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JusticeZero
2013-10-22, 02:12 PM
I keep wanting to get an honest examination about a specific thing in the campaign setting I run, but everyplace I put it the discussion is derailed by a lot of other things.

Please do not debate sexism in real life here. Please do not debate sexism in the media as a whole here. Please do not debate sexism in specific abstract edge cases here. I really just want to know about this one specific case that I can never seem to get any input from the women who know about this on, given that every time they open their mouths, they get distracted by a huge debate about real life/the media as a whole/freakish edge cases/whatever.

I deal with a lot of social science. I like the idea of an egalitarian society. Unfortunately, I know about a lot of things that tend to derail that in various ways. I do not know what form a culture would take that would achieve egalitarianism. Ergo, I chose to use a model which, while not egalitarian, is still very positive toward women.

Specifically, I cited a historical "men go out and pillage" as an ancient historical fact in the campaign setting, then seperated the roles of "pillaging" offense from "police/siege defense", and gendered the latter as a stereotypically female, "pink-armor" role.

I then asserted that because police and counter-siege would have various moments of glory, that these routes were common routes by which women could gain glory which could then be leveraged into political power, resulting in a number of female headed government leaders in a culture which retained a military path to power.

I do not know what the various people who generally are much more up to date on feminist theory and the like have to comment on regarding this specific case, or whether they have other suggestions, inputs, or glitches that I may have missed. As noted, I did not simply apply egalitarianism for the simple reason that I do not know how to actually arrive at a truly egalitarian culture - there are a lot of root things that indirectly result in at least some inequality that I simply do not know how to fix, as much as I would like to.

Leliel
2013-10-22, 02:56 PM
From what little I know, there's still going to be gender roles in your society, and both men and women unhappy with them. A woman is going to be viewed as a defensive combatant during a fight, and a man an offensive one, and there's going to be a few stereotypes about the "wanderlust of men" and such, because that's how people are. It's (demi)human nature to divide people into neat categories ("Oh, you're a woman? You must be a city guard!", is probably a line of logic people from that culture follow if they see a lady in armor).

I do like that you're aware of how difficult equality is to achieve, however. A lot of people can be massively insensitive if they assume all problems can be solved easily with one action. Keep it up.

AgentofHellfire
2013-10-22, 03:33 PM
From what little I know, there's still going to be gender roles in your society, and both men and women unhappy with them. A woman is going to be viewed as a defensive combatant during a fight, and a man an offensive one, and there's going to be a few stereotypes about the "wanderlust of men" and such, because that's how people are. It's (demi)human nature to divide people into neat categories ("Oh, you're a woman? You must be a city guard!", is probably a line of logic people from that culture follow if they see a lady in armor).

...I actually think that whatever gender roles exist here would favor women to some degree--since women are the ones who can actually stay in one place (and thus run businesses, craft things collect taxes, etc.) they have a greater opportunity to be the ones in charge of the actual social structure.

EDIT: Although now that I'm thinking about it they'd probably make most of their money off of tributes/plunder rather than taxes. But still, the women would've been the ones enforcing laws in the homeland, so...

*Disclaimer: I'm not a "feminist theorist", really, just an amateur.

JusticeZero
2013-10-22, 05:02 PM
All of that is kind've the point - I don't know how to eradicate the differences, but i'd sure as heck rather have a bias that puts a somewhat even spread in power and makes "highly capable female fighter" into a culturally normal role without swinging it into the dysfunctionally opposite extreme.

Blackjackg
2013-10-22, 05:25 PM
To a pretty significant extent, this overlaps with one of the harmful gender roles that exist in our society-- women are in charge of the home, men are in charge of anything else. The fact that the "home" in this case is the whole city ameliorates it to some extent, but it's still pretty remniscent.

On a much more symbolic level, the idea of women's role as defensive and men's role as offensive is a big part of what's called r*pe culture. Men besiege and women resist, until they can resist no more. It's an ugly metaphor, supported in a lot of ways by our media. I'm not trying to diverge from your setting here: the dominant metaphors inherent in a fictional setting are important to consider in a feminist critique.

I guess my main question is: Why not have men AND women serving in each military arm? That avoids the issue of individuals being shoehorned into roles they don't want and is really the shortest route to an egalitarian fictional society.

Daer
2013-10-22, 05:34 PM
not feminist but..

Why not simply assign people based on their ability scores.. strong people are melee forces, agile ones scouts and archers, someone wise and intelligent would be trained to be strategist and charismatic ones to be teamleaders and diplomats?
I mean, try find each one where they would be most useful. That woudl seem fairest to me.

JusticeZero
2013-10-22, 05:40 PM
I guess my main question is: Why not have men AND women serving in each military arm? That avoids the issue of individuals being shoehorned into roles they don't want and is really the shortest route to an egalitarian fictional society.
The reason is mostly that I have not found any way to have that type of egalitarianism with a nuclear family that is not also associated with a population freefall in a setting that is dependent on a growing population.

The issue basically is the same as every physicist I have seen run a sci-fi game has - there's only so much handwaving of nonsensium that they can do before it really starts getting on their nerves, and in my case, dictating an egalitarian culture when I do not have any idea how it could construct itself is nonsensium. I don't want a sexist culture, but nobody knows how to make a non-sexist culture with a population above replacement, and I don't want a culture that is dominated by one side or the other.

Fairly distributing roles works great if everyone is an immortal adult who respawns somewhere after they are killed. Once you start having to deal with families, economics, and things like that, the ability to get from A to B breaks down.

AgentofHellfire
2013-10-22, 05:45 PM
To a pretty significant extent, this overlaps with one of the harmful gender roles that exist in our society-- women are in charge of the home, men are in charge of anything else. The fact that the "home" in this case is the whole city ameliorates it to some extent, but it's still pretty remniscent.

That's really only true on a broad and symbolic level, though--the women stay "at home", certainly, but the nature of their jobs there isn't that of a home-maker. A soldier involved in defense isn't going to be expected to be submissive and weak.


On a much more symbolic level, the idea of women's role as defensive and men's role as offensive is a big part of what's called r*pe culture. Men besiege and women resist, until they can resist no more. It's an ugly metaphor, supported in a lot of ways by our media. I'm not trying to diverge from your setting here: the dominant metaphors inherent in a fictional setting are important to consider in a feminist critique.

Given that the people the men are besieging aren't the women, I don't think that applies...

Libertad
2013-10-22, 05:51 PM
@OP: You might also receive better help by asking around outside this board, too.

I can recommend you Intangibility.org (http://intangibility.org/)

Most of the posters there are both table-top gamers and feminists.

RPG.net (http://www.rpg.net/) is also a good choice, as a lot of the posters there are very liberal and progressive in regards to gender issues.


As for my thoughts, I really don't know enough about the wider setting than what you provided. Is this "siege mentality" thing setting-wide, or just located in a few warring nations?

Additionally, what circumstances led to men and women being separated so specifically in military roles?

Blackjackg
2013-10-22, 06:16 PM
The reason is mostly that I have not found any way to have that type of egalitarianism with a nuclear family that is not also associated with a population freefall in a setting that is dependent on a growing population.

The issue basically is the same as every physicist I have seen run a sci-fi game has - there's only so much handwaving of nonsensium that they can do before it really starts getting on their nerves, and in my case, dictating an egalitarian culture when I do not have any idea how it could construct itself is nonsensium. I don't want a sexist culture, but nobody knows how to make a non-sexist culture with a population above replacement, and I don't want a culture that is dominated by one side or the other.

Fairly distributing roles works great if everyone is an immortal adult who respawns somewhere after they are killed. Once you start having to deal with families, economics, and things like that, the ability to get from A to B breaks down.

I'm no cultural anthropologist, but this is perplexing to me. I can only assume that the argument against gender equality in a nuclear family-centered growing population is that it requires each couple to surrender one parent to the task of child-rearing ten or twelve years until their 2.1 children are of age to begin an apprenticeship. But what prevents that choice from being made an egalitarian way? Is there some fundamental truth of human nature that says that only one gender can be responsible for child-rearing in a given society?

(With the exception of that last question, which was basically rhetorical since I know there isn't any such truth, these are sincere inquiries-- I have no idea why this idea seems so obviously far-fetched.)

Aside from that confusing syllogism, does the society need to have nuclear families? Historically in our own world, nuclear families have been the exception rather than the rule, and there are those that say the only reason they're so prevalent now is through the intervention of the Catholic church. Many more societies have taken a whole-village approach to family and childcare, and it continues to work well to this day around the world.

Anxe
2013-10-22, 06:22 PM
The Romans did something similar with their armies. Every legion had a base camp. There were essentially two populations in the base camp, the field army and the base army. The field army would go away on campaigns while the base army stayed and defended the base from barbarian incursions. The field army was made up of all the good able-bodied recruits, while the base army was made up of the old, sick, rookies, and married soldiers (they didn't want to leave their families).

So in a historical parallel you've set up the women to be old, sick, bad at fighting, or part of a family. You've added a little more power to women, but it still seems like the men get the lion's share. The men won't always be on campaign and when they get home, why aren't they asserting their power over the women? They'd be better fighters from their campaign experience. This is assuming a violent confrontation, but ultimately one would've happened at some point in your campaign's history to change the status quo.

Perhaps making women in charge of magic would work better? That's fundamentally different than anything we know now so you could set your own rules.

I also like the women as police thing, but I feel what I pointed out earlier means it wouldn't work. When the male soldiers come home they likely would not respect the authority of the female guards.

Sorry if this sounds disjointed. I'd be happy to clarify anything if I can.

JusticeZero
2013-10-22, 06:25 PM
You can do things somewhat equitably, but it's that "somewhat" that binds things up.

And again, it's not that it is not possible to generate an egalitarian society - just that I don't know how one would work. Extended families might help, but I don't know enough about how they operate, and neither will any of my players without a solid prototype.

Anxe
2013-10-22, 06:56 PM
Okay, going off what I research for my setting (mostly classical stuff, Greeks and Romans). The most egalitarian society is probably the Spartans. They raise their children in schools once they turn 6 or something. There are separate schools for men and women. Both are trained in basic exercise. The women receive domestic training once they are teenagers while the men receive military training. Remove the specialization. Each person is given the training thought best suited to their skills. There will still likely be more men getting military training due to physical differences, but that's better than nothing.

Then we have Sparta's political system. They had a ruling body of 30 men which included two kings. Then they had a larger council of some sorts. Perhaps the 30 men can still be men, while the council MUST be women.

So different spheres would be domestic and magic for mostly women and military and manufacturing for mostly men.

JusticeZero
2013-10-22, 07:01 PM
As for the nuclear family, there is also the issue that one must not only surrender one parent, but that you must make the decision regarding what parent to surrender shortly after a short period during which one of the two was at least partly disabled and at a reduced capacity to work in a number of fields. Without some protective system there - which doesn't typically get prioritized highly in the neoliberal structural logics that we are most ingrained in at this time - one of the parents is at a bit of a handicap at that point, which creates a demographic shift back toward the female homemaker norm that I want to avoid.

The men won't always be on campaign and when they get home, why aren't they asserting their power over the women?Because they come back partly depleted and return to a city of highly drilled people who are completely capable of shaming and belittling anyone who wants to stay at home if they get uppity about taking over the role that they abandoned in the first place. Yes, this is in fact a strong and rather restrictive gender role here; i'm completely aware of this fact. I simply do not see any way to avoid having to have one cut the other way here.
The magic schools are fixed in cities. They teach the troops as needed, but you have to be in town - either because it is peacetime, or because you are female and a member of the guard who stays in town anyways - to take advantage of that.

Perhaps making women in charge of magic would work better? That's fundamentally different than anything we know now so you could set your own rules.That just reinforces a different set of stereotypes that i'm not a big fan of.
I also like the women as police thing, but I feel what I pointed out earlier means it wouldn't work. When the male soldiers come home they likely would not respect the authority of the female guards.
One does not have to respect an authority that has a monopoly on violence within a certain sphere to follow the rules.

The basic premise is that male soldiers went out on campaign, then women drilled and fortified and restricted weaponry within the city. When the men get back, they have to leave their warrior bravado at the gate and put their civilized faces on, or be marginalized. If the men are having a lot of success, the balance of power tends to swing toward the men, but if they are breaking even or at peace, there are less opportunities to demonstrate prowess available for the males. If the city has been attacked, the fact that the women have specialized training for that and control of the chain of command and tactics for defensive operations means that a list of war heroes will be dominated by womens' names. When it comes time to pick leaders, people like choosing war heroes.

Anxe
2013-10-22, 07:11 PM
I just don't see that working. The people who are left behind for wars are the worst fighters. They may be drilling and training and fortifying, but if there ever actually is a gender war, the men win in this scenario. They've got experience taking down fortifications, while the women have only theories, no experience.

I can see this sort of society working for a time after the women defended an attack from outside while the men were away. They then establish that as their gender role. I don't see it working long term or more than city-wide though. Eventually one of the male generals is going to get tired of listening to the person in charge of the city and will conquer the city and destroy the old culture.

JusticeZero
2013-10-22, 07:19 PM
Generals have power in the city, just as long as they don't bring their weapons and the like through the gates like an uncultured savage. And the idea of invading a city that is generally treating you well, oh and which contains your girlfriend on the city defense side, seems to be a bit hard to get general support for.

Anxe
2013-10-22, 07:31 PM
It's happened multiple times though. Alcibiades, Pisistratus, a few other Greek tyrants, essentially every Roman Emperor, multiple Kings of Persia, etc. If the general loses power by going into the city without his army, he's going to bring his army in. There needs to be a better reason for the general not to enter than unexperienced soldiers stopping him. Magic seemed the clearest choice to me, but if anyone's got a better idea I'm open to it.

The semi integration I suggested somewhat solves the problem, but you seem pretty keen on this defense/offense split.

Scow2
2013-10-22, 07:34 PM
You can do things somewhat equitably, but it's that "somewhat" that binds things up.

And again, it's not that it is not possible to generate an egalitarian society - just that I don't know how one would work. Extended families might help, but I don't know enough about how they operate, and neither will any of my players without a solid prototype.If you have a body, thank your parents. If you have a brain, thank your grandparents.

Part of the reason I'd suspect the Males are on Offense and Females are on defense is because the children need to be born on the homefront, not the frontlines... which can be more than 11 months away. In order to have population growth, you need pregnancy, which only women can do (Sorry, but it's true). There isn't cost-effective birth control available in most fantasy settings, and where there are men and women together in large numbers, there will be pregnancy (Especially in war - life's short and dangerous)... and even if a woman is still a competent member of society or even military while pregnant, it's not really fair for her or the child to force them both to endure the rigors of a march, though they can still defend the homeland (And are only an hour or two at most away from children left at home)... and if you do, there's the risk of frontline births and battlefield babies. While the vast majority of women won't be pregnant most of the time, there's a not-negligible chance of any one of them ending up so.

The men end up on offense because they're the only ones available to do so, unless you segregate the military (Which you end up doing anyway, but bleh!)

As an interesting anthropological note... In neolithic and pre-neolithic human societies, women were warriors, and tasked with defending the home while the males went out to hunt or wage war.


As for the males being better at conquering the city than the females are defending it - Females are defending it as well as males tear them down, and in addition to fortifications, the female half of the city also has the same number of professional defenders as the male offense has professional soldiers, AND can conscript the noncombatant population (Male AND Female) - including retired soldiers too old to march but young enough to fight - to defend against a serious threat.

houlio
2013-10-22, 07:46 PM
OP, have you ever heard of The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Leguin? It describes a world where humanity is only a single gender (it gets weird biologically, don't worry about that so much). While I wouldn't say that you should necessarily restructure your campaign to have single sex/gender humans in it, you can take a few lessons from it. One way to approach this is to refocus and instead of having society based on a male/female dichotomy, cast it in a different gender light. Maybe only people who have done policing and raiding can be expected to know enough to a family capable of both facets of life, since both seem pretty integral to the population? Perhaps that while women who are considered to be family-capable are pregnant, the men in these relationships are put through some sort of similar experience socially/politically/economically so that it is more or less shared by both partners? Why do you need a necessarily monogamous basis for a family, maybe families are effectively state-run, or are open to larger units than a nuclear family?

Just a few questions I thought that might help you think about this differently.

Anxe
2013-10-22, 07:49 PM
The Soviets had integrated units during WW2. Although there were many problems with it, I think those problems would go away if integrated units were seen as the norm. Also, if its a standing army the pregnancy issue would likely be nonexistent. Women stop getting their period if they exercise ridiculous amounts or are in stressful situations. Still, much more historical support for the men on the frontlines and women on defense.

We've still got this professional defender problem. I'm arguing that as the women don't see combat, they aren't as professional as the men. Alexander the Great conquered Persia because his men were so much more experienced in combat than the Persians'. If the women are as experienced as the men then some interesting problems come up.
1. The women have to be attacked while the men are away, but why would you send half your force away if you know an attack is coming at home?
2. If the men are at home they're getting just as much practical experience as the women.
3. If I'm planning on attacking a city, why am I leaving half my military force at home defending, when I know the enemy forces are gathered where I am right now to fight?
This leads to another problem if the women actually stay home but are trained at fighting. No one EVER takes cities. There will always be twice as many defenders and you'll lose (assuming all other things equal). Unless, you bring the women along.
I just see it going two ways. The women go along with the men on field armies or they eventually lose power when the more experienced army returns and decides it wants control.

JusticeZero
2013-10-22, 08:18 PM
Why do you need a necessarily monogamous basis for a family, maybe families are effectively state-run, or are open to larger units than a nuclear family?
If you have some good prototypes for me to look at that use these sorts of models, i'm open to looking into them.
1. The women have to be attacked while the men are away, but why would you send half your force away if you know an attack is coming at home?If nothing else, you have random monster problems and the like.
3. If I'm planning on attacking a city, why am I leaving half my military force at home defending, when I know the enemy forces are gathered where I am right now to fight?This was actually the reason for the policy - if you take your *entire* force with you, you leave yourself open to someone else coming in the back.
This leads to another problem if the women actually stay home but are trained at fighting. No one EVER takes cities. There will always be twice as many defenders and you'll lose (assuming all other things equal). Unless, you bring the women along.This is actually a campaign setting thing, that since this division, cities normally do not get overrun by direct attack alone. That said, a city is not a self contained unit. Cities are dependent on farms, mines, caravans, et cetera which also need defending and which are often also close to home.
They don't just need defending from marauding armies, they also need to be defended from random zombies, etc. etc. That's more commonly "mop-up", but mop-up is still experience.

RPGuru1331
2013-10-22, 08:20 PM
That's what a lot of actual vikings did in the real world, so it's plausible enough (putting aside that many, many vikings were traders, not pillagers and all that)

The Oni
2013-10-22, 08:20 PM
^ Regarding women on defense, the Japanese trained all young women in use of the naginata during the Edo period. The idea was that a naginata was a good weapon to be used by someone without much physical strength. Its cutting power relied less on strength (like the katana) than other weapons, and it kept enemies at a distance.

Even an ordinary housewife could do serious damage with a naginata, so, regarding women on defense, you might consider that as a base model for your weapon of choice.

JusticeZero
2013-10-22, 08:36 PM
That's what a lot of actual vikings did in the real world, so it's plausible enough (putting aside that many, many vikings were traders, not pillagers and all that)
Yeah, I know. I'm TRYING to sort how to make a better setting. It's just that jumping straight to equality without figuring out how it could be supported makes it hard to track the power flows through the culture to make adventures, since the culture is a facade in that case.
There's lots of stuff on tactics that i'm cheered to see seems to fit with how I was structuring things, and also some suggestions to change the family model - which i'm happy to take a swing at as soon as I can see one of them described in detail.

tasw
2013-10-22, 08:47 PM
I dont see it working as a society for long.

A big part of a soldiers training is mental. So your basically taking all your male soldiers and conditioning them to the belief that its their job and their (divine?) right to raid and pillage towns.

And then doing your absolute best to train them to be very, very good at it and sending them out to actually DO it professionally. How long do you reasonably expect those people to take orders from people who DIDNT go out and fight before they say

"screw this guys, the only difference between this and town X that we pillaged last week is that we're already inside the walls of this one."

No amount of training equals real experience in combat and even if we assumed it did in this world the psychology involved pretty much guarantees an extremely fractious culture with consistent inter-gender violence and civil distrust that would implode most societies very quickly.

valadil
2013-10-22, 09:16 PM
Specifically, I cited a historical "men go out and pillage" as an ancient historical fact in the campaign setting, then seperated the roles of "pillaging" offense from "police/siege defense", and gendered the latter as a stereotypically female, "pink-armor" role.

I then asserted that because police and counter-siege would have various moments of glory, that these routes were common routes by which women could gain glory which could then be leveraged into political power, resulting in a number of female headed government leaders in a culture which retained a military path to power.


I see what you're going for, but my gut reaction says separate but equal. That didn't go over so well and I'm not sure why it would be different in your case.

Here are some things to think about. I know you said you didn't want to get into the theory, but I feel like you need to back up into that territory if you're going to have an egalitarian society evolve in your game.

Where do gender roles come from? As far as I'm aware (and my awareness is extremely limited) sexual dimorphism and pregnancy are the big causes.

Men are bigger and stronger than women. Blame the testosterone. If they're the ones out raiding and pillaging it's because size and strength make them good at raiding and pillaging.

When humans breed, men can keep doing whatever it is they do. Women can't. Trust me, my wife is pregnant with son #2 right now. Aside from gestating, she's useless. If she's out of commission for 9 months, how is she supposed to move up the ladder? Note that that's not counting breast feeding. I don't want to say that the moms care for the babies, but it's hard to argue with lactation.

Anyway, I mention these things because I think your setting needs to address them. I don't have a good answer for the pregnancy one, but here's an idea I've had for the size and strength difference.

In D&D, there's no statistical difference between sexes. If you really want to represent the strength boost men get from testosterone, just say that they get a +0.25 bonus to strength, but it rounds away to nothing. Now compare them to an entirely different species. Half orcs get a +2 bonus. Their weaker females have 8 times the bonus male humans get. And that's just looking at PHB races. If you go to war against another humanoid nation you might fight trolls, minotaurs, and giants (oh my!). In a world with radically different species vying for power over each other, I don't see how the relatively tiny gap between men and women would matter anymore.

Xianthe
2013-10-22, 09:41 PM
*drags out her cultural anthropology textbook* (I've only taken intro level, so any real anthropologists please forgive any blithering idiocy.)

In a culture where the men are going to be spending extended periods of time away from home, there's a strong benefit to extended family structures as a form of support. The Western nuclear model (mom/dad + kids living away from familial support structures) is a pretty "modern" development.

There's a couple of different societal...I'll call them metrics, for lack of a better term off the top of my head. These are pretty much a generality, so feel free to liberally insert the word "usually" as needed.

First category describes where power rests. This is your "patriarchy" versus "matriarchy."

Second is how the culture traces it's lineage, or rule of descent. This is basically which side of your bloodline is considered more important. Broad options are "patrilineal" (my father, my father's father, and so on), "matrilineal" (my mother, my mother's mother, etc), "ambilineal" (within the society there is a mixture), and "bilateral" (both sides are equally important, and equally considered).

Thirdly is the pattern of residence. Options here are "patrilocal" (daughter leaves family and lives with husband with/near husband's family), "matrilocal" (son leaves family and lives with wife with/near wife's family), "bilocal" (either the son or daughter leaves, to live with/near spouses family), "avunculocal" (son and daughter both leave, to live with/near husband's maternal uncle), and "neolocal" (both leave home, live apart from both families).

While some combinations are far more common than others (patrilocality represents something like 67% of all cultures worldwide), theoretically there is no reason why any of these combinations couldn't occur.

The default assumption of "American" culture* is patriarchical, bilateral, neolocal.

But there's no reason your culture couldn't have the women staying near their families while the men go off, but still have descent traced through the father's line.

Keeping extended family close together also helps easy some of the responsibility of raising children from the mother. If you are living all by yourself with little support to take care of your children if something happens to you, it can be potentially very dangerous to have both parents involved in a risky line of work. Some cultures end up with the women beyond childbearing age doing much of the caretaking for the children. Because they are no longer investing their energy into raising their own offspring, they are capable of freeing mothers and fathers from a lot of the necessary labor involved.

I could see that being something very common in a society like the one you describe.

Somewhat tangental to this, but communal living arrangements akin to the Israeli kibbutzim might be something worth looking at to see if there's anything worth borrowing for your culture.


*Yes, I realize that with modern blending it's a bit of a grey area to define an "American culture" but stick with me. There's tons of diversity, but this seems to be the broad stroke.

Anxe
2013-10-22, 09:43 PM
Okay, the women staying to defend against monsters was something I hadn't thought of. There must be a lot of monsters if truly half the fighting force needs to stay behind though. This leads to two different scenarios.

1. The men are often away pillaging other towns. They can try to take over other cities, but this is foiled if they are ever in a 1v1 conflict with other towns. Thus alliances have to pop up quickly if any progress is ever made in wars. Thus city-states would be rather rare and nation states would be heavily favored. That works.

2. The men are away fighting the monsters that always attack their city when they leave to go fight with their neighbors. They eradicate the monsters and then there's no longer a need to keep the female soldiers at home.

If 2 is possible, why aren't the men in 1 doing it? The monsters are a much more real threat to their homes and families. One reason could be that the monsters are truly too big a threat for their army to manage, but if that's the case wouldn't the men stay home to defend with the women from monster attacks?

So I still see the monsters as not sustainable IF their lairs can be found. And for most monsters capable of endangering a city this will be true. A horde of orcs should be easy enough to find. A flying dragon, not so much, but if it wants to attack the city I don't think anything can stop it except the PCs.

Scow2
2013-10-22, 09:58 PM
So I still see the monsters as not sustainable IF their lairs can be found. And for most monsters capable of endangering a city this will be true. A horde of orcs should be easy enough to find. A flying dragon, not so much, but if it wants to attack the city I don't think anything can stop it except the PCs.Except hordes of orcs aren't easy to find... Everything's fine and peaceful one moment, then BAM! Horde of Orcs on your doorstep, with no idea where they came from... and with just enough women(Which are noncombatants in Orcish Chauvenistic culture) and children to ensure that every paladin that rides against them will fall.

AMFV
2013-10-22, 10:06 PM
There are few problems on a military note. Note that I am not a feminist theorist, so feel to disregard. We've already had people out that garrison forces tend to be supremely under experienced as compared to seasoned veterans. Also in medieval warfare the difference between male and female bodies becomes that much more significant, so be prepared to handwave this away, or at least be prepared to explain that it isn't that way in your society, because that is something I would ask about.

I think that you could possibly have the garrison situation improve if you had vast differences in population, or if instead of having the women's defensive role be limited to active defense of cities, you could put the women in charge of logistics, since an army marches on it's belly, this would give them essentially the ability to severely restrict if not completely prevent a coup.

You could also have disparities in experience the other way, for example if the women had more routine combat and the men rarely ravaged and pillaged you'd have the opposite effect.

Personally the population method seems the best to be, the whole thing seems like an analogy to a lion pride, which is pretty cool, so I would just alter the birth rate till your society matches whatever degree of verisimilitude you want.

Anxe
2013-10-22, 10:18 PM
Except hordes of orcs aren't easy to find... Everything's fine and peaceful one moment, then BAM! Horde of Orcs on your doorstep, with no idea where they came from... and with just enough women(Which are noncombatants in Orcish Chauvenistic culture) and children to ensure that every paladin that rides against them will fall.

If giant hordes of Orcs are dropping on the city's doorsteps, then the city must really be in a bind to send out half its fighting force. This also assumes a low magic setting where high level divinations to find the Orcs or predict their attacks are not easily available.

So I guess this system works if monster attacks can happen at anytime, are untraceable, and unpredictable, but only so threatening that half the fighting force of a city can repel or delay the attack until the other half returns from whatever war it was fighting. That feels awfully specific to me and I'd like to jiggle those pieces into place if we can.

Scow2
2013-10-22, 10:54 PM
If giant hordes of Orcs are dropping on the city's doorsteps, then the city must really be in a bind to send out half its fighting force. This also assumes a low magic setting where high level divinations to find the Orcs or predict their attacks are not easily available.

So I guess this system works if monster attacks can happen at anytime, are untraceable, and unpredictable, but only so threatening that half the fighting force of a city can repel or delay the attack until the other half returns from whatever war it was fighting. That feels awfully specific to me and I'd like to jiggle those pieces into place if we can.It's more that the entire fighting force is more than a match than anything else the world can throw at it can face, so any threats would time themselves to ensure they strike when the offensive force is on the move.

And orcs have a nasty way of dodging divinations by virtue of existing in a state of quantum uncertainty - An orc horde is simultaneously marching on and not marching on your city until the area is observed, at which point the waveform collapses, and you either have orcs or you don't (Though the chance of orcs is much smaller than 50/50.).

Anxe
2013-10-23, 12:33 AM
Alright, that implies a spy in the city to me who tips off the Orcs whenever the men leave the city. I think we've got something now.

Any other problems you're noticing JusticeZero?

Miriel
2013-10-23, 02:08 AM
Did not read the entire thread in detail.

As for ways to make a more equal society... distribution of fighting duties is not all that matters. First, what being a soldier means, in campaign or on garrison duties, also depends on attitudes towards the army. Second, there is more to life than war. Third, you have to keep class and life-cycle into account. If you decide to keep the "separate spheres" theme (EDIT: I follow Blackjackg in not entirely agreeing, though) with all its modern ambiguity and historical verisimilitude, you can still have a lot of space for varying gender roles. It doesn't necessarily lead to a egalitarian society or to egalitarian societies, but it allows you to subvert our conceptions of gender roles. You also have to make clear that whatever role you make for either gender is an ideal-type, and that individuals may and do vary from it.

