Help me flesh out this culture/society?

[nexus]

An alternate humanity that has always been this way. Their dominate (almost univeral) sexual orientation is homosexual. They only really have herterosexual relations during certain times of the year when they undergo a powerful estrus effect (Not sure ifi thats the right name since it affects both genders). I'm a bit stumped on some other cultural details that might have developed with such a race and I'd appreciate any suggestions.

[OddHat]

Ultra-strict sexual segregation, as bad as if not worse than any historical human culture. Why mix sexes at all if the other gender is only good for breeding? Brutal oppression of the physically weaker gender. Imagine the nastiest, most paranoid anti-female gay man you've ever known, or the most vile man-hating lesbian you ever heard spouting off in Uni, and then assume that these points of view are held by the majority of each gender, with no love, affection, trust, or even physical appreciation to temper them.

I expect at least a few suggestions that this be made an egalitarian paradise world; I say go the other way

[sinanju]

Military culture will be very different from contemporary military culture, I expect. Far more like the Spartans, who believed that lovers would fight harder for one another and so homosexual relationships were accepted (if not encouraged).

Morale building exercises are likely to look like single-sex orgies.

Lots of tales about heroic/tragic relationships between soldiers who fought and died (or triumphed heroically) against incredible odds in defense of their loved ones.

Love relationships are going to be single-sex. All the romantic tales, myths, legends are going to focus on those. Sex with that _other_ gender is an animal necessity.

How strong is the "estrus" you're talking about? Are they in heat? Neither sex is likely to enjoy being a slave to their hormones and there'll be lots of "jokes" about the stupidity/insanity they endure while hopped up on hormones.

If one gender is far more susceptible to the "heat", the other sex is likely to take advantage of that--dominating them most of the year by threatening to leave unruly individuals unsatisfied (to put it mildy--say rather "in an agony of unrequited desire") when they go into heat (idea stolen from Chalker's "Well of Souls" novel).

[nexus]

Thanks for the suggetions, guys. They should be really helpful.

Simply amazing though, I posted this same question on rpg.net and its already simmering into a flamewar.

[David Blue]

I think the flaming issue for this society will be the education of children. Each side would want to educate their own, to see that they had the right attitude - and probably the other sex's as well, to make them fit in with what their sex wanted. Which would probably start with "blind obedience", since relations between the sexes would not be softened by pervasive physical attraction.

Custody battles would be from hell. Assuming that the females get universal custody would not be acceptable from the male point of view. Letting the males snatch all the kids, or even just all the male children, would be even less acceptable from a female point of view.

The structure of male status-seeking that we are familiar with, based ultimately on the fact that higher-status males get the desirable females, would not exist. Civilisation, or parallel civilisations, would be motivated and organised on some other basis, such as warrior prestige and intense personal bonding.

Since the glue of such civilisation(s) as exist would be bound up with homo-sexuality, anyone not playing that game (at least in some refined form or other) would be something like an enemy of all, or at least immensely suspect. Someone who neither had nor wanted a true love of their own sex (or say a guy group that they were regularly with), would be like someone in the middle ages who was against the whole structure of feudalism, and "love" including the love of Jesus.

Unless animals were also pervasively homosexual, people would likely feel a need to explain: "Why are we so different from the rest of nature in this respect?" That would add fuel to the bonfire of religious speculation.

Religion could be organised on a basis similar to monastic communities (single-sex, but likely non-celibate), with much-intensified monastic (negative) views of the opposite sex. Do members of the opposite sex even have souls? In view of the religious of each sex, quite likely not. That would make rutting season and the physical need of each sex for the other a dark joke. You might need two (three) gods to explain this: a good god of true love and exalted/heavenly hope and striving (one each for the sexes, each disbelieved in by the other, so three gods though everyone you ask for a count will say "two"), and a devilish, arbitrary (likely hermaphroditic) creator-god of fate, lust, fertility, and (lower/non-human) nature, earnestly believed in by all, and thus very powerful indeed - the Great God(dess) Pan, Plus.

