Writing inverse stereotypes of men and women

[Sharad9]

I want to create a setting that is similiar to our world, but with different notions of "masculine" and "feminine" traits. I've read works of fiction that involve matriarchies, in which all women are very aggressive and go to war, while men become passive and stay at home to care for children. This seems unrealistic, as it seems to simply change gender roles and turn women into men, and vice versa. I want to create something that feels more authentic.

What I want to do is changing what society values instead of simply change gender roles. Society would place more worth on feminine rather than masculine stereotypes, and view what it means to be men and women differently. For instance: traditional western notions of masculinity revolves around strength, aggression, boldness, etc. In this world, this would be interpreted as arrogance, impatience, and emotional. They are very loyal to their friends, and quick to form attachments. However, they are hot headed and rash. Quick to anger, quick to laugh is the best way to describe it: scrapping with each other over some imagined slight to their honor to laughing at the incident over a few beers. This argument leads many to believe that males should not lead a country.

In contrast, femininity is associated with being more passive, emotionally complicated, mothering, etc. In this world, women would be characterized as more rational and wise in their decision making. They form bonds less quickly, and are more clinical in their decision making, taking the long view of things, and ultimately knows what is best. They are slow to anger, but when roused, can be vicious and cruel. Women can hold grudges for long periods of time, and it is difficult to forget past slights.

These are just stereotypes and ideals that society supports and want the sees to live up to, but I don't want everyone to just go along with them. People will react to the culture in different ways. I am not aiming for a utopia where everything is perfect because women rule the world, or a dystopia. I would like it to be a world with its highs and lows. Is this a believable inverse of masculine and feminine traits?

[Crazy Author]

Believable, absolutely. It seems a possibly-accurate, probable and elegant description of the concept.

Would the setting have an underlying sense of competition between the genders to any degree, as seems to exist in our-world reality (see any number of pro-male/female anti-female/male jokes we've all heard at some point)? As part of the same question: would this setting have been through "pendulum swings" between matriarchal/patriarchal stances, or would it have settled into this one initially, with any concept of patriarchy as a valid state being a "new" idea rather than a rehash of an old one?

[Zorku]

You've got a couple of modern examples of matrilineal societies in India. Iirc, a few researchers once overheard a couple of women from the Khasi tribe basically having a water cooler conversation where they derided men as "only good for mating and baby sitting." So far as I know, none of these groups does a complete 180 on the gender stereotypes, but as far as Google University can take me, it looks really close. They tend to still have men go out of the house to work during the day or such, or the men do inherit (small) portions of the family wealth, or simply have a stronger political presence than women did in Western society some centuries back (and maybe more than women do in some modern democracies? I'm not well read enough to rank these things accurately.)

A lot of the oracle and shaman traditions seem to have been female dominant just a few thousand years before most of the recorded history we can get at, but there's not any one accepted explanation for why everything fully matriarchal switched away from that system, often frustratingly close to when we'd have had a better understanding of it (so don't act like there's an obvious answer and it's the one you liked all along.)

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In terms of the politics of rulership, you tend to focus on policies and positions that the people as a whole like in order to put yourself into power, but then shift more into just trying to keep your economy in good shape once you get there so that people will stay complacent and generally not raise much fuss. (This is sufficiently vague to hold true basically everywhere but it's not actually saying all that much.) Whatever social cause or program is basically a big popularity contest (even in government systems where you're not so much competing with others as you're competing for "let me be king" vs "drag me to the gallows in a big ugly public display,") and then ruling is mostly accountant type stuff. The popularity section is supposed to be about selecting policies that will solve problems, but the supporters don't necessarily know anything about what the actual job is like, and it's all just so damn busy to keep track of everything.

But saying that "it's hard to keep all of your promises when you're in charge" probably isn't a new idea to you. It's important to bring up here as kind of a reminder: if you have leaders that have the more passive and muted suite of gender characteristics, there are still going to be lots of problems that are not solved by the kinds of simple solutions that whatever base of support clamors to get put in place, and that it takes a great deal of time and effort to actually turn those simple solutions into the kind of complex implementation that even makes sense in the context of your larger governmental structure.