For example, you can rule that in Huge-Port City, an important trade city, men often go abroad on trade ships and naval expeditions. Lower-class men are ship mates, rowers, etc., upper-class men are mostly merchants. But upper-class women stay home and lend the trade capital from the land estates they manage around the city: their traveling husbands and sons are effectively their factors. Lower-class women stay at home and produce various goods. The government and diplomacy is managed by women: after all, they have all the information that men collect elsewhere. In this Huge-Port City, stay-at-home women are at a socio-economic advantage, because they hold a central position in their social network and in government and own the capital. Men may get the military prestige, but it doesn't get them any power because they are always away, for war or business.

In Cornton, a small village devoted to agriculture, you can decide that the pattern follows something more akin to what you described: men work the fields and go to war, women tend the home and stay as garrison. But even though this would replicate traditionnal gender roles, you still have a margin to make the model more (or less) equal, using other variables. For exemple, what is the dowry system? If the dowry is integrally provided by the bride's family, this may lead to a very different situation than if women work for several years to accumulate money. In the former case, women may be subordinate to men, whereas in the latter, they may be equal partners in marriage. Actually, without going into such details, you can just "state" that they are. Historical societies are diverse.

Let's look at the people of Warland. Now, this very warlike people is the terror of the area, and to achieve that, they assign a very specific role to everyone, which they must follow. All the men must go on raiding parties when they reach 14 (those happen almost every year, in the winter), while women tend and guard the home. Within the family, the mother decides, but the father represents the family in public. Before then, young boys are socialized with other young boys, under the supervision of men in the summer, and with their mothers during campaigns. However, this is a rough life. Around puberty, some boys end up not following the standard male path, and, benefitting from their experience with women during campaign times, they can become semi-women/some other term (*poof* you just created a gender variant!). You could decide they were all castrated. They are well integrated and serve specific ceremonial function -- in game, let's say all/most clerics from Warland are all semi-women. In the same way, the women are mostly socialized with other women and learn how to take care of the house, but they also learn to bear arms, under the instruction of their mothers and their fathers. As in the case of boys, this allows some girls to become full-persons/whatever term you like at puberty (*poof* other gender variant!), because they have the full experience of life: as women, they can "manage the house", i.e. take decisions; as men, they can fight and act outside the house. Contrary to the infertile semi-women, full-persons can have one husband (for reproduction) and several wives (for tending the house). Therefore, even though for instance most soldiers and diplomats would be men, most decision makers and generals are full-persons. The whole system is extremely rigid and holistic, so no one confuses them with the path followed by most boy and girls. And it's clear to everyone that semi-women and full-persons are not women or men: they are something else entirely. So even in this most rigid of systems, you can play around with the gender binary!

EDIT: All of these are vaguely inspired by actual historical situations. They're just examples of what can be done.


One thing is certain, though: as long as there are gender roles, there is little hope of true equality. EDIT: Oh, and saying that "it can't work" is the surest way to make sure it never will. So take some chances with reality. Worst case scenario, the fictional world won't work, but who cares if the real one improves through it?

falloutimperial
2013-10-23, 05:42 AM
I may be missing something, but you might just be over-thinking this. I accept that to say that a society without gender roles, even in a pseudo-medieval one, is possible. I cannot accept that such a proposal is so implausible that it could negatively impact your game.

Of course, in gaming, such things are often called out more than other plausible-but-unlikely or even impossible things, but I think this usually derives itself from either a view that such things are non-historical or that you are attempting to create a modern utopia in your game.

The first problem is simple; you are not attempting to to re-create history and are fully entitled to make original societies.

The second isn't too hard to put to rest; people are more willing to accept societies that have flaws. A city may have great gender politics, but it periodically attacks other areas with no provocations, for instance.

This is not to say the city you have created reflects poorly on you regarding gender politics. Indeed, your having paid attention to the social nature of gender roles gives you license to intelligently create imperfect societies in fiction.

Themrys
2013-10-23, 06:10 AM
Additionally, what circumstances led to men and women being separated so specifically in military roles?

I'd like to know this, too.

Also, if men are physically stronger than women in your setting, wouldn't it make more sense to have them protect the children? Attacking monsters on your terms, in the way you want, is much more easily achieved with cunning and strategy, while if you're being attacked, the enemy knows exactly where you are and can deduce what you are going to do next - you aren't likely to leave children unprotected, for example.

Delta
2013-10-23, 06:44 AM
The reason is mostly that I have not found any way to have that type of egalitarianism with a nuclear family that is not also associated with a population freefall in a setting that is dependent on a growing population.

One simple solution: Make healing (especially curing sickness) of a sort (most likely divine magic, but any flavor should do) readily available, thereby reducing death by sickness and massively improving the percentage of children surviving childhood and suddenly the need for women to give birth on a regular basis to have your population grow lessens just as massively.

Segev
2013-10-23, 08:19 AM
On a much more symbolic level, the idea of women's role as defensive and men's role as offensive is a big part of what's called r*pe culture. Men besiege and women resist, until they can resist no more.Er...

I think you're confusing correlation and causation, here.

Greeks, mentioned earlier, believed women to be the wonton ones and men to have more self-control. And yet, they had every bit as much "rape culture" as does modern western society. There was no "men besiege; women defend until they give in" attitude; the justification behind THEIRS was "women want it."

Similarly, those cultures who blame the women for "tempting" the men typically actually believe the women are not the defenders by the aggressors, as well. This is why they do such things as force women to wear all-concealing garments that show only the eyes.

So, no, "men agress, women defend" only plays to your "ugly metaphor" for rape because you're seeking to establish connection; it is equally established with alternative social models. Rape is ugly no matter the culture, and it comes about because one person wants to abuse another for their own sick gratification (whether sexual or something else).


I'm no cultural anthropologist, but this is perplexing to me. I can only assume that the argument against gender equality in a nuclear family-centered growing population is that it requires each couple to surrender one parent to the task of child-rearing ten or twelve years until their 2.1 children are of age to begin an apprenticeship. But what prevents that choice from being made an egalitarian way? Is there some fundamental truth of human nature that says that only one gender can be responsible for child-rearing in a given society?
The reason it is typical for a woman to be the home-maker and to transition to primary child-rearer really is rooted in the fact that it's the woman who carries the child to term and is equipped to provide nourishment to said child for the early stages of life. It is of course possible to arrange it differently, but it is increasingly awkward the more "normalized" it is for a monogamous family to have the male be the stay-at-home and the female be the "breadwinner."

When a woman becomes pregnant, she is - to some degree or another - increasingly debilitated throughout the gestation period. I know, not all women react the same way, but enough become slower, tire more quickly, and need more frequent and specialized accommodation. It is generally seen as cruel to expect a pregnant woman to put in a heavy day of work and not understand if she needs to take a "sick day" for no reason other than it's a rough day for her body. And to expect, say, a female day laborer to put in an 8-10 hour day of hard physical labor while 7-9 months pregnant?

Again, yes, some could do it. But many cannot or would rather not, and for good reason. Such strain can often lead to miscarriages.

Then, when the baby is born, for the first few weeks at least it is the mother who is most capable of providing the child with nourishment. This means needing to be on hand to feed the baby at feeding times, at the very least. For some women, recovering from childbirth is a multi-day affair, as well.

"But," I hear some of you say, "isn't keeping a house just as much hard work? Why can you expect a pregnant woman to do THAT but not keep a day job?"

The answer is that home-making CAN be allowed to slide a little, and is NOT dependent on the one person hired for that specific job being the one to do it. In modern American society (or, at least, the idealized version of the 1950s and 60s; I think we probably have had this slip in recent decades), the husband is expected to come home and help his wife out with housework that she for any reason couldn't get around to. A pregnancy is a partnership of effort as the husband does take on some of his wife's normal duties (and I use that term denotatively; this isn't some statement that "it's a woman's job" so much as an acknowledgement that the home-maker will have things for which they're responsible, and that a pregnant woman may well not be quite as able to keep up easily with all of whatever duties she may have).

If a pregnant housewife doesn't keep the house as clean, or doesn't manage to do the grocery shopping, it can be allowed to slide. If a pregnant office worker doesn't manage to get that contract drawn up and delivered across town today, it could cost the company a small fortune. (And let's not even get into what happens if a pregnant, say, construction worker can't do her job as well as she could without carrying the baby.) The husband can come home and help out his housewife, working under her direction on tasks for which he is not as well-trained as she.

The house-husband can't really go in to work for his highly-trained wife on days she's unable to manage everything.

And if this is not the first child the couple has, somebody has to be watching the other kids. The beleagured pregnant housewife who couldn't keep handle on her rambunctious kids may be a bit of a stereotype, and may be the ONLY thing where a house husband is "better off" during a pregnancy. At least the woman doesn't have to deal with the kids AND the pregnancy! Even so, the husband who comes home to help out his wife is coming home to also help with the kids. The house husband who went in to work to take some burden from his pregnant wife (let's assume for sake of argument that this might even be socially acceptable in the "women as breadwinners" society) would need to bring the kids to work with him, or find caregivers.

Even the "extended family" model does more to alleviate the stay-at-home pregnant woman's problems than the breadwinning pregnant woman's problems: the housework is already shared, and is somewhat interchangeable. Nobody in the household is going to resent their pregnant sister/aunt/daughter taking it a bit easy and still getting a share of the household resources; in an office, co-workers probably would begin to resent a woman who is pregnant "too often" for making them take up the slack and just mooching her salary (in their minds) from the company.

Even allowing for pregnant women to take "maternity leave" creates problems: they either need to be fully paid by their work, or there needs to be another income stream. While modern society almost demands maternity leave be a thing to avoid being unfair to women who work, there is actually plenty of room to argue that it's unfairly demanding of employers to require it. Employers are paying for work to be done; if that work is not being done, they are not making the money they need to justify paying the worker.

And, to recall again the "day laborer" type of work (construction worker, even retail and other by-the-hour jobs) is a thing that women would do in a "women as breadwinners" society, those kinds of jobs often DO NOT have maternity leave. If the employee isn't on the job, she's not getting paid. A male breadwinner can make sure he's on the job more often; while a husband may definitely want to take more time out to help out his wife, he doesn't need nearly as much rest as does his pregnant wife.


For a smoothly functioning society where a woman is the breadwinner and men are the home-makers, you'd almost need to have polygamy. "Normally," that's two (or more) income streams for 3 adults (plus however many kids). When one of the wives is pregnant, she can take reduced hours or even take a full leave of absence; such a society would probably have provisions for this which are far less onerous than demanding that all employers pay women for time they're not able to work. Even then, if she's an hourly job, she might need to actually go look for another one if her position gets filled. (Fortunately, there likely are other hourly jobs out there into which she could step.)

Meanwhile, the other wife still serves as breadwinner. Money might be tighter than normal, but it's still a full income stream for only +1 person over what a monogamous "nuclear family" would entail. While the pregnant wife is taking her time off, she can help a little around the house, but more importantly, the house husband is there to take care of her as well as the house. It's a little more work for him, but pregnancies always entail that.


Sexism aside, the biological fact that pregnancies are not universally trivial for women to undergo and the fact that "breadwinner" jobs often are less forgiving of schedule deviations and "days off" than home-making means that it is unsurprising to find most cultures default to male breadwinners and females keeping the home.

It takes another "sexist" thought - that a man can marry multiple women - to make the female breadwinner-as-a-thing be workable for a truly stable socio-economic culture.

Otherwise, a population that is going at something above replacement needs women to have 2+ children on average, and the facts of pregnancy mean that this will pull a female breadwinner away from her job. (Note, in a polygamous culture, each woman would need only 1.5+ on average, assuming the average household was 1 husband and 2 wives. But that also implies a far different ratio of sexes being born, or that something is otherwise artificially depleting the male population.)

hamishspence
2013-10-23, 09:42 AM
Even within the primate category, there is considerable variation in the ratio of male to female childcare. In some species of monkey - cotton-top tamarins, for example - the male does most of the childcare- except for feeding early on.

Miriel
2013-10-23, 10:10 AM
Er...

I think you're confusing correlation and causation, here.

Greeks, mentioned earlier, believed women to be the wonton ones and men to have more self-control. And yet, they had every bit as much "rape culture" as does modern western society. There was no "men besiege; women defend until they give in" attitude; the justification behind THEIRS was "women want it."

Similarly, those cultures who blame the women for "tempting" the men typically actually believe the women are not the defenders by the aggressors, as well. This is why they do such things as force women to wear all-concealing garments that show only the eyes.

So, no, "men agress, women defend" only plays to your "ugly metaphor" for rape because you're seeking to establish connection; it is equally established with alternative social models. Rape is ugly no matter the culture, and it comes about because one person wants to abuse another for their own sick gratification (whether sexual or something else).
The fact that other societies had other conceptions is irrelevant. The point is, it follows some dangerous attitudes of our own very closely, attitudes that we should try to change, not reinforce.

Segev
2013-10-23, 10:14 AM
The fact that other societies had other conceptions is irrelevant. The point is, it follows some dangerous attitudes of our own very closely, attitudes that we should try to change, not reinforce.

Eh. I agree that the attitude can be irritating. But it's a cyclic trope; it will cycle around again whether we consciously try to do so or not. And it won't go away, because there will always be differing likes and dislikes in how romance is pursued, and these will tend to need to be complementary differences rather than utterly removed, lest we lose the ability to form meaningful life-bonds at all.

But really, if you're interested in the topic and how it manifests, TVtropes has ENORMOUS numbers of pages devoted to tropes related directly and indirectly to this attitude.

Serpentine
2013-10-23, 10:15 AM
Following on a bit from Enrico Dandolo in particular: first of all, the "nuclear family" model is only one of many, and to a large extent I think pretty modern. There's plenty of other ones, the extended family or household models in particular, and the fact that women are not always the "homemakers", nor have they historically always been so. As a modern example, for much of my life my father was the primary caregiver, my mother the primary breadwinner. More historically, in agricultural societies women were almost always right there in the fields with the men. There were no - or few - "women belong in the home, men out at work" lines: a farm needed everyone doing everything, including the kids as soon as they were able to do anything at all. The relegation of women into the home is, again, a modern invention.

As Enrico said, you have to consider other areas as well. You specify that women could "use" their defensive roles to claim political power. Why does female political power, specifically, need that justification? Why couldn't it be "men and women are both respected, and so are both equally capable of obtaining political power"? Or Hell, considering the fact that women are explicitly in charge of defending the homeland, surely it is the more-absent men whose political power needs justification.
Are there any other areas that are sex segregated? If so, why? How strictly is it so divided?

The biggest question, for me, is this: what happens if someone doesn't keep to your model? What if a woman wants to join a offensive force, or a man the defensive? You can't just say "that doesn't happen", not if you want to stick to your precious "realism" - it happens all the time in real-world history, and not just the Joan of Arcs, but regular muddy-boot soldiers. So what happens if they do? Do people just shrug and go "well, if you want..."? Do people informally but significantly mock, abuse or otherwise discourage them? Are there official policies in place to make it difficult, or illegal? Are people who dare defy their allotted roles actively persecuted?
There isn't necessarily a right or wrong answer to that question, but it is something you need to think about - especially if it's going to effect someone who actually wants to play such a character.

There is not necessarily anything intrinsically wrong with your system. In fact, it sounds fairly similar to what I'm thinking of doing with my dwarves*. Your justification for it, and insistence that you "just can't see it being otherwise" is what has me suss about it (and frankly, that last one just sounds to me like "I can't be bothered thinking of anything"). Just be careful that you don't end up with a cultural monolith in your game - not every society works the same way. Having divisions always based on sex is likely to end up with a fairly dull setting.


*I'm actually thinking that men will tend to manage economics, while women manage the home. The thing is, "economics" makes men the shopkeepers and artisans, while the "home" makes women the main household defenders - and thus military - as well as domestic decision-makers. As a generalisation - plenty of exceptions.

edit: There's one other point I think you need to consider: Military service is not (usually) performed by every single person, nor for their entire lives. There is plenty of room for people - male and female to go into service for a while, leave, have kids, hand those kids onto others, and then go back into service again. Or to have kids, raise them, and then go into service. Or serve, retire, raise kids, and never go back. A woman joining a military service isn't doomed to be a spinster; neither is a man going to have nothing but bastard children. Neither is likely to be alone in the world, with no one to help raise their children.
Children, in other words, are not an iron ball that anchors a person to one place and one role for their whole life, and defining people's roles based solely on that is not necessarily realistic - certainly not necessarily essential.

Miriel
2013-10-23, 10:26 AM
Eh. I agree that the attitude can be irritating. But it's a cyclic trope; it will cycle around again whether we consciously try to do so or not. And it won't go away, because there will always be differing likes and dislikes in how romance is pursued, and these will tend to need to be complementary differences rather than utterly removed, lest we lose the ability to form meaningful life-bonds at all.
Being fatalistic ("it's impossible to change, we have no grip over it") is the best to ensure that nothing will change.

JusticeZero
2013-10-23, 10:37 AM
One thing is certain, though: as long as there are gender roles, there is little hope of true equality. EDIT: Oh, and saying that "it can't work" is the surest way to make sure it never will..
I won't argue with that. Like I said, I don't believe that it cannot be done. I just do not know how it would be done. In much the same way, someone in the 1500s could have said "It is possible for people to learn how to fly. But I haven't the faintest idea how they would do it." It doesn't mean that they are denying the Wright Brothers will ever exist, it just means they haven't a clue how flying would be achieved; they can't imagine an airplane that hasn't been invented yet, or else they would already have built one.

Make healing readily available, thereby.. improving the percentage of children surviving childhood and suddenly the need for women to give birth on a regular basis to have your population grow lessens just as massively.
While this is true, it only reduces it as far as maintenance levels. While real-world population expanded by this method, it expanded vertically, which only lasts as long as the lifespan increases continue to outrun the actual lifespans. Most industrialized nations that we are familiar with the cultures of are well below maintenance, so we need to work around a birth rate significantly higher than anything many of us are familiar with on a daily basis.
As noted by Segev, a neo-liberal labor logic will disrupt female working ability and skew things toward a female homemaker role. Furthermore, Segev apparently took neoliberalism as a given; that economic logic is deeply ingrained in modern society.

JusticeZero
2013-10-23, 10:49 AM
Your justification for it, and insistence that you "just can't see it being otherwise" is what has me suss about it (and frankly, that last one just sounds to me like "I can't be bothered thinking of anything").
I'm a bit offended by that. "It should be possible to design an engine that can travel at FTL speeds. You have an hour to write up a working set of blueprints, ready, go." "OMG, these blueprints don't look like they could possibly work. YOU AREN'T TRYING!"
As noted, the reason I have issues is that I get a lot of adventures out of cultural analysis, and so it becomes a real hamper when I am having to use a non-functioning faҫade of a desired end instead of a culture.

Delta
2013-10-23, 11:03 AM
While this is true, it only reduces it as far as maintenance levels. While real-world population expanded by this method, it expanded vertically, which only lasts as long as the lifespan increases continue to outrun the actual lifespans. Most industrialized nations that we are familiar with the cultures of are well below maintenance, so we need to work around a birth rate significantly higher than anything many of us are familiar with on a daily basis.

I fear I don't quite get your point or what my point had to do with modern industrialized nations. The fact is that given the lifespan and childhood mortality rate of the medieval period, it was simply necessary for the vast majority of women to spend basically all their childbearing years trying to get children just to sustain the population or get small growth. If you change that equation, it "frees up" the majority of women to do something beyond that in those years, and we're talking MAJOR percentages here if the local cleric can make sure that almost all children are delivered healthy and the vast majority of them lives past puberty.

I'm not sure what kind of population growth you're trying to achieve here, of course if the population needs to double or triple every generation or something like that then yes, you have doomed almost all the women in your setting to be nothing but baby machines there's really no way around that unless you massively change the way humans reproduce.

Segev
2013-10-23, 11:08 AM
Being fatalistic ("it's impossible to change, we have no grip over it") is the best to ensure that nothing will change.

In this case, I don't think it is worth expending the amount of effort that would be required to change it, and worry that the ... over-enthusiasm ... that is so often demonstrated by those who eventually profit from the "social justice" crusades that spring up would actually create worse problems.

Write what you think will be interesting in fictional societies and social mores. There's really not much else to be done that doesn't come with reams and reams of unintended consequences and mountains of effort that far outweigh the annoying trope's presence.

Miriel
2013-10-23, 11:20 AM
In this case, I don't think it is worth expending the amount of effort that would be required to change it, and worry that the ... over-enthusiasm ... that is so often demonstrated by those who eventually profit from the "social justice" crusades that spring up would actually create worse problems.

Write what you think will be interesting in fictional societies and social mores. There's really not much else to be done that doesn't come with reams and reams of unintended consequences and mountains of effort that far outweigh the annoying trope's presence.
I don't see what is so over-enthusiastic about what I've said. We're discussing something that can easily be done: choosing discourses for a fictionnal world that do not reinforce harmful attitudes in the real world.

Serpentine
2013-10-23, 11:23 AM
I'm a bit offended by that. "It should be possible to design an engine that can travel at FTL speeds. You have an hour to write up a working set of blueprints, ready, go." "OMG, these blueprints don't look like they could possibly work. YOU AREN'T TRYING!"
As noted, the reason I have issues is that I get a lot of adventures out of cultural analysis, and so it becomes a real hamper when I am having to use a non-functioning faҫade of a desired end instead of a culture.You're not trying to actually build a society from the ground up, you're just making an adequate impression of one. And faster than light travel is hardly the same thing as a functioning egalitarian society: we have never had faster than light travel, and may never; we are well on our way towards something very close to an egalitarian society, and there have been many which have gotten quite close in the past.

You can say "I know I'm not there yet, but I'm trying to get close" without saying "it can never be done! I can never do it!" At least you're acknowledging that it's just the limits of your own imagination, but it certainly does come across as very fatalistic and self-limiting. My goal was not to offend, but to motivate: you're just shooting yourself in the foot with that attitude, and it sounds like an excuse to not even try. It's like I guy I know who said he wouldn't write female characters, because he didn't think he could write good ones: way to have confidence in your own writing ability and empathy skills there, mate; you never will if you don't practice.

In any case, my other questions and critiques still stand.


In this case, I don't think it is worth expending the amount of effort that would be required to change itI, and a great deal of the rest of the world, strongly disagree with you. Don't bother "expending the effort" if you don't want to, just don't get in our way if we do.

Segev
2013-10-23, 11:27 AM
I don't see what is so over-enthusiastic about what I've said. We're discussing something that can easily be done: choosing discourses for a fictionnal world that do not reinforce harmful attitudes in the real world.

Actually, you've demonstrated how this attitude CAN be harmful. You're engaging in social pressure censorship. "I think this portrayal reinforces harmful ideas because I have ascribed it to 'rape culture' through this extended linkage. Even though a counter-example has been raised to demonstrate that the correlation may well be non-existent, I feel it reinforces harmful attitudes in the real world, so this kind of society should not be depicted in fiction."

You don't get to dismiss the fact that it is no more correlated to "rape culture" than its antithesis and then claim that there's no over-zealousness in saying it shouldn't be written.

"Armed young men fighting for the sake of fighting corresponds to our modern gang culture. Thus, you shouldn't have societies that represent pillagers and raiders in any codified sense, lest you reinforce gang culture."

"Women who engage in more strenuous physical activity - such as combat training - are more likely to have miscarriages. Therefore, women in combat at all reinforces abortion culture."

These statements are patently absurd (or at least, I hope they are). But they rely on exactly as much (if not more) relation of culture and activity as does your tying of "males being attackers in war, women being defenders in war" to "rape culture."

Segev
2013-10-23, 11:30 AM
I, and a great deal of the rest of the world, strongly disagree with you. Don't bother "expending the effort" if you don't want to, just don't get in our way if we do.

"I, and a great deal of the rest of the world, disagree that women in the workplace are not contributing to the downfall of society. Don't bother 'expending the effort' to keep them in the kitchen if you don't want to, just don't get in our way if we do."

(Note, the above does not reflect my actual beliefs.)

The above does, however, reflect exactly why your request is foolish: if you will do harm through your efforts to "change the world for the better," you should be opposed.

Miriel
2013-10-23, 11:46 AM
Actually, you've demonstrated how this attitude CAN be harmful. You're engaging in social pressure censorship. "I think this portrayal reinforces harmful ideas because I have ascribed it to 'rape culture' through this extended linkage. Even though a counter-example has been raised to demonstrate that the correlation may well be non-existent, I feel it reinforces harmful attitudes in the real world, so this kind of society should not be depicted in fiction."
Read my above very-long post, where I gave several examples of ways to build societies which discuss gender in meaningful ways while keeping the "separate spheres" idea. I don't see how I'm trying to force anyone not to write what they want. I'm answering a question from the OP on what can be done for their world to adapt to feminist discourses.


You don't get to dismiss the fact that it is no more correlated to "rape culture" than its antithesis and then claim that there's no over-zealousness in saying it shouldn't be written.
I don't understand what you mean. Could you elaborate?

Also, for me, the issue is less about rape culture than about traditionnal gender roles.


"Armed young men fighting for the sake of fighting corresponds to our modern gang culture. Thus, you shouldn't have societies that represent pillagers and raiders in any codified sense, lest you reinforce gang culture."

"Women who engage in more strenuous physical activity - such as combat training - are more likely to have miscarriages. Therefore, women in combat at all reinforces abortion culture."

These statements are patently absurd (or at least, I hope they are). But they rely on exactly as much (if not more) relation of culture and activity as does your tying of "males being attackers in war, women being defenders in war" to "rape culture."
The second example is silly. I don't remember there being any dangerous "abortion culture". Besides, "women in combat" doesn't imply "pregnant women in combat".

The first, well, why not? If anyone wants to build a roleplaying universe without violence, or at least with less violence, I'll cheer. I personnally don't need a quota of massacred creature to have fun when I'm playing any game. It doesn't mean all such games should be banned, more that those who contribute meaningfully by escaping standard conceptions and expectations should be encouraged, because doing something different is always difficult.

Segev
2013-10-23, 11:55 AM
The difference between "sure, I'd love to see a setting without X" and "You shouldn't have a setting with X" is enormous.

If I misread your admonition against having the "males as attackers, females as defenders" paradigm and you weren't saying that you should NOT have this in a setting because it promotes "rape culture," then I apologize. I truly do not quite grasp what you're trying to get across.

As for "abortion culture," there absolutely is one. And it's a big problem. It just isn't really topical beyond being used in a deliberately absurd example of how tying things together in that fashion is ... well, absurd.

And if you're claiming that "rape culture" is pervasive throughout our civilization, rather than being something that exists in some areas, then I think we probably need to stop talking about it entirely now, because there's really no way for this to go but nigh-religious flame war as we start to feel mutually insulted by each others' position and defense of what we believe to be right.

Serpentine
2013-10-23, 12:06 PM
If I misread your admonition against having the "males as attackers, females as defenders" paradigm and you weren't saying that you should NOT have this in a setting because it promotes "rape culture," then I apologize. I truly do not quite grasp what you're trying to get across.
I believe the gist was "you asked for things that might be wrong with this setting. This is something that is wrong with this setting."

He asked us to tell him what is wrong with his setting from a feminist perspective. I presume he would rather that we not get told off for complying with his request, regardless of whether or not you agree with their assessment (which, incidentally, I don't particularly).

Miriel
2013-10-23, 12:25 PM
The difference between "sure, I'd love to see a setting without X" and "You shouldn't have a setting with X" is enormous.

If I misread your admonition against having the "males as attackers, females as defenders" paradigm and you weren't saying that you should NOT have this in a setting because it promotes "rape culture," then I apologize. I truly do not quite grasp what you're trying to get across.

As for "abortion culture," there absolutely is one. And it's a big problem. It just isn't really topical beyond being used in a deliberately absurd example of how tying things together in that fashion is ... well, absurd.

And if you're claiming that "rape culture" is pervasive throughout our civilization, rather than being something that exists in some areas, then I think we probably need to stop talking about it entirely now, because there's really no way for this to go but nigh-religious flame war as we start to feel mutually insulted by each others' position and defense of what we believe to be right.
I'm trying to say that "men going abroad, women staying home" reflects traditional gender roles, which we are working towards abolishing. This is why I often mentionned of the "separate spheres" ideology (EDIT: i.e. women stay in the private sphere, while men go about in the public sphere -- and, incidently, rule over women), which arose with industrialization. (EDIT2: Obviously, similar ideas existed before as well.) The "attacker/defender" distinction is, to me, far less important.

I don't remember making any claim about rape culture whatsoever. Ctrl+f tells me I haven't used the word "rape" until my last post, where I denied I was talking about it. I would rather not talk about rape or rape culture at all because I am not knowledgeable about this.

Mewtarthio
2013-10-23, 01:08 PM
So I guess this system works if monster attacks can happen at anytime, are untraceable, and unpredictable, but only so threatening that half the fighting force of a city can repel or delay the attack until the other half returns from whatever war it was fighting. That feels awfully specific to me and I'd like to jiggle those pieces into place if we can.

It works pretty well if monster attacks can truly happen at any time, are either completely unpredictable or very frequent, and cannot be stymied in the long run. Basically, if monster attacks are similar to bad weather, except instead of boarding up your windows and taking shelter you take up arms and defend your city. For example, you could have monsters literally spawn out of the air from magic, or demons launching attacks through planar portals, or inhuman raiders pouring up from the depths of the earth.

Next, we'll give the humans access to magic or technology that makes them very good at piercing fortifications. For example, they might have explosive spells for knocking down walls or short-range teleportation to bypass defenses. The important thing here is that our attackers need to stand a pretty good chance of taking cities before the monsters gobble them up while they're out in the open (or, if not, they need to make "Surrender now or we'll blow up your walls and let the monsters eat you next!" a credible threat).

