Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26248252-20150418023438/@comment-508329-20150429221229


 * "When gems form there is a 50/50 chance it could be male or female"

Here's the quote from the Rebecca Sugar AMA:


 * "Q: Is there any particular reason the Gems use feminine pronouns if gender is irrelevant to them? I would understand if it were just more convenient.
 * "A: There's a 50 50 chance to use some pronoun on Earth, so why not feminine ones-- it's as convenient as it is arbitrary!"

From the context, I think she was trying to say that, on Earth, pretty much everyone uses either male or female pronouns (which is true for over 99% of the English-speaking world), so she, as a writer, made the convenient and arbitrary decision to have these genderless alien polymorphic sentient space rocks feminine pronouns by default.

Various Crewniverse comments have mentioned that gems don't really have human-style genders. Rebecca Sugar has said that, technically, full gems aren't actually male or female, and just happen to resemble human women. Ian Jones-Quartey has compared them to the Nameks / Namekians, the lizard / snail aliens from Dragon Ball who use male pronouns and reproduce by spitting out eggs.