Fwiw, I suspect that gender doesn't make a very big difference when you've got a feudal society like medieval Europe. Public opinion may still go this way or that, but the leaders that understand how to put on one face for policy politics and take it back off when it comes to power politics, will still fabricate claims that they rightfully own the land that has that nice stone quarry on it, or that forest that produces lots of high quality lumber, or the mine, or just some rich farmland. Acquiring new sources of revenue is always going to be a great way to keep your local economy afloat (provided you can effectively manage it all,) and all of that gradually turns into the weird noble's game of pretending to be friends with all of your rivals while humiliating them every single time there's something to be gained from doing so. You probably have some notion in your head about how women are quite good at that, and beating neighbors in little skirmishes to take away their salt mines reduces down to exactly the same kind of mental process.

At any time you've probably got a lot of little nobles that are only good enough to manage whatever little town they have been put in charge of, but everyone that's good at power politics gets more land than that. There are dumb inheritance rules that get in the way of this at times, but that's what assassins are for. The people that can handle the basics and wish to rise to power pretty much do, except when they get stepped on by other people that are also rising to even greater power. We remember the wars, we don't so strongly remember when there was a shortage of cattle feed and somebody managed to resolve it.

[Sharad9]

Believable, absolutely. It seems a possibly-accurate, probable and elegant description of the concept.

Would the setting have an underlying sense of competition between the genders to any degree, as seems to exist in our-world reality (see any number of pro-male/female anti-female/male jokes we've all heard at some point)? As part of the same question: would this setting have been through "pendulum swings" between matriarchal/patriarchal stances, or would it have settled into this one initially, with any concept of patriarchy as a valid state being a "new" idea rather than a rehash of an old one?

The way I imagined it, society would be broken into matrilineal clans, with the oldest women serving as the most powerful political leaders of a clan. Men would be used to fight wars, security, manual labor, etc. Women would serve as administrators, political leaders, teachers, etc. Culture would emphasize complimentaryrather than egalitarian views. Men and women would be considered "equal" but made for different roles and purposes.

[King of Nowhere]

I say your depiction is very believable. I offer you a couple more ideas to deal with:

- men may babysit, but they cannot breast-feed, and in ancient societies there were little children in need to be breast-fed, like, all the time. That certainly contributed to the idea that women have to stay with the kids. So a matriarcal society has to deal with that. Maybe noblewomen have other women breastfeed their children while they do politics, and there is much less gender distinction among the commoners. Or maybe men only babysit weaned children, and otherwise it would be normal for the queen to bare her breast and start breastfeeding during a formal sitting. Or maybe women bring their children to work, and there are a few men there to take care of them, but the mothers are close enough that they can breastfeed as needed. Or maybe you'll get another idea. Pregnancies are also to be accounted for.

- men are phisically stronger, so they are better for a variety of works. Most of them are humble works, which would reinforce the idea that women are fit to rule while men provide workforce, but a particularly important masculine profession is soldiering. Man make best warriors, and your society will have to deal with that in some way. Possible examples: maybe fighting is considered a male profession, but all officers are women. Or maybe this society puts a greater emphasis on archery, as strenght is less important with a bow (and even less with a crossbow).

- hystorically, in many societies gender divisions were less about discriminating half the population, and more about having different roles - because, as highlighted by my other two points, there are some differencies among the genders that were more important before the industrial revolution. So for example in the west men held positions of power and worked outside of home, but a man was supposed to protect a woman and to pamper her. It was socially acceptable for a woman to slap a man in public, but not the reverse (there was, however, the tendency to hide what happened in private). It would give depth to your society if it didn't think somehting like "women are just better, men are only for mating and babysitting", but more something like "women are better at some stuff, men at some other stuff; and incidentally all the important, influential tasks are feminine, but we don't call it discrimination, it's just the way of things, and men have other benefits from our social customs".
A good (if extreme) example in that sense is the alethi society in the stormlight archive, where all the profesions have been divided into masculine and feminine, and are restricted to a specific gender. Women are prohibited from taking a fighting profession or from most ruling places, but men are forbidden from learning to read and write, and they need women scribes, meaning that women can wield a lot of power indirectly.