Of course, this creates an extremely hostile environment for humans, which will result in a lot of implications everywhere else in your world, so you might want something simpler...

mago
2013-10-23, 01:11 PM
Okay then, a few things:

One thing I think would be usefull in creating an intresting society from a feminist standpoint would be to focus on Gender, not Sex. Many cultures have a third gender (such as hijra, two-spirits and ladyboys), and i think that using multiple genders and going beyond the gender binary is an intresting way to explore feminist issues in fantasy settings. What if, instead of being either men or women, all warriors are of a third gender? It doesn't matter what your genitalia say, when you become a warrior, you become a third gender and stay like that for the rest of your life, with a seperate pronoun and diffrent roles and laws. These might relate to everything from family (perhaps a warrior gets some sort of preffrencial treatment in terms of lineage or inheritance, or there are certain expectations of hir in relation to hir parents), to merriage (perhaps warriors can marry each other (no matter sex) or men/women, but women can't marry each other) to tons of other stuff.

hamishspence
2013-10-23, 01:17 PM
Kyree, an intelligent wolf-like species in the Heralds of Valdemar novels, can be male, female, or neuter. Since the neuters lack reproductive responsibilities to the pack they tend to be the ones that go out and have adventures, and are therefore most often encountered by others.

They also tend to be the lorekeepers.

Eric Tolle
2013-10-23, 01:34 PM
My first question on this is " How many men are off fighting again?" Are all men are supposedly in the army for life? Because if that's the case, that society isn't going to function for long at all. For an agricultural society, optimistically 90% of the population needed to be doing agriculture. Even in those so-called "warrior" cultures, a closer examination shows "Oh, these people we don't consider citizens till the soil". Generally at best s society can muster up a military force lower than 1% of the pulsation. Likewise, much military action was seasonal or for a limited time.

This is your answer to your "Women can't be warriors cause they needed to make the babies to keep the population up!" issue. Sure if every women were off in the military that might be a problem, but if 1% of the women were in the army, or 10% in the army for 2 years, that's really sustainable.

Also, the prestige given to a given occupation is a function of propaganda and storytelling. One could add easily talk up " Our brave defenders of hearth and home" as "Our brave raiders". (Cynical me tends to think that if the women were the ones going off to war, the army would be denigrated as " women's work".)

Honestly, people tend to spend too much time focused on military matters, and not the day-to-day matters that make societies actually function(not just gamers, historians do it to). So these are doing questions that are probably more important for egalitarianism than who goes off to fight:

Can women own property?
Con women control their own finances?
Can women run businesses?
Can women own property in marriage?
Can women divorce?
Do women have independent legal standing in court?
Can women bring suits out testify?
Can women marry freely?
Do laws against adultery apply equally to both genders?
Can women work in the government in non-ruling capacities?
How are old women cared for?

And general questions:

matrilineal or patrilineal descent?
matrilocal or patrilocal marriage?
Extended families or clans? (If neither, better have s damn good reason not)

These sorts of things will make s huge difference in the egalitarian nature of society. Even more than warfare.

Broken Twin
2013-10-23, 02:18 PM
There is one method for doing mixed sex armies without worrying about sudden pregnancies threatening your fighting force's stability: In your setting, reliable birth control has already been discovered. Maybe the seeds of a relatively common plant function as birth control for both sexes. Bumping up the commonality of same sex pairings and bisexualism would help as well.

You could have it so that there is a mandatory length of time that everyone needs to be enlisted in the military. After X period of time, they can choose to either enter the stay with the main force, enter the reserves, or fully retire. Those that enter the reserves would become defenders, mixing their non-combat time between practice and community service. Those that retire can start businesses and/or families.

AMFV
2013-10-23, 02:41 PM
There is one method for doing mixed sex armies without worrying about sudden pregnancies threatening your fighting force's stability: In your setting, reliable birth control has already been discovered. Maybe the seeds of a relatively common plant function as birth control for both sexes. Bumping up the commonality of same sex pairings and bisexualism would help as well.

You could have it so that there is a mandatory length of time that everyone needs to be enlisted in the military. After X period of time, they can choose to either enter the stay with the main force, enter the reserves, or fully retire. Those that enter the reserves would become defenders, mixing their non-combat time between practice and community service. Those that retire can start businesses and/or families.

You could also do what the US military does and make sexual relations in theater illegal, not a perfect system but it does decrease pregnancies in wartime to a fraction of those in peace time.

Broken Twin
2013-10-23, 02:49 PM
You could also do what the US military does and make sexual relations in theater illegal, not a perfect system but it does decrease pregnancies in wartime to a fraction of those in peace time.

That could work as well. The reason I like the stated birth-control method is that it plants the incentive to avoid pregnancy equally on both parties. If a pregnancy does occur, the odds are pretty high that both parties wanted it to happen. In which case they're both dishonourably discharged for allowing a pregnancy while in theatre. If you have a child before you enroll, the child is looked after by the state until your term has been completed, at which point you resume the roll as parent.

Kitten Champion
2013-10-23, 03:19 PM
I'm confused about the premise of this thread.

I'd have more difficulty believing soldiers encompass a sufficient majority for their numbers to effectively hinder population growth, if you need that many soldiers in the first place you've got serious, serious problems.

As to making an egalitarian society, why don't you emulate the early Gaels? Women could own and inherit property, they could acquire skills and work within occupations men mostly governed elsewhere, political authority was available as well.

They had a communal, kinship-driven society that seemed to work well enough until the Christians got there. Although I'll confess I'm working off a PBS documentary I saw years ago.

veti
2013-10-23, 03:59 PM
I too am slightly puzzled at why you're so married, pun not intended, to the concept of the 'nuclear family' as the basic social unit. From an (admittedly cursory) knowledge of history, I believe that strongly 'warrior' cultures generally share the child-raising and home-making duties between a much wider pool of people - either an extended family, or an entire clan/village/other large unit living more-or-less communally.

I appreciate what you're trying to do with the "women defend the home" idea, but I'm not convinced it holds water. It seems like, at best, a fragile equilibrium. For instance, what happens if the town is attacked while the menfolk are at home?

In theory, I guess they'd fall under the women's authority in that case. But are people who think of themselves as a close-knit band of hardened, experience warriors, accustomed to working independently, really going to take orders from someone who's Not One of Them, irrespective of gender?

If I were the male commander in that situation, my first thought would be to lead my men in an offensive sortie against the attackers. But that basically steals the glory (and the XP) from the women and reduces them to a distinctly subordinate role, so it'd be interesting to see how the female commander responds to it. Do we all charge at the same time, leaving the walls undefended? Do we mix the units, thereby powerfully diluting the training and experience they've had together? Or do the men defend the walls while the women take the offensive? - in which case, I as male commander am probably going to have a stand-up row with the female commander, because while she knows defensive tactics and the local area, I know offensive tactics and how the enemy is likely to be organised and working, which I feel is at least equally relevant.

Sapphire Guard
2013-10-23, 06:13 PM
Has anyone ever read Robin Hobb's Tawny Man series? There's a nation in that that functions pretty much like what's described in the OP. (It's a sequel trilogy to one called the Farseer trilogy, in case anyone wants to start it.

There's a pirate nation that raids a neighbouring kingdom. Back home, the society is matriarchal, with the women being the only ones to own property and the men requiring permission to enter it. The men are raiders, that are as inclined to raid other islands as well as neighbouring nations, but if they step out of line, they can be refused entry to their home clan, which basically amounts to ruin. However, the women alone don't have the numbers to work the fields by themselves in peacetime, so they're not going to throw someone out for no reason. .If anyone can correct me, I may be forgetting important details, but I think that was the gist of it.

tasw
2013-10-23, 09:59 PM
I'm confused about the premise of this thread.

I'd have more difficulty believing soldiers encompass a sufficient majority for their numbers to effectively hinder population growth, if you need that many soldiers in the first place you've got serious, serious problems.

As to making an egalitarian society, why don't you emulate the early Gaels? Women could own and inherit property, they could acquire skills and work within occupations men mostly governed elsewhere, political authority was available as well.

They had a communal, kinship-driven society that seemed to work well enough until the Christians got there. Although I'll confess I'm working off a PBS documentary I saw years ago.

I was about to say this too. The only thing that really kept most of the old celtic tribes from being totally egalitarian was lack of birth control. Which lets be honest, humans being what we are means that lots of women if not most will spend the majority of their lives until middle age either pregnant, nursing, or both.

The nuclear family was a huge component of human society since tribal times though. There were some cultures with extended families but for the most part it was the equivalent of having grandma watch the kids while you and your wife go to work.

And extended families arent just a free ride for the women in them to have kids and then pawn them off on someone else. The majority of parenting still almost always falls on the actual parents and it comes with the additional responsibility of being expected to HELP THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE FAMILY WHEN THEY NEED IT. Its not a one way street.

So while it may add to free time when its done right its not by a huge amount and comes with responsibility that may take a womans free time when she is not pregnant or dealing with kids herself. Because her aunt/sister/wife/mother may be and need help.

And some extended family groups are STILL highly patriarchal. So that by itself really does nothing to solve the problem.

It reduces the amount of downtime from having kids but it does not eliminate it by any means. And it would still have to be coupled with reliable birth control and pediatric medicine to have much effect.

The other option for "extended family groups" was usually either slave holding cultures where the household slaves did most of the domestic chores (and do we think thats a less insensitive road to go down then mild sexism?) and cultures with ingrained apprenticeships. Which usually still didnt start until the children were what we would consider elementary school age. Which still gives the females a half dozen years out of the labor force. Or 1 or 2 years in an extended family.

Life expectancy has to be a factor you consider to build something like this too. Theres a reason why political power has traditionally been held by old people.... it takes time to build a base to get it.

Through most of human history average life expectancy has been less then 40 years with few cultures considering you an adult until around 15 and sometimes older. Giving adults only 25 productive years assuming good health up until the end, which is rarely the case.

http://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US39-01.html

So If you assume women in your culture dont start having kids until at least 16 (and you definitely shouldnt assume younger then that) and spend 2 years out of the work force per kid (basically an inevitability in a large enough majority of cases to be the assumption even assuming extended families who help), and even a minimum population growth requires 3 kids. And considering the lethality of the average fantasy world 5 is probably more realistic you have women out of the work force for 6-10 of their 25 years.

Considering the last few years will probably have people of either gender too sick to fully contribute that leaves women spending half of their adult lives out of the professional work force in any role. Soldier or otherwise.

These are factors you would really have to address if you want a realistic fantasy world that also happens to be totally egalitarian and none have really been fully addressed (or even touched on) so far.

Morithias
2013-10-23, 10:02 PM
Has anyone ever read Robin Hobb's Tawny Man series? There's a nation in that that functions pretty much like what's described in the OP. (It's a sequel trilogy to one called the Farseer trilogy, in case anyone wants to start it.

There's a pirate nation that raids a neighbouring kingdom. Back home, the society is matriarchal, with the women being the only ones to own property and the men requiring permission to enter it. The men are raiders, that are as inclined to raid other islands as well as neighbouring nations, but if they step out of line, they can be refused entry to their home clan, which basically amounts to ruin. However, the women alone don't have the numbers to work the fields by themselves in peacetime, so they're not going to throw someone out for no reason. .If anyone can correct me, I may be forgetting important details, but I think that was the gist of it.

So basically another Matriarchy where men are second-class citizens?

I stand by Rosewood as an equal society.

You want to know why most of the NPCs are female in Rosewood?

Because they're stolen characters.

And due to the media I enjoy. Harem animes, Visual novels, dating sims, eroges, etc, most of my 'characters to steal ideas from' are female.

The setting has basically no gender roles in it at all. A girl can be anything, a guy can be anything.

Scow2
2013-10-23, 10:31 PM
Through most of human history average life expectancy has been less then 40 years with few cultures considering you an adult until around 15 and sometimes older. Giving adults only 25 productive years assuming good health up until the end, which is rarely the case.
While I agree with your larger point, the 40 years is skewed downward due to high Infant Mortality rates for ancient societies. Removing the people who survived less than a year greatly increases practical life expectancy.

JusticeZero
2013-10-23, 10:45 PM
I too am slightly puzzled at why you're so married, pun not intended, to the concept of the 'nuclear family' as the basic social unit.I'm not married to a nuclear family, but I do not have any detailed knowledge of the dynamics of non-nuclear family structures. Thus far, nobody has offered anything more than "Other alternatives exist" without actually providing any alternatives. Most of the material I work with is historical, sociological, and anthropological analyses of various bits of the underclass and middle class of the USA 1880-2013, which is bound up in a neoliberal industrialized nuclear family system, so that's the parts i've got the most knowledge on.

The Fury
2013-10-23, 11:09 PM
Would cross-training between the female guards and male raiders occur? Officer exchanges or anything like that? The reason I ask is because there's some skills that the two forces could learn from one another. The men might become better at holding captured settlements after training with the women, and the women might become better at siege tactics after training with the men and such.

Morithias
2013-10-24, 12:25 AM
Would cross-training between the female guards and male raiders occur? Officer exchanges or anything like that? The reason I ask is because there's some skills that the two forces could learn from one another. The men might become better at holding captured settlements after training with the women, and the women might become better at siege tactics after training with the men and such.

I see no reason why not.

In one campaign, one empire that focused on Legion tactics with firearms, once did cross-training with an Amazon tribe that focused on hit-and-run tactics with animal mounts and traps.

The result? A cavalry unit that tore enemy units apart.

Imagine the Vietcong with training that rivaled the Spartans, and numbers that rivaled Rome.

Ouch.

DeadMech
2013-10-24, 02:30 AM
I'm just going to toss in my 2 cents because I like these kinds of threads.

The presence of magic wildly changes the setting away from what occurred historically. Suddenly childbirth isn't the leading cause of death to women. Suddenly minor injuries like cuts that get infected and broken bones aren't effectively death sentences. Replacement becomes easier to achieve when you have magical aid that rivals or surpasses modern medicine. If spells refresh daily I don't see the local cleric refusing to heal and look after the people of his church just because they aren't rich.

But I mean this is all besides the point. There are different standards of what is sexist or not. Feminists like most groups of people are fractured on different lines.

The model of being willing, able and free to choose to do so to join the armed forces seems perfectly valid to me. Not every woman is cut out for combat. Just like some men. Not every woman wants to fight. Just like some men. Are more men than women going to join the army? Probably. That's not necessarily a bad thing but being free to choose to do so seems more important to me than a strict rule where half the military must be men and half must be women.

And in a setting where the vast vast majority of the population are farmers this all seems moot anyway. Women have to give birth but it's not as if men can't take the lions share of maintaining the household. Aside from perhaps feeding infants which is still something you can come in from the fields to do every couple hours without massive loss in productivity.

Themrys
2013-10-24, 05:11 AM
And in a setting where the vast vast majority of the population are farmers this all seems moot anyway. Women have to give birth but it's not as if men can't take the lions share of maintaining the household. Aside from perhaps feeding infants which is still something you can come in from the fields to do every couple hours without massive loss in productivity.

In a medieval setting, I suspect that working in the field is easier work, and more easily done by a pregnant woman, than lifting heavy kettles and stuff for cooking and doing laundry. Less dangerous, too.

People always assume that patriarchy makes sense. What if it doesn't? What if it is just a historical coincidence? Or maybe men could oppress women easier than the other way round, and that's the whole reason?

Scientific research is still mostly done through the blue-tinted glasses of a male-dominated society. Not all findings can be trusted to be true.
(It was recently found that cave paintings, up to then believed to be made by men, were made by women. What a surprise! Who would have thought that cave women did something other than having babies!)

@Kitten Champion: Yes, I wonder why someone would design to have such a need for military in the first place.

@JusticeZero: Have you researched the Ainu of Japan? If I remember correctly, they had nuclear families of a kind, but with brothers taking care of their sisters' children, with no live-in husband.

Delta
2013-10-24, 06:00 AM
What if, instead of being either men or women, all warriors are of a third gender? It doesn't matter what your genitalia say, when you become a warrior, you become a third gender and stay like that for the rest of your life, with a seperate pronoun and diffrent roles and laws. These might relate to everything from family (perhaps a warrior gets some sort of preffrencial treatment in terms of lineage or inheritance, or there are certain expectations of hir in relation to hir parents), to merriage (perhaps warriors can marry each other (no matter sex) or men/women, but women can't marry each other) to tons of other stuff.

While the idea is intriguing, you have to be aware that this will in all likelihood lead to the warriors taking over sooner or later. Having all of the warriors as a completely separate "society within society" will lead to the warriors asking themselves why they should let those pesky "two-gendered" peasants and politicians tell them what to do, especially if there are both biologically male and female warriors so you can have children of warriors growing up inside the military structure.

In such a society, most scenarios I can think of would start out with the warriors already calling the shots (which is of course a completely plausible setup if raiding is a major source of income for this society) or would lead to a military coup sooner or later.

AMFV
2013-10-24, 11:17 AM
In a medieval setting, I suspect that working in the field is easier work, and more easily done by a pregnant woman, than lifting heavy kettles and stuff for cooking and doing laundry. Less dangerous, too.


I've worked in a field, it's back breaking, and physically demanding to the point of exhaustion, and I'm not a weak out of shape guy, I'm a former Marine who works out regularly, and I find work in a field demanding and exhausting. My mother who is very strong as far as women go, she's done farm work for much of her life and there are things she simply cannot do, she is not physically capable of doing certain things, she's not pregnant, fairly young, and there are tasks that she cannot complete, that I can do easily.

In a fantasy setting we have the advantage of being able to create more gender equality than might exist in the real world. But there is a definite danger in including agricultural themes over military themes as more people are familiar with the work involved in farming than in soldiering, so it may be more stretching people's sense of immersion to include that, given no magical aid.

@JusticeZero, I think I have an alternative idea for you, since you want direct critique of your setting feel free to completely disregard this. But what if instead of the offense/defense split, you had officers vs. enlisted? In my experience women can make for exceptional officers, in fact the number of poor female officers I knew by percentage was significantly lower. Men would perform duties as the Enlisted, while this may seem like a reverse sexist society, and in a sense it is, because there isn't really equal opportunity, but most enlisted that I know would not want to be officers. I would not have.

I'm not sure how this would be fluffed in a way that was more egalitarian, but it would definitely eliminate quite a few problems with the verisimilitude, you wouldn't have the issues with the offensive males having more experience or the females being overwhelmed. You do have the addition of some unfortunate implications things but you could certainly fluff it away. Giving women more magical aptitude for example, while not gender equal is certainly a way to work this.

Serpentine
2013-10-24, 12:37 PM
I find the appeals to agriculture kind of amusing. Like I said, in agricultural societies, everyone on a farm was involved in the farm work - especially at harvest, when entire VILLAGES could be involved. As I understand it, a woman practically had to be in labour before she was exempt, and then she'd be pretty much straight back at it - maybe not at the most physical of work, for a while, but she certainly wouldn't just be tottering about the house suckling babies.
You guys heard of swaddling? Was big for a while. Babies would be bound up stupid-tight, which would make them go quiet and passive, as well as preventing them from moving around and hurting themselves. Mothers would do that, and they could keep on working and would barely have to worry about the kids at all.

There's just this fact that a lot of people don't seem to be getting: even in the real world, women weren't just house-bound baby-making machines. There were differences by class and occupation, of course, but up until relatively modern times, there weren't really clear-cut "traditional gender roles" as we understand it - women had fewer rights and privileges, certainly, but they were out there getting dirty with the men. They had to, if they wanted to survive.
In a fantasy world, with magic and different physics and all of that, you can only be more flexible while maintaining verisimilitude.

Lorsa
2013-10-24, 01:41 PM
Listen to Serpentine, she is wise in this matter.

I also believe there was someone stating somewhere that we seem to have "forgotten" a lot about what women did in medieval times; that they were guild leaders and warriors and whatnot. And an average farmer wasn't very concerned about keeping accurate historical accounts about their daily lives for people to read a thousand years later; they were too busy staying alive.

Themrys
2013-10-24, 01:53 PM
Listen to Serpentine, she is wise in this matter.

I also believe there was someone stating somewhere that we seem to have "forgotten" a lot about what women did in medieval times; that they were guild leaders and warriors and whatnot. And an average farmer wasn't very concerned about keeping accurate historical accounts about their daily lives for people to read a thousand years later; they were too busy staying alive.

History is written by the winners. This is important to keep in mind.

Women could have done all kinds of things in medieval times. That we don't know about it proves nothing. Not even for those kinds of people who did keep historical accounts. If it doesn't fit the desired narrative that a woman accomplished something important, then she won't be mentioned, simple as that.

If you look at cultures where there is no myth of chivalry, you'll see that not only do women work very hard, they frequently work harder than men.

If you read Tess of D'Urbervilles, you'll see that women did work as hard as men in agriculture back then, but did get paid half of what men got paid. The book was, as I recall, written by a man, who had no reason to lie about that to his contemporaries.

Delta
2013-10-24, 01:59 PM
@JusticeZero, I think I have an alternative idea for you, since you want direct critique of your setting feel free to completely disregard this. But what if instead of the offense/defense split, you had officers vs. enlisted? In my experience women can make for exceptional officers, in fact the number of poor female officers I knew by percentage was significantly lower. Men would perform duties as the Enlisted, while this may seem like a reverse sexist society, and in a sense it is, because there isn't really equal opportunity, but most enlisted that I know would not want to be officers. I would not have.

This is definitely an interesting approach if you want to keep the physiological differences between the sexes "realistic" in your setting, frontline "soldiering" in a world where melee weapons are the norm will put women at a severe disadvantage, on average. That of course doesn't mean that there won't be women able to serve on the front lines, but those will be few, I could easily imagine a unit having 10-20% female soldiers but more probably wouldn't be very plausible.

But as soon as we get away from the front lines things become much more diverse. Muscle strength is completely irrelevant for commanding troops, and as soon as we're talking armored troops on horseback, sheer physical strength becomes much less important as well because the equipment starts doing a lot of the work for you. Of course most women would still be outclassed by most men in a direct duel, but war isn't about winning the fair fight, and a trained woman on horseback can massacre a bunch of foot soldiers just as well as a man.

So a society where the "grunts" are mostly (but not exclusively) male but it's quite acceptable for noble women to become knights isn't that hard to imagine, wouldn't put any significant strain on population growth (because obviously, the vast majority of people won't be nobility) and would be a plausible scenario where women could have just as much political and military power as men.

AMFV
2013-10-24, 02:06 PM
This is definitely an interesting approach if you want to keep the physiological differences between the sexes "realistic" in your setting, frontline "soldiering" in a world where melee weapons are the norm will put women at a severe disadvantage, on average. That of course doesn't mean that there won't be women able to serve on the front lines, but those will be few, I could easily imagine a unit having 10-20% female soldiers but more probably wouldn't be very plausible.

But as soon as we get away from the front lines things become much more diverse. Muscle strength is completely irrelevant for commanding troops, and as soon as we're talking armored troops on horseback, sheer physical strength becomes much less important as well because the equipment starts doing a lot of the work for you. Of course most women would still be outclassed by most men in a direct duel, but war isn't about winning the fair fight, and a trained woman on horseback can massacre a bunch of foot soldiers just as well as a man.

So a society where the "grunts" are mostly (but not exclusively) male but it's quite acceptable for noble women to become knights isn't that hard to imagine, wouldn't put any significant strain on population growth (because obviously, the vast majority of people won't be nobility) and would be a plausible scenario where women could have just as much political and military power as men.

The thing is that officers should be commanding rather than fighting in almost all cases. Even in today's warfare there are issues with officers who try to act as fighters rather than as leaders. "One Bullet Away" is actually a really interesting take on that, and describes that sort of thing from a former Marine Infantry Officer.

I don't think that cavalry would be that much of an advantage, really if you're talking grunt work, then only guns can equalize that and you still have difficulties, since women can't sprint as fast or carry as much equipment. However women are equally capable of leading, and certainly capable in the area of logistics.

If you work in magic, then women could be magically gifted, there is historical precedent for this, at least as far as mythology goes. If you have women as Mage/Officers, then it does balance out fairly well. As I said there is a chance for reverse sexism with that particular setting, so I'm hoping that JusticeZero doesn't mind me suggesting it as an alternative setting, also because I think magic/physical is a really interesting dynamic, which could put women on truly equal footing as far as soldiering goes.


History is written by the winners. This is important to keep in mind.

Women could have done all kinds of things in medieval times. That we don't know about it proves nothing. Not even for those kinds of people who did keep historical accounts. If it doesn't fit the desired narrative that a woman accomplished something important, then she won't be mentioned, simple as that.

If you look at cultures where there is no myth of chivalry, you'll see that not only do women work very hard, they frequently work harder than men.

If you read Tess of D'Urbervilles, you'll see that women did work as hard as men in agriculture back then, but did get paid half of what men got paid. The book was, as I recall, written by a man, who had no reason to lie about that to his contemporaries.

My experience comes from having worked on a pseudo-farm as a kid, having done farm work with a real life comparison (my mother, who as I said earlier is an amazing woman, and certainly physically capable) there are certain things that women have difficulty doing physically. I mean bone density and body composition have to come into play at some point and manual labor is where that happens.

Certainly magic can act as an equalizer, and in a fantasy setting you can handwave it, but men are better at manual labor. The same way as men are better at most of the components of soldiering. I trained alongside female Marines, who are certainly not weak, and they were not as good at certain things as almost any man, so if I were in a game and the GM presented me with a setting where the claim that women could soldier as well as men, it would be damaging to my immersion.

However in a high fantasy setting, if we're not going for overt realism, I find that it doesn't bother me. For example in D&D, a female fighter with a strength of 22, isn't a problem for me at all, because it's an inherent part of the setting. It's when you start to strive for more and more realism that issues like this become more significant. I think it is probably sufficient generally though to handwave it, but if you bring it up, you can expect your players to question it.

TripleD
2013-10-24, 02:22 PM
Personally, I think if you want an egalitarian society in fantasy you should just make a society where sex is observed but there is no concept of "gender roles". The human brain is, if nothing else, malleable.

If you want something more "realistic", how about this? In your world there are group of plants similar to Silphium (debates of its effectiveness aside). Unlike Silphium these plants are easy to grow in large quantities, and varieties exist for both men and women. When they hit puberty, youths are expected to daily drink a tea made from this plant that inhibits conception. Unplanned pregnancy is almost unheard of.

Men and women both serve equally in the armed forces. Should they choose to have a child (the time of which they have total control over) they are given a years leave. After the child is three months old the highest ranking parent is expected to report back. Should it be the woman, the baby is weaned off onto formula (I have yet to see the culture that does not have a traditional mother's milk substitute) and the man is expected to take care of the child for another eight months until the child is considered old enough to travel.

Roving armies (which in ancient times were basically moving cities) have a kind of "daycare" unit of soldier/medic/teachers who specialize in childcare. They believe the "scent" of war will toughen the children up. Parents drill/fight during the day and reform families at night.

Force
2013-10-24, 02:58 PM
There's the option of making arcane magic relatively rare or unknown in your societies, making divine magic much more important, and having a lot more women devote their lives to divine service. That doesn't mean that you have to have catholic-style priests and nuns; write a society in which people spend their working hours doing divine tasks. A strong cadre of females wielding divine magic will make a strong case for equality.

warty goblin
2013-10-24, 03:32 PM
The thing is that officers should be commanding rather than fighting in almost all cases. Even in today's warfare there are issues with officers who try to act as fighters rather than as leaders. "One Bullet Away" is actually a really interesting take on that, and describes that sort of thing from a former Marine Infantry Officer.

I don't think that cavalry would be that much of an advantage, really if you're talking grunt work, then only guns can equalize that and you still have difficulties, since women can't sprint as fast or carry as much equipment. However women are equally capable of leading, and certainly capable in the area of logistics.

Fighting hand to hand without modern communications equipment is a very different thing than fighting at range with rifles. If you want to keep your formation cohesive and fighting, you need to be right there. Maybe not the very high up commanders, but the officers directly in charge of the fighting men absolutely need to be able to fight well.

AMFV
2013-10-24, 03:43 PM
Fighting hand to hand without modern communications equipment is a very different thing than fighting at range with rifles. If you want to keep your formation cohesive and fighting, you need to be right there. Maybe not the very high up commanders, but the officers directly in charge of the fighting men absolutely need to be able to fight well.

Not really, generally you'd command from behind the formation, keeping ranks is more important than the officers running into battle. The job of the officer is to keep the soldiers in rank and file, which is more effective than a mob. That is best done from behind them, since you can observe better.

The disorganized mob rush was made obsolete a long time ago in warfare. Pre-hoplite era I believe, certainly the Spartans made an example of how better organization wins battles, or at least causes vastly superior performance. The Romans also. Keeping your forces in order is more important than your officer being able to fight. In the real world, in real warfare authority does not equal asskicking, discipline under fire, the ability to command coherently and effectively, those are more important traits for an officer than the ability to fight well.

Lamech
2013-10-24, 03:49 PM
I could certainly see a society with informal gender roles where women are more or less expected to go into the militia. This ties them to the city. So they can't leave. Men get stuck with going on long voyages, and the like.

I don't think it would be strict. If you got fighting types, the good ones can go out to war. It won't matter if they are womanly as long as they can fight. The men are going to fight when the city gets attacked if they are around.

I do think it would affect gender roles. Traveling merchants are more likely to be men. Shopkeepers are more likely to be women. Matters for political roles too. Diplomats would tend to be male if they have a traveling roll, and city admins are gonna be women if they stick around.

You would still get discrimination and gender roles. But those things are totally plausible. [/my two cp]

erikun
2013-10-24, 03:56 PM
I have to agree with several other posters, in asking the question of what's going on with the men in this society. I mean, if they're spending most of their time going out and making war/raids/fighting monsters, then I'm thinking one of two scenarios is likely to occur.

