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[The Twilight God]

There are only two sexes on Earth you mean (discounting hermaphrodites!)!

 

There's even a Star Trek: Enterprise episode where they show a race with basically 3 sexes (the third is needed for conception of offspring and treated very very badly otherwise: basically a slave that's passed around from couple to couple and only used when they want a child)...so stop being so narrow minded

 

Asari aren't male or female - they are both (I mean they do the heavy lifting in their society - what women normally (still, despite being oh so emancipated and despite not needing men and being able to do anything a man can do!) think is men's work! - and they build stuff from household items to buildings and even ships!)...in a way the Asari are a (human) female power fantasy (they can do it all and they are good at it, too they are after all one of the leading species in the Milky Way!)

 

No, two sexes. Period. The Enterprise episode showed 2 sexes. One was female and 2 were males. What you're saying is a surrogate human mother is third sex. And don't call me narrow-minded for being truthful and objective.

 

If you produce the offspring you are female. If you don't you are male. There is no possible third option.

 

Geth are female. EDI is male. Asari are female. There is no such thing as both. Some species can switch between one and the other but there can only be those two. Anything outside those two is just arbitrary unnecessary fluff that doesn't even deserve recognition.

[Hadeedak]

On one hand, yes, dimorphism is good.

 

On the other hand, I've spent literally my whole life around dogs, frequently a lot of them, and I can't always tell the gender of a dog from a distance... So maybe not TOO much. Basically, you can come up with a psuedo-scientificish explanation for every trait. But if you use boobs as shorthand for female on EVERY species, I'm going to roll my eyes. Especially since that's pretty much limited to human females. A safer bet would be to make males bright colors, since that's a much more common type of dimorphism, occuring in multiple species and genras instead of just the one. Oh well.

[Shechinah]

No, two sexes. Period. The Enterprise episode showed 2 sexes. One was female and 2 were males. What you're saying is a surrogate human mother is third sex. And don't call me narrow-minded for being truthful and objective.
 
If you produce the offspring you are female. If you don't you are male. There is no possible third option.
 
Geth are female. EDI is male. Asari are female. There is no such thing as both. Some species can switch between one and the other but there can only be those two. Anything outside those two is just arbitrary unnecessary fluff that doesn't even deserve recognition.

 
I'll set the other bits of your post aside and address the bolded; I'll start by saying that this would not be an opinion that seems to be shared by the scientific community seeing as the term hermaphrodite is a thing.
 
Actually what you seem to be referring to is called sequential hermaphroditism which, to my knowledge, is; "Sequential hermaphroditism occurs when the individual changes sex at some point in its life."
 
For a short explaination of the terms related to it;  "They can change from a male to female (protandry), or from female to male (protogyny) or from female to hermaphrodite (protogynous hermaphroditism), or from male to hermaphrodite (protandrous hermaphroditism)."
 
There are hermaphroditic lifeforms which have both male and female reproductive organs and do not undergo the process of sequential hermaphroditism. Amongst them are the turbellaria, a type of flatform, which have both egg-producing ovaries and sperm-producing testes. They perform what is referred to as penis fencing when mating. During this, the flatforms in question engage in a duel wherein the flatworm that is struck is inseminated. This battle may last up to an hour for some species.
 
I have brought a visual which can be seen below here;
https://upload.wikim...os_bedfordi.png

 

This has been one example of hermaphroditism. I will gladly provide further examples.

 
Note: Penis fencing is the term that Wikipedia uses. I cannot claim it as my invention.

[Shechinah]

No, two sexes. Period. The Enterprise episode showed 2 sexes. One was female and 2 were males. What you're saying is a surrogate human mother is third sex. And don't call me narrow-minded for being truthful and objective.

 

If you produce the offspring you are female. If you don't you are male. There is no possible third option.

 

Geth are female. EDI is male. Asari are female. There is no such thing as both. Some species can switch between one and the other but there can only be those two. Anything outside those two is just arbitrary unnecessary fluff that doesn't even deserve recognition.

 

Additionally, I question this because, if I understand this correctly, you are saying that whoever carries and births the offspring is female?

 

This would be untrue, as far as I know, in the case of some seahorses wherein the female deposits the eggs in the pouch of the male who then fertilizes and carries the eggs through the gestation period. The male also performs the birth so to speak.

 

Something similar to this form of incubation happens, I think, with some frogs wherein the eggs are carried on the back of the male or in the mouth of the male until the eggs hatches and the tadpoles swim out.

[Hadeedak]

I could do with a bit more "Biology is weird" in general from my Mass Effect.

 

My parents have a farm. One year, we lost all of our roosters to one accident after another. While we were looking for a replacement, one of our hens started developing secondary male sex characteristics -- crowing, the long tail, bright colors, the lot. We eventually found a backup rooster, so we never found out if our now male hen was fertile or not (no way to prove it, could have been the other rooster), but she lived the rest of her life as a rooster.

 

Very strange.

[Hexi-decimal]

and on the flip note many of them do have it. 

 

I mean, for those that do fine, for those that don't okay exemplify please. To the guy who listed 4 races and said it was 50/50, sure that sounds right when you narrow it down to only those races ever appearing in any future game. However it's not going to be limited to them, we will gain new races over time, and you forgot about humanity in your breakdown. 

 

What im saying is whether there is any now isn't the question, but rather should there be more going forward. I already pointed out which one had it and didn't. So what's really the point of reiterating what we already know? What I also proposed is that mayhaps they could even rework some less defined ones to accentuate it more even if it means a slight redesign.

 

As far as the comics go, I kind of scoff at those to, in fact the reason i made this thread is because I did looked up Thane's Wife while looking for something else and saw some of the scans of her from said comic. Because where these first examples of female members of a previously male seen only race appear in a comic instead of a game, I'm a little reluctant to cite them as artistic vision as intended.

Personally, a rich world building explanation for why or why not would be preferable to me rather than whether they should or should not.  Some animals have it in spades, others to a much lesser degree.  Sometimes it's only noticeable because one knows what to look for.  

[Spectr61]

Google "race vs species".

My guess is that the OP means sexual dimorphism in different species.

[DuskWanderer]

I think that it's difficult enough to draw one very weird alien. Drawing something that is so similar, but different enough to be recognizable, might be difficult.

 

Also (and this could just be me being forgiving), maybe the player character doesn't have enough experience with aliens to accurately tell the difference. Many people of different races have difficulty telling others apart. 

[ClarkHewis]

Would dimorphism help or could outfit design aide in distinguishing them, in newer MEA races would you want to see additional morphologies. I know the animal kingdom has a few extra genders and the plant kingdom has 1500 others.