# Nimmerworld — Gender Parity

> *Body and sex content is gender-parity by default. Asymmetric gendering is a vocabulary reserved for cases where the asymmetry itself is load-bearing — where some structural meaning would evaporate if the gendering were neutralized. Default-leakage gendering is forbidden by canon.*
>
> *Companion to: [`style-index.md`](./style-index.md), [`trait-palette.md`](./trait-palette.md), [`../architecture-index.md`](../architecture-index.md). Cross-referenced from every body / clasp / service-body / going-rogue section because those are the surfaces where this rule binds hardest.*

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## Spine rule — gendered framing is reserved for load-bearing asymmetry

**Body, sex, intimacy, clasp, service-body, going-rogue, outcast-pair, re-vat, and beloved-content is rendered in gender-parity register by default. Asymmetric gendering is permitted only where the asymmetry carries structural meaning that cannot be expressed without it. Default-leakage gendering — gender drift introduced unconsciously by the author's reach — is canonically forbidden.**

**Why this matters.** Gender, like saturated chromatic color (per [`style-index.md`](./style-index.md) §Spine rule), is *vocabulary*. Reserving it for content where it *carries information* keeps it sharp when invoked. Most fiction lets gendered default-framing leak everywhere — *the companion is ever-feminine, the rescuer is ever-masculine, the beloved is ever-she* — and the gendering becomes ambient wallpaper rather than meaningful signal. Nimmerworld doesn't want gendered default-framing because the **whole architecture rests on body-as-political-vocation, body-as-caste-marker, body-as-imperial-product** (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md)) — letting *gender* leak in as an extra default would mean the player reads the body before they read the *politics of the body*, and the politics is the whole point.

**The trait-palette parallel is exact.** Where saturated chromatic color is reserved for trait-information and freed from environmental decoration, gendered framing is reserved for content where the gendering is the load-bearing register and freed from default-leakage on every other surface. *White is not coloring text — it is text. Gendered framing, when it appears, is not coloring the scene — it is the scene.*

## Definitions — what is gender-parity, what is asymmetric gendering

**Gender-parity** is the default register: pronouns are `they/their/them`; categories of people (vocations, castes, roles, body-tiers) are not gendered; archetypes are framed in role-terms (*the captive-bound-to-the-liberator*, not *the damsel-in-distress*); intimate content treats both partners as equally embodied, equally desiring, equally witnessing.

**Asymmetric gendering** is the marked register: pronouns specify; categories carry gender; archetypes invoke gendered source-material; intimate content marks one body or position as gender-specific. The marked register is the *exception*, invoked only when its absence would erase structural meaning.

**Default-leakage** is the forbidden case: gendered framing introduced by authorial reach without examination. The author writes *her* because *she* came easier than *they*; the category becomes *waifu* because the source-tradition was feminine-coded; the romantic beloved gets gendered because the writer's templates ran on autopilot. **Default-leakage is not a moral failing — it is a craft failing.** The contract exists to make the failure mode legible, not to assign blame.

## When asymmetric gendering is load-bearing — three legitimate cases

| Case | Test | Example |
|---|---|---|
| **Specific named individuals with canonical identity** | The character is a SPECIFIC person, not a TYPE of person. Their gender is part of who they are, established and tracked. | A particular district-director NPC who is canonically she/her in lore-database, named, with continuous identity across playthroughs. *Categories around them remain gender-parity*. |
| **Source-material citation where gendering IS the citation** | The text invokes a classical / mythic / literary archetype whose source is irreducibly gendered, AND the source-gendering is the channel through which the meaning travels. | If a scholar-NPC quotes a Sapphic fragment in deep-lore context, the gendering is part of the citation, not a default. *Caveat: invoking the archetype neutrally first is preferred; gendered citation is fallback when neutralization would break the reference.* |
| **Biological asymmetry where the asymmetry is the subject** | The content is *specifically about* a gender-asymmetric biological process (pregnancy, lactation, menstruation, hormonal-specifics) AND the asymmetry is the load-bearing axis of the scene. | Vat-fabrication that *deliberately differentiates by reproductive function* in the imperial bio-engineering register. **Almost never required** — most body-canon in nimmerworld is post-fabrication, sumptuary, and politically-marked rather than biologically-marked. |

**All three cases share a test**: rewrite the passage with `they/them` and gender-neutral category-language. *Does some structural meaning evaporate?* If yes — load-bearing, asymmetric gendering permitted. If no — neutralize.