1.) The males get large amounts of prestige, experience, and wealth from their travels, far more than the females back at home and so return with considerable political clout, likely taking over the government.
2.) The males get very little out of their travels beyond risk, returning home with nothing but experience and noticing that they are not allowed access to any higher-level city positions, while the females remain safe and in power.

Neither situation seems to bode well for the males in the army, especially not when they are well-trained and (possibly) experienced in taking other cities. Now, we could handwave this by saying something along the lines of "The activities that male armies take is just as dangerous/profitable as the homebound activities that female defenders take," but then there isn't much reason for the men to be out with an army while the females stay at home. The females could be out campaigning, because outside of pregnancy, there wouldn't be much reason for them to remain home.


I'm not married to a nuclear family, but I do not have any detailed knowledge of the dynamics of non-nuclear family structures. Thus far, nobody has offered anything more than "Other alternatives exist" without actually providing any alternatives.
How about this idea: Children who come of age (~14yrs) are then put towards working in a trade, with soldiers being the home defense/army. (Unskilled for manual labor.) At that point, they spend the next ~5 years at their trade, with the soldiers swapping between being away from home and being the home defense. After that point, it is assumed that the now young-adults will marry and start a family; they take their earnings, and use that to keep both parents at home while raising their 2-3 children. After that point, they decide together who will become the primary bread-winner of the family; it is generally the more skilled parent. (Although the other may re-enter the workforce once the children are at apprentice age.)

Of course, I'm sure this model has its problems. The biggest one is that I'm not sure how the economics of this situation would work out, especially if apprentice/journeyman wages for two over 5 years would be enough to provide for a family for 6 years. But it does mean that women are just as likely to be in charge of the household as men in virtually any situation that I can see.

Alberic Strein
2013-10-24, 04:40 PM
Has anyone ever read Robin Hobb's Tawny Man series? There's a nation in that that functions pretty much like what's described in the OP. (It's a sequel trilogy to one called the Farseer trilogy, in case anyone wants to start it.

There's a pirate nation that raids a neighbouring kingdom. Back home, the society is matriarchal, with the women being the only ones to own property and the men requiring permission to enter it. The men are raiders, that are as inclined to raid other islands as well as neighbouring nations, but if they step out of line, they can be refused entry to their home clan, which basically amounts to ruin. However, the women alone don't have the numbers to work the fields by themselves in peacetime, so they're not going to throw someone out for no reason. .If anyone can correct me, I may be forgetting important details, but I think that was the gist of it.

Absolutely what I had on my mind.

However, it IS true that, by what is shown in the books, "men" tend to be seen a bit like second rate citizen. A bit, not totally.

However, by switching the environment a bit, we can get something a bit more equalitarian, I find.

First, if the men are not pirates like in the books, then they can be home waaaaaaay more often than the men in the books. Which mars their status as second rate citizen a fair bit.

Next, you could have men be waaaaaay more necessary to the culture. They are not merely raiding and pillaging. If they don't go clearing enemies, trade routes, etc... Then their town falls apart, failing to produce enough food to feed everybody or such.

The two end up dependent on each other and women being the ones to actually own stuff calms down the excess of testosterone in most males.

Sure, there will be frictions, but female population + children and elderly + non raider men Vs Raider men should make the outcome of the fight obvious.

It does NOT mean that cities following this theory are never invaded. First, men are waaaaaaaay more motivated when they're not fighting their spouses, daughters, sisters and mothers. Secondly, you raid if there are no defenses to speak of and can strike when they are vulnerable, you besiege when you can't. Sieging is weakening the enemy till you can actually get in and win. Or, more likely, when they start offering gifts that outvalue (what more you could get minus the men you lost, which hampers the next attack)

veti
2013-10-24, 05:25 PM
History is written by the winners. This is important to keep in mind.

Women could have done all kinds of things in medieval times. That we don't know about it proves nothing. Not even for those kinds of people who did keep historical accounts. If it doesn't fit the desired narrative that a woman accomplished something important, then she won't be mentioned, simple as that.

Well, no, not really. Because historians don't, for the most part, rely on "the narrative" as written by medieval historians/chroniclers/scribes - they do their own research based on primary sources. Which is how we now know that, for instance, there were women priests and bishops (known, acknowledged, recognised as women) serving in the early medieval church - they don't get much play in the history books, but the sources are there anyway.


If you read Tess of D'Urbervilles, you'll see that women did work as hard as men in agriculture back then, but did get paid half of what men got paid. The book was, as I recall, written by a man, who had no reason to lie about that to his contemporaries.

Not only had he no reason to, he couldn't have got away with it, because his contemporaries would have known if he was "lying". Everything in that setting was common knowledge in Hardy's day.

On the other hand, Hardy's setting is fictional. Just because that's the rule in Hardy's part of "Wessex", that doesn't necessarily mean that it's true for the whole of "Wessex", never mind the rest of England, let alone other countries. Just that it's plausible that this differential could exist, and people accept it as natural.

warty goblin
2013-10-24, 05:59 PM
Not really, generally you'd command from behind the formation, keeping ranks is more important than the officers running into battle. The job of the officer is to keep the soldiers in rank and file, which is more effective than a mob. That is best done from behind them, since you can observe better.

The disorganized mob rush was made obsolete a long time ago in warfare. Pre-hoplite era I believe, certainly the Spartans made an example of how better organization wins battles, or at least causes vastly superior performance. The Romans also. Keeping your forces in order is more important than your officer being able to fight. In the real world, in real warfare authority does not equal asskicking, discipline under fire, the ability to command coherently and effectively, those are more important traits for an officer than the ability to fight well.

From eight ranks back, aka the standard thickness of the Greek phalanx, I can't think a person would have the slightest clue what sort of line the front was in. Nor could an officer back there actually communicate with the front ranks; between the hammering of weapons, armor and shields, general screaming and shouting, and the diminished hearing that comes from a close helmet, a man on the front isn't going to hear somebody behind yelling orders. I'd bet there's a good chance they wouldn't hear - or distinguish - a signalling trumpet or horn either.

In the case of Rome, the historical record is, IIRC, actually pretty unambiguous on this point. I can think of at least one battle off the top of my head (Trajan's first conquest of Dacia) where the centurions were the only soldiers who would fight at first, and their example essentially shamed the rank and file back into combat. I'd figure somebody with a more detailed knowledge of Roman military history can probably name others where officers were expected and required to fight.

There's also plenty of examples of generals leading from the front throughout the time period when striking weapons were the main order of combat. If Herodotus is to be believed, Leonidas fought quite ably at Thermopylae. IIRC there are several examples of generals fighting in person during the Peloponnesian War, though my Thucydides is a bit rusty at this point. Alexander famously led his cavalry in person, and was repeatedly wounded doing so. The early Roman Republic had a longstanding tradition of generals fighting enemy champions in single combat before the main battle joined.

Heading into the Middle Ages, the record is rife with kings and generals fighting; their deaths in combat (or the rumor thereof) frequently precipitating a general route. In 1066 one actual king of England, and one would-be monarch died in combat within a week of each other. The battle of Crecy ended after the French king Philip VI was wounded. Henry IV was wounded by an arrow in the face when fighting in Scotland, and is known to have fought in the front lines at Agincourt, at one point defending his temporarily incapacitated cousin in person. At least two battles in the War of the Roses (Barnet and Bosworth) that were decided by the death in battle of the commander, and in the case of Bosworth, actual king, of one side. It seems unlikely if the leaders of the entire armies were fighting man to man to bolster the morale of their men that the commanders of individual companies weren't.

Delta
2013-10-24, 05:59 PM
The thing is that officers should be commanding rather than fighting in almost all cases. Even in today's warfare there are issues with officers who try to act as fighters rather than as leaders. "One Bullet Away" is actually a really interesting take on that, and describes that sort of thing from a former Marine Infantry Officer.

I don't think that cavalry would be that much of an advantage, really if you're talking grunt work, then only guns can equalize that and you still have difficulties, since women can't sprint as fast or carry as much equipment. However women are equally capable of leading, and certainly capable in the area of logistics.

Yes but as has been said, without modern communications, a commander will be forced to be reasonably close to the fighting troops. Not frontline fighting close, but still close enough. It of course depends massively on the scale of the fighting we're talking about, in an army of thousands, most of the high level "commanding" will take place on a hill far behind the lines. If it's a skirmish of a couple hundred at best, I'd expect the officers to be much closer to the actual fighting.

You just dismissed my point about cavalry without any serious argument, why is that? I think I made some very valid points, the role of cavalry in the period we're talking about seems to be in inherently "unfair" one, you're not looking to duel an opponent on equal ground, you're looking for the untrained, weakly armored rabble of the opponents army to run them down and slaughter them, I'd say this is a perfect role where women wouldn't be at such a disadvantage.

From personal experience (which is of course limited to LARP and reenactment, but still), I can definitely say that there are women who are strong and tough enough to hold their ground in organized fighting, because awareness, training and discipline become just as important as physical strength in that regard, of course women will still be at a severe disadvantage so only the strongest and toughest should realistically qualify, but as I said, I wouldn't have any problem believing a fighting unit with say 10% women.

AMFV
2013-10-24, 07:19 PM
Yes but as has been said, without modern communications, a commander will be forced to be reasonably close to the fighting troops. Not frontline fighting close, but still close enough. It of course depends massively on the scale of the fighting we're talking about, in an army of thousands, most of the high level "commanding" will take place on a hill far behind the lines. If it's a skirmish of a couple hundred at best, I'd expect the officers to be much closer to the actual fighting.

You just dismissed my point about cavalry without any serious argument, why is that? I think I made some very valid points, the role of cavalry in the period we're talking about seems to be in inherently "unfair" one, you're not looking to duel an opponent on equal ground, you're looking for the untrained, weakly armored rabble of the opponents army to run them down and slaughter them, I'd say this is a perfect role where women wouldn't be at such a disadvantage.

From personal experience (which is of course limited to LARP and reenactment, but still), I can definitely say that there are women who are strong and tough enough to hold their ground in organized fighting, because awareness, training and discipline become just as important as physical strength in that regard, of course women will still be at a severe disadvantage so only the strongest and toughest should realistically qualify, but as I said, I wouldn't have any problem believing a fighting unit with say 10% women.

That's what drummers and bugles are for, that's the primary purpose of horns in war is to communicate over the din of battle. Admittedly I was imagining 8 or so rows back, but frankly that isn't really the line, also officers are not expendable, and would be targeted immediately on the front lines and killed, the same again with bugles or drummer boys if they were on the front line. Soldiers have no problems killing drummer boys if it disrupts communications, and if they'll kill and eight year old first, you don't think they'd target the officers? There are reasons why you don't put your officers in the front, additionally, if the officers are on the front they can't observe the battlefield, which is important. Sergeants would certainly have been on the front, or in the second or third rows, but not officers. Lastly, officers would stand in the rear to prevent retreating, a critical function.

Sadly women could not be as effective at cavalry tactics, strength of arm still matters a lot from horseback, and wearing heavy armor impedes movement, if you're already smaller, then 80 or so pounds of armor is enough to make it impossible for you to be competitive. For other variations on cavalry such as the Mounted Archers, again you have a composite bow, which is a strength related thing. It's just not as competitive. Secondly, pikemen and infantrymen aren't "rabble", they're trained forces. They won't just break, they'll probably be able to hold their own, especially as pikemen, or anti-cavalry forces.

In LARPing and reenactments you wind up with the same problems that you would have in sporting events. Men go easy on women, without thinking about it or realizing it. There aren't ten percent women in MLB, or in the NFL, if women could compete on that physical level why aren't they in professional athletics. My experience comes from the Marines, I remember at one point I was going through an small unit leader training course, with an infantryman who trained women for the Female Engagement Teams, so he had experience with them, his quote on the subject was to paraphrase, "Out of every Small Unit Leader Course [sic: 30 men] there is one who could not make in in the infantry, out of every FET course [40 or 50 female Marines] there is one that could", that's lower than ten percent. If you take away rifles, the great equalizer, this would likely go down even further.

Scow2
2013-10-24, 08:20 PM
That's what drummers and bugles are for, that's the primary purpose of horns in war is to communicate over the din of battle. Admittedly I was imagining 8 or so rows back, but frankly that isn't really the line, also officers are not expendable, and would be targeted immediately on the front lines and killed, the same again with bugles or drummer boys if they were on the front line. Soldiers have no problems killing drummer boys if it disrupts communications, and if they'll kill and eight year old first, you don't think they'd target the officers? There are reasons why you don't put your officers in the front, additionally, if the officers are on the front they can't observe the battlefield, which is important. Sergeants would certainly have been on the front, or in the second or third rows, but not officers. Lastly, officers would stand in the rear to prevent retreating, a critical function.Officers still stand in front... but you give them better weapons and armor not only to make them stand out to your own team, but also harder to take down. The officer is also the most skilled and experienced soldier in the area, and melee combat is entirely opposed - for every offensive action, there is a reciprocal defensive action. With bullets and ranged weapons, the only defense is "Hope you're not where a missile is."

If an army tried to focus on the officer (Who can hold his own against at least two or three less-skilled/unranked soldiers given his superior experience, weapons, and armor), the soldiers they aren't focusing on instead are free to take them out - and equally skilled - with equal numbers, the ones trying to focus on the officer find themselves effectively outnumbered.

Keep in mind that armor wasn't 80 lbs. It was between 40 and 60. Yes, modern military armor is heavier than medieval plate armor.

AMFV
2013-10-24, 08:41 PM
Officers still stand in front... but you give them better weapons and armor not only to make them stand out to your own team, but also harder to take down. The officer is also the most skilled and experienced soldier in the area, and melee combat is entirely opposed - for every offensive action, there is a reciprocal defensive action. With bullets and ranged weapons, the only defense is "Hope you're not where a missile is."

If an army tried to focus on the officer (Who can hold his own against at least two or three less-skilled/unranked soldiers given his superior experience, weapons, and armor), the soldiers they aren't focusing on instead are free to take them out - and equally skilled - with equal numbers, the ones trying to focus on the officer find themselves effectively outnumbered.

Keep in mind that armor wasn't 80 lbs. It was between 40 and 60. Yes, modern military armor is heavier than medieval plate armor.

No officer could hold their own against three men. Almost no person can hold their own against two or three men. Real life action economy gets you every time. Frankly Officers were frequently targeted in battle, and the supposition that officers were that much better than enlisted is likely untrue.

Again that still doesn't answer the perspective issue. If you are at the front you can't really see what's going on, since that part is the part that is your job, then that's a problem. Also if you're at the front no messenger can get through, so you can't receive commands. Since we don't have modern comm gear, that's pretty much going to stop you right there. Basically if you are an officer and you are standing at the front you can't receive orders, can't see to give effective orders, can't give effective orders (since you're not standing next to the drummer/bugler/horns and if you tried to shout you'd have to turn round exposing your back to the enemy). A good officer doesn't seek glory at the expense of his soldiers.

Yes, there are situations where an officer would have to fight, but that's when circumstances are absolutely dire, fighting is simply not an officer's job, if you try to do jobs that are not your own, you can't do yours, as I've explained in the preceding paragraph. Medieval soldiers would certainly have been able to figure this out.

Lastly, in real life authority DOES NOT equal asskicking, just because you are a better leader does not mean you are a better fighter. Yes, officers were generally better trained, but ask any trained fighter if they'd want to fight two guys, I have training and I would never ever ever want to get into a fight where I was outnumbered two to one, because you lose those.

So in summation, if you lead from the front, you can't lead, you can't do your job, and you get killed.

Scow2
2013-10-24, 08:54 PM
No officer could hold their own against three men. Almost no person can hold their own against two or three men. Real life action economy gets you every time. Frankly Officers were frequently targeted in battle, and the supposition that officers were that much better than enlisted is likely untrue.

Again that still doesn't answer the perspective issue. If you are at the front you can't really see what's going on, since that part is the part that is your job, then that's a problem. Also if you're at the front no messenger can get through, so you can't receive commands. Since we don't have modern comm gear, that's pretty much going to stop you right there. Basically if you are an officer and you are standing at the front you can't receive orders, can't see to give effective orders, can't give effective orders (since you're not standing next to the drummer/bugler/horns and if you tried to shout you'd have to turn round exposing your back to the enemy). A good officer doesn't seek glory at the expense of his soldiers.

Yes, there are situations where an officer would have to fight, but that's when circumstances are absolutely dire, fighting is simply not an officer's job, if you try to do jobs that are not your own, you can't do yours, as I've explained in the preceding paragraph. Medieval soldiers would certainly have been able to figure this out.

Lastly, in real life authority DOES NOT equal asskicking, just because you are a better leader does not mean you are a better fighter. Yes, officers were generally better trained, but ask any trained fighter if they'd want to fight two guys, I have training and I would never ever ever want to get into a fight where I was outnumbered two to one, because you lose those.

So in summation, if you lead from the front, you can't lead, you can't do your job, and you get killed.Your "No man can take on three guys" assertion does not hold up to empirical and observed experiences and records. Especially if that one guy has two others backing him up while the three try to focus all their attention on taking him down. The officer does NOT fight alone. Melee combat means you can't get more than three guys on one person before they start tripping over each other and the other team's side takes over.

It also depends on what kind of officer. The ones that lack horses (Which can change from front to back lines in a matter of seconds) tend to be Sergeant-types (Such as Centurions), which get to their position through merit, and are in charge just as much because of their penchant for not-dying as much as their skill with leadership.

You put higher-ranked officers (Such as Legates) on horseback or chariot - even if they aren't martially the greatest, the horse gives them a superior edge against any infantry, they can move around the battlefield and see what's going on easily, and if the officer does end up facing trouble, the horse gives it the tools it needs to do what needs to be done (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tF9Darnmj4)

In the medieval and Renaissance ages, most of the officers were Knights. The closest the modern world has to the role of a historic knight are super soldiers like Space Marines or Mechwarrriors - the reason the knight was given a Fief and serfs was to ensure that said serfs produced the food, weapons, armor, and other tools needed to ensure that the knight (Who started training at least as young as 6) got the education, training, conditioning, and equipment to be the best soldiers on the battlefield. It takes a tremendous stroke of strategic and tactical stupidity for a large number of knights to get defeated by men-at-arms (One such blunder would be trying to fight in a swamp, or trying to take on English Longbowmen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5X5zh00rdg))

Morithias
2013-10-24, 09:08 PM
Why not make the officer and political system similar to Rome? Where you require years of military service prior before getting into any government or officer position?

AMFV
2013-10-24, 09:09 PM
Your "No man can take on three guys" assertion does not hold up to empirical and observed experiences and records. Especially if that one guy has two others backing him up while the three try to focus all their attention on taking him down. The officer does NOT fight alone. Melee combat means you can't get more than three guys on one person before they start tripping over each other and the other team's side takes over.

It also depends on what kind of officer. The ones that lack horses (Which can change from front to back lines in a matter of seconds) tend to be Sergeant-types (Such as Centurions), which get to their position through merit, and are in charge just as much because of their penchant for not-dying as much as their skill with leadership.

You put higher-ranked officers (Such as Legates) on horseback or chariot - even if they aren't martially the greatest, the horse gives them a superior edge against any infantry, they can move around the battlefield and see what's going on easily, and if the officer does end up facing trouble, the horse gives it the tools it needs to do what needs to be done (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tF9Darnmj4)

In the medieval and Renaissance ages, most of the officers were Knights. The closest the modern world has to the role of a historic knight are super soldiers like Space Marines or Mechwarrriors - the reason the knight was given a Fief and serfs was to ensure that said serfs produced the food, weapons, armor, and other tools needed to ensure that the knight (Who started training at least as young as 6) got the education, training, conditioning, and equipment to be the best soldiers on the battlefield. It takes a tremendous stroke of strategic and tactical stupidity for a large number of knights to get defeated by men-at-arms (One such blunder would be trying to fight in a swamp, or trying to take on English Longbowmen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5X5zh00rdg))

You still haven't answered the can't do your job bit. Officers are supposed to command. Frankly medieval knights were not as dominant as armor is today. Being trained from six isn't that great an advantage or the Spartans would have conquered the world, which they didn't. They had trouble even fighting the Athenians, who were certainly not trained since six.

The main thing is that an officer still needs to be able to see to command. If you're in front you can't see. You can't get messages, you fail at your job, it doesn't matter if you kill 10 guys, doing your job could kill 100.

Calvary sorties did occasionally happen but they were rarer than you imagine, the reason being that horses simply cannot perform at that level for a long period of time, especially not carrying three hundred pounds of weapon, armor, and knight (Possibly an overestimate but I think that's not that out there). A human farmer could theoretically fight all day, endurance is one of our great advantages.

If Knights were dominant in the way that you imagine there'd have been no need for conscripted peasant forces, which they certainly utilized. Furthermore the Knights were certainly targeted and frequently killed for being what they were, for example, King Richard was killed in such a fashion.

The standing point, is that in a battlefield you have a job to do, an officers job is not to be the guy that kills people its to command those people. If he tries to do their job he'll be unable to do that.

Lastly, Sergeants are not officers. If you want to find out what the difference is (at least in today's world) go find a Sergeant Major and call him an officer, see how he reacts. Sergeants did lead from the front, because their job is to lead people and keep moral up. Officers job is to command, sergeants job is to make sure that commands are followed, which can be done from the front. So if you are calling NCOs, officers, then I can understand where you're coming from, but that's a distinction that's important to make, at least in military terms.


We are getting fairly sidetracked though, the point is that women could conceivably be the officers in a system such as JusticeZero envisions. In fact if you just give them a little magic, say the ability to communicate with each other over distance, they would be infinitely better than men at that role. If they had magical abilities to communicate and broadcast commands they would be the best officers any medieval society could ask for.

Worira
2013-10-24, 09:17 PM
Why are you acting like this is a hypothetical? There is ample historical evidence that high-ranking officers did, in fact, lead from the the front a significant amount of the time.

AMFV
2013-10-24, 09:21 PM
Why are you acting like this is a hypothetical? There is ample historical evidence that high-ranking officers did, in fact, lead from the the front a significant amount of the time.

Then, they were bad officers for the reasons I've described. Not all officers are good officers. Leading from the front when you are the sole link to communications and in charge of watching what's going on so you can issue orders is bad leadership.

It certainly sounds like it would be the opposite, but it's not, putting yourself at risk when other lives depend on your orders is bad leadership. Putting your men between yourself and the signal lines when order might come through, bad leadership. Standing in front, away from the drummer boy or bugler so you can't relay orders, bad leadership. Putting the drummer boy in front with you, even worse leadership, because then your method of communicating with the troops is gone.

Good officers lead from the rear, good sergeants lead from the front, good soldiers follow orders. That's the best way for everybody to do their jobs and perform. In a military unit doing your job is more important than killing the enemy, or your own personal glory, and they were aware of this even in medieval times.

Furthermore the reason why we are treating this as a hypothetical is because it is, we are attempting to help with a setting that isn't in real life, and it's only relation to real life is tangential.

Maybe the reason why this society is so succesful is because their officers lead rather than hogging the glory. Perhaps this is why they select women officers, because they are perceived as being less obsessed with personal glory. Also note that I'm not stating that they are or aren't, just suggesting a potential perception.

Scow2
2013-10-24, 09:34 PM
You have to be at the front, not back, to see. You already know what your guys are doing - it only takes a brief glance back to ensure it's happening. You need to be at the front to be able see what the other team is doing, and the effect your strategy and tactics are having on the battlefield. You do have to be able to fall back toward the middle and back lines though, which is where a fast warhorse is critical.

Battles don't last forever - you DO want your officer on a horseback when those happen. Battles don't tend to last long enough to bother the horse, and those that do tend to have informal 'breaks' throughout them the horse can be swapped out or rest.

Non-commissioned Officers are still officers of a type, and they still have significant tactical authority.

You stand in front, and glance behind to give orders - it's easier to hear something coming from in front of you than it is to hear something coming from behind, and one man looking back to give orders once is better than having to shout for attention, have the entire army turn to listen, then give the orders.

AMFV
2013-10-24, 09:43 PM
You have to be at the front, not back, to see. You already know what your guys are doing - it only takes a brief glance back to ensure it's happening. You need to be at the front to be able see what the other team is doing, and the effect your strategy and tactics are having on the battlefield. You do have to be able to fall back toward the middle and back lines though, which is where a fast warhorse is critical.

Battles don't last forever - you DO want your officer on a horseback when those happen. Battles don't tend to last long enough to bother the horse, and those that do tend to have informal 'breaks' throughout them the horse can be swapped out or rest.

Non-commissioned Officers are still officers of a type, and they still have significant tactical authority.

You stand in front, and glance behind to give orders - it's easier to hear something coming from in front of you than it is to hear something coming from behind, and one man looking back to give orders once is better than having to shout for attention, have the entire army turn to listen, then give the orders.

You do not know what your guys are doing, they aren't robots, stuff changes. You have to make sure that they can react or else you can't adapt and you'll get flanked and butchered. You being in front doesn't help. Getting flanked = getting dead. Getting dead is bad leadership.

Additionally if you're fighting you darn well aren't paying attention to what's going on, it's literally impossible to do that in any real sense in a brawl. With modern weapons it is possible, not very practicable but possible. That's why you stand in the back because fighting is not your job, giving orders is.

And you still haven't answered the issue of communications and logistics which is infinitely more important on a battlefield than any ability to kill three guys at one time. Messengers from the further back officers who can see more. If you want how effective this is, look up how balloons changed warfare in the 17th century, why do you think people loved OPs on the high ground, observation and logistics is more important than fighting ability, a poorer force that communicates better will generally win.

You can see that other team too, from the rear, because you're on your horse, or at a higher vantage point. Again your job as an officer is to lead and command not to kill dudes, not to fight. It might seem foreign to you, but this is how it is, it is probably how it always has been. I have personal experience with this, I was a non-commissioned officer. You have to accept that your role as an NCO or as an Officer is not the same, and officers are further back than NCOs.

Additionally you still haven't answered why you would put officers where they are most likely to get killed, if your experienced officers die, and even competent soldiers do, then you wind up not having leadership and you fail, badly. Look at how Stalin's purge affected the USSR in the opening of World War 2 and in the Finno-Russian War. The point is that roles are important in the military and confusing them helps nobody in the long run.

Lastly as somebody who has actually given orders in the din of rifles, I can tell you, somebody yelling in your direction behind you, is infinitely easier to hear than somebody yelling the wrong way.

Alberic Strein
2013-10-24, 10:03 PM
This is an interesting debate which definitely deserves its own thread.

So how about we do just that and recenter this thread around the OP's question?

tasw
2013-10-25, 12:47 AM
While I agree with your larger point, the 40 years is skewed downward due to high Infant Mortality rates for ancient societies. Removing the people who survived less than a year greatly increases practical life expectancy.

Its not ancient. it starts a few hundred years ago and you can see it doesnt significantly change until a few decades ago.

Point 2. We assume higher infant mortality rates skewing it. And I certainly wont debate that.....

But those records were poorly kept. Until the last few decades there were no real organizations in any country that kept track of these things and even when they did it was poorly.

Until very modern times most families whose children passed simply buried them in the church. There was no government to report them to, no statistics bureau to compile them. They were simply not counted at all.

So while infant mortality definitely skewed the age range down assuming it skewed it down significantly is faulty.

Assuming 200+ years ago, we can look at the American founding fathers. People who no one can honestly dispute had the money to get the best care for illnesses, to eat healthy throughout their lives and to live the ripest of old ages available at the time.

George Washington died at 67. A man we wanted to make King. Its little known but the entire american republic, that became a democracy was plan B. Plan A was Washington as the american King.

This man got the absolute best of the best, everything we could give him. 67 years old.

That was the average lifespan of the founding fathers 67.

Thats slightly more then 200 years ago, with people who have the absolute best of the best care that we could provide. not normal folks, not numbers that reflect society.

Thats the equivalent of how long obama, GW bush and bill gates will live.

tasw
2013-10-25, 12:56 AM
{Scrubbed}

tasw
2013-10-25, 01:12 AM
Not really, generally you'd command from behind the formation, keeping ranks is more important than the officers running into battle. The job of the officer is to keep the soldiers in rank and file, which is more effective than a mob. That is best done from behind them, since you can observe better.

The disorganized mob rush was made obsolete a long time ago in warfare. Pre-hoplite era I believe, certainly the Spartans made an example of how better organization wins battles, or at least causes vastly superior performance. The Romans also. Keeping your forces in order is more important than your officer being able to fight. In the real world, in real warfare authority does not equal asskicking, discipline under fire, the ability to command coherently and effectively, those are more important traits for an officer than the ability to fight well.

Your missing the social component though. Nobles in European cultures were noble because their job was to fight and defend everyone who did everything else.

Leaders led from the front, there are innumerable examples of this from history.

It extended into the age of the U.S. civil war where it wasnt until halfway through that the officers started dressing the same as their soldiers because they were targets. And even then they still were expected to LEAD their battlations into battle.

Just take a look at the casualties of the U.S. civil war, or Napoleons wars and see how many high level officers, including generals were killed or maimed.

This wasnt by accident. Officers leading from behind is a very modern invention. And IMO (as a humble 82nd airborne NCO with 3 years experience in the sandbox) a ****ty one.

tasw
2013-10-25, 01:27 AM
{scrubbed}

Eric Tolle
2013-10-25, 02:15 AM
George Washington died at 67. A man we wanted to make King. Its little known but the entire american republic, that became a democracy was plan B. Plan A was Washington as the american King.

This man got the absolute best of the best, everything we could give him. 67 years old.

