Really? First I hear of it. I was about to write this comment as all "Oops, sorry, not intentional"... But then I got curious and checked around a little, and my current best guess is that you're mistaken:
1) Always only mentioned as female in articles, including by presumably "woke" sources like in an interview at WorldCon75 in 2017.
2) The Wikipedia bio page is chock full of "she" and "her", not a whiff of anything else on the talk page either.
3) Seems to me to sport a "traditionally female" look as far as hairstyle and clothing goes in photos.
4) Both personal web pages feature a traditional nuclear family with children, grandchildren, and "Fred", presumably the husband (and father / grandfather).
Well, now I’m embarrassed. I had been operating (apparently for decades) on the assumption that Hobb was male. Which is pretty bloody sexist on my part. I apologize to you and M. Hobb. (I interpreted the “he” correction as a reference to my use of the word spay, not bothering to confirm that it was made in earnest. The “identifies as” was meant as a weak joke. Which seems to have spectacularly failed. Again, sorry.
Hey, nothing to be sorry about. You learned something, and so did I: Even though my a priori assumption was closer to the truth, getting confirmation is also worth something. It's a win-win -- or, if someone reading this exchange also learned something new, a win-win-win.