[Mechalich]

The way I imagined it, society would be broken into matrilineal clans, with the oldest women serving as the most powerful political leaders of a clan. Men would be used to fight wars, security, manual labor, etc. Women would serve as administrators, political leaders, teachers, etc. Culture would emphasize complimentaryrather than egalitarian views. Men and women would be considered "equal" but made for different roles and purposes.

The critical thing with this setup is that you need a reason why the warriors don't seize power, because that's what happens in pretty much every pre-modern system that wasn't already under military rule - eventually the warriors get annoyed at doing all the fighting and dying and they seize power (or they refuse to fight in defense against a foreign aggressor and the society ends). It helps if your society is fairly peaceful and doesn't face significant outside threats so you can have rule by a non-militarized bureaucracy - Song Dynasty China might be a decent model - and have military service be relatively disparaged.

[Sharad9]

The critical thing with this setup is that you need a reason why the warriors don't seize power, because that's what happens in pretty much every pre-modern system that wasn't already under military rule - eventually the warriors get annoyed at doing all the fighting and dying and they seize power (or they refuse to fight in defense against a foreign aggressor and the society ends). It helps if your society is fairly peaceful and doesn't face significant outside threats so you can have rule by a non-militarized bureaucracy - Song Dynasty China might be a decent model - and have military service be relatively disparaged.

The solution I came up with was magic. But instead of the fireball throwing type, it would be slow and time consuming. Ritualized would be a good word. It would be fundamental to society and it's culture.

[Zorku]

I say your depiction is very believable. I offer you a couple more ideas to deal with:

- men may babysit, but they cannot breast-feed, and in ancient societies there were little children in need to be breast-fed, like, all the time. That certainly contributed to the idea that women have to stay with the kids. So a matriarcal society has to deal with that. Maybe noblewomen have other women breastfeed their children while they do politics, and there is much less gender distinction among the commoners. Or maybe men only babysit weaned children, and otherwise it would be normal for the queen to bare her breast and start breastfeeding during a formal sitting. Or maybe women bring their children to work, and there are a few men there to take care of them, but the mothers are close enough that they can breastfeed as needed. Or maybe you'll get another idea. Pregnancies are also to be accounted for.

Maybe the wet nurse hangs out in your home but still bosses your husband around while you're at work.

- men are phisically stronger, so they are better for a variety of works. Most of them are humble works, which would reinforce the idea that women are fit to rule while men provide workforce, but a particularly important masculine profession is soldiering. Man make best warriors, and your society will have to deal with that in some way. Possible examples: maybe fighting is considered a male profession, but all officers are women. Or maybe this society puts a greater emphasis on archery, as strenght is less important with a bow (and even less with a crossbow).

That variation on that one is too broad. Our current culture doesn't put too many women into tough physical labor, but the women that do that develop higher testosterone and start to grow facial hair for it. In a culture like this I could see a lot of butch women in mines of swinging around hammers for whatever reason, just because there's nobody to tell them that they're not fit for the kind of work they want to do. Presumably they'd be thought of as decoration less often, so the hair might stay, but it's also hard to predict what styles are popular so you'd probably just get regional variation where the women from area x pluck and shave hair around their mouth while the women from area y don't pay it much thought, and the women of area z crimp and curl the little wisps of hair.

The solution I came up with was magic. But instead of the fireball throwing type, it would be slow and time consuming. Ritualized would be a good word. It would be fundamental to society and it's culture.

So like the women know and perform the magic, because they're just kind of assumed to be good at that kind of thing, but how magic-touched a person is doesn't actually have that much to do with their gender?