A friend of mine died not too long ago. He was 37. He received the absolute best care modern society could give him, but within two years of his initial diagnosis, he was gone. Based on your absolutely stunning anecdotal evidence, our survival rate has gone down in the last 200+ years.

HUman Lifespans Nearly Consistent for 2000 Years (http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans-constant-2-000-years.html)

Nature: Life Expectancy (http://www.nature.com/scitable/content/life-expectancy-around-the-world-has-increased-19786)

Life Expectancy (http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/webfac/carson/e113_su05/life.pdf)

Why has life expectancy increased? (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_has_life_expectancy_increased)

The consensus is that infant mortality is the main cause for shorter lifespans in the pre-industrial age. If anyone has an alternative theory, they better have some damn good evidence for it.

Alberic Strein
2013-10-25, 02:26 AM
Farm work is probably the physically hardest work a human being can do.



Mining. Mining tops farming.

I don't know about hardest, but it's certainly one of the most ruinous work you can engage for your body.

But yeah, farming is quite bad for your body too.


Nobles in European cultures were noble because their job was to fight and defend everyone who did everything else.

For a while, yes. Nobles were only "bred for war" when wars had been waged for a rather long time, see 30/100 years wars.

But as time went on, nobility was less and less about asskicking and more about politics. Consequently, nobles had been effective warriors and war chiefs, because if they weren't, then they were annihilated, end of story. When that changed, nobles became at large some of the stupidest commanders ever.

I'm not arguing your point, just giving complementary information.

---------------------------------------------

Ok, we are veering into personal attacks so... Back to OP's idea?

Delta
2013-10-25, 02:31 AM
{scrub the post, scrub the quote}

The problem is that the same seems to apply to you, as far as average lifespan and infant mortality is concerned, because of course our statistics do include that and it is the major reason why the average lifespan was so short back then.

Especially funny since you gave the correct answer yourself: churches. How do we know when people were born and when they died? You're absolutely right, they went to the church. And in most churches, someone wrote it down when someone was born or died (pretty fortunate to have a religion around demanding important rituals in both cases), including children. And paper is patient, of course by far not every church record survives to this day, but enough that we can extrapolate and make an educated guess about the average lifespan back in the day.

Alberic Strein
2013-10-25, 02:35 AM
The problem is that the same seems to apply to you, as far as average lifespan and infant mortality is concerned, because of course our statistics do include that and it is the major reason why the average lifespan was so short back then.

Especially funny since you gave the correct answer yourself: churches. How do we know when people were born and when they died? You're absolutely right, they went to the church. And in most churches, someone wrote it down when someone was born or died (pretty fortunate to have a religion around demanding important rituals in both cases), including children. And paper is patient, of course by far not every church record survives to this day, but enough that we can extrapolate and make an educated guess about the average lifespan back in the day.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, in Europe the Church did that as part of the Baptism. And children were only baptized after they were one year old. Else, there simply wouldn't be enough ink to mark all the deaths.

Delta
2013-10-25, 02:40 AM
Your "No man can take on three guys" assertion does not hold up to empirical and observed experiences and records. Especially if that one guy has two others backing him up while the three try to focus all their attention on taking him down. The officer does NOT fight alone. Melee combat means you can't get more than three guys on one person before they start tripping over each other and the other team's side takes over.

I'm sorry but "A man can take on three guys on his own if he has two guys backing him up!" sounds a bit like you're actually making his point. Gotta agree with AMFV here, no man can take on three guys without getting ridiculously lucky, unless those three guys are unarmed, unarmored and untrained.

Delta
2013-10-25, 02:41 AM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, in Europe the Church did that as part of the Baptism. And children were only baptized after they were one year old. Else, there simply wouldn't be enough ink to mark all the deaths.

This depends on local custom AFAIK, but in general, churches made notes about pretty much everything that happened in their local environment, because that was their job. Women giving birth was definitely one of those things, I've seen some of those records myself.

Alberic Strein
2013-10-25, 02:51 AM
I'm sorry but "A man can take on three guys on his own if he has two guys backing him up!" sounds a bit like you're actually making his point. Gotta agree with AMFV here, no man can take on three guys without getting ridiculously lucky, unless those three guys are unarmed, unarmored and untrained.

...Not really.

Or, more to the point, yes, you are right, if all the opponents are assumed to be roughly equal. Or at least in the same league.

One lone knight in full plate can take on any number of peasants as he wants. They could kill him by zerg rushing him (maybe) or at least wound him, but as the first one would come closer he would get killed, same for the second, same for the third, the fourth would hesitate following suit.

As long as the knight avoids getting surrounded, he is golden.

That's the whole point of armor. As long as you don't get knocked down, it allows you to take some crazy punishment.

Equipment factors a lot in the outcome of a fight, as does the environment. Full plate isn't so hot (or actually yes, it's burning hot) in a desert.

I can see three normal foot soldiers take down a knight... Barely. But three peasants ? Three conscripts ? I won't say never, but it would take some great strategy, some immense luck and/or some massive guts.

However, all factors being equal, yes, the amount of skill needed to pull you through a 3v1... Is either huge (a veteran versus three rookies) or it's not skill. Pure dumb luck, divine providence, some crazy circumstances, yes, but not skill.

Skill makes you win a 1v1, not a 3v1.

EDIT/PS : And in the veteran vs rookies example, it's not about the veteran's skill, it's about how the rookies lack it so very hard that they screw up their very real chance at taking him down... And the veteran being skilled enough to capitalize on that.

Delta
2013-10-25, 05:19 AM
One lone knight in full plate can take on any number of peasants as he wants. They could kill him by zerg rushing him (maybe) or at least wound him, but as the first one would come closer he would get killed, same for the second, same for the third, the fourth would hesitate following suit.

I don't know from how much personal experience you draw this, but I couldn't disagree more. If those peasants have solid weapons and know how to use them, my money is on the peasants every time. Of course, yes, if they only have knives and never fought before, then they fall in the category of "unarmed, unarmored, untrained" I mentioned above.

Somehow, you seem to assume that they rush the knight one after the other, yes, in that case, of course the knight can take them all night long until he gets tired. But reality is no hollywood movie, in a 3 on 1 fight, the 3 most likely won't be considerate enough to wait in line until it's their turn to be killed. There is no need to "zerg rush" him (although that should be effective), just don't attack the guy 1 on 1.

Lorsa
2013-10-25, 05:26 AM
If you're fighting a knight in full armour on foot, all you have to do is run away and trip him when he comes after you. Also, most full helmets have incredibly poor visibility so you could easily sneak up on him from behind and use a long piercing weapon. Knights are the most dangerous when they're on horses and there's a reason why there were weapons specifically made to get the knights OFF the horses. From a range longer than his sword.

AMFV
2013-10-25, 06:11 AM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

I got a 98 on my AFQT, 129 GT score, I'm fairly sure I could have gotten into any of the services. I chose to go to the Marines. I've never done laundry with a board, not once. I have learned quite a bit about tactics.

I like you insulted me and my branch of service instead of answering any of my questions. Tell me how do you have a line of communication if officers are in the front, they don't have radios... the only way to communicate is by messenger. Tell me why standing in front allows you to talk to your men, I mean if you've been on a rifle range or around the noise of battle (admittedly modern battles are larger) you'll of course know that you can't see what's going on behind you, you'll also know that even in modern warfare with modern communications the officer/NCO is not usually the point man, that would be stupid.

If you'd like to address my points instead of rantingly accusing me of spousal abuse that'd be pretty awesome. I mean it's not like the 82nd has had a perfect track record on that count either, if I recall back in 2003 there was that whole murder pact thing, so are we calling kettles black or what?

So again, I'd really appreciate if you would answer my points, since as an NCO you should clearly know the answers to those really obvious questions. Like how you can maintain logistics if you have no lines of communication, it's gotten easy nowadays but back then it was not, yes Officers have died and done brave things, but those who were effective tended to be slightly better at not dying and at doing their job, not somebody else's job.

It'd be the same thing as if in a fireteam everybody decided to go on point, that would be stupid. Like really stupid, I'm sure you know this, being an NCO, with three years experience in the Sandbox.

Again, could you maybe, just touch on my points instead of ranting and personal attacks? Just a little bit?


Your missing the social component though. Nobles in European cultures were noble because their job was to fight and defend everyone who did everything else.

Leaders led from the front, there are innumerable examples of this from history.

It extended into the age of the U.S. civil war where it wasnt until halfway through that the officers started dressing the same as their soldiers because they were targets. And even then they still were expected to LEAD their battlations into battle.

Just take a look at the casualties of the U.S. civil war, or Napoleons wars and see how many high level officers, including generals were killed or maimed.

This wasnt by accident. Officers leading from behind is a very modern invention. And IMO (as a humble 82nd airborne NCO with 3 years experience in the sandbox) a ****ty one.

You still didn't lead from in front of them, especially not in the civil war... I mean you'd get shot, not because of fratricide, but because of you know the fact that's where everybody is shooting. I mean I guess you could lie down on the ground in front of your men, but then you wouldn't be able to observe what was going on. Is that something maybe you hadn't quite thought about in line warfare?

Nobles weren't bred for war, they were trained for it, they were bred for political success and family preservation, hence their tendency for certain genetic disorders. Yes there were many bad officers because birth does equal merit.

hamishspence
2013-10-25, 06:20 AM
That is a FANTASY novel written in 1891. And set in 1873.

It has absolutely no bearing at all on anything in a medieval culture.

How about preserved bones, showing massive wear and tear on bones identified as female?

Do those exist?

GolemsVoice
2013-10-25, 06:54 AM
As far as I know, women, at least peasant women, did quite a lot of stuff around the house. Manual labour was expensive, and especially during the harvest, a peasant family needed all the hands they could get, so femals were expected to work around the house and on the fields, too. They may not always have had the hardest jobs possible (especially while pregnant), but they sure didn't sit around idly.

Delta
2013-10-25, 08:02 AM
As far as I know, women, at least peasant women, did quite a lot of stuff around the house. Manual labour was expensive, and especially during the harvest, a peasant family needed all the hands they could get, so femals were expected to work around the house and on the fields, too. They may not always have had the hardest jobs possible (especially while pregnant), but they sure didn't sit around idly.

The idea that females aren't supposed to "work" is a very modern one that didn't really come up before the industrialization, because before that, for most people, there wasn't much of a difference between a "real job" and the choirs around the house, because all of those were just the things you had to do and of course everyone able to do something had to do it, the idea of someone able to work not doing anything was reserved for rich people who could afford to do so.

Did the men do the more physically demanding jobs? Definitely. Does this mean women were "only" cooking and looking after the kids? Most definitely not. Agriculture is hard, tough work, and there was more enough work to be done for everyone, you can be sure of that.

Miriel
2013-10-25, 08:51 AM
Point 2. We assume higher infant mortality rates skewing it. And I certainly wont debate that.....

But those records were poorly kept. Until the last few decades there were no real organizations in any country that kept track of these things and even when they did it was poorly.

Until very modern times most families whose children passed simply buried them in the church. There was no government to report them to, no statistics bureau to compile them. They were simply not counted at all.

So while infant mortality definitely skewed the age range down assuming it skewed it down significantly is faulty.
Do you understand that you are arguing against armies of demographers and family historians? I mean, I'm not a demographer myself, but I can tell you that your statement is either iconoclastic, uninformed or pyrrhonian.

Even though we don't know with full certainty the demography of earlier times, it is by no means inaccessible. Examples of sources :
- Church record, as some mentionned. However, they are not a true reflect of infant mortality, because, as Alberic Strein said, it only tracked people after baptism (although it didn't take a full year). They are relatively recent, too.
- Various narratives can be compiled in large numbers. It's not perfect, but it gives us a general idea. We do know that even in noble families, babies died all the time.
- Some exceptional surveys or tax declarations, notably the 1427 Florentine Catasto (http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/catasto/), or Egyptian papyri, etc.
- Archeological evidence, e.g. burried infants.
- Comparison with modern demographic data from countries with a traditional demographic regime (often, this is Imperial China).

None of these are perfect, and there are certainly other imperfect sources I don't know of, but we don't need to know a year by year trend in the late 1300s either. We just want the general idea.


I'm sorry but "A man can take on three guys on his own if he has two guys backing him up!" sounds a bit like you're actually making his point. Gotta agree with AMFV here, no man can take on three guys without getting ridiculously lucky, unless those three guys are unarmed, unarmored and untrained.
As far as I can gather, there are records in medieval sources that a dismounted knight in full armour could need up to 8 unarmoured/less armoured opponents to go down. This doesn't necessarily mean they would kill everyone, but at the very least, they wouldn't die. On medieval reality, I trust the medieval sources, biased though they are, not modern speculation. (Sorry, I can't remember the source. I'm probably inspired from D. Barthélémy, La chevalerie, 2007, but maybe not.)

On armour: early tourneys were basically battles without strategic purpose, and they were as bloody -- that is, virtually nobody died. (EDIT: By that example, I wanted to show that armour was good enough that they could fight actual battle just for pleasure.) That was before full plate armour, which is mostly an Early Modern reality, for those of you who like standard periodization. Knight had enough armour that they were not supposed to die even when they faced similarly trained and equiped. That a single knight could make dozens of badly trained peasants flee, I have no trouble believing.

In order that the conversation may return vaguely on topic... Let me remind everyone that the main limitation for wearing heavy armour was not strength, but money. If noble women decided they wanted to fight in heavy armour, then that would happen. Worst case scenario, women wear slightly ligther armour. This is no big deal, since everyone had different armour anyway.

In any case, the decisive element in pre-modern battles was not strength and equipment, but tactics and discipline. Even though in theory, having less endurance could hurt morale, on the whole, women are not significantly less suited for staying in the line of battle than men. Why they weren't asked to do it very often goes back to cultural reasons.

Scow2
2013-10-25, 08:56 AM
{Scrubbed}

Scow2
2013-10-25, 09:34 AM
I'm sorry but "A man can take on three guys on his own if he has two guys backing him up!" sounds a bit like you're actually making his point. Gotta agree with AMFV here, no man can take on three guys without getting ridiculously lucky, unless those three guys are unarmed, unarmored and untrained.I was referring to the context of targeting officers/sergeants in melee. Just because you have a force of three or five or seven guys and decide to dogpile on one of them doesn't make his equal or similar number of allies go away.

Also, you underestimate the skill of a knight and quality of armor he wore. In a 1-on-3, the knight will parry the first guy (Disabling him in the process), disable the second, and have his armor absorb the attack from the third, who is now alone: Parrying isn't the art of negating attacks with your weapon, it's the art of killing someone as they try to hit you. In D&D terms, attacking someone who knew how to parry would negate your attack and get a free attack at the same time.

I don't know from how much personal experience you draw this, but I couldn't disagree more. If those peasants have solid weapons and know how to use them, my money is on the peasants every time. Of course, yes, if they only have knives and never fought before, then they fall in the category of "unarmed, unarmored, untrained" I mentioned above.

Somehow, you seem to assume that they rush the knight one after the other, yes, in that case, of course the knight can take them all night long until he gets tired. But reality is no hollywood movie, in a 3 on 1 fight, the 3 most likely won't be considerate enough to wait in line until it's their turn to be killed. There is no need to "zerg rush" him (although that should be effective), just don't attack the guy 1 on 1.Trying to get at the knight with all 3 at once will have them tripping over each other, while the knight can dispatch them at will before they can actually take advantage of their numbers. Knights didn't go out of style because they weren't invincible - it was because they were too damn expensive. It wasn't 3-to-1 odds that were overwhelmed them - it ended up being 10+-to-one. And even with the 3-on-1 - they may try to rush him all at once, but it's impossible to synchronize actions perfectly, and the knight has the skill and agility to capitalize on each individual approach. Or he can stab the first guy, grab the second, and beat the third senseless with the second.


If you're fighting a knight in full armour on foot, all you have to do is run away and trip him when he comes after you. Also, most full helmets have incredibly poor visibility so you could easily sneak up on him from behind and use a long piercing weapon. Knights are the most dangerous when they're on horses and there's a reason why there were weapons specifically made to get the knights OFF the horses. From a range longer than his sword.That is MUCH easier said than done - Even in his armor, the knight has equal speed, greater strength, and more stability than you. Unlike a man-at-arms, the knight had very good back armor. You're dead as soon as you try to run away.

Helmets did restrict visibility, but not to overwhelming degrees. If you're sneaking up on a knight, it means you're between him and his men-at-arms, as well.

Delta
2013-10-25, 11:27 AM
Trying to get at the knight with all 3 at once will have them tripping over each other, while the knight can dispatch them at will before they can actually take advantage of their numbers. Knights didn't go out of style because they weren't invincible - it was because they were too damn expensive. It wasn't 3-to-1 odds that were overwhelmed them - it ended up being 10+-to-one. And even with the 3-on-1 - they may try to rush him all at once, but it's impossible to synchronize actions perfectly, and the knight has the skill and agility to capitalize on each individual approach. Or he can stab the first guy, grab the second, and beat the third senseless with the second.

I think it doesn't make much sense to discuss this further, because first of all this has already gone way too far off topic and second of all I disagree with literally almost everything you just wrote there, so there's no basis to discuss this on.

warty goblin
2013-10-25, 11:56 AM
I was referring to the context of targeting officers/sergeants in melee. Just because you have a force of three or five or seven guys and decide to dogpile on one of them doesn't make his equal or similar number of allies go away.

Also, you underestimate the skill of a knight and quality of armor he wore. In a 1-on-3, the knight will parry the first guy (Disabling him in the process), disable the second, and have his armor absorb the attack from the third, who is now alone: Parrying isn't the art of negating attacks with your weapon, it's the art of killing someone as they try to hit you. In D&D terms, attacking someone who knew how to parry would negate your attack and get a free attack at the same time.
Trying to get at the knight with all 3 at once will have them tripping over each other, while the knight can dispatch them at will before they can actually take advantage of their numbers. Knights didn't go out of style because they weren't invincible - it was because they were too damn expensive. It wasn't 3-to-1 odds that were overwhelmed them - it ended up being 10+-to-one. And even with the 3-on-1 - they may try to rush him all at once, but it's impossible to synchronize actions perfectly, and the knight has the skill and agility to capitalize on each individual approach. Or he can stab the first guy, grab the second, and beat the third senseless with the second.

Knights are guys in armor, not goddamn super-heroes. We actually know a good bit about how they fought, and nowhere in any of the fechtbucher with which I have any familiarity is beating one person unconscious with another advised.

It's not that hard to coordinate multiple people attacking a single target. I've done it, and had it done to me. Very seldom has anybody tripped over anybody else. If anybody's likely to trip, its the guy on his own, while backing up to keep from being attacked on two or three lines at once.


That is MUCH easier said than done - Even in his armor, the knight has equal speed, greater strength, and more stability than you. Unlike a man-at-arms, the knight had very good back armor. You're dead as soon as you try to run away.
Have you ever worn armor? Ever tried to fight in armor? I have. It slows you down. It doesn't turn a person into a helpless, plodding tortoise, but twenty plus pounds of ironmongery strapped to a body reduces mobility and speed on foot. It also absolutely makes a person less stable, and less able to quickly alter direction. Not critically on the first, but fairly significantly on the second score.


Helmets did restrict visibility, but not to overwhelming degrees. If you're sneaking up on a knight, it means you're between him and his men-at-arms, as well.
This depends on the helmet.

endoperez
2013-10-25, 12:52 PM
I don't know if this has already been mentioned, but...


At the moment, the gender "hats" are extremely strong, and specifically concern wartime. It isn't always wartime. Everyone isn't a soldier.

If we look at raiding vikings, they raided AND traded. If the male raiding parties are caravans instead of war parties and aren't always confident enough to attack, well, that changes things.

Then let us soften the hats. Everyone isn't in the military. Many men and women stay in the cities and attend shops, work as craftsmen, servants, farm fields and so on. All these men and women obey the city guard - the women. When monsters attack, it's the city guard that saves them. The women are their protectors, the heroes.

Men in comparison are the ones who go out, then come back rich - or poor, or not at all. The wealthiest individuals would likely be men, but their heroics would be just hearsay. More hearsay from the victims than the invaders, perhaps. Men would be the stereotypical villains, perhaps.


Then let's look at training. City guards get into actual fights, with monsters or drunkards or criminals or, rarely, invaders. The military-in-training don't get to fight as much. They get to train more, if they have less policing to do. Who do they train with? The city guard, of course. The defenders have an advantage in an equal situation, so what about a situation when a veteran force of defenders is training up a new batch of aggressors? Clearly the males are going to lose a lot, at first. They'll look up into the women as their trainers and mentors more often than not, even if they then go on to be expert raiders and surpass them in human-to-human combat, because that's all they do and train to do.


How could these roles be mixed up, and how should they NOT be mixed up?

First, if a male raider is hurt or disabled, he won't be able to get a post as a city guard. Same for women who get an arrow to the knee, they won't be raiding with the men, and can't keep on in defense duty. These shouldn't be the "weak and old and wounded" sort of home defense. These should be the "you shall not pass" sort. Perhaps the wounded will be trained as healers, regardless of gender.

How would a man be able to break the stereotypes and become a guard? Perhaps by slaying a monster, instead of people. A man who slays a dragon is accepted into the city guard and gets a medal and so on. He'd be twice the warrior he used to be. Perhaps if he still raids, he'd be earning double pay.

How would a woman be able to break the stereotype and become a raider? Well, if you go with the defenders helping to train to rookie raiders, perhaps the raiders ask some of their mentors to join them in their first raid, to help and give advice. Perhaps she goes, and then decides she likes that more than getting back to the policing duty.

Kitten Champion
2013-10-25, 01:25 PM
It should also be pointed out, since it's technically accurate, that biological distinctions in strength and endurance are irrelevant in a D&D universe or something similar.

In a world where women can split a dragon's skull with a great axe, we can expect the physical capability of humans are going to surpass our own. Which to a degree makes sense, seeing as a species humanity would need to have survived horrors unmentionable pretty vigorously to achieve any sort of prolonged population growth much less demographic dominance.

Either you've got to limit yourself to mundane human potential while adjusting the stats for sex, or accede to the game's depiction of humanity. The idea that women wouldn't be able to equal men in physical labour would seem pretty specious when my theoretical female character could punch a hole through an Orc with a toothpick just using muscles and womanly charm.

Haarkla
2013-10-25, 03:42 PM
I keep wanting to get an honest examination about a specific thing in the campaign setting I run, but everyplace I put it the discussion is derailed by a lot of other things.

...

Ergo, I chose to use a model which, while not egalitarian, is still very positive toward women.

Specifically, I cited a historical "men go out and pillage" as an ancient historical fact in the campaign setting, then seperated the roles of "pillaging" offense from "police/siege defense", and gendered the latter as a stereotypically female, "pink-armor" role.

I then asserted that because police and counter-siege would have various moments of glory, that these routes were common routes by which women could gain glory which could then be leveraged into political power, resulting in a number of female headed government leaders in a culture which retained a military path to power.

Your setting simply does not make sense.

Having separate "pillaging" and "siege defense" armies makes no sense. So trained warriors are going to sit out the battle because they are the wrong sex/dont do seige defense? Militarily your society would be a laughing stock, and would be quickly defeated by a better organised opponent.

Morithias
2013-10-25, 03:49 PM
Your setting simply does not make sense.

Having separate "pillaging" and "siege defense" armies makes no sense. So trained warriors are going to sit out the battle because they are the wrong sex/dont do seige defense? Militarily your society would be a laughing stock, and would be quickly defeated by a better organised opponent.

Not to mention the easiest way to 'kill off' such a society would just be to do a proper siege.

I.e Lock them inside the city, burn the fields, and let them starve.

Lack of women = dead society.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket!

Alberic Strein
2013-10-25, 04:42 PM
I don't know from how much personal experience you draw this, but I couldn't disagree more. If those peasants have solid weapons and know how to use them, my money is on the peasants every time. Of course, yes, if they only have knives and never fought before, then they fall in the category of "unarmed, unarmored, untrained" I mentioned above.

Why, from my personal experience as a 15th century knight, of course!

What, how do you know I don't actually have a PhD in knighthood? What do you mean it doesn't exist?! Prepostruous!

Actually, yes, I meant average peasants with farmwork implements, half starved because peasants were, untrained for war and without a good leader to give them a viable strategy. Yes, it falls squarely in your "unarmed (not really, but close enough, their weapons can't punch through armor) unarmored, untrained". I was simply under the impression that you meant it for a 3v1. One soldier can take three unarmored and untrained enemies. What I was trying (and failed, seemingly) to say was that yeah, armor, weapons and training make you win the 3v1, and the 4v1, and the 5v1 and so on.



Somehow, you seem to assume that they rush the knight one after the other, yes, in that case, of course the knight can take them all night long until he gets tired. But reality is no hollywood movie, in a 3 on 1 fight, the 3 most likely won't be considerate enough to wait in line until it's their turn to be killed. There is no need to "zerg rush" him (although that should be effective), just don't attack the guy 1 on 1.

I see why it would seem this way. Actually, I assumed the knight used footwork to avoid being surrounded, and his armor, his reflexes, his training, and his knowledge of his reach to take them down 1 on 1 even if they attack him in numbers.

The peasants example was not to be the main point of my post, only the first part that opened the possibility to have one veteran take down three rookies, which are only "untrained".

And I purposefully took the knight example, because it's extreme. My point does NOT stand with one roman soldier versus three "barbarian" warriors. The roman would get slaughtered.

----------------------------

Haarkla/Morithias : Actually, the whole point of the OP's system is to effectively have two armies, which is actually quite sound. It's not about the secondary army not helping the first defending the siege, it's about one army being on the offense, out of the city for extended periods of time, killing enemies, while the other one defends the city and prevents it from being taken. If the attacking army comes back to the city while it's being besieged, it enters the fray.

More on Morithias' point. While I agree that putting all your eggs in the same basket is dangerous and ill-advised, I don't think it applies in this situation. The city is the basket itself, if it is taken, is pillaged, ravaged, destroyed and its ruins salted, then wether there are men or women survivors, the society would still be dead.

Also, please keep in mind that year-long sieges exist, if the city has enough food to hold for the other army to comes back, the besiegers will be caught between the hammer and the anvil.

warty goblin
2013-10-25, 04:59 PM
Not to mention the easiest way to 'kill off' such a society would just be to do a proper siege.

I.e Lock them inside the city, burn the fields, and let them starve.

Lack of women = dead society.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket!

This works on anybody, about exactly as well as it would on a city with this particular set of gender roles. If the city falls and is put to the sword, everybody's dead or enslaved one way or the other. It's why we don't hear so much from Carthage these days.

It also tends to be difficult to pull off. Your average walled city tends to be fairly paranoid, and thus have enough food stored to last for a long time, while the attacking army has to live off the smouldering land at great expense. If the city has a port, it becomes even more difficult; hence the Athenian strategy in the first years of the Peloponnesian War. No point fighting when you can hang out inside the walls, develop exciting new diseases, and avoid losing battles.

Sure you can try to storm the place, but have fun dying a lot.

Worira
2013-10-25, 05:50 PM
Parrying isn't the art of negating attacks with your weapon, it's the art of killing someone as they try to hit you. In D&D terms, attacking someone who knew how to parry would negate your attack and get a free attack at the same time.

Incorrect.

Morithias
2013-10-25, 07:56 PM
Incorrect.

No. He's actually right. That's how it works in the Neverwinter nights games.

Then again, the rules vary from campaign to campaign.

I guess my argument for him being right about parry would be.

"In the one 'official licensed' media with Parry as a rule, that's how it worked."

PersonMan
2013-10-26, 05:03 AM
Don't put all your eggs in one basket!

So, you're arguing against putting all your eggs in one basket by saying 'Put all your eggs in this other basket!'?

Really, that's what sending out 100% of your military is. Blindly hoping that you won't just get attacked and razed while you're defenseless. So either you keep a force there to defend (and even outnumbered, that isn't too difficult because of your fortifications and food stores), while your main army is out, and all you need to do is get one messenger out (or arrange a sort of system where if they don't receive a messenger they will return) and then wait until the enemy, who has apparently sent their entire army to attack you and is now sitting on burned farms trying to feed themselves, gets flanked by your returning force and crushed.

Plus, there's the point others mentioned. A society with a burned out ruin for a city is dead, regardless of whether or not they have women in their invasion force or not.

Themrys
2013-10-26, 05:21 AM
Plus, there's the point others mentioned. A society with a burned out ruin for a city is dead, regardless of whether or not they have women in their invasion force or not.

Not exactly. Some of those in the invasion force could survive, wandering in the wilderness, have children, pass on their swords to those children, and have one of those children finally defeat the Dark Lord who has taken over their city. You know how it works.

However, to those who stayed in the city, and are now dead, it hardly makes a difference. In that, you are correct.
It's only if you care more about culture and language (and rightful heirs to the throne) than about people that it starts to make a difference.

Thrudd
2013-10-26, 06:13 AM
I keep wanting to get an honest examination about a specific thing in the campaign setting I run, but everyplace I put it the discussion is derailed by a lot of other things.

Please do not debate sexism in real life here. Please do not debate sexism in the media as a whole here. Please do not debate sexism in specific abstract edge cases here. I really just want to know about this one specific case that I can never seem to get any input from the women who know about this on, given that every time they open their mouths, they get distracted by a huge debate about real life/the media as a whole/freakish edge cases/whatever.

I deal with a lot of social science. I like the idea of an egalitarian society. Unfortunately, I know about a lot of things that tend to derail that in various ways. I do not know what form a culture would take that would achieve egalitarianism. Ergo, I chose to use a model which, while not egalitarian, is still very positive toward women.

Specifically, I cited a historical "men go out and pillage" as an ancient historical fact in the campaign setting, then seperated the roles of "pillaging" offense from "police/siege defense", and gendered the latter as a stereotypically female, "pink-armor" role.

