Matriarchial Societies

[nexus]

Inspried by some of the respopnses in these threads

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55838

 

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=325075

 

I've gotten curious what a truly matriarchial (though not nessearily Amazonian) society might be like in a "realistic" sense. I use quotes because I as I understand there hasn't been a culture or society where women have been the truly dominate/aggressive powers (any information to the contary is quite welcome) but we can make guesses and proposals about I think.

[austenandrews]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

You might start by determining what factors would create a matriarchal society.

[nexus]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

You might start by determining what factors would create a matriarchal society.

 

That's part of what this thread is about: brainstorming ideas about what might bring one about, what it would look like, etc.

[austenandrews]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

Women significantly outnumbering men comes to mind.

[Clonus]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

Sex-linked psi powers.

 

Prenatal child sex determination by women who set up a colony so that they could be in charge creating a numerical imbalance.

 

Ovipositors.

 

Egglaying.

 

Cultural taboo against men knowing how to read.

 

Sex-linked dyslexia.

 

Cultural belief by both sexes that masculine warlike tendencies let to the legendary War of Annihilation and therefore men can't be trusted with positions of authority or weapons.

 

Sex-linked emotion influencing pheromones.

 

Cultural concentration of all masculine endeavours on military training to the point where women are actually running everything else.

[Comic]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

A matriarchal society could happen around you without you realizing it at all.

 

If 80% of the disposable income were controlled by women, if women held two thirds of all government jobs and led two thirds of all identified family units, were statistically likely to live fifteen percent longer than men, be fifteen percent less likely to be a victim of crime, and to be fifteen percent better educated, then you _could_ argue you were in a matriarchal society..

 

(..If you ignored the higher expenses, lower average wages, old-boys' networks, noxious oppressive behaviors, and ingrained biases of some such worlds.)

 

Would a matriarchal society feel the need to advertise itself as such?

[pinecone]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

Inspried by some of the respopnses in these threads

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55838

 

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=325075

 

I've gotten curious what a truly matriarchial (though not nessearily Amazonian) society might be like in a "realistic" sense. I use quotes because I as I understand there hasn't been a culture or society where women have been the truly dominate/aggressive powers (any information to the contary is quite welcome) but we can make guesses and proposals about I think.

 

There have been matralinial societys, and in them the power ballence between the sexes is differant than we usually think of as "normal"...most of the matralinials were later absorbed/merged with/ by patralinials.

 

A "true" matriarchal society would need the sexes to be differant than they are in "real life". In human society and most animal ones...males play the "expendable" role...so they are the risk takers, one male can impregnate thousands of females, so only one is "nessisary" for the species to continue.

 

Agressive risk takers tend to take leadership roles......

[Clonus]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

A matriarchal society could happen around you without you realizing it at all.

 

If 80% of the disposable income were controlled by women, if women held two thirds of all government jobs and led two thirds of all identified family units, were statistically likely to live fifteen percent longer than men, be fifteen percent less likely to be a victim of crime, and to be fifteen percent better educated, then you _could_ argue you were in a matriarchal society..

 

 

You'd be wrong though, as long as men were making the laws and the third of all of government jobs held by them was the top ranking third.

[Badger]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

Women significantly outnumbering men comes to mind.

 

or vice versa.

[Curufea]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

Nietzchean society in the Andromeda series is matriarchal. We had very lengthy discussions about them on the Slipstream BBS - before the later seasons disillusioned me and I gave up on it.

[McCoy]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

as I understand there hasn't been a culture or society where women have been the truly dominate/aggressive powers (any information to the contary is quite welcome) but we can make guesses and proposals about I think.

And the Navajo don't count because?

[Curufea]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

Andromeda links-

 

The Way it Works - Niet Matriarchy! (Spoilers)

The Way it Works - Niet Matriarchy! (Spoilers) (Part 2)

Nietzschean Matriarchy: Multi-Husbanding?

Nietzschean Matriarchy: Multi-Husbanding? (Part 2)

 

Final bonus Nietzchean information, the Nietzchean FAQ:

 

Q) Nietszcheans all seem to have spikey things on their

forearms. Do the come in different colours?

