meaning, like age, height, or blood type are.
There are more than 20K cities/towns to choose from and most forms have auto-complete for that. So I think we could make it work and if it was an essential part of your identity, I imagine people would come to recognize most of them just by name over time
If my species had 20K sexes, sex wouldn’t be an essential part of my identity. It would be like my fingerprints being part of my personality.
Not quite - mating types aren’t sex (though the post confuses them). Their gametes are the same size (isogamy), so it’s called mating types. Humans have gametes of different sizes, so we have sexes.
The opening line of that wikipedia article says they’re “equivalent to sexes in multicellular lifeforms”
Right, “equivalent to” in the sense that legs are “equivalent to” fins in that they provide locomotion.