Do these ritual casting women use much of that magic on the battlefield? I get that you said it's slow and gradual, but even 10% of a haste spell applied in a broad way to your side's troops is gonna have a pretty big impact on a battle, and the troops could just be of mind that they're not strong enough to seize control of their society without a bunch of animal sacrifice buffs and such. Or maybe the soldiers are never all that eager to kill and be killed, except that there are some very involved bloodlust rituals that whip them into a frenzy?

[Sharad9]

[QUOTE=King of Nowere;22284318]I say your depiction is very believable. I offer you a couple more ideas to deal with:

- men may babysit, but they cannot breast-feed, and in ancient societies there were little children in need to be breast-fed, like, all the time. That certainly contributed to the idea that women have to stay with the kids. So a matriarcal society has to deal with that. Maybe noblewomen have other women breastfeed their children while they do politics, and there is much less gender distinction among the commoners. Or maybe men only babysit weaned children, and otherwise it would be normal for the queen to bare her breast and start breastfeeding during a formal sitting. Or maybe women bring their children to work, and there are a few men there to take care of them, but the mothers are close enough that they can breastfeed as needed. Or maybe you'll get another idea. Pregnancies are also to be accounted for.

Would women even be comfortable breastfeeding in public while debating poltics? It's kind of a private personal thing for people.

[Sharad9]

So like the women know and perform the magic, because they're just kind of assumed to be good at that kind of thing, but how magic-touched a person is doesn't actually have that much to do with their gender?

Do these ritual casting women use much of that magic on the battlefield? I get that you said it's slow and gradual, but even 10% of a haste spell applied in a broad way to your side's troops is gonna have a pretty big impact on a battle, and the troops could just be of mind that they're not strong enough to seize control of their society without a bunch of animal sacrifice buffs and such. Or maybe the soldiers are never all that eager to kill and be killed, except that there are some very involved bloodlust rituals that whip them into a frenzy?[/QUOTE]

I made magic to be restricted to women to give an advantage. The religion uses it as justification for their place in society as leaders. Magic forms the basis of technology, creating a sort of magi tech setting. Attack magic on the battlefield can be used, and it is powerful. However, because of the magic system, it is dangerous and risky to use. And limited to specialists. Someone who isn't careful can damage or kill themselves in the process of using it.

[redwizard007]

[QUOTE=Sharad9;22305853]

Would women even be comfortable breastfeeding in public while debating poltics? It's kind of a private personal thing for people.

Most likely, yes. One needs only look at the myriad of cultures where breasts are not seen as frightening and rape provoking to see public breastfeeding on a large scale. Sorry. Small rant.

On a more setting specific answer; if women are responsible for weaning their children, and performing duties of state or business, it stands to reason that the society would just accept the biological portion of those tasks as routine. There would be no taboos against baring ones breasts for a feeding, and thus none of the stigma it holds in some cultures.

It is not at all improbable to picture a group of mothers/diplomats discussing state business on plush couches while feeding the little ones and/or putting them down to nap in nearby basinets. Indeed, the presence of the infants might keep violence and verbal altercations from cropping up in all but the most tense situations.

It would not be out of the question for a taboo to develop about upsetting the children. Or for mother's to loose face for the inability to soothe a crying baby. We are, after all, bringing women to the forefront of society. Why do so without celebrating the ways in which they are unique.

[Zorku]

Would women even be comfortable breastfeeding in public while debating poltics? It's kind of a private personal thing for people.

My sister got really into attachment parenting.

*You know, where the women wear their baby in a sling/wrap, tend to be really in your face about what's natural, possibly call themselves tiger moms, etc.