I then asserted that because police and counter-siege would have various moments of glory, that these routes were common routes by which women could gain glory which could then be leveraged into political power, resulting in a number of female headed government leaders in a culture which retained a military path to power.

I do not know what the various people who generally are much more up to date on feminist theory and the like have to comment on regarding this specific case, or whether they have other suggestions, inputs, or glitches that I may have missed. As noted, I did not simply apply egalitarianism for the simple reason that I do not know how to actually arrive at a truly egalitarian culture - there are a lot of root things that indirectly result in at least some inequality that I simply do not know how to fix, as much as I would like to.

I think this is a plausible place to start for the history of a culture in which women play an equal role in the military. It seems like something which would have arisen out of a temporary necessity, however, not a perpetual state of existence. Why are the male warriors always away attacking other people? Where are the attacks coming from that the women defenders have achieved equal prestige as the men who are apparently always fighting? Is this a world where opposing city states constantly have eachother simultaneously under siege?
However, place this in the history of your setting...there was a time when all the warriors of the small city-state were required for a great war instigated by one of their allies (think the Trojan War), and every able bodied man marched off to besiege their enemy. Although this was a culture familiar with war and hardships and the women as hardy as the men, they normally did not join the ranks of the warriors. While the men were far away, across the sea and many months from home, an unforseen threat attacked, maybe monsters or an unknown civilization. The strong women of the city were the only line of defense against the invaders, and they fought ferociously to protect their homes and families. The women succeeded in defeating the attackers and it was now recognized that the women of this city state needed to train in the arts of war as well as the men. Perhaps they had to defend the city more than once while all their men were away. When the long war was finally over and the men returned far fewer in number, the city sung the praises of the brave women who had defeated the monsters. With a fighting force weakened by the attrition of war and the recognition of the monstrous threat, young women joined the ranks of the warriors alongside the men and made up the bulk of the force for some time. From that time on the city-state maintained the tradition of training both young men and women as warriors, and vowed never to send so many warriors away again. Women in this culture are not seen as less capable in any way, and leadership equally falls to both genders in the military and in administration.

Morithias
2013-10-26, 10:13 AM
So, you're arguing against putting all your eggs in one basket by saying 'Put all your eggs in this other basket!'?

Really, that's what sending out 100% of your military is. Blindly hoping that you won't just get attacked and razed while you're defenseless. So either you keep a force there to defend (and even outnumbered, that isn't too difficult because of your fortifications and food stores), while your main army is out, and all you need to do is get one messenger out (or arrange a sort of system where if they don't receive a messenger they will return) and then wait until the enemy, who has apparently sent their entire army to attack you and is now sitting on burned farms trying to feed themselves, gets flanked by your returning force and crushed.

Plus, there's the point others mentioned. A society with a burned out ruin for a city is dead, regardless of whether or not they have women in their invasion force or not.

Who said anything about sending out 100% of the military? By keeping the gender roles equal in both roles, on the off chance the city is lost, the military can repopulate.

warty goblin
2013-10-26, 10:38 AM
Who said anything about sending out 100% of the military? By keeping the gender roles equal in both roles, on the off chance the city is lost, the military can repopulate.

This seems like an unnecessarily specific contingency to have a plan for. "Hey yo, we should integrate the military, because on the off chance half of us are out on assignment and the city falls, we can totally keep society going by humping like rabbits. Nevermind that pesky lack of anyplace to live, a steady food supply, or that whomever wiped out the city with half the armies and walls probably isn't going to want us as neighbors anyway."

I'd think the bigger worry with this gender division is that the city can only ever put half its army in the field.

Example: If Genderopolis can field four battalions, 2 male and 2 female, and their next door neighbor Exampleville supports 3 battalions, despite having more soldiers in arms, Genderopolis operates at a permanent disadvantage. Should they launch an offensive, they need to worry about meeting the full force of the enemy's army, which outnumbers their male army significantly. Nor do they have a chance of sacking Exampleville should the enemy retreat to their walls, since Exampleville can put more soldiers on the walls than Genderopolis has in the field. Any attempt by Genderopolis to threaten Exampleville is extraordinarily risky, since forces their offensive force to fight at a disadvantage, without the chance for reinforcement, and a loss would completely remove their ability to project force for years.

I realize the tacit assumption has been that having a gender bifurcated military allows Genderopolis to field larger armies than other social systems. I don't think this really follows though; since the constraining factor for soldiery is more about materiel than manpower. Armor, weapons, training, etc cost a lot of money, and aren't cheaper just because half the army doesn't go anywhere. Arguably the strong division ends up being more expensive, since the female army isn't able to pay for itself through plunder, which means those soldiers need higher saleries to compensate for their lack of booty.

Narren
2013-10-26, 11:55 AM
I confess that I haven't had time to read this whole thread, so forgive me if this has already been answered.

But why the separation? What's the reason? Fixing gender inequality in a game is far easier than doing so in real life. If you're concerned about the implications of separating the gender roles in your military, just don't separate them.

JusticeZero
2013-10-26, 02:50 PM
Because if I just install the social system by fiat, it cuts my ability to GM the setting in half, and leaves it full of annoying things. Already explained this.

Scow2
2013-10-26, 05:48 PM
This seems like an unnecessarily specific contingency to have a plan for. "Hey yo, we should integrate the military, because on the off chance half of us are out on assignment and the city falls, we can totally keep society going by humping like rabbits. Nevermind that pesky lack of anyplace to live, a steady food supply, or that whomever wiped out the city with half the armies and walls probably isn't going to want us as neighbors anyway."

I'd think the bigger worry with this gender division is that the city can only ever put half its army in the field.

Example: If Genderopolis can field four battalions, 2 male and 2 female, and their next door neighbor Exampleville supports 3 battalions, despite having more soldiers in arms, Genderopolis operates at a permanent disadvantage. Should they launch an offensive, they need to worry about meeting the full force of the enemy's army, which outnumbers their male army significantly. Nor do they have a chance of sacking Exampleville should the enemy retreat to their walls, since Exampleville can put more soldiers on the walls than Genderopolis has in the field. Any attempt by Genderopolis to threaten Exampleville is extraordinarily risky, since forces their offensive force to fight at a disadvantage, without the chance for reinforcement, and a loss would completely remove their ability to project force for years.
If Exampleville sends out enough of their forces to threaten Genderopolis' two female divisions, the male divisions have the power to deploy behind the 2.3-3 Examplevillain Battallions marching on Genderopolis, and annihilate Exampleville's defenders, and by extension the logistic and supply lines.

Of course, what it this sort of thing really shows is that even with gender-divided armies, significant campaigns (Such as sacking/besieging a city, or defending against the same) would require each to draw auxiliary forces from the other.

Narren
2013-10-26, 06:43 PM
Because if I just install the social system by fiat, it cuts my ability to GM the setting in half, and leaves it full of annoying things. Already explained this.

I looked, but I didn't really see where you explained how it hinders your ability to GM or inserts annoying things.

Maybe I'm looking at this wrong. Are you considered about how to run your setting or is this an discussion about social theory?

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-26, 07:14 PM
I've only read a few pages of this, but there seem to be a lot of complaints regarding why you'd only use half your army for defense, why men would be constantly raiding etc. My thought: Maybe men can't own property here. For the most part, they aren't citizens and have nothing to defend in the city. Not to say they wouldn't, they just aren't even trusted enough to defend because they aren't seen as having a vested interest in the city.

Perhaps "raiding" is something men periodically, as a means of obtaining wealth and building a dowry in order to convince a woman to marry him. Every generation usually has a "Great Raid" where men go out and try to impress women with what they can bring back. Maybe they pillage a city, maybe they throw wave after wave at a dragon to bring back his hoard, maybe they murder-hobo it up for a few months-it changes every generation.

Women, on the other hand, not only inherit all of their mothers property, but they're really the only ones who can own property in town. Men who aren't married to a property-owning woman are treated more like tenant farmers/serfs. Women, then, don't need to engage in peasant work. They take to the arts, magic, politics, war. They're the noble class here, the knights and magistrates.

Men are peasants and property-less artisans. Even after a man has married and could potentially be trusted as a defender, he's still not as good as the women who were raised to be soldiers. All him and his friends did was some low-rate pillaging/raiding and really they only did it so they could get married and keep more of the products of their labor (granted, it now belongs entirely to his wife, but he gets more direct benefits from his work despite this).

Just my thought on how to make it work, logistically.

erikun
2013-10-26, 07:26 PM
It should also be pointed out, since it's technically accurate, that biological distinctions in strength and endurance are irrelevant in a D&D universe or something similar.

In a world where women can split a dragon's skull with a great axe, we can expect the physical capability of humans are going to surpass our own. Which to a degree makes sense, seeing as a species humanity would need to have survived horrors unmentionable pretty vigorously to achieve any sort of prolonged population growth much less demographic dominance.

Either you've got to limit yourself to mundane human potential while adjusting the stats for sex, or accede to the game's depiction of humanity. The idea that women wouldn't be able to equal men in physical labour would seem pretty specious when my theoretical female character could punch a hole through an Orc with a toothpick just using muscles and womanly charm.
We aren't just talking about D&D.

However, this point should not be understated. There is a physical difference between a male human and a female human, but nowhere near the difference between a male human and a three-foot, childlike male halfling. Or between a human and an eight-foot, hulking, winged, scaled, fire-breathing draconling.

If humanity is regularly fighting kobold or ogres, then the difference between men and women in the fighting force is going to be pretty insiginificant. Either your opponents will be much stronger than you, to where the strength of even the best trained man is no better than the average person, or yoru opponents will be much weaker than you, to the point where any competently trained person (male or female) will be able to handle themselves equally.

Morithias
2013-10-26, 07:46 PM
I've only read a few pages of this, but there seem to be a lot of complaints regarding why you'd only use half your army for defense, why men would be constantly raiding etc. My thought: Maybe men can't own property here. For the most part, they aren't citizens and have nothing to defend in the city. Not to say they wouldn't, they just aren't even trusted enough to defend because they aren't seen as having a vested interest in the city.

Perhaps "raiding" is something men periodically, as a means of obtaining wealth and building a dowry in order to convince a woman to marry him. Every generation usually has a "Great Raid" where men go out and try to impress women with what they can bring back. Maybe they pillage a city, maybe they throw wave after wave at a dragon to bring back his hoard, maybe they murder-hobo it up for a few months-it changes every generation.

Women, on the other hand, not only inherit all of their mothers property, but they're really the only ones who can own property in town. Men who aren't married to a property-owning woman are treated more like tenant farmers/serfs. Women, then, don't need to engage in peasant work. They take to the arts, magic, politics, war. They're the noble class here, the knights and magistrates.

Men are peasants and property-less artisans. Even after a man has married and could potentially be trusted as a defender, he's still not as good as the women who were raised to be soldiers. All him and his friends did was some low-rate pillaging/raiding and really they only did it so they could get married and keep more of the products of their labor (granted, it now belongs entirely to his wife, but he gets more direct benefits from his work despite this).

Just my thought on how to make it work, logistically.

Okay now for a thought experiment.

Flip the genders, and see if you still approve of the setting.

Where women aren't allowed to own property, and have to impress men or else they remain second class people needing to rent, with no possibly of political advancement and say in how the society is run outside of "go put your lives on the line to try and impress us."

Didn't think so.

The setting is sexist, whether the OP likes it or not. It's misandrist at worse, and misguided at best.

Worira
2013-10-26, 09:02 PM
Also, it's a revolution waiting to happen.

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-26, 10:20 PM
Okay now for a thought experiment.

Flip the genders, and see if you still approve of the setting.

Where women aren't allowed to own property, and have to impress men or else they remain second class people needing to rent, with no possibly of political advancement and say in how the society is run outside of "go put your lives on the line to try and impress us."

Didn't think so.

The setting is sexist, whether the OP likes it or not. It's misandrist at worse, and misguided at best.

Oh, I thought misandry was the point, as the OP said they weren't aiming for egalitarian and wanted it to portray women "very positively". Carry on then.

Serpentine
2013-10-26, 11:00 PM
Oh, I thought misandry was the point, as the OP said they weren't aiming for egalitarian and wanted it to portray women "very positively". Carry on then.
You don't portray women "very positively" by making Yet Anotuer Evil MatriarchyTM. We already have plenty of them.

Morithias
2013-10-26, 11:11 PM
You don't portray women "very positively" by making Yet Anotuer Evil MatriarchyTM. We already have plenty of them.

She's right.

Let me give you an example of a matriarchy, that me and 3 friends wrote for a campaign.

There is an amazon tribe, that is very militarist. Of course being Amazons they can only give birth to other Amazons...so they need the help of men from nearby kingdoms.

Now how do they do this? Do they kidnap men, rape them, and then murder them?

No.

They wander into the cities of the nearby kingdom...go into the taverns...

...and get drunk and have unprotected sex with the men with the promise that if they get pregnant they won't hold the men accountable.

No seriously. Think about this, guys who are single.

You live in a kingdom that shares borders with an amazon tribe, and it's well documented that they often come to the cities non-violently to get knocked up. A woman in a jungle outfit wanders into a bar you're at, flirts with you, plays a game of cards or two, and offers unprotected, no downsides, no consequences sex, for free. You screw her, and she leaves, only to return if she needs to get knocked up again, or you failed to knock her up.

Are you SERIOUSLY going to say NO to that? A chance for sex with a hot amazon woman with no downside?

The idea that amazons need to be violent to get pregnant from males is a joke to anyone who knows how the average hormonal young adult male thinks. They could wander onto a college frat party and get what they need with free booze too.

Bam, no call for sexism, because both parties benefit. The young adult college males get to sleep with hot women, and the amazons get to continue their tribe.

Call the whole "amazons rape men" thing misandrist. We decided to call it what it really was: STUPID. Anyone with a wisdom score over 13 could figure out there's a better way to get knocked up by a male without the hostility and murder. Even if you hate men, you don't need to be violent about it! That just leads to them hating you back!

Alberic Strein
2013-10-26, 11:55 PM
No seriously. Think about this, guys who are single.

You live in a kingdom that shares borders with an amazon tribe, and it's well documented that they often come to the cities non-violently to get knocked up. A woman in a jungle outfit wanders into a bar you're at, flirts with you, plays a game of cards or two, and offers unprotected, no downsides, no consequences sex, for free. You screw her, and she leaves, only to return if she needs to get knocked up again, or you failed to knock her up.

Are you SERIOUSLY going to say NO to that? A chance for sex with a hot amazon woman with no downside?


Why, yes. Yes I would say no to that.

Contrary to popular belief, yes, men say no to sex. Also, some don't like "no consequences sex" as a concept.

It does not disprove your point in any way however. While some would definitely say no, some would also say yes. So yeah, the Wis 13 amazon that walks into a bar and follows that strategy would definitely find someone to knock her up.

Maybe not the ones she would like to procreate with, though...

PS : If I happened to be sterile however, I would definitely accept. Just to screw with her.

Worira
2013-10-27, 12:29 AM
Well, yes, that would generally be the reason.

Mr Beer
2013-10-27, 12:30 AM
Contrary to popular belief, yes, men say no to sex. Also, some don't like "no consequences sex" as a concept.

Not every man says yes to sex in every circumstance.

But a hot girl offering consequence free sex to a selection of inebriated young men, when they know it is not some kind of trick or con, is not going to go home without having achieved her aim. That's not saying the first guy she makes the offer to will always say yes or that you personally would say yes...but she's not going to have to ask many guys.

Morithias
2013-10-27, 12:47 AM
Okay maybe I was a bit too forceful.

My point was, a young adult male, who is single, and hormonal, is probably not going to say no unless he's saving it for someone special or something.

I'm just saying, go to a college fraternity and do a survey. I'm betting a fair number would say yes.

Maybe not EVERY guy would say yes, but enough of them would.

Sapphire Guard
2013-10-27, 07:38 AM
...Why the need for Amazon lady to get drunk? She knows what she's there for anyway.

Also, I think obliging that lady might easily be resented by the local women, to the point where there's a social pressure against accepting that offer, or even a royal decree against it or something. Considering that


There is an amazon tribe, that is very militarist.

, the local kingdoms would be very leery of allowing a military rival to repopulate themselves when they control the means to it. It might even be considered treason. Not that that would stop everyone, but it's not nearly as cut and dry as you are suggesting.

What happens to the male children born as a result?

Themrys
2013-10-27, 08:02 AM
She's right.

Let me give you an example of a matriarchy, that me and 3 friends wrote for a campaign.

There is an amazon tribe, that is very militarist. Of course being Amazons they can only give birth to other Amazons...so they need the help of men from nearby kingdoms.

Now how do they do this? Do they kidnap men, rape them, and then murder them?

No.

They wander into the cities of the nearby kingdom...go into the taverns...

...and get drunk and have unprotected sex with the men with the promise that if they get pregnant they won't hold the men accountable.

No seriously. Think about this, guys who are single.

You live in a kingdom that shares borders with an amazon tribe, and it's well documented that they often come to the cities non-violently to get knocked up. A woman in a jungle outfit wanders into a bar you're at, flirts with you, plays a game of cards or two, and offers unprotected, no downsides, no consequences sex, for free. You screw her, and she leaves, only to return if she needs to get knocked up again, or you failed to knock her up.

Are you SERIOUSLY going to say NO to that? A chance for sex with a hot amazon woman with no downside?

The idea that amazons need to be violent to get pregnant from males is a joke to anyone who knows how the average hormonal young adult male thinks. They could wander onto a college frat party and get what they need with free booze too.

Bam, no call for sexism, because both parties benefit. The young adult college males get to sleep with hot women, and the amazons get to continue their tribe.

Call the whole "amazons rape men" thing misandrist. We decided to call it what it really was: STUPID. Anyone with a wisdom score over 13 could figure out there's a better way to get knocked up by a male without the hostility and murder. Even if you hate men, you don't need to be violent about it! That just leads to them hating you back!



Amazons who have no men of their own are not a matriarchy. They're a one-gender society. You can call it matriarchy because one woman rules over other women, like a mother, but you could just as well all it monarchy and it wouldn't change anything.

And what are the surrounding societies like? Given that there are Amazons, who hate men, so much that they don't even want to have men in their country, they probably have a reason for hating men. So ... let's assume the surrounding countries are patriarchies.

Why on earth do you think would Amazons go there, get drunk and let themselves be raped by the men they hate so much, and risk being killed or, even worse, infected with lethal diseases?

endoperez
2013-10-27, 08:23 AM
And what are the surrounding societies like? Given that there are Amazons, who hate men, so much that they don't even want to have men in their country, they probably have a reason for hating men. So ... let's assume the surrounding countries are patriarchies.

Why on earth do you think would Amazons go there, get drunk and let themselves be raped by the men they hate so much, and risk being killed or, even worse, infected with lethal diseases?

His amazons aren't man-hating. It's not mentioned in his description, he describes them as militaristic women in jungle outfits who only give birth to other Amazons.

We don't know why there are no men in Amazon country, but man-hating wasn't mentioned. Why do you assume amazons hate men?


Also, his basic assumption was that it'd all be consensual. No rape. Why do you assume it's rape?

Scow2
2013-10-27, 08:27 AM
Amazons who have no men of their own are not a matriarchy. They're a one-gender society. You can call it matriarchy because one woman rules over other women, like a mother, but you could just as well all it monarchy and it wouldn't change anything.

And what are the surrounding societies like? Given that there are Amazons, who hate men, so much that they don't even want to have men in their country, they probably have a reason for hating men. So ... let's assume the surrounding countries are patriarchies.

Why on earth do you think would Amazons go there, get drunk and let themselves be raped by the men they hate so much, and risk being killed or, even worse, infected with lethal diseases?

Where does "Hating Men" come into anything. They're just militant women. Perhaps they all have a biological quirk that prevents their eggs from accepting fertilization of any sperm carrying a "Y" chromosome - Still a one-gender society, though. They could have reasons for not wanting men integrated into their society for reasons beyond "We hate men"

Themrys
2013-10-27, 09:01 AM
His amazons aren't man-hating. It's not mentioned in his description, he describes them as militaristic women in jungle outfits who only give birth to other Amazons.

We don't know why there are no men in Amazon country, but man-hating wasn't mentioned. Why do you assume amazons hate men?


Also, his basic assumption was that it'd all be consensual. No rape. Why do you assume it's rape?

If they don't hate men, why don't they raise male babies? There has to be a reason for that.

If "getting drunk" is necessary to be able endure the sex, then it's not good sex. It's sex they don't really want to have. Which is dangerously close to rape, or, depending on the level of drunkenness, very certainly rape.

Spiryt
2013-10-27, 09:16 AM
If they don't hate men, why don't they raise male babies? There has to be a reason for that.

If "getting drunk" is necessary to be able endure the sex, then it's not good sex. It's sex they don't really want to have. Which is dangerously close to rape, or, depending on the level of drunkenness, very certainly rape.

There's absolutely nothing about not raising male babies and getting drunk being "necessary" in that post either. :smalltongue:

Just pointing out that drinking and erotic 'adventures' tend to naturally occur simultaneously, seeing that alcohol removes the restrains.

Jacob.Tyr
2013-10-27, 09:35 AM
There's absolutely nothing about not raising male babies and getting drunk being "necessary" in that post either. :smalltongue:

Just pointing out that drinking and erotic 'adventures' tend to naturally occur simultaneously, seeing that alcohol removes the restrains.

If drinking and sex "naturally" occur simultaneously, then your society has some issues with sexual repression or rape. Or probably both.

Edit: Unless you are a dwarf, and drinking is just happening constantly anyway. Then I guess drinking and pretty much anything else occur together.

endoperez
2013-10-27, 09:38 AM
If they don't hate men, why don't they raise male babies? There has to be a reason for that.

If "getting drunk" is necessary to be able endure the sex, then it's not good sex. It's sex they don't really want to have. Which is dangerously close to rape, or, depending on the level of drunkenness, very certainly rape.

They can't give birth to male babies.

being Amazons they can only give birth to other Amazons...

They could raise adopted male babies, but since they have no adult males in their land (at least not enough for a healthy population), they probably don't.


He stated that the amazons get drunk and have sex. You drew this connection between getting drunk to endure the sex. It might be what he meant, or not.

I guess it could be rape if they drink because they don't want to have sex. How would you change it so that it works better, without those implications?

Mr. Mask
2013-10-27, 09:51 AM
I don't think that would count as rape. The males they would be procreating with couldn't be charged with it. Your best bet would be to charge the amazons coercing their fellow amazons into having sex they didn't want. Most likely it would be a form of peer pressure, which isn't treated as a criminal offence in any case I know of.

The description from Morithias made the amazons sound more like they were having fun. Drunkenness and one-night-stands are a popular combination.

Spiryt
2013-10-27, 10:01 AM
If drinking and sex "naturally" occur simultaneously, then your society has some issues with sexual repression or rape. Or probably both.


Ethanol causes massive, and usually somehow pleasant chaff from the brain.

It usually tends to turn people way more daring, less reserved and more honest.

It makes them rather funny too, usually involuntarily.

All that promotes new acquittance.

Those are pretty obvious things, let's not bring rape into it somehow. :smalltongue:

Themrys
2013-10-27, 10:13 AM
I guess it could be rape if they drink because they don't want to have sex. How would you change it so that it works better, without those implications?

Not have them get drunk in the first place, obviously.
It doesn't make sense. Why would a woman, in order to get pregnant with a healthy baby, get drunk before choosing a man to have sex with? Why impair her judgement in so important a matter?

Allegedly, alcohol makes other people look more attractive to you ... which may be fine for someone who just wants to have sex and uses contraception, as long as they're not too drunk to give meaningful consent.

But it quickly ceases to make sense if you have sex for reproduction.

Mr. Mask
2013-10-27, 10:16 AM
If they don't want to, they won't. They're likely to get drunk with their chosen partner before procreation as a form of bonding (bonding through alcohol is terribly popular).

Themrys
2013-10-27, 10:22 AM
If they don't want to, they won't. They're likely to get drunk with their chosen partner before procreation as a form of bonding (bonding through alcohol is terribly popular).

I thought they were having one-night-stands. Why bond with someone you plan to never see again?

Also, as I said, if the drinking is optional, and only someting some Amazons choose to do, why mention it specifically?

Mr. Mask
2013-10-27, 10:30 AM
The second question would take a very deep analysis of human interaction to answer, which would take a long time. I suggest asking Morinthias why she posted it.

As for the first.. people generally do like to talk or have dinner before their one-night stands. Why they do that has another long-winded explanation, relating to human psychology and analysis of the cultures where one-night-stands are common.

Scow2
2013-10-27, 10:30 AM
Not have them get drunk in the first place, obviously.
It doesn't make sense. Why would a woman, in order to get pregnant with a healthy baby, get drunk before choosing a man to have sex with? Why impair her judgement?Because it's more fun to be drunk - it lowers social inhibitions, improving socialization and increasing the likelihood of finding someone they like, and having the experience be more pleasant for it. Since they're merely looking for one-night stands, they don't really care about the male beyond his ability to make them extremely happy over the next couple hours. She, like he, is looking for nothing more than a good time.

Also, given that the Amazons likely live in a militaristic hunter-gatherer society in the military, their forays into civilization are the best times for them to get drunk. It's fun putting aside social inhibitions, concerns, worries, better judgement, and other stuff that gets in the way of a good time.


I thought they were having one-night-stands. Why bond with someone you plan to never see again?You need to bond enough to know whether or not you want to spend the next hour/evening/morning with the person, and they can give optimal results.


Also, as I said, if the drinking is optional, and only something some Amazons choose to do, why mention it specifically?Because drinking is a fun, unique experience that lends itself well to making questionable decisions that bring excitement and adventure to one's life. It's not like a jungle hunter-gatherer society would have brewers of its own, so they need to get their booze while in town.

tasw
2013-10-27, 11:35 AM
Something is being forgotten in the one night stand debate here... which is a bizarre thing to have to say on a gaming board..... but anyway sex isnt a 100% proposition. Its not like a woman gets pregnant every single time she has unprotected sex.

Its likely this sort of arrangement would take several meetings sometimes. So yeah, do some bonding.

Plus assuming the Amazon wants more then one child and she's already found a male halfway decent who gets the job done to her... satisfaction. Why start the search all over again next time?

I can see a society like this actually evolving more having lots of the equivalent of long distance relationships, or since he stated they dont hate men, merely live separate a friends with benefits type of deal.

Over a long period of time two cultures interacting like this could become pretty symbiotic in a lot of weird ways.

Morithias
2013-10-27, 11:53 AM
My point was.

The idea behind most matriarchies, amazons societies, and other such society always falls to the same ideas.

No one ever seems to write such a society where they act anything resembling an actual society. They always have to create all kinds of stupid rules as justifications for why the society is run that way. Rules that often DON'T MAKE SENSE.

As I've stated in the Rosewood thread, no one gives a crap most of the rulers in Rosewood are female. I've stated both the in-universe (random chance), and out-universe (DM is Lazy), reasons and everyone seems to accept it.

Maybe we'd get better matriarchies and female-run societies, if we stopped trying to come up with insane ways to justify it, and just let it be part of the setting.

warty goblin
2013-10-27, 12:24 PM
My point was.

The idea behind most matriarchies, amazons societies, and other such society always falls to the same ideas.

No one ever seems to write such a society where they act anything resembling an actual society. They always have to create all kinds of stupid rules as justifications for why the society is run that way. Rules that often DON'T MAKE SENSE.

Have you looked at actual societies recently? 'Cause run by stupid rules that don't make sense is a pretty good first order approximation.

Scow2
2013-10-27, 12:36 PM
While this is off-topic... the easiest way to create a truly egalitarian culture without relying on fantastic birth control is not to use Humans, but instead Dwarves or Elves.

Elves have such long lives, low birthrates, and small communities that dealing with pregnancy and reproduction isn't something in need of being socially institutionalized. That's all there really is to it. And, just because their biology (Like that of cats) is smarter than humans, they don't have to worry about periods either.

Dwarves, on the other hand, are quite an interesting situation. Even without trying to say all dwarves look the same (eg. Ladies have Beards), the dwarves are largely not bothered by the trouble of pregnancy/childbirth except for the Move Action required to give birth (An advantage dwarves have over humans), and few minutes each day to feed the child until it's capable of drinking from a tankard like everyone else. A female dwarf is never obviously pregnant, nor hindered by said pregnancy - The female dwarf's womb and beer gut take up the same space, and the latter nourishes the growing fetus, shrinking at the same rate as the former grows. Dwarf children aren't as mother-dependent for as long as human children are - due to their smaller, stockier frames, they're on their feet faster than stupidly-tall and top-heavy humans are. The most a dwarf female might need to take off is a few hours to care for the baby, which can be done during the universally-mandated drinking hours in dwarf culture. As for repopulation... dwarves are strictly monogamous, and normally have equal numbers of males and females. If you get all your males killed in battle, an equal number of females are incapable of reproducing. Males and females have to die off at similar rates to keep population growth at optimal efficiency, so you need the military to be 50/50 male and female ratios.


Have you looked at actual societies recently? 'Cause run by stupid rules that don't make sense is a pretty good first order approximation.It's because society is composed of and run by humans, not dwarves or anthropomorphic cat people, I tell ya!

Themrys
2013-10-27, 12:37 PM
Maybe we'd get better matriarchies and female-run societies, if we stopped trying to come up with insane ways to justify it, and just let it be part of the setting.

What's what I do. And I'm quite happy with my matriarchy. :smallsmile:
I think I even explained it in some of those threads.

People did complain that I didn't justify it but I don't really care.

It does, of course, have stupid rules. It would just not be a realistic human society without stupid rules. But those rules are only in-universe, they're not there to justify why there is a matriarchy.

warty goblin
2013-10-27, 01:28 PM
What's what I do. And I'm quite happy with my matriarchy. :smallsmile:
I think I even explained it in some of those threads.