## When asymmetric gendering is forbidden — the default-leakage cases

**These patterns appear when the author reaches for templates without examining them.** All four were observed and patched in the v0.19 cleanup pass (commit `781aafa`); the contract exists to prevent recurrence.

| Pattern | What it looks like | Why it leaks |
|---|---|---|
| **Categorical default-gendering** | A vocation, body-tier, or role that names itself in a gendered loanword (*waifu*, *succubus*, *femme-fatale*) when the role-content itself is not gender-specific. | The source-tradition was gendered; the borrowing carried the gendering through unexamined. *Patch: split the category into role-specific terms. v0.19 split `waifu` → `companion` + `sex-worker`*. |
| **Pronominal asymmetry in scene-blocks** | A section about a category of people uses gendered pronouns 27 times in one direction, ~zero in the other (the specific count from v0.19's bodies.md going-rogue / outcast-pair / re-vat audit). | The author's templates default to one gender; once the first pronoun lands, downstream pronouns chain through that gender by inertia. *Patch: full pass to `they/their/them`*. |
| **Archetype-gendering in role-symmetric scenes** | A classical archetype whose role-asymmetry is structural (rescuer / rescued, witness / witnessed, captive / liberator) gets imported with its source-tradition's gender-coding intact. | The archetype carries a *role-asymmetry* that IS load-bearing; the *gender-asymmetry* attached to it in source-material is **not** load-bearing — it's a contingent decoration of the original cultural context. *Patch: keep the role-asymmetry, neutralize the gender-asymmetry. v0.19 rewrote §The damsel-in-distress activation as §The captive-bound-to-the-liberator activation*. |
| **Romantic / cosmological one-liners** | Stray gendered phrases in passing examples (*moving the waifu*, *the bride's awakening*) inside scenes that are not about gender. | The example was incidental; the gendering was reached for as flavoring. *Patch: substitute role-terms (`the beloved`, `the partner`)*. |

**Each of the four has a structural failure-mode the contract is designed to catch.** The tests in §When asymmetric gendering is load-bearing answer all four — no member of any leakage-pattern can pass them.

## Propagation — where this rule binds in the architecture

The contract propagates *everywhere body / sex / intimate / relational content is rendered or generated*. Concretely, it binds these surfaces:

| Surface | What the rule requires |
|---|---|
| **Body-canon authoring** ([`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md), §Service bodies, §Sumptuary fabrication, §Asymmetric clasp, §The going-rogue arc, §The outcast-pair, §Re-vat outflow, §The three-body grammar) | Categories are gender-parity by default. Pronouns are `they/their`. Archetypes are framed in role-terms. *This is the spine where the rule was first established (v0.4 of bodies.md, v0.19 of architecture-index.md)*. |
| **Cosmology authoring** ([`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md), §The deferred-moksha doctrine, §There is no outside) | Cosmological one-liners use role-terms (*the beloved*, not *the waifu*). Doctrinal voice is gender-parity unless the citation requires asymmetry per Case 2 above. |
| **Vocation-substrate authoring** ([`../political-register/architecture.md`](../political-register/architecture.md), §The vocation-substrate of the imperial-net market) | Vocations are not gendered. Service-body-of-the-dead, memory-pattern-extractor, tongue-installer, assembler-artisan, lobotomist — all neutral by default. |
| **Inference / memory schema** ([`../inference-and-memory/architecture.md`](../inference-and-memory/architecture.md)) | Database filenames and schema-field names use role-terms (`companion.sqlite`, not `waifu.sqlite`). v0.19's rename and explicit scope-clarifier-sentence is the canonical example. |
| **Compositor narrative output** ([`../narrative-composition/architecture.md`](../narrative-composition/architecture.md)) | LLM-authored canon-rows must satisfy the contract. The substitution-test should be a Compositor *output-validator* hook before back-write. |
| **NPC speech corpora** | NPC dialog templates are gender-parity by default. Specific NPCs with canonical identity (Case 1) may speak in gendered terms about themselves; speech *about categories* of others is neutral. |
| **Universal-translator corpus** ([`../player-experience/architecture.md`](../player-experience/architecture.md), §Designer-fixed cosmology) | The word-to-trait mapping does not carry gender-coding through trait-palette assignment. Categories that get translated retain their gender-parity register. |
| **Player input** | The player's typed/spoken language is *not* policed — players use whatever pronouns they reach for. The contract binds **canon-authoring**, not player utterance. |
| **NPC body rendering** ([`../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md`](../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md)) | The base-limb palette and trait-textured variance do not encode default-gendering at the chassis level. Chassis carry caste-tier marks, vocation-marks, and trait-state — not gender-defaults. |

