Seeing as the original thread is nearly 50 pages long, I thought it would be a good idea to start a new one. I hope that this isn't something only mods are supposed to do...

Anyway, a lot of the old thread was taken up by (a) people who understandably didn't want to read the whole thread posting things that had already been said several times before and (b) other people noting how annoying that was. :P Philip actually gave a good summary of almost all of the arguments made thus far on page 32, but of course the problem there is that people wouldn't read that far. I'm hoping that by starting this thread off with a summary of the collected evidence on the first page, maybe I can keep this thread from being quite so cluttered. So, starting with philip's summary:

Quote Originally Posted by phlip
General: "-us" suffix is common in male Roman names, therefore Male
Counter: V isn't Roman, why should Roman naming conventions apply?
Also, note that we've since seen evidence that real-world naming conventions may not apply in OOTS.

General: V is occasionally referred to, sometimes to hir face, as either male or female. S/he objects to neither.
See #9 #87 #111 #135 and possibly others.
Actually, it's only in front of V in #9 and #135; further, in the former V is still entranced and may not have heard Roy, and in the latter (s)he might not have been paying terribly close attention to the shopkeeper. Even if he noticed and is male, he might not bother correcting a stranger he'll likely never see again anyway.

Also, note that Rich has stated that this only reflects the characters perceptions.

General: The bottom of V's body is square, like the male characters, not round like the female. Therefore Male
Counter: Rich has addressed this one directly, saying the robes s/he wears cover any distinguishing features. Plus, in #200, Miko was revealed to be female, and she also looks square with her robe (this may in fact be a reference to this argument).

General: Rich has been quoted referring to V as 'he', therefore Male
Counter: Rich is playing with us.
Also, when questioned about this, Rich has noted that the English language often uses the pronoun "he" when no gender is specifically known. In addition: this, and the general status of women as the "marked gender" may explain why Vaarsuvius is refered to as if he is male more often than as if she is female. (Side note: the fact that being female is often treated as an exceptional case, despite the fact that half of humanity is female, is just one illustration of how the English language is oh so very stupid. I blame the fact that it developed naturally instead of being designed. Note also how this linguistic convention reflects a cultural bias.)

#3: V is happily talking with Haley about her lime green Boots of Speed. Therefore Female
Counter: V may be "metrosexual", or otherwise care about fashion. Or s/he may be simply agreeing for the sake of discussion (as one would say "Uh-huh... Interesting." to a friend if they were talking about something you were not interested in)

#20: V's quote is rather macho. Therefore Male
Counter: Again with the gender stereotyping. V could be a macho female. I'm not even going to mention the stereotyped "proofs" anymore.
To give a broader impression of what philip is talking about here, I'll just say that people often say, essentially, "It's obvious from his/her behavior that V is (fe)male!" I think the simple fact that this argument is made by both sides of the debate rather clearly shows that it is flawed. :P Besides which, it may be unreasonable to expect elves to conform to human gender stereotypes.

Still, I'll address a few specific instances that have come up that have more specific counterpoints, in addition to the already noted danger of gender stereotyping:

Argument: No man would care about doilies.
Counterargument: V says "My preliminary inquest", suggested no preexisting knowledge; this was something (s)he researched at Roy's request. True, one could argue that most men wouldn't be willing do that, but one could also make the case that using a pastry decoration thingy to find ULTIMATE COSMIC POWER is kind of a "guy" response.

Argument: No self-respecting man would wear a circlet. That's so girly.
Counterargument: A mideivel fantasty land just might have different fashion standards than the ones you're familiar with, y'know. Plus, that could be an awesome Headband of Intellect, in which case V would likely wear it regardless of how it looks. In any case, it keeps his/her hair out of his/her eyes.

#25: V is covering hir eyes while Elan runs around naked, while Haley (later) admits to being interested. Therefore Male
Counter: V is highly sexually disciplined (which is reasonable, since s/he seems disciplined in most other respects). Or s/he doesn't swing that way.

#28: When Haley says V was interested in Elan's "weapon of choice", Roy and Belkar look shocked. Therefore Male.
Counter: It just shows Roy and Belkar think at this point that V is male. Belkar's "I always suspected" could be taken as "I always suspected V was gay" or "I always suspected V was female", either way as it was a misunderstanding anyways it is still unconfirmed suspicion. And in the latter case, it is just an example of even the characters not knowing V's gender.

#35: When Haley's top came undone, V was not watching excitedly with the rest of the group. Therefore Female
Counter: V may not have been nearby at the time to notice. Also, see #25
I'll just note that it seemed clear to me that Roy left V on lookout as he went to see what was up. In that case, V didn't see anything and had no chance to react in any fashion.

#43 and on: Zz'dtri is male, so should V. Therefore Male
Counter: Durkon is male and Hilgya is female - so this isn't a hard rule. And even if it was, V may be the exception.