People did complain that I didn't justify it but I don't really care.


Can I just take a moment to say I am extremely appreciative whenever somebody does something in fantasy without excessive justification? I'll probably never actually encounter your material, but thanks nonetheless.

Sapphire Guard
2013-10-27, 01:40 PM
Matriarchies don't necessarily need justification to exist. If I was playing in your setting, I wouldn't care. I don't question the roles when I'm reading or playing in a matriarchal setting. But when you bring them up as examples in a thread specifically about how gender roles can realistically work...

Mr. Mask
2013-10-27, 01:55 PM
Goblin: Justifying fantasy features is a lot of fun. The problem is that so many justifications are so very terrible.

warty goblin
2013-10-27, 02:01 PM
Goblin: Justifying fantasy features is a lot of fun. The problem is that so many justifications are so very terrible.

Let's just agree to disagree on this one. I find the current fixation with every aspect of fantasy needing a justification to be at best tedious to the point of extremity, at worst seriously limiting and reductive in the worst possible way.

Themrys
2013-10-27, 02:07 PM
Goblin: Justifying fantasy features is a lot of fun. The problem is that so many justifications are so very terrible.

I think you shouldn't justify for the sake of justification.

Pratchett, for example, doesn't justify the fact that his setting is a disc on a giant turtle. It just is like that, and he expects his readers to believe it. He does, however, explain why his barbarian heroes are elderly people - he actually has a fun explanation for that.

Mr. Mask
2013-10-27, 02:29 PM
Terry is a good example of justification. Even writing a parody/comedy fantasy series, he justifies important elements of the story.

Libertad
2013-10-27, 02:47 PM
Okay maybe I was a bit too forceful.

My point was, a young adult male, who is single, and hormonal, is probably not going to say no unless he's saving it for someone special or something.

I'm just saying, go to a college fraternity and do a survey. I'm betting a fair number would say yes.

Maybe not EVERY guy would say yes, but enough of them would.

No, there are still many reasons men, even young single men, might turn the offer down. What if he doesn't find the person attractive, or worries that they might have STDs, or if neither of them has birth control? Or if they're already in a relationship? Or if the person offering sex has a very jealous/violent significant other? There are many cases where a man might be uncomfortable with sex.

Scow2
2013-10-27, 02:59 PM
No, there are still many reasons men, even young single men, might turn the offer down. What if he doesn't find the person attractive, or worries that they might have STDs, or if neither of them has birth control? Or if they're already in a relationship? Or if the person offering sex has a very jealous/violent significant other? There are many cases where a man might be uncomfortable with sex.Well, the only case in the given situation that would apply is "What if she has STDs?" While superior Amazon physiology may be immune to mundane diseases, they might still be carriers.

Mr. Mask
2013-10-27, 03:03 PM
More men would say no than given credit. Nevertheless there would be more than enough men to fulfil the Amazons' needs under expected circumstances.

Mr Beer
2013-10-27, 03:30 PM
I don't know why we're still arguing about Morithias's setting, it's not that men never say no to sex, it's that it's extremely easy for women to get laid in the scenario proposed and certainly a lot easier than abducting men because evil matriarchy.

Lorsa
2013-10-27, 04:48 PM
Oh oh! Before we move on, wouldn't it be more beneficial to invite men with good genes to live with the amazons, give them 5-10 women each to have sex with (for genetic diversity) and skip the random strangers bit? I think that's how I would do it if I was in charge of a female-only society.

warty goblin
2013-10-27, 05:08 PM
Oh oh! Before we move on, wouldn't it be more beneficial to invite men with good genes to live with the amazons, give them 5-10 women each to have sex with (for genetic diversity) and skip the random strangers bit? I think that's how I would do it if I was in charge of a female-only society.

Unless these are Totalitarian Amazons*, nobody's in charge of society at the level of engineering who boinks whom. Even in the case of Totalitarian Amazons, unless the Totalitarian Queen of the Amazons is in fact a straight dude with some major entitlement issues, I doubt very much that she'd go around assigning men their own personal harems. One of the points of a female-run society is that it isn't set up as a way for a small group of men to get maximum amounts of ass. There's plenty of examples of that in plain old patriarchy.



*Which is just totes unrealistic. Everybody knows Amazons live in social democracies with a figure-head ruler elected through single combat.

Scow2
2013-10-27, 06:21 PM
Oh oh! Before we move on, wouldn't it be more beneficial to invite men with good genes to live with the amazons, give them 5-10 women each to have sex with (for genetic diversity) and skip the random strangers bit? I think that's how I would do it if I was in charge of a female-only society.Which is why we're glad you're not in charge of a female-only society. While there might be a few males that live with the Amazons (Merchants and liasons mostly - they're all seen as "Outsiders", though. They don't lack citizenship because they're male, though - they lack citizenship because they're not related to any of the Amazons.)

One of the benefits of the "Hook up in bars with random strangers" is the female gets to choose from multiple prospective males, in quantities as large as they can get them to agree, while the odds of any one amazon getting the same guy are extremely low to prevent inbreeding possibilities further down the line. You get more genetic diversity from having 5-10 males per Amazon than 5-10 Amazons per male.

Mr Beer
2013-10-27, 06:36 PM
Oh oh! Before we move on, wouldn't it be more beneficial to invite men with good genes to live with the amazons, give them 5-10 women each to have sex with (for genetic diversity) and skip the random strangers bit? I think that's how I would do it if I was in charge of a female-only society.

I guess it depends on whether the Amazons enjoy fun sex with men or only use them as sperm donors. If it's for impregnation purposes only, that ratio might work reasonably well, otherwise probably not.

Although, the Amazons probably have periods in sync? So they're likely all fertile at the same time. Could be death by snu snu for the poor males and then we're to evil matriarchy.

Morithias
2013-10-27, 06:58 PM
No, there are still many reasons men, even young single men, might turn the offer down. 1. What if he doesn't find the person attractive, or 2. worries that they might have STDs, or 3. if neither of them has birth control? 4. Or if they're already in a relationship? 5. Or if the person offering sex has a very jealous/violent significant other? There are many cases where a man might be uncomfortable with sex.

1. Okay I'll give you that one.
2. When is the last time you have EVER seen a DM use an STD in a setting? I allow the bloody Book of Erotic Fantasy in my campaigns, and even I don't use those rules!
3. Considering she is TRYING to get pregnant, that's a moot point.
4. Again I said single. Single College Frat party.
5. Considering the amazon's in the settings relationships with men were very casual, significant other isn't really a problem, and even if she was in a relationship with another amazon, there's the whole "Keeping the race alive" thing.

Lord Vukodlak
2013-10-28, 05:06 AM
All this talk of Amazons reminds me, back in 2nd edition I had this Elven ranger who over the course of one adventure was knocked out twice before getting the chance to attack and missed another fight while getting his armor on.
He ended up captured by Amazons... he was a very happy camper.


The reason is mostly that I have not found any way to have that type of egalitarianism with a nuclear family that is not also associated with a population freefall in a setting that is dependent on a growing population.

The answer then is to abandon the nuclear family and submit to the wisdom of the Qun. Under the Qun children are sent to be raised by the Tamassrans whose job is evaluated, and assigned a job based on the child's aptitude. (they also determine who breeds with who) But even if you were breed to be a solider if your show yourself to be more intellectual they'll find a more suitable possession for you.

Themrys
2013-10-28, 06:15 AM
Unless these are Totalitarian Amazons*, nobody's in charge of society at the level of engineering who boinks whom. Even in the case of Totalitarian Amazons, unless the Totalitarian Queen of the Amazons is in fact a straight dude with some major entitlement issues, I doubt very much that she'd go around assigning men their own personal harems. One of the points of a female-run society is that it isn't set up as a way for a small group of men to get maximum amounts of ass. There's plenty of examples of that in plain old patriarchy.



*Which is just totes unrealistic. Everybody knows Amazons live in social democracies with a figure-head ruler elected through single combat.

Yup. Attractive men might get invited into Amazon country, because, why not have them nearby? But they'd not get harems. They would not be given women, because that is patriarchy.

They'd be given a place to live and would have as many visitors as they can attract with their good looks and behaviour, more likely.
After, of course, being tested for STDs and psychopathy, and stuff. If I were Amazon Queen. Hey, that's fun. Someone needs to turn this into a game: "You're the Queen of the Amazons - rule wisely, or be killed by your unhappy subjects"

Lorsa
2013-10-28, 06:16 AM
Unless these are Totalitarian Amazons*, nobody's in charge of society at the level of engineering who boinks whom. Even in the case of Totalitarian Amazons, unless the Totalitarian Queen of the Amazons is in fact a straight dude with some major entitlement issues, I doubt very much that she'd go around assigning men their own personal harems. One of the points of a female-run society is that it isn't set up as a way for a small group of men to get maximum amounts of ass. There's plenty of examples of that in plain old patriarchy.



*Which is just totes unrealistic. Everybody knows Amazons live in social democracies with a figure-head ruler elected through single combat.

Obviously there wouldn't be some "assigning" or something like that. Every amazon would still get to choose a prospective mate but instead of getting random genes found in a bar you'd be more careful with who gets to father more amazons. Or maybe genetics doesn't really work the same and whatever the state of the father doesn't affect the strength of the child amazon at all?

Mr. Mask
2013-10-28, 06:52 AM
Assigning could happen. We don't have enough details on the outlook of this society to say. If they're egalitarian, or if they have a strong caste system, and whether they hate men or not.

warty goblin
2013-10-28, 08:33 AM
Yup. Attractive men might get invited into Amazon country, because, why not have them nearby? But they'd not get harems. They would not be given women, because that is patriarchy.

Exactly. If anything it would work the other way 'round. Hey, they've gotta do something with all those prisoners captured in battle.

Either that, or simply host a lot of athletic events. It's not like you need to get all top-down organized about getting people to have sex after all, you really just need to have folks in roughly the same vicinity for a while.


They'd be given a place to live and would have as many visitors as they can attract with their good looks and behaviour, more likely.
After, of course, being tested for STDs and psychopathy, and stuff. If I were Amazon Queen. Hey, that's fun. Someone needs to turn this into a game: "You're the Queen of the Amazons - rule wisely, or be killed by your unhappy subjects"
Just invite promising warriors to live and train with the Amazons for a year. It'd be an honor for the young men of nearby nations, keep the Amazons abreast of developments abroad, and form the critical inter-culture bonds that keep the peace. The absolute buckets of sex that would happen is really just a fringe benefit, and nobody has to actually have 'prostitute' on their work visa.

I'd figure you could also have official consorts, who have long term residence, simply because some people are going to want to settle down.

Lord Vukodlak
2013-10-28, 09:49 AM
——————
I'm reminded of this bit of dialog from Star Trek

TROI: Mintakan women precede their mates. It's a signal to other women.

RIKER: "This man's taken; get your own?"

TROI "Not precisely... More like, "if you want his services, I'm the one to negotiate with."

RIKER "What kinds of "services?"

TROI "All kinds."

RIKER "Ah. They are a sensible race."

AMFV
2013-10-28, 12:56 PM
The problem is that it is still tantamount to prostitution and the society is extremely sexist. Judging this we must remember that things change, this is sexist on the women are lustful scale, while we don't see that often, it is still a sexist viewpoint. It is sexist towards men in that it implies that they would want to be a part of this arrangement and would prefer no part in raising their children.

These are dangerous assumptions. Additionally we have women being stereotyped as aggressive and cold towards men, another stereotype, we need to be careful with this sort of thing because we inherently make additional stereotypes and validate them, if our goal is to avoid them.

Narren
2013-10-28, 02:02 PM
The problem is that it is still tantamount to prostitution and the society is extremely sexist. Judging this we must remember that things change, this is sexist on the women are lustful scale, while we don't see that often, it is still a sexist viewpoint.

I didn't see it so much as lustful (though several scenarios were put forth, so we may be on different pages) as utilitarian. They need mates to repopulate. Men are not a part of their culture, so the willing ones are brought in for this service. Some of the women may enjoy the arrangement, others may see it was a necessity to becoming pregnant. As long as all are willing participants, I don't see the issue.


It is sexist towards men in that it implies that they would want to be a part of this arrangement and would prefer no part in raising their children.

For some men, this is true. For others (those not participating in the arrangement) it is not true. Just because some men feel a certain way does not mean that all do, and does not equal sexist.


These are dangerous assumptions. Additionally we have women being stereotyped as aggressive and cold towards men, another stereotype, we need to be careful with this sort of thing because we inherently make additional stereotypes and validate them, if our goal is to avoid them.

The only way to avoid stereotypes in all-female society is to offer no societal norms. Anything they do could be construed as a stereotype.

But I don't think any societal norms in a particular all-female society should speak for the gender as a whole. It's what women do in one specific society. In both fantasy and real life (let's avoid RL examples, though, for the sake of forum rules) there are numerous cultures with a wide array of cultural norms and values. Just because the men and/or women (or elderly, children, etc) of Culture A feel and act a certain way does not mean it represents the men, women, elderly, children, or whatever of the rest of the world.

AMFV
2013-10-28, 02:30 PM
I didn't see it so much as lustful (though several scenarios were put forth, so we may be on different pages) as utilitarian. They need mates to repopulate. Men are not a part of their culture, so the willing ones are brought in for this service. Some of the women may enjoy the arrangement, others may see it was a necessity to becoming pregnant. As long as all are willing participants, I don't see the issue.



For some men, this is true. For others (those not participating in the arrangement) it is not true. Just because some men feel a certain way does not mean that all do, and does not equal sexist.



The only way to avoid stereotypes in all-female society is to offer no societal norms. Anything they do could be construed as a stereotype.

But I don't think any societal norms in a particular all-female society should speak for the gender as a whole. It's what women do in one specific society. In both fantasy and real life (let's avoid RL examples, though, for the sake of forum rules) there are numerous cultures with a wide array of cultural norms and values. Just because the men and/or women (or elderly, children, etc) of Culture A feel and act a certain way does not mean it represents the men, women, elderly, children, or whatever of the rest of the world.

I realize that the Amazons are not all women in the setting, I'm merely pointing out that those societal norms could easily be interpreted by an outside observer as being extremely sexist. The problem is that it does fit with several sexist stereotypes already.

In the first part we have the fact that women who are interested in things that are typically perceived as being a part of the men's sphere they must totally be alienated from men. The women who are warriors are completely separate from all men, in fact this is a problem in the original setting presented as well.

The second problem, is that we trade using one gender for using another, while the men may be amicable to that arrangement, it doesn't make it non-sexist, or non-discriminatory. Since the stated goal is to produce a non-sexist setting then you can't have that.

As an aside, I have no problem with sexism existing in a setting, but if your stated goal is to remove it, then this simply does not achieve the stated goals.

Narren
2013-10-28, 02:35 PM
I realize that the Amazons are not all women in the setting, I'm merely pointing out that those societal norms could easily be interpreted by an outside observer as being extremely sexist. The problem is that it does fit with several sexist stereotypes already.

In the first part we have the fact that women who are interested in things that are typically perceived as being a part of the men's sphere they must totally be alienated from men. The women who are warriors are completely separate from all men, in fact this is a problem in the original setting presented as well.

The second problem, is that we trade using one gender for using another, while the men may be amicable to that arrangement, it doesn't make it non-sexist, or non-discriminatory. Since the stated goal is to produce a non-sexist setting then you can't have that.

As an aside, I have no problem with sexism existing in a setting, but if your stated goal is to remove it, then this simply does not achieve the stated goals.

I had thought the amazon setting was a product of someone else, not the OP.

In any event, you're correct. Gender issues will result when a setting places so much emphasis on separate gender roles. The simplest solution to get rid of sexism in a fantasy setting is to....get rid of sexism. It doesn't have to be an inherent issue in a fantasy culture, and it doesn't require any kind of special explanation.

JusticeZero
2013-10-28, 02:45 PM
The specific issue is, as said, that if the underlying processes do not mesh passably with the depiction of the culture, then a lot of other things break down here and there. It's okay to have a setting depicted in a decently egalitarian way if and only if the society has had things which would damage egalitarianism are addressed, otherwise the society becomes less believable; average players may not notice, but if all of your friends are anthropologists, sociologists, economists, et cetera, one kind've has to pay more attention to these things.

AMFV
2013-10-28, 02:48 PM
I had thought the amazon setting was a product of someone else, not the OP.

In any event, you're correct. Gender issues will result when a setting places so much emphasis on separate gender roles. The simplest solution to get rid of sexism in a fantasy setting is to....get rid of sexism. It doesn't have to be an inherent issue in a fantasy culture, and it doesn't require any kind of special explanation.

It was, I was trying to indicate that the separation is a problem even in the OP's setting, also trying to get us back on track, since we keep getting sidetracked. Sorry if I wasn't able to communicate that as well as I was attempting to.


The specific issue is, as said, that if the underlying processes do not mesh passably with the depiction of the culture, then a lot of other things break down here and there. It's okay to have a setting depicted in a decently egalitarian way if and only if the society has had things which would damage egalitarianism are addressed, otherwise the society becomes less believable; average players may not notice, but if all of your friends are anthropologists, sociologists, economists, et cetera, one kind've has to pay more attention to these things.

That is a fair point, and there isn't that much that can be said against that. I guess to figure out how things are going we need to know if any alterations have been made, which advice have you found helpful or not helpful?

If we know this we can improve our suggestions and avoid repeating things that were already not helpful.

PersonMan
2013-10-28, 02:54 PM
The second problem, is that we trade using one gender for using another

See, this is something that confuses me.

I, personally, see 'using' someone as as, well, using them for your own benefit, without regard for their own benefit, and that being the focus of your interaction. It's negative.

However, if you have two groups that do something like the cultural exchange-training thing mentioned, how is that 'using'? It's beneficial for both sides - heck, even the 'Amazon goes into a bar and she and a guy find a room' is.

Is it 'using' if both sides benefit and want it? If so, then your definition is such that 'using' really shouldn't be a bad thing.

JusticeZero
2013-10-28, 02:59 PM
Honestly, the whole thing is useful either for this setting or a different one. I'm not so sure about the Amazons though. I've never been a fan of severe matriarchies, any more than I like severe patriarchies. Plus, the framing of wanting bars seemed a bit forced. There is also the issues of gender power in an Amazonian culture based on rarity that are concerning.

That said, I think people are getting a lot of utility out of the digressions, and i'm not so far seeing a collapse into the madness I see in other discussions, so i'm fine with that.

The way I have defined the setting so far does not restrict males from gaining power in cities, only from taking the specific defensive role. If a general returns covered in gold and success, they should be able to return and be elevated to a powerful position, but the walls will still be watched by the ladies. That was brought up earlier. The setting is primarily a monoculture, and I have no illusions that ANY social form is permanent, so long as it is sufficiantly stable to not spontaneously collapse.

I'll likely use one of the non-gendered structures into a race elsewhere. A non-gendered race really is easy, but it's also a complete dodge, and a lot of players have a hard time getting into such a role.

AMFV
2013-10-28, 04:24 PM
See, this is something that confuses me.

I, personally, see 'using' someone as as, well, using them for your own benefit, without regard for their own benefit, and that being the focus of your interaction. It's negative.

However, if you have two groups that do something like the cultural exchange-training thing mentioned, how is that 'using'? It's beneficial for both sides - heck, even the 'Amazon goes into a bar and she and a guy find a room' is.

Is it 'using' if both sides benefit and want it? If so, then your definition is such that 'using' really shouldn't be a bad thing.

Well if the point of having the men around is primarily just the one thing, then it is using. Even if there are positive results from it for both parties.

In the Amazon scenario the focus of the interaction is using the man to produce children without any care for his own benefit. For a point of contention if I postulated a setting that was exclusively male where women were just kept around for babymaking purposes, most people would immediately decry it as being horribly sexist. The only reason that this is not is the stereotype that men are unable to control their lustful urges, because that's required it is fairly a sexist viewpoint.

PersonMan
2013-10-28, 04:55 PM
In the Amazon scenario the focus of the interaction is using the man to produce children without any care for his own benefit. For a point of contention if I postulated a setting that was exclusively male where women were just kept around for babymaking purposes, most people would immediately decry it as being horribly sexist. The only reason that this is not is the stereotype that men are unable to control their lustful urges, because that's required it is fairly a sexist viewpoint.

Emphasis mine.

There is an important, and huge, difference between 'society in a setting' and 'a setting'. A society of women who only give birth to women who have regular, but limited contact to the outside world and who mainly do so by finding men to continue their line with works. A setting of only women where the men are only there to make babies? Doesn't really work.

Lorsa
2013-10-28, 06:30 PM
Yup. Attractive men might get invited into Amazon country, because, why not have them nearby? But they'd not get harems. They would not be given women, because that is patriarchy.

I think your definition of patriarchy is different than mine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy).


They'd be given a place to live and would have as many visitors as they can attract with their good looks and behaviour, more likely.

Well, that's kind of what I meant, just assumed there'd be more amazons than men living with them and that due to genetic diversity there should be some limit to how many get to mate with the same man. Although given that every new generation of amazons will need new males that might not actually be a huge deal.

warty goblin
2013-10-28, 07:24 PM
Well if the point of having the men around is primarily just the one thing, then it is using. Even if there are positive results from it for both parties.

In the Amazon scenario the focus of the interaction is using the man to produce children without any care for his own benefit. For a point of contention if I postulated a setting that was exclusively male where women were just kept around for babymaking purposes, most people would immediately decry it as being horribly sexist. The only reason that this is not is the stereotype that men are unable to control their lustful urges, because that's required it is fairly a sexist viewpoint.

I'm not going to extend the realm of things that bother me to people entering into voluntary, non-coercive arrangements with each other in an essentially equal power dynamic without explicitly investing in the other party's benefit. Want to visit Amazonland and get screwed six ways from Sunday by ladies who have their own agenda? Fine, go for it. That not your thing? Great, stay home. Or go and keep it in your pants all year.

And there's at least as much opportunity for Amazonian lust here.

Narren
2013-10-28, 08:23 PM
Well if the point of having the men around is primarily just the one thing, then it is using. Even if there are positive results from it for both parties.

In the Amazon scenario the focus of the interaction is using the man to produce children without any care for his own benefit. For a point of contention if I postulated a setting that was exclusively male where women were just kept around for babymaking purposes, most people would immediately decry it as being horribly sexist. The only reason that this is not is the stereotype that men are unable to control their lustful urges, because that's required it is fairly a sexist viewpoint.

By that definition the majority of human interaction is "using." I bought a hamburger today. The success of the restaurant is not my primary concern in life. The owner of that restaurant is not super concerned that I wanted a hamburger. But our interaction ended with me getting a burger and him getting money, which was the intended goal that we both had. Does that mean that one of us used the other in a negative manner?

AMFV
2013-10-28, 09:44 PM
By that definition the majority of human interaction is "using." I bought a hamburger today. The success of the restaurant is not my primary concern in life. The owner of that restaurant is not super concerned that I wanted a hamburger. But our interaction ended with me getting a burger and him getting money, which was the intended goal that we both had. Does that mean that one of us used the other in a negative manner?

Yes, you were using the hamburger people to feed your hunger. But you weren't in a sexual relationship with them. Call me old fashioned but in any kind of relationship involving children and sex I have a harsher definition of using. You would be hard-pressed to argue that the same societal standards of courtesy and decorum apply to complete strangers.

Furthermore, in the course of this thread the using is important because it is gender based. The Amazons aren't using the men because they are good at making hamburgers or any actual task but simply because they are men.


I'm not going to extend the realm of things that bother me to people entering into voluntary, non-coercive arrangements with each other in an essentially equal power dynamic without explicitly investing in the other party's benefit. Want to visit Amazonland and get screwed six ways from Sunday by ladies who have their own agenda? Fine, go for it. That not your thing? Great, stay home. Or go and keep it in your pants all year.

And there's at least as much opportunity for Amazonian lust here.

I'm not bothered by people entering into sexual relationships, but this is a non-equal relationship. To be honest, in real life, that doesn't bother me either here, but we are here to evaluate something based on certain criteria. If we are introducing a non-equal relationship between men and women, we are introducing something sexist. Certainly the interest in children at least is a stark inequality, the men can't care for their progeny, at all. This is sexist, while maybe not immoral, we're not here to debate the morality of one-night stands or amazonian Polyandry, we're here to discuss if that is sexist, and I posit that it is significantly so.

warty goblin
2013-10-28, 09:57 PM
Furthermore, in the course of this thread the using is important because it is gender based. The Amazons aren't using the men because they are good at making hamburgers or any actual task but simply because they are men.

I can't speak for Amazons here, but I'd figure if selecting somebody from some good old fashioned NSA sex, there would in fact be some criteria to be met.


I'm not bothered by people entering into sexual relationships, but this is a non-equal relationship. To be honest, in real life, that doesn't bother me either here, but we are here to evaluate something based on certain criteria. If we are introducing a non-equal relationship between men and women, we are introducing something sexist. Certainly the interest in children at least is a stark inequality, the men can't care for their progeny, at all. This is sexist, while maybe not immoral, we're not here to debate the morality of one-night stands or amazonian Polyandry, we're here to discuss if that is sexist, and I posit that it is significantly so.
And again, if the men in question want to care for their children, they can certainly enter into that sort of relationship. This is no more unequal than a sperm donor or surrogate mother. Or closed adoption, for that matter.

AMFV
2013-10-28, 10:44 PM
I can't speak for Amazons here, but I'd figure if selecting somebody from some good old fashioned NSA sex, there would in fact be some criteria to be met.


And again, if the men in question want to care for their children, they can certainly enter into that sort of relationship. This is no more unequal than a sperm donor or surrogate mother. Or closed adoption, for that matter.

I should note that you are making assumptions on the setting that are actually stated in the setting. It is possible that it is a closed adoption or sperm donor type setting. However there are significant issues even with those type of situations, legally and morally, those aren't clear-cut simple situations in real life. Again do you disagree that if I presented the opposite scenario, with warlike men capturing women and impregnating them, then sending them away when that was done, it would be extremely sexist, by most reasonable definitions. If something is sexist one way it should be considered sexist the other way.

We have no proof that men can be involved in raising their children, rather we have the opposite sort of scenario, where the Amazons wouldn't want that kind of cultural pollution.

Morithias
2013-10-28, 11:26 PM
Furthermore, in the course of this thread the using is important because it is gender based. The Amazons aren't using the men because they are good at making hamburgers or any actual task but simply because they are men.



No duh.

Have you ever seen two women get each other pregnant? Getting pregnant and giving birth isn't some kind of 50/50 "It'll either happen or it won't" type of thing, there are certain requirements. Namely that you need two people with certain biological functions.

Question

Has anyone here played Mass Effect?

Do you consider the Asari "sexist"? Cause that's basically what these Amazons are, just fantasy instead of sci-fi. An all female race that breeds with other races to continue their races existence.

erikun
2013-10-28, 11:36 PM
While I don't think that the Amazons presented here is necessarily a problem, I think that the concept behind them might pose a problem if presented at a table. After all, we're talking about a species/magically-imposed society who is either all-female, or does something unpleasant with the male portion of their childhood. Either way, I think that we'd want to think about how and why they would be presented at the table as-is so that it comes off as interesting, rather than "The town of hot warrior chicks."

I'm thinking that the most interesting cause would be some sort of curse or magic in the area that only produces female babies. As such, the people living there choose to do so. They don't have a problem with men per se, but the only people who have been living there their whole lifetime are women, so it doesn't make sense to put a bunch of foreigners in control of the city.

AMFV
2013-10-29, 12:04 AM
No duh.

Have you ever seen two women get each other pregnant? Getting pregnant and giving birth isn't some kind of 50/50 "It'll either happen or it won't" type of thing, there are certain requirements. Namely that you need two people with certain biological functions.

Question

Has anyone here played Mass Effect?

Do you consider the Asari "sexist"? Cause that's basically what these Amazons are, just fantasy instead of sci-fi. An all female race that breeds with other races to continue their races existence.

In nonhuman species even on Earth, Parthenogenesis is a thing. In fact if you used that you could take care of the one glaring conceptual problem.

Many people do consider the Asari sexist, as was evidenced by the earlier spinoff thread about them from the Races thread.

I personally have no problem with this society, but it is not a non-sexist society, in fact it may be more sexist than our own current story.

Worira
2013-10-29, 12:48 AM
I should note that you are making assumptions on the setting that are actually stated in the setting. It is possible that it is a closed adoption or sperm donor type setting. However there are significant issues even with those type of situations, legally and morally, those aren't clear-cut simple situations in real life. Again do you disagree that if I presented the opposite scenario, with warlike men capturing women and impregnating them, then sending them away when that was done, it would be extremely sexist, by most reasonable definitions. If something is sexist one way it should be considered sexist the other way.

We have no proof that men can be involved in raising their children, rather we have the opposite sort of scenario, where the Amazons wouldn't want that kind of cultural pollution.

Except there's no capturing going on. That's kind of a key detail.

AMFV
2013-10-29, 01:13 AM
Except there's no capturing going on. That's kind of a key detail.

It's a partial detail but again not the only key detail. I'm sorry but a society where men use women for reproductive purposes only is generally viewed as a sexist one. For example Victorian England, Afghanistan. Just because there is no nine month investment on the part of the men it's a problem, if your goal is to avoid a sexist society then that's not the way to go.

As I have pointed out Parthenogenesis is as an option, that would fix most of perceived issues with this setting. There are issues with using men only for that purpose, but with parthenogenesis you could completely work around that. I mean we've already shown that the amazons aren't exactly regular people, on account of the no-male babies, and the parthenogenesis could fix that as well.

