Worldbuilding: Sexuality and Relationships

This might get long. Questions and comments welcome but also please mute if you want!

Disclaimer: this is about the sociocultural norms of a fictional civilisation and isn't meant to reflect my RL opinions on people from the real world

Which shouldn't need to be said, but it's there just in case!

Okay! So a lot of things are different in Ari's sector. Probably the biggest one is that there's no heteronormativity. People are assumed to be bisexual unless they say otherwise.

The majority of the population actually is bisexual, but someone growing up and realising actually I only like men, or only like women, or I'm just not interested - they wouldn't worry about not being accepted. There's no discrimination, present or historical. You can just love who you love.

There's no marriage. There are 'partnership contracts' for couples, but they're time limited. A couple can keep renewing theirs forever and have it function pretty much like marriage, but asking for 'lifetime contract' would be a massive red flag. Nobody really does it.

Most people go into partnership contract for love. Some rich Company people might use it for temporary alliances, but only with the full consent of the people involved.

Historically, spacers didn't do it, because voyages took so long that the contract would probably expire before you saw your partner again! With technological improvements, that's not quite so pronounced, but there's a cultural hangover

On the Tradelines especially - that if you have a partner you're committed to them and not the ship. So if you're only planning to be there for a few years anyway, no big deal, do what you want. If you're ambitious and want your own ship etc, then it'll go against you.

I've posted about overnights before but it's very common for people on long trips through space (Tradeliners or otherwise) to hook up with people they meet at space stations. Stationers are generally accepting of this but some don't like it, think it has negative effects on station culture, etc.

People are very varied in opinions on sex outside of contract. The Company elite tend to be more conservative, and independent colonies vary wildly depending on who founded them! The general attitude though, in keeping with their libertarian origins, is that even if you're personally conservative you wouldn't really care about what other people do.

So long as everyone's consenting, totally up to them! The very wealthy can be particular about 'children born in contract' for inheritance reasons, and it's trickled down a bit in Company culture, but on most other colonies it wouldn't be a big deal.

Children are still created the normal way! But gestation in genelabs isn't unheard of, and adoption is very common, so same-sex couples or unpartnered people being parents is totally normal and wouldn't surprise anyone.

Also because of the limited nature of partnership contracts, step-parents are fairly common too! Local custom differs as to how involved they are in the children's lives.

That is all that comes to mind right now! May add more later if I think of it or anyone has thoughts.