Quote Originally Posted by Honest Tiefling View Post
I'd argue against the idea of them being a mono-sex race. The idea is for them to have a reference to their mythology, which makes them very male. (I believe many Japanese mythological creatures tend to follow the trend of only having a single sex, or am I wrong?) Why would a race with only a single sex evolve to have two genders? Without a reason, it doesn't make sense why they would just fabricate two and only two genders. Not one, not three, just two.

I could see their genders coming around because of biological concerns. Their genders are less 'male' and 'female' and more 'motherly' and 'fatherly'. While the father might have the bits to carry a child to term, he's the one building the nursery while the mother is the one making the clothing and preparing some poultices. With enough alchemy, people could choose which role they prefer, who gets to carry the child and even who gets to breastfeed the child.

Heck, one could make the argument that if anything were to happen to the mother, the father could just get a temporary fix and finish the job. Poor other races, whose husbands will never be able or willing to do such a wonderful thing for them! Or even volunteer to handle a bit of the breastfeeding if something happens! Poor dears. The more I think about this, this is how I would present a mono-sex race with two genders.

You could go with the simple approach, that their race has an unusually high number of female hermaphrodites, which they like just fine and like to celebrate their diversity. Some of their ladies come with a bit more but a gentlemen never asks and most don't care.
So, let me just establish that we're on the same page here:

You're arguing that Tanuki should be a race of simultaneous hermaphrodites, where every individual has both masculine and feminine sexual organs, but has evolved a spectrum of gender identities based on two fundamental genders: Mother and Father (which mostly, but not entirely, correlate to Female and Male respectively)?

Because, this is an idea that makes a lot of sense to me. It feels like something that can be presented matter-of-factly and without coming off as too unsettling.

If we can agree that this is the way to handle tanuki, I'll put forth a draft of their codex's "Gender Notes" section.