First contact with humans, or a great many other races, could be a big shock. Human society could look like a creation of the dark god/creator-devil figure that was untouched or barely touched by the redeeming influence of the heavenly god(s) of true love and higher striving.

[Lightray]

Looking to Sparta and classical Greek cultures for ideas will be helpful; they had very gender-segregated cultures that we know a lot about.

That said, I think you're going to need to decide who raises the children, first. If the women raise all the children (until puberty, maybe?), then men and women will be more inclined to accept a mixed-gender culture. If all the boys are given to the men, and the women keep the girls, then I think you'll see two entirely separate cultures that are parasitical or symbiotic on each other.

What tasks do the men and women have? There's never been a culture that had women as the warriors, to my knowledge (only exceptions as individuals, like Boudicca or Joan of Arc, and then as war-leaders only). So I'm assuming the men are the defenders. Will the women raise the kids? And who grows the food - the non-warrior men or the non-mothering women?

And if you're going to the trouble of making an entire country as a statement on homosexuality, you should encorporate the obvious kicker: the despised, shameful heterosexuals. The ones who secretly keep on with members of the opposite sex, despite the wrongness of it. Maybe there's an underclass of dirty, same-sexists involved in prostitution or something similar. Stealing from the Indian caste of transvestite untouchables might be interesting here.

You might want to look for The Gate to Women's Country, by Sherri S. Tepper, which touches on some of these issues. However, she writes from a strongly feminist viewpoint in that book, so be prepared for her "message" to be be beaten in.

Simply amazing though, I posted this same question on rpg.net and its already simmering into a flamewar.

Okay, now I'm curious. Link?

[Lightray]

Unless animals were also pervasively homosexual, people would likely feel a need to explain: "Why are we so different from the rest of nature in this respect?" That would add fuel to the bonfire of religious speculation.

This is a nice point that could be exploited for some in-culture flavor. Have the culture revere or respect the animals known to engage in same-sex coupling (wolves, dolphins, quite a few bird species, and others IIRC). These are the "noble" animals that are portrayed as exemplifying the culture's ideals.

Animals with habits that exemplify patriarchal or matriarchal same-sex mating behavior are likely to be vilified. Lions aren't noble, they're women-hating despots. The poor lionesses have to band together in prides just to fend off the domineering males, and even then have to endure his killing their children by other male lions and then raping them until they conceive his offspring. *spit*

[David Blue]

And if you're going to the trouble of making an entire country as a statement on homosexuality, you should encorporate the obvious kicker: the despised, shameful heterosexuals.

You can get similar problems with bixuals, who have built-in advantages ("the world is a big box of chocolates" theory) but can inconveniently fall in love with someone of either sex.

A problem like this arose here in Sydney years ago. A guy who'd been involved as an organiser of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi-Gras (a prestigious and fairly big-money deal) was "passing". Rather than being truly/exclusively gay, he was a secret bisexual, who many years before had had an affair with a woman, which he'd managed to keep clandestine. Someone found the evidence and outed him. Immediately he was fired and basically became a social "dead man" - his life and work were pretty inseparable from his acceptable gayness. There was some public fuss about it, but the decision stuck.

Bisexuals are inconvenient for separatist theories of sexuality. Being "inconvenient" is often bad for you. I do not think bisexuals, if there were any, would do well at all in this world that is gay except for brief periods of rutting for repoduction.

[Curufea]

It could have cultural roots based on hyper-fertility. Possibly in the dim past homosexuallity was encouraged as a means of birth control.

A very good idea for the Estrus as well - otherwise they won't reproduce enough to make up for their losses. If they don't have children every time the opposite sexes mate, they would very likely die out.

This also leads to myths and legends about overpopulation. Possibly some "demon horde" corruption as well, especially if you tie it in with the religions.

[McCoy]

Is this a culture that needs a strong military?