Scow2
2013-10-29, 08:29 AM
I should note that you are making assumptions on the setting that are actually stated in the setting. It is possible that it is a closed adoption or sperm donor type setting. However there are significant issues even with those type of situations, legally and morally, those aren't clear-cut simple situations in real life. Again do you disagree that if I presented the opposite scenario, with warlike men capturing women and impregnating them, then sending them away when that was done, it would be extremely sexist, by most reasonable definitions. If something is sexist one way it should be considered sexist the other way.Of course it's more sexist and horrific: The Warlike men are capturing, not inviting, the women, and then leaving the women to clean up the mess because the females can't impregnate the males.

Now, if we have a tribe of feral Chippendales/Disciples of the MYMCSL (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE), we might be able to make something a bit more equitable.

Themrys
2013-10-29, 08:36 AM
It's a partial detail but again not the only key detail. I'm sorry but a society where men use women for reproductive purposes only is generally viewed as a sexist one. For example Victorian England, Afghanistan. Just because there is no nine month investment on the part of the men it's a problem, if your goal is to avoid a sexist society then that's not the way to go.



That nine month investment because of which men who use women for reproductive purposes are rapists and slave-holders is very, very important, and you cannot act as if it didn't exist.

Women who "use" men for reproductive purposes by having consensual sex with them is not the same as slavery. It just isn't, and no matter how long you whine about it, it will never be the same.

Delta
2013-10-29, 08:44 AM
Women who "use" men for reproductive purposes by having consensual sex with them is not the same as slavery. It just isn't, and no matter how long you whine about it, it will never be the same.

It's not the same obviously, but that doesn't really change anything about the fact that he has a point, just because it's not the same doesn't mean it can't be sexist.

hamishspence
2013-10-29, 09:13 AM
In the case of seahorses, it's the male (that is, the sex that produces large numbers of small, sperm-type sex cells, rather than a few large ones) - that has to do most of the childbearing.

So, if seahorses were intelligent- they might see "who has the biggest investment" differently from the way we do.

erikun
2013-10-29, 09:56 AM
I think there is a very big difference between ignoring the rights of half your society and using them for reproductive purposes, and in requesting outsiders assist in reproduction for compensation and/or entertainment.

I mean, strip the genders and see what you have. In one society, you have half the population without rights and used primarily for reproduction. In the other society, nobody in the population has their rights taken away and members of the society will have sex with outsiders for reproduction. These two are not equivalent at all.

Morithias
2013-10-29, 10:53 AM
I think there is a very big difference between ignoring the rights of half your society and using them for reproductive purposes, and in requesting outsiders assist in reproduction for compensation and/or entertainment.

I mean, strip the genders and see what you have. In one society, you have half the population without rights and used primarily for reproduction. In the other society, nobody in the population has their rights taken away and members of the society will have sex with outsiders for reproduction. These two are not equivalent at all.

Yeah the amazons aren't raping people. They're walking up to people and going "hey want to have a roll in the hay?"

The person who spent most of the time writing the amazons in that campaign is currently having...I have no idea what kind of issue it is but he hasn't been online for about a week, I'll ask him more details when he finally shows up again.

Narren
2013-10-29, 11:47 AM
It's not the same obviously, but that doesn't really change anything about the fact that he has a point, just because it's not the same doesn't mean it can't be sexist.

I suppose that doesn't inherently mean it CAN'T be sexist, but in this particular case it does mean just that. Just my (and a few others) opinion, obviously.

AMFV
2013-10-29, 12:09 PM
That nine month investment because of which men who use women for reproductive purposes are rapists and slave-holders is very, very important, and you cannot act as if it didn't exist.

Women who "use" men for reproductive purposes by having consensual sex with them is not the same as slavery. It just isn't, and no matter how long you whine about it, it will never be the same.

But it is functionally the same, say I have an interest in children of my unions with women, if I wind up sleeping with an Amazon am I aware of the fact that I will never be able to see any children, never even know, likely, if they belong to me. If that is the case, then that is a fundamental striping away of my rights as a father. If that is not the case, then how do the Amazon's preserve their culture.

If I have a male child, is he killed in infancy, is he aborted pre-term, those things are important in determining the rights that were and are being violated here if any. I certainly think that the removal of all ability to interact with my children is a violation of my rights, maybe I'm just old fashioned that way.


Yeah the amazons aren't raping people. They're walking up to people and going "hey want to have a roll in the hay?"

The person who spent most of the time writing the amazons in that campaign is currently having...I have no idea what kind of issue it is but he hasn't been online for about a week, I'll ask him more details when he finally shows up again.

Sperm Donors and Surrogate Mothers sign a contract, they are aware that they are going to have no contact with children. Yet there have been cases, where surrogate mothers have sued for custody, and where sperm donors have attempted to find their progeny. So even that isn't a black and white situation.

Agreeing to "have a roll in the hay" is not tantamount to agreeing to donate sperm to their offspring, if that is not explicitly spelled out then it is inherently a duplicitous relationship, which I would argue is morally wrong, and in this case sexist, as it is a morally wrong situation that applies only to one gender.


I suppose that doesn't inherently mean it CAN'T be sexist, but in this particular case it does mean just that. Just my (and a few others) opinion, obviously.

I disagree strenuously, that would make yours a moot point, no?

Obviously differing views on sexism would make this all pretty moot. All I can say is that for me it appeared to be sexist immediately, and so we must assume that others would share my opinions on that, since the goal is to reduce the perception of sexism, this does not meet that goal, sans parthenogenesis of course. Which I think would be the perfect fix for this.

warty goblin
2013-10-29, 12:28 PM
But it is functionally the same, say I have an interest in children of my unions with women, if I wind up sleeping with an Amazon am I aware of the fact that I will never be able to see any children, never even know, likely, if they belong to me. If that is the case, then that is a fundamental striping away of my rights as a father. If that is not the case, then how do the Amazon's preserve their culture.

If you have an interest in the raising of your offspring, don't have sex with Amazons. This is in fact very simple. Actions have consequences, and one of those consequences is that when you enter into some relationships with people you give up certain rights. This is entirely fine and dandy so long as you have a choice not to enter into that arrangement. Otherwise you're getting what you signed up for, so suck up and deal.


If I have a male child, is he killed in infancy, is he aborted pre-term, those things are important in determining the rights that were and are being violated here if any. I certainly think that the removal of all ability to interact with my children is a violation of my rights, maybe I'm just old fashioned that way.
You arguably do have that right. It is however a right that can be given up, and is being given up in this situation.




Sperm Donors and Surrogate Mothers sign a contract, they are aware that they are going to have no contact with children. Yet there have been cases, where surrogate mothers have sued for custody, and where sperm donors have attempted to find their progeny. So even that isn't a black and white situation.
Just because people try to back out of a contract doesn't mean the issue is complicated. It means people aren't being good to their word, which means the issue is whether they have a legitimate reason for attempting to not make good on their commitment.


Agreeing to "have a roll in the hay" is not tantamount to agreeing to donate sperm to their offspring, if that is not explicitly spelled out then it is inherently a duplicitous relationship, which I would argue is morally wrong, and in this case sexist, as it is a morally wrong situation that applies only to one gender.
Offspring are a noted consequence of sex. Absent birth control, a man having intercourse with a woman is in fact providing sperm for potential offspring. There may be other purposes for the encounter, but the biology doesn't go away because of that.

AMFV
2013-10-29, 12:36 PM
If you have an interest in the raising of your offspring, don't have sex with Amazons. This is in fact very simple. Actions have consequences, and one of those consequences is that when you enter into some relationships with people you give up certain rights. This is entirely fine and dandy so long as you have a choice not to enter into that arrangement. Otherwise you're getting what you signed up for, so suck up and deal.

[...]

Offspring are a noted consequence of sex. Absent birth control, a man having intercourse with a woman is in fact providing sperm for potential offspring. There may be other purposes for the encounter, but the biology doesn't go away because of that.

The question is am I aware that this is what I'm signing up for, just because offspring are a potential result from sex, doesn't mean that having no interaction with my offspring is. If I'm not aware of it, then it is a problem. It is not a fair or moral thing, and that is what we're looking at. If you trick somebody into participating into a reproductive act that they are not consenting to fully, then it is immoral, very immoral, and in this case fairly sexist, at least to my viewing.

Since we're discussing whether observers might find something sexist, I find this sexist. That should be enough to conclude that it at least could be interpreted as sexism.

Just because we view men as being more controlled by their urges does not mean that they should lose out on their rights in child-rearing, any viewpoint that suggests that men should be not as involved in child-rearing, is probably a sexist viewpoint at some level.

warty goblin
2013-10-29, 12:47 PM
The question is am I aware that this is what I'm signing up for, just because offspring are a potential result from sex, doesn't mean that having no interaction with my offspring is. If I'm not aware of it, then it is a problem. It is not a fair or moral thing, and that is what we're looking at. If you trick somebody into participating into a reproductive act that they are not consenting to fully, then it is immoral, very immoral, and in this case fairly sexist, at least to my viewing.

So while wandering through Amazon territory, a woman asks if you're up for a little catch the javelin. The sane inference here is that the woman in question is an Amazon.


Since we're discussing whether observers might find something sexist, I find this sexist. That should be enough to conclude that it at least could be interpreted as sexism.
A standard this loose renders pretty much any term meaningless.


Just because we view men as being more controlled by their urges does not mean that they should lose out on their rights in child-rearing, any viewpoint that suggests that men should be not as involved in child-rearing, is probably a sexist viewpoint at some level.
I don't see where men being more controlled by their sexual desires enters into the understanding of this arrangement at all. It would enter into how likely a man is to have sex with an Amazon, but that's rather a different question.

AMFV
2013-10-29, 12:55 PM
So while wandering through Amazon territory, a woman asks if you're up for a little catch the javelin. The sane inference here is that the woman in question is an Amazon.


But there is no sane way to infer that I am completely aware of Amazonian culture and customs, if they don't make me aware of them, then it is wrong to involve me in them.

Look we are likely not going to agree on this, I have very strong views on child-rearing and dual responsibility in this sort of thing, it is unlikely that anything you could say could influence me otherwise. Since this is kind of meandering away from the OP's setting and his topic, could we potentially agree to disagree on this point? That way we don't wind up shouting the same points unproductively at each other ad infinitum.

warty goblin
2013-10-29, 01:07 PM
But there is no sane way to infer that I am completely aware of Amazonian culture and customs, if they don't make me aware of them, then it is wrong to involve me in them.

One could always, you know, ask. If it's an issue you feel strongly about, a bit of due diligence on the matter is probably in order anyway.

Barring that, this doesn't seem like the sort of custom that's exactly opaque and unknown to outsiders, and presumably one didn't simply materialize on the spot from parts distant and unknown. A more mundane form of travel, such as foot, horse or boat would come with plenty of occasion to talk with strangers en route, and unless we're postulating an exceedingly different inter-male culture than any I'm familiar with, the land full of women who like NSA sex would probably come up. Repeatedly.


Look we are likely not going to agree on this, I have very strong views on child-rearing and dual responsibility in this sort of thing, it is unlikely that anything you could say could influence me otherwise. Since this is kind of meandering away from the OP's setting and his topic, could we potentially agree to disagree on this point? That way we don't wind up shouting the same points unproductively at each other ad infinitum.
Oh I don't think we're shouting the same points at each other yet.

PersonMan
2013-10-29, 01:12 PM
If I have a male child, is he killed in infancy, is he aborted pre-term, those things are important in determining the rights that were and are being violated here if any.

The answer is no, you don't.

It's been stated that Amazons don't have male children. As in, at all.

Why people are talking about them hating men and/or killing male babies is beyond me. It was pretty clearly mentioned that they just don't have male offspring hence, you know, the all-female society.

Narren
2013-10-29, 01:16 PM
But there is no sane way to infer that I am completely aware of Amazonian culture and customs, if they don't make me aware of them, then it is wrong to involve me in them.

Look we are likely not going to agree on this, I have very strong views on child-rearing and dual responsibility in this sort of thing, it is unlikely that anything you could say could influence me otherwise. Since this is kind of meandering away from the OP's setting and his topic, could we potentially agree to disagree on this point? That way we don't wind up shouting the same points unproductively at each other ad infinitum.

I had thought that the assumption was pretty much everybody explicitly understood this major norm of Amazon culture, especially because of it's required involvement of outsiders. Furthermore, the Amazon was pretty good reason to make sure that her partner understands the arrangement.

We're not talking about an Amazon tricking some unknown male into impregnating her, or capturing men, or using it was a punishment or criminal sentencing. We're talking about whether or not a mutual and fully understood consensual arrangement is considered sexist. I think it isn't.

PersonMan
2013-10-29, 01:25 PM
TIt is not a fair or moral thing, and that is what we're looking at. If you trick somebody into participating into a reproductive act that they are not consenting to fully, then it is immoral, very immoral, and in this case fairly sexist, at least to my viewing.

You're the one who brought trickery into this.

Unless I've missed something, in which case I'd thank you if you would enlighten me as to what I overlooked, the following scenarios are/were being discusses:

-Amazons show up in neighboring areas' taverns and look for one-night stands
-Cultural exchange things (athletic events, 1-year training stuff, etc.)

Both of these imply that the Amazons are known neighbors and probably easy to identify, so everyone knows who she is and what she wants.


[...]does not mean that they should lose out on their rights in child-rearing [...].

I agree, but...

a man doesn't carry the baby around before birth. Therefore, he doesn't have a surefire way to realize "hey, I'm a parent now/will be one soon!" unless he sees the woman regularly or hears from her or similar. I will agree that, in a 'normal' scenario, a man has the right to be informed that he has a child-to-be, but in a situation where he's choosing to have sex with a woman from a group known for going into neighboring areas to have sex, get pregnant and raise the child in their own society, he can't really complain if she does exactly that.

Just like how, if I'm sleeping with someone who is going to move across the continent in two months, I can't complain that, when they get pregnant, I'm suddenly deprived of being able to see my child when s/he is born (assuming I can't go there for the birth).

If a man wants to be aware of and help raise all of his children, then he had better do something about it rather than just expect all of the women he ever sleeps with to come to him if they're pregnant, even if they're the traveling type or just visiting from another region. There's a difference between having rights and expecting to be catered to.

A woman is playing Easy Mode in the 'Be aware of all of my offspring' game. It's kind of hard to miss getting pregnant. A man is playing Hard Mode, and so he has to put in more effort.

AMFV
2013-10-29, 01:43 PM
I had thought that the assumption was pretty much everybody explicitly understood this major norm of Amazon culture, especially because of it's required involvement of outsiders. Furthermore, the Amazon was pretty good reason to make sure that her partner understands the arrangement.

We're not talking about an Amazon tricking some unknown male into impregnating her, or capturing men, or using it was a punishment or criminal sentencing. We're talking about whether or not a mutual and fully understood consensual arrangement is considered sexist. I think it isn't.

Well if that is the case I'm not sure if it would be a sexist thing or not. That did not necessarily follow explicitly from the discussion however. And was clearly able to be misinterpreted by several people, most of whom at least consider themselves to be intelligent, and may very well be.


You're the one who brought trickery into this.

Unless I've missed something, in which case I'd thank you if you would enlighten me as to what I overlooked, the following scenarios are/were being discusses:

-Amazons show up in neighboring areas' taverns and look for one-night stands
-Cultural exchange things (athletic events, 1-year training stuff, etc.)

Both of these imply that the Amazons are known neighbors and probably easy to identify, so everyone knows who she is and what she wants.



I agree, but...

a man doesn't carry the baby around before birth. Therefore, he doesn't have a surefire way to realize "hey, I'm a parent now/will be one soon!" unless he sees the woman regularly or hears from her or similar. I will agree that, in a 'normal' scenario, a man has the right to be informed that he has a child-to-be, but in a situation where he's choosing to have sex with a woman from a group known for going into neighboring areas to have sex, get pregnant and raise the child in their own society, he can't really complain if she does exactly that.

Just like how, if I'm sleeping with someone who is going to move across the continent in two months, I can't complain that, when they get pregnant, I'm suddenly deprived of being able to see my child when s/he is born (assuming I can't go there for the birth).

If a man wants to be aware of and help raise all of his children, then he had better do something about it rather than just expect all of the women he ever sleeps with to come to him if they're pregnant, even if they're the traveling type or just visiting from another region. There's a difference between having rights and expecting to be catered to.

A woman is playing Easy Mode in the 'Be aware of all of my offspring' game. It's kind of hard to miss getting pregnant. A man is playing Hard Mode, and so he has to put in more effort.

I still think that it should be required for the woman to make the man aware of this. While it isn't that way in our society. But again that would be veering onto my own personal opinions regarding child-rearing and responsibility and therefore are not exactly pertinent to this discussion.

erikun
2013-10-29, 02:07 PM
I still think that it should be required for the woman to make the man aware of this. While it isn't that way in our society. But again that would be veering onto my own personal opinions regarding child-rearing and responsibility and therefore are not exactly pertinent to this discussion.
Do you think that it should be required, in general, for the man to specifically spell out to the woman that sexual intercorse would have the possibility of producing a pregnancy and child? Along with going over the details about visitation rights if it does happen? Because outside of some truly poor sexual education programs, most people are going to acknowledge that a sexual liaison without birth control will likely produce a child.

If the man is concerned at this point about the child he may father, he should be asking questions now and/or turning the Amazon down. This isn't a case of drugging the man, tying him up, and sexually assaulting him, after all.


The answer is no, you don't.

It's been stated that Amazons don't have male children. As in, at all.

Why people are talking about them hating men and/or killing male babies is beyond me. It was pretty clearly mentioned that they just don't have male offspring hence, you know, the all-female society.
If you're going to be presenting this "Amazon" culture at one of your tables, then you'd better be prepared to explain why this society is all-female. Most people are going to assume both males and females, for understandable reasons. The fact that some people would immediately jump to the idea of slavery or infantcide when presented with a culture with no visible males is probably a good point to bring up.

The Fury
2013-10-29, 02:11 PM
Poor Justice Zero. We haven't discussed his setting for quite awhile now.



Sperm Donors and Surrogate Mothers sign a contract, they are aware that they are going to have no contact with children. Yet there have been cases, where surrogate mothers have sued for custody, and where sperm donors have attempted to find their progeny. So even that isn't a black and white situation.

Agreeing to "have a roll in the hay" is not tantamount to agreeing to donate sperm to their offspring, if that is not explicitly spelled out then it is inherently a duplicitous relationship, which I would argue is morally wrong, and in this case sexist, as it is a morally wrong situation that applies only to one gender.


That said, this stood out to me. I agree that it's not black and white and there could be some hurt feelings afterward. However, I think that Morithias is right in saying that both parties are getting what they signed up for. The hypothetical man here almost certainly understood that there's a chance that he got this random woman he'll never see again pregnant, especially if no contraceptive measures were taken. This is to say, nobody was deceived or coerced.

Mr. Mask
2013-10-29, 02:15 PM
I see both legitimacies and issues with this complaint.

If the man is being mislead, believing they're entering into a long-term relationship and that they'll get to be part of their children's lives, then it is indeed a dirty trick. But... I don't see why you could reasonably have that expectation within the context of a one-night stand, unless you made that agreement of a long-term relationship. That could be an issue--but that's the exception, not the rule.

And since the Amazon breeding practice would be a common and repeating tradition in neighbouring areas, it would also be commonly known.

The Fury
2013-10-29, 02:22 PM
I see both legitimacies and issues with this complaint.

If the man is being mislead, believing they're entering into a long-term relationship and that they'll get to be part of their children's lives, then it is indeed a dirty trick. But... I don't see why you could reasonably have that expectation within the context of a one-night stand, unless you made that agreement of a long-term relationship. That could be an issue--but that's the exception, not the rule.

And since the Amazon breeding practice would be a common and repeating tradition in neighbouring areas, it would also be commonly known.

As near as I can tell, nobody in the scenario is agreeing to a long-term relationship. If this is wrong maybe someone can correct me.

AMFV
2013-10-29, 02:27 PM
Poor Justice Zero. We haven't discussed his setting for quite awhile now.



That said, this stood out to me. I agree that it's not black and white and there could be some hurt feelings afterward. However, I think that Morithias is right in saying that both parties are getting what they signed up for. The hypothetical man here almost certainly understood that there's a chance that he got this random woman he'll never see again pregnant, especially if no contraceptive measures were taken. This is to say, nobody was deceived or coerced.

I think the issue we would have then is "is denying a father visitation rights sexist?" I would say that it would be. But I could see arguments on the other side. At least for me it is unlikely that I would change my mind on the issue, I've had too many friends lose their children to not have strong feelings about this.

The Fury
2013-10-29, 02:41 PM
I think the issue we would have then is "is denying a father visitation rights sexist?" I would say that it would be. But I could see arguments on the other side. At least for me it is unlikely that I would change my mind on the issue, I've had too many friends lose their children to not have strong feelings about this.

Father visitation rights could have a lot more underlying issues not related to gender at all. Not to say that it's never sexist, I'm sure cases exist where it is, but it just seems to complicated to pin down to any one thing.

As an aside, my sympathies to both you and your friends.

Morithias
2013-10-29, 02:50 PM
I think the issue we would have then is "is denying a father visitation rights sexist?" I would say that it would be. But I could see arguments on the other side. At least for me it is unlikely that I would change my mind on the issue, I've had too many friends lose their children to not have strong feelings about this.

I don't think they DENY visitors...however from what I understand about their society they don't really have "mothers" either.

Like there's basically just old people, adults, kids.

They don't really keep track of who gave birth to who.

In the campaign setting they were technologically very druidic (can't build a blacksmith in a jungle with no metal deposits, plus you'll burn the jungle down), using animal companions, ironwood weapons, and so on.

However they were also very militarist. Like the romans, to rise in political power in their society required years of military service. Which is largely why no outsider could really ever get into power, it would require joining their military.

I'm pretty sure they allowed trade...hell during the campaign one amazon became a commander for the PC's Empire and created an all-female cavalry unit.

Themrys
2013-10-29, 02:53 PM
I think the issue we would have then is "is denying a father visitation rights sexist?" I would say that it would be. But I could see arguments on the other side. At least for me it is unlikely that I would change my mind on the issue, I've had too many friends lose their children to not have strong feelings about this.

It's ridiculous to demand visitations after a one night stand.

We're not talking about long-term relationships here, and certainly not about situations where the sperm donor has cared for the baby for any amount of time.

Mr. Mask
2013-10-29, 02:55 PM
AMFV: I have a friend who went through something akin to that. It was more of a case of someone trying to steal their child.

The idea of wanting to visit your children is a legitimate one. If the Amazons did not allow any visitation, that would be a problem.

Themrys
2013-10-29, 03:35 PM
The idea of wanting to visit your children is a legitimate one. If the Amazons did not allow any visitation, that would be a problem.

Yes, but it would be the Amazons having a problem to find men who want to have sex with them (IF we assume that a significant percentage of men would say no to sex if they knew they wouldn't be allowed to visit resulting children), not men having a problem to get the visitation rights they totally expected to have ... after a one-night-stand.

Mr. Mask
2013-10-29, 03:44 PM
I don't know the metrics as to how many men would say no compared to how many would say yes, but metrics of prostitution make it very clear that in most socieities the Amazons would have no shortage of willing mates. If Amazons didn't allow visitation, the number of men who would care/suffer from it would likely be few (I can imagine the odd Amazon playing the stereotype of the guy who leads women on, but in their case men).

AMFV
2013-10-29, 04:39 PM
It's ridiculous to demand visitations after a one night stand.

We're not talking about long-term relationships here, and certainly not about situations where the sperm donor has cared for the baby for any amount of time.

I sure as hell don't think that would be ridiculous. Just because it was a one night stand doesn't make it any less my responsibility or my child than if it was with my wife, to whom I had been married for years. To suggest that this is the case is discriminatory against the fathers, which is ironically one of the only areas where men are routinely treated more poorly than women.


I don't know the metrics as to how many men would say no compared to how many would say yes, but metrics of prostitution make it very clear that in most socieities the Amazons would have no shortage of willing mates. If Amazons didn't allow visitation, the number of men who would care/suffer from it would likely be few (I can imagine the odd Amazon playing the stereotype of the guy who leads women on, but in their case men).

And there are still questions as to the legitimacy, sexism and morality of prostitution, I assume we could easily have similar questions in regard to an Amazonian society. As I indicated, sans parthenogenesis, I, personally, would find that society very sexist. Whether or not my arguments have particular merit, I suspect that there would be others that would feel the same way, especially given the children situation that I'm most concerned about.

We don't have a signed contract here, we have something implied and that's dangerous, if they have a signed contractual system with donors who know what they're getting into, that's probably fine, but assuming that is as much an assumption as my earlier nab the men assumption.


AMFV: I have a friend who went through something akin to that. It was more of a case of someone trying to steal their child.

The idea of wanting to visit your children is a legitimate one. If the Amazons did not allow any visitation, that would be a problem.


Here we agree, and I think this is now where we're hitting an impasse that likely can't be resolved, since we both have to make assumptions about the society to determine things, if they do allow visitations and have contractual relationships I could see it not being a problem otherwise there would be significant issues with it, to my mind.

Without further information though, it is sadly impossible to make a conclusive statement about whether or not it really is sexist or moral or whatever.

Frosty
2013-10-29, 05:27 PM
Assuming that

1) The amazons disclose fully, up front, what their aims are, and also explain the likely lack of parental rights

and

2) No one is forced or coerced into anything (aka full agency on both sides)

Then there is aboslutely NOTHING wrong with this arrangement.

PersonMan
2013-10-30, 12:26 AM
If you're going to be presenting this "Amazon" culture at one of your tables, then you'd better be prepared to explain why this society is all-female. Most people are going to assume both males and females, for understandable reasons. The fact that some people would immediately jump to the idea of slavery or infantcide when presented with a culture with no visible males is probably a good point to bring up.

"They don't have male children, ever. People don't know why."

If you want to learn everything about the setting, feel free to turn the game into an exploration/discovery campaign.

Otherwise, well, knowledge has limits and you will reach them (especially you, because you're up against the What Is That Nobody Has Seen It Before Oh My Goodness It's Eating The Capitol).

(May be outdated, I skipped over the rest of the page to comment this before leaving in the morning, so if this was adressed, sorry for repeating things.)

AMFV
2013-10-30, 12:33 AM
"They don't have male children, ever. People don't know why."

If you want to learn everything about the setting, feel free to turn the game into an exploration/discovery campaign.

Otherwise, well, knowledge has limits and you will reach them (especially you, because you're up against the What Is That Nobody Has Seen It Before Oh My Goodness It's Eating The Capitol).

(May be outdated, I skipped over the rest of the page to comment this before leaving in the morning, so if this was adressed, sorry for repeating things.)

It wasn't directly addressed to my knowledge, it looks the main salient points is that we've come to the point where we have to make assumptions either way for the society to be acceptable or not, without any further information from its creator none of us can really be sure about it. Or at least I can't.

Alberic Strein
2013-10-30, 04:50 AM
Assuming that

1) The amazons disclose fully, up front, what their aims are, and also explain the likely lack of parental rights

and

2) No one is forced or coerced into anything (aka full agency on both sides)

Then there is aboslutely NOTHING wrong with this arrangement.

Or the exact opposite. Give the amazons a rule stating that the father has a right to go see his daughter, and then nothing is explained. Ever.

Guy meets girl, sexy time, goodbyes, end of story.

If it's not the end of the story for the lover/possible father, he has to go look for her, to actually give a damn. And if he finds the amazons, is entitled by law to have things explained to him. If the union produced a child, he is entitled to see said child whenever he damn wants.

PS :


"They don't have male children, ever. People don't know why."

Every boy is a girl once his balls are chopped off.

AMFV
2013-10-30, 05:23 AM
Or the exact opposite. Give the amazons a rule stating that the father has a right to go see his daughter, and then nothing is explained. Ever.

Guy meets girl, sexy time, goodbyes, end of story.

If it's not the end of the story for the lover/possible father, he has to go look for her, to actually give a damn. And if he finds the amazons, is entitled by law to have things explained to him. If the union produced a child, he is entitled to see said child whenever he damn wants.

PS :



Every boy is a girl once his balls are chopped off.

I was with you, right up until the castration bit. That would probably qualify as sexist for societal castration. Additionally eunuchs, aren't female, but rather something different altogether.

Alberic Strein
2013-10-30, 06:11 AM
I was with you, right up until the castration bit. That would probably qualify as sexist for societal castration. Additionally eunuchs, aren't female, but rather something different altogether.

...I should probably have blue'd the castration bit. It was meant as a joke.

Jokes aside (not really) earlier western civilizations (greeks come to mind) had a tendency to not see eunuchs as men. So, while it wouldn't make the boys women, it would... Assexualize them, for a number of societies. So it could justify the "Amazons don't have male children", from a certain point of view. The only sexualized offsprings they have are women.

Doesn't make it any less horrendous or barbaric, of course.

[EDIT] And it doesn't change the fact that I clearly posted "every boy is a girl once his balls are chopped off", which makes your response "castrated boys aren't female" perfectly legitimated. I wasn't trying to prove a point, but to make a witty (see sig) quip.

JusticeZero
2013-10-30, 05:05 PM
I think the Amazon thing is played out, and it is apparently stepping on someones trauma here. Can we drop it now? Seriously. I have to agree that the construction is highly sexist in ways that some people find upsetting.

How well do alien constructions of development play with an average group? I see some suggestions of societies with literally plastic sex roles (non gendered or easy to change) and have to wonder if anyone has ever had them in their game as a default society?

Alberic Strein
2013-10-31, 10:38 AM
Undead nation?

When you're nothing but bones, genres don't exactly matter. So any campaign that starts, or has such undead society as the default society is bound to be non gendered by default... I think.

Do souls have sexes ?