Okay, so gender in this universe is not a particularly major focus of the story/themes (so it's not like, say, Ann Leckie's Ancillary trilogy where pronouns, and different cultures' understanding of gender was a major component). Certainly gender in this universe does not appear to be particularly linked to sex/biology/pronouns/honorifics: I've already mentioned above that 'Queen-Marshal', which in our universe would be a gendered title, is a position which has been held by at least one man (or at least someone who used he/him pronouns and who impregnated someone). The current Queen-Marshal uses she/her pronouns, is married to multiple people (two of whom use he/him pronouns — one being the father of the eponymous Sun — one of whom who uses she/her pronouns and is described as being pregnant at some point after their marriage). Given that this Queen-Marshal appears to have both given birth to at least one child, and be married to a woman who she has somehow impregnated, reproductive biology is clearly working differently to how it works in our universe — and this biology seems to be decoupled from gender/gender roles.
I think the best way to explain it is that in the book's universe, broader groupings of people are more important than individuals: most of the societies depicted are communal rather than individualistic. And so the book is more concerned with intracommunal relationships and connections between people — their familial connections (mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings), and their connections within organisations and hierarchies — rather than an individual person's gender identity. A lot of the names for these family or other types of relationship are names which have a gendered connotation in our world ('mother', 'Queen', 'ma'am'), but don't always match the pronouns used by the individual character (although I'm assuming that pronouns=gender, which is not necessarily true). This is not viewed by the characters as misgendering them, which is what leads me to think that gender doesn't work the same way it does in our world: either gender is unimportant to them, or titles etc that we would view as gendered are perceived as a gender neutral default in the world of the book. Hardly any of the characters seem to be straight, but given what I've just said about gender, I don't even know if the way we talk about sexual orientation can map exactly onto sexual orientation in this universe. I don't know if that makes sense?
(Which is an extremely long-winded way of saying that female!Alexander in this world is in a relationship with a woman ... if we are treating 'uses she/her pronouns' to mean 'is a woman'.)
no subject
I think the best way to explain it is that in the book's universe, broader groupings of people are more important than individuals: most of the societies depicted are communal rather than individualistic. And so the book is more concerned with intracommunal relationships and connections between people — their familial connections (mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings), and their connections within organisations and hierarchies — rather than an individual person's gender identity. A lot of the names for these family or other types of relationship are names which have a gendered connotation in our world ('mother', 'Queen', 'ma'am'), but don't always match the pronouns used by the individual character (although I'm assuming that pronouns=gender, which is not necessarily true). This is not viewed by the characters as misgendering them, which is what leads me to think that gender doesn't work the same way it does in our world: either gender is unimportant to them, or titles etc that we would view as gendered are perceived as a gender neutral default in the world of the book. Hardly any of the characters seem to be straight, but given what I've just said about gender, I don't even know if the way we talk about sexual orientation can map exactly onto sexual orientation in this universe. I don't know if that makes sense?
(Which is an extremely long-winded way of saying that female!Alexander in this world is in a relationship with a woman ... if we are treating 'uses she/her pronouns' to mean 'is a woman'.)