Would suggest that the culture is matrilineal, children are the children of their mothers, no one cares (or often knows) who the father is.

All boys go into the military. At an early age they go into boarding schools, where the curriculum stresses physical fitness, martial arts, discipline, tactics, etc. All preparing the boys for the noble profession of being warriors. Womed do everything else.

In other words, women really control the culture, but men are allowed to think they do.

Since one man can inseminate several women, the majority of the males would be considered expendable if necesssary. Their military tactics would go heavly into the shock & awe area, overwelming numbers, maybe kamazi tactics.

[nexus]

In other words, women really control the culture, but men are allowed to think they do.

So... pretty much like our world then?

Seriously, these are really great thoughts. I think I can use them all actually as different variation in this worlds cultures. Thanks every for contributing.

[bblackmoor]

Most people have suggested a gender-based division of labor even more dramatic than that in our own world. I would suggest the opposite. It would take a long time to explain, but I'll try to summarize. In a heterosexual society, the man-woman pairing is the norm. Within that relationship, the man has (historically) held the power, and the woman has been relegated to menial status. The current division of labor, even in otherwise civilized countries, echoes this power structure.

In a homosexual society, couples will either be man-man or woman-woman. Since there is no unifying gender basis for which individual has the power in each relationship, there is a much weaker basis for excluding one gender from positions of power, or from certain professions (particularly in an industrialized society). The entire phenomenon of women not being welcome in certain work environments would be absent.

So although such a society probably has its own unique problems and inequities, it is possible that gender-based oppression of the kind we take for granted might not be one of them. Or, at least, that it would take a very different form, since it would not be based on the potential of sexual relations between co-workers.

[austenandrews]

I tend to go with bblackmoor on this. I don't think men and women only associate because of romantic attraction, so I don't see why the sexes would be more divided than they are now.

What are the childrearing conditions? Is it still considered preferable to be raised by both mother and father? In which case you'd have mated couples emotionally bonded but with no pretense at romance. It'd be like a brother and sister raising a child.

[Vanguard00]

So... pretty much like our world then?

Well, yeah. That'd be my answer.

Why change much of anything? Simply reverse the homosexual and heterosexual biases, but essentially leave the society/culture alone. I don't see why it'd be that different as a whole. Men and women should still be able to coexist normally. Mixed-gender restrooms would be common. Cross-dressing, heterosexual relationships, transgender individuals...no more discrimination than their counterparts have today, I'm thinkin'. You could even keep the gender discrepency intact--men have always been dominant, and it's only (relatively) recently that women have closed in on equality in all things.

I think the biggest change would have to be in regards to procreation and child-rearing. Pregnancy would, of necessity, be much more clinical. Sperm donors (for women) and adoptions (for men) would be the order of the day. Perhaps the children are still raised at home, or perhaps boarding schools (or something similar) are standard, wherein the children are essentially gone all week and come home on the weekends.

I just don't see the need to take biases and cynicism to an extreme when it seems that a homosexual-based society could function just as easily as a heterosexual based one could.

Now, the origins of such a society would be interesting, indeed. Was it because of some strange population control idea way back when? Perhaps the leaders of the society segregated men and women for so long to keep the birth rate down that homosexuality just naturally developed. Long after the need for such population control dissipated society continued with the model, just naturally following their instincts in staying within their own gender. Now it's the norm, and no one thinks anything of it.

Just some ideas.

[bblackmoor]

What are the childrearing conditions? Is it still considered preferable to be raised by both mother and father? In which case you'd have mated couples emotionally bonded but with no pretense at romance. It'd be like a brother and sister raising a child.

That's an interesting thought: what if marriage as an economic and social contract is completely separate from marriage as a covenant of fidelity between lovers? The entire structure of what we think of as the "extended family" might be completely different. It might be common for several "lover-couples" to share habitation, so that "parent-couples" could jointly raise their offspring. This might result in a shifting of the parent-child relationship to a household-child relationship, as one sees in some preindustrial communities.