**This is the body / sex / intimacy register's typed contract.** Anywhere the architecture authors content that touches a body, this rule fires.

## The substitution test — the contract's executable form

Any passage in body / sex / intimate / relational content can be checked by mechanical substitution:

1. **Replace** all gendered pronouns with `they/their/them`.
2. **Replace** any gendered category-name with a role-term.
3. **Replace** any archetype-invocation with its role-structure.
4. **Read** the result.

**Verdict:**
- If the result preserves all structural meaning → the original was default-leakage. **Apply the substitution.**
- If the result loses structural meaning → the original was load-bearing. **Document why** (one of Cases 1, 2, 3 in §When asymmetric gendering is load-bearing) inline or in a `<!-- gender-parity-exception: case-N -->` comment so future readers know the asymmetry was deliberate.

**The test is mechanical enough that it can be run by an LLM-Compositor as a hook on any body-canon-authoring output.** That's the long-term enforcement path: the contract binds at the schema-level via output-validation, not via per-author vigilance.

## What this rule does NOT do

- **It does not regulate player utterance.** Players speak in whatever gendered language they reach for. The contract binds the world-as-authored, not the player-as-acting.
- **It does not erase named NPCs' identities.** A specific NPC who is canonically she/he/they remains so — Case 1 covers them. The contract is about *categories and scenes*, not individuals.
- **It does not require synthetic neutrality in lore-citations.** Case 2 protects citation-integrity when the gendering is part of the source.
- **It does not deny biological asymmetry where the asymmetry is the subject.** Case 3 covers genuinely gender-asymmetric biological content. Most nimmerworld body-content is post-fabrication and politically-marked, so Case 3 is rarely invoked, but it is not foreclosed.
- **It does not police trait-vocabulary by gender.** The 8 Hellenic traits do not carry gender-defaults; the trait-palette and gender-parity contract are *orthogonal* spine-rules that compose cleanly.

## Cross-references into architecture domain files

The gender-parity contract is referenced from architecture sections where body / sex / intimate / relational content is authored. When this contract changes, those sections may need updates too (or they may reference back into here for canonical definition):

| What | Where it's referenced architecturally |
|---|---|
| Service-body taxonomy + companion / sex-worker split | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §Service bodies |
| Service-body honeypot + companion-honeypot deepening | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The service-body honeypot |
| Going-rogue arc + outcast-pair geometry + re-vat outflow | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The going-rogue arc through §The three-body grammar of the defected beloved |
| The captive-bound-to-the-liberator archetype (Stockholm-dynamics-inverted) | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The captive-bound-to-the-liberator activation |
| Imperial Cult doctrinal one-liners + deferred-moksha refutation phrasings | [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §The deferred-moksha doctrine |
| Vocation-substrate of the imperial-net market (companions, sex-workers, harvest-vocations) | [`../political-register/architecture.md`](../political-register/architecture.md) §The vocation-substrate of the imperial-net market |
| `companion.sqlite` per-player local database + scope-clarifier sentence | [`../inference-and-memory/architecture.md`](../inference-and-memory/architecture.md) §Local memory architecture |
| Compositor canon-authoring as the LLM enforcement-point | [`../narrative-composition/architecture.md`](../narrative-composition/architecture.md) (Compositor output-validation hook — pending implementation) |
| Universal-translator corpus + player-curated trait-circle gender-neutrality | [`../player-experience/architecture.md`](../player-experience/architecture.md) §Designer-fixed cosmology |

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**Version:** 0.1 | **Created:** 2026-04-27 | **Updated:** 2026-04-27