Those of you who frequent TVTropes may be aware of the "green-skinned space babe" trope, popularized by Star Trek's Orion, Star Wars' Twi'lek and more recently Mass Effect's Asari. I find this trope to be fundamentally sexist, since it objectifies women and values impossible beauty standards. So are its typical variations. Reversing it and portraying the aliens as sexy dudes still values impossible beauty standards. Revealing that the sexy babes are actually the males of their species, which is distressingly common as a joke, is transphobic.
I stumbled upon an unorthodox solution in the fanfiction The Enemy of My Enemy. In that story we are introduced to the Galra Empire, a vast stellar empire of purple cat people. These Galra are divided into six "genders" of qylar, gol, gal, qvir, raego, and ruj, all of which appear from a human perspective to be male. These genders are more like castes and are used to determine an individual's role in Galra society. They look noticeably different: some look like the thundercats, others like elves, and one gender has reptilian scales. The gal, qvir, raego and ruj are biologically male: they have a penis and testicles. The qylar, distinguished by possessing tails but otherwise resembling the qvir, is biologically female: they have a uterus and ovaries. The gol are sterile and possibly sexless. As I mentioned before, a human being would mistake them all as male because they lack human-like sexual dimorphism. Galra always use male pronouns regardless of their gender, further maintaining this illusion.
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