Q) How many Nietszcheans does it take to change a

lightbulb?

Q) Who is faster? Flash, Superman or Tyr?

Q) If Tyr and Rommie had offspring, would they be Neat

Droids?

Q) What else to Nietszcheans have enhanced besides

strength and stamina ?

Q) If a Nietszchean were trapped on a desert island,

what three things would they take?

Q) What's with the hair?

Q) Can I mail order a Neitszchean?

Q) If Magog were created to kill and Neitszcheans were

created to survive - Is Paul Mouseveni a better designer

than the Spirit of the Abyss or is Tyr's body count a

freak occurance?

 

1. No, just shades of grey.

2. Two, one to change the bulb, and one to trick the

other/owner out of the lamp.

3. Depends on who stages the race, If Tyr then Superman

suffers kryptonite posioning prior to the race and The

Flash mysteriously fails to show up. Otherwise,

Superman, Flash, Tyr.

4. No but the little avatars would just keep going and

going and going...

5. Depends on the shade of the inital human genetic

stock, some have "ahem" enhancements others have good

press agents.

6. A gauss rifle, a contingency plan and Drago's bones.

7. Little known fact: The only human enterprise from the

20th century to survive both the Commonwealth and the

fall was Supercuts, go figure.

8. Yes but only a 12 inch replica with plastic hair.

9. No, Tyr has Don King as his promoter.

[wcw43921]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

I think if it were perfected, human cloning could lead to a matriarchal society. Since women would no longer need men to reproduce, men would become superfluous, and would only survive for as long as women allowed them to survive.

 

Which, of course, is not to suggest that allowing men to die out completely is a good idea.

[Midas]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

I think if it were perfected, human cloning could lead to a matriarchal society. Since women would no longer need men to reproduce, men would become superfluous, and would only survive for as long as women allowed them to survive.

 

Which, of course, is not to suggest that allowing men to die out completely is a good idea.

 

Men will not be obsolete as long as there is furniture to be moved, things stored on high shelves, or bugs to squish.

 

Midas

[OddHat]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

I think if it were perfected, human cloning could lead to a matriarchal society. Since women would no longer need men to reproduce, men would become superfluous, and would only survive for as long as women allowed them to survive.

 

Which, of course, is not to suggest that allowing men to die out completely is a good idea.

 

Which assumes that women are a unified social and political block that would have some super-majority interest in killing off their fathers, brothers, lovers, husbands, and sons. And that men would somehow stop being interested enough in self preservation to fight back.

 

You can make the same case that cloning and artificial wombs eliminate the "need" for women, but it doesn't show up as often in sci-fi, probably because a society of hot gay men is much more frightening to the average male sci-fi fan than a world of hot lesbians.

[OddHat]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

I'd go about the process of designing a matriarchal game setting by deciding what I want the final result to look like and then working backwards.

 

If the goal is FemDomFantatopia, build the great city state of FDF however you want for game purposes, then fill in the justifications later. Alternatively, you could go the classic Pulp route of exaggerating period feminist stereotypes and putting them in charge of a dystopia of weak men (allowing our heroes to teach the women their rightful place through this Earth Thing Called Kissing), or the classic feminist SciFi route with exaggerated gender roles and men placed in the traditionally female role.

 

If I were going for a simulationist rather than a narrativist modern or near future matriarchy, I'd probably take modern European society, add a disproportionate number of women in high political and corporate positions rather than men, and explain it with something on the lines that decades of women spending more time in school than men combined with anti-intellectualism in the male population and the collapse of the two parent family, finally starting a societal shift towards women rising higher and faster than men up the political and corporate ladder. Large numbers of young men tend to get sucked into gang life, leave school early and never return; their sisters tend to finish school and go on to higher education. By the time both groups hit their thirties, a large minority or slim majority of men tend to have criminal records that make them almost unemployable, and those who avoid that trap still tend to have only mediocre job skills. Meanwhile, women in their thirties are finally in managerial positions, and tend to give preference to younger women whom they can relate to or to attractive, docile young men. After a few generations of this, men tend to be viewed as violent, dangerous, and dim witted, and have internalized this view; women tend to be seen as the bread winners, the responsible ones, the educated, and the pillars of society, and view themselves that way. The result is a society of female led one parent households where sons are considered, at best, pretty morons, while daughters are expected to become leaders.