#123: Haley asks V to share the room with her, while all the boys share the other room. Therefore, Female
Counter: She might just not have wanted the room to herself, and trusted V the most to not do unspeakable things to her at night.
Personally, I assumed that there were four beds to a room, so Haley had to choose someone to sleep with her. She might then reasonably choose V over the others even if she thought he were male. But maybe she just did not want to sleep alone. Or maybe she thinks V is, or might be, female. Regardless, this is another case that only speaks to someone's perception of V.

#123 again: When Haley shows V her gemstones, The rest of the group is not surprised by V"s comment that s/he has a set of hir own. Therefore Female
Counter: As well as the usual it-only-shows-their-perception claim, they may have been too enthralled in the imagining ("remembering"?) of a topless Haley to notice.

#152: V is shot in the chest with an arrow, and doesn't seem to mind that much. Therefore Male
Counter: While in real life such a shot would probably hurt a female more, I know of no such rule in D&D.

#154: V's familiar is male, but it was argued both ways what implications this has for V's gender.

#186: While V is nude behind the dragon's tail, you can see hir shoulder and the top section of hir chest - and it looks distinctly flat. Therefore Male
Counter: When Hilgya is shown nude in #83 you can see just as much of her chest and it looks flat also, while she definately is curvy while clothed. Also, V might be flat-chested.
Rich has also noted that, however consistant his style of drawin men and women might usually be, if he deliberately created an androgenous character, obviously he would bread his own rules. At best, one might conclude that V was not specifically designed as a woman.

Did I miss anything?

While I'm at it:
Instrip references to V's androgyny:
#87: V doesn't enter either the male or female restrooms.
#107: Belkar refers to V as "ambiguously-gendered"
#173: V is referred to as "sir or madam", and V uses the gender-inspecific "their" to refer to hirself.
#177: It is revealed that Belkar doesn't know V's gender either.
#186: V is shown nude, but concealed behind a dragon's tail.
Let me now further discuss the rest of the Order's and Rich's perceptions of Vaarsuvius's gender, and how they may have changed over time.

Several people have suggested that Rich at first designed V with a specific gender in mind. I think that V was first created as a male. That's how the rest of the party consistantly refers to him/her (on the rare occasions that they hint at V's gender), and it seems unlikely that Roy would call Vaarsuvius "V-Man" if he thought that V might be female. Now, granted, that only proves what they think, BUT: If Rich really wanted to confuse readers on the matter, it should have been less consistant. If one were only to go by what's in the strip, one might well have just concluded that he was male at least until Belkar's "ambiguously gendered" comment in #107 or even until the shopkeeper's use of "she" in #135. Even then, you'd think the people V travels with would know better than some stranger. One of the reasons it's so debatable here is because of Rich's comments on how this only demonstrates the characters' perceptions; I imagine that many people who only read the strip (I wonder how much of the readership that is?) think V is male. In particular, Roy's use of a male nick-name for V suggests to me that Rich hadn't decided to make V so ambiguous yet. And I think it was only after a question prompted by said nickname that Rich started with the obfuscation.

That's not to say, however, that V is really male. Rich could still reveal her to be a female within the strip, and it wouldn't contradict anything we've seen so far. And indeed, he might choose to do so at some point, having himself abandoned the idea of V as specifically male. Although he says he'll never tell.

As for the characters:

As I said, Roy's use of "V-Man" seems to indicate that Roy is convinced V is male, or at least sometimes forgets that he doesn't really know. It's possible that the others went along with this assessment, thinking that Roy maybe knew something they don't. However, Belkar, at least, seems to have his doubts about this: He checks V's reptilian anatomy in #177 to try to find out for sure. I wonder: does V-lizard realize that Belkar is trying to sex it (that sounds dirtier than it is), and thus that Belkar is uncertain of its sex?

Based on the fact that V is identified as both male and female by different people in the strip, we can conclude that (s)he does not look (by stick figure standards) or sound distinctly masculine or feminine.

Other things that have been mentioned many times:
  • Maybe V is a hermaphrodite/is asexual/is a enuch/changes genders spontaneously due to a bizarre magical incident.
  • What if V were to put on the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity that Elan found? Maybe no one would even be able to tell the difference!

One more thing I'd like to note, because it hasn't been mentioned yet. V has been referred to as male by the other party members on several occasions. However:
  • Soon after Roy calls Vaarsuvius "V-man", V identifies a belt that changes the wearers gender.
  • In the strip before Elan calls V "he", V conveniently doesn't need to use the bathroom.
  • Belkar refers to Vaarsuvius as "ambiguously gendered" a few strips prior to using male pronouns to refer to V.

Now, that's just... well, as Jerry Seinfeld put it, "I'm not sure what it is, but it's somethin'."

Wow, this wound up really long. I may edit this a bit later.