[Clonus]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

I'd go about the process of designing a matriarchal game setting by deciding what I want the final result to look like and then working backwards.

 

If the goal is FemDomFantatopia, build the great city state of FDF however you want for game purposes, then fill in the justifications later. Alternatively, you could go the classic Pulp route of exaggerating period feminist stereotypes and putting them in charge of a dystopia of weak men (allowing our heroes to teach the women their rightful place through this Earth Thing Called Kissing), or the classic feminist SciFi route with exaggerated gender roles and men placed in the classically female place.

.

 

What I always wanted to do was a Golden Age world war II storyline where Hitler adds an extraterrestrial ally, an evil dominatrix type dictator from the world of Amazons who is not actually going to be all that much use to the Axis because she's fighting an alliance of the nicer Amazons already. But the heroes go there, meet the local superheroines, just so I can have them say:

 

 

 

Don't you worry your handsome little head about it, sweetie.

 

 

[McCoy]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

Seriously, why is no one but me mentioning the Navajo?

 

Navaho men owned their weapons, and, after they were introduced to horse, their saddle. Women owned everything else; houses, land, whole kit and caboodle. Women could unilaterally divorce their husbands by simply putting his stuff outside the house. Custody of the children went to the mother's family, always, no discussion.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

A lot of American Indian societies were like that.

[McCoy]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

A lot of American Indian societies were like that.

Yep. But the two I'm related to are Navajo and Shoshoni, and the Shoshoni weren't like that.

[Clonus]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

I know the Navajo were matrilocal, but what were their divorce customs like and how were decisions of public policy made?

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

There's another society, and I can't remember the name of it, but it's an island society. The women determine who they'll marry by cooking him a dinner of a certain fish, and they build the houses the married couple will live in. Apparently the idea of divorce was unheard-of until men started getting Western ideas into their heads and proposing marriage and trying to dominate the social culture; many of them have gone back to the old ways.

 

There's also a town in China, where they're trying to promote tourism, where women are the dominant force.

 

In case you're looking for inspiration.

 

From my perspective, a matriarchal society wouldn't necessarily need to have the women be stronger or even more numerous. Look at the many cultures that have come before that held women as sacred, and fertility as a holy thing. If that idea were never discouraged, and if the ideals of nurturing and raising were held to be the traits the culture needed to survive, we could very well be living in a very different kind of society. And, in fact, on the surface, it might not even look much different from ours. I mean, theoretically, what if it was determined that women did better work by being teachers, the raisers of children, the caregivers, while men were better shuttled off to do the menial tasks? You might find all of the office buildings filled with a male majority, while the female CEOs got to telecommute from their nice, cushy homes. And who's to say politics would take the same precedence it does here? In a society which places emphasis on community caregiving, why legislate that caregiving? Why not just focus more attention on that than where little pieces of paper get pushed? Why not leave that to the (presumed) less intelligent males?

 

Just one line of thought, really, which takes one seemingly evolutionary female trait to a logical extreme. Like Oddhat said, you could really build any matriarchal society you wanted, then work backwards as to how it got that way.

[nexus]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

And the Navajo don't count because?

 

I hadn't heard that the Navajo were matriarchial (women were dominant, made all the major descision, held more temporal power than men, etc). Nothing I've read brought it up. Tell me more?

[OddHat]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

Just one line of thought, really, which takes one seemingly evolutionary female trait to a logical extreme. Like Oddhat said, you could really build any matriarchal society you wanted, then work backwards as to how it got that way.

 

We could build a female dominated society based on my old students, where the language consists of only seven words: Really, You're Kidding, Unbelievable, Amazing, and Too Much.

 

[nexus]

Re: Matriarchial Societies

 

Just one line of thought, really, which takes one seemingly evolutionary female trait to a logical extreme. Like Oddhat said, you could really build any matriarchal society you wanted, then work backwards as to how it got that way.

 

I've found that's a good way to build just about any alternate world (its easier for me) but I didn't think fishing for ideas among creative people could hurt (and I can be lazy :-D)