I'm not perfectly clear on what the pure form of all of that was supposed to be, but she was probably doing about 80% of it, as she still had some life outside of raising children. Anyway, with that style of parenting there's no embarrassment there, and breast feeding is just kind of how you expect babies to work. This is all taking place in the society that you and I are familiar with, so those women have a good idea (based on some mix of common sense intuition and actually talking with other attachment parents a lot,) of what places will accept this vs what places will interrupt you feeding your child, but where nobody is going to cause a fuss the baby starts to cry and almost as fast as you can snap your fingers the baby is suckling and you can go on with a conversation or dinner or w/e.

I don't have exact numbers, but this style of child rearing has become quite popular among middle class families (poorer folks can't afford for the woman in a relationship to work less than 1 job, and this whole business is rather time intensive,) to the point where you can make pretty good money producing the products and services that cater to this lifestyle. Assuming this specific subculture is much more common in cities, I'd ballpark it at 15-40% of American women in their 20's-30's raising their children this way, or sort of trying it out without putting the full level of effort into it.

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If you feel that women who don't mind dropping a strap off their shoulder and exposing some flesh while their kid eats is gonna distract from the stories you want to tell in a setting like this, then don't use it. If it's not really gonna get in the way of storytelling, and you just want to make sure that it's reasonable, then yeah, you could have breastfeeding senators. I'm not entirely sure how many would want to give a speech while feeding their kid, especially once the brat has a couple of teeth, but just being in their senate and listening to another woman wouldn't be too much trouble. You usually want somewhere dark and quiet if you're trying to put the kid to sleep, which is kind of unusual hours for young young children, but it would be manageable.

I made magic to be restricted to women to give an advantage. The religion uses it as justification for their place in society as leaders. Magic forms the basis of technology, creating a sort of magi tech setting. Attack magic on the battlefield can be used, and it is powerful. However, because of the magic system, it is dangerous and risky to use. And limited to specialists. Someone who isn't careful can damage or kill themselves in the process of using it.

I was asking "by what means is it restricted?" and you haven't told me anything there.

As above, you can restrict it just by making it really time consuming to learn to control, and denying a whole class of people the time and means to work on that. You could restrict it by making it require some exhaustible commodity that the society only allows certain types of people access to. Or, you can restrict it by saying that male genitals literally get in the way so any body that has those is just going to be magically inert.

Is the way that it is restricted undefined? Did any of my examples land in the right ballpark? Is it something totally different?

Are they supposed to have that advantage right now, or is it specifically an advantage at some crucial point in the past that matters?

[Sharad9]

My sister got really into attachment parenting.

*You know, where the women wear their baby in a sling/wrap, tend to be really in your face about what's natural, possibly call themselves tiger moms, etc.

I'm not perfectly clear on what the pure form of all of that was supposed to be, but she was probably doing about 80% of it, as she still had some life outside of raising children. Anyway, with that style of parenting there's no embarrassment there, and breast feeding is just kind of how you expect babies to work. This is all taking place in the society that you and I are familiar with, so those women have a good idea (based on some mix of common sense intuition and actually talking with other attachment parents a lot,) of what places will accept this vs what places will interrupt you feeding your child, but where nobody is going to cause a fuss the baby starts to cry and almost as fast as you can snap your fingers the baby is suckling and you can go on with a conversation or dinner or w/e.

I don't have exact numbers, but this style of child rearing has become quite popular among middle class families (poorer folks can't afford for the woman in a relationship to work less than 1 job, and this whole business is rather time intensive,) to the point where you can make pretty good money producing the products and services that cater to this lifestyle. Assuming this specific subculture is much more common in cities, I'd ballpark it at 15-40% of American women in their 20's-30's raising their children this way, or sort of trying it out without putting the full level of effort into it.

-

If you feel that women who don't mind dropping a strap off their shoulder and exposing some flesh while their kid eats is gonna distract from the stories you want to tell in a setting like this, then don't use it. If it's not really gonna get in the way of storytelling, and you just want to make sure that it's reasonable, then yeah, you could have breastfeeding senators. I'm not entirely sure how many would want to give a speech while feeding their kid, especially once the brat has a couple of teeth, but just being in their senate and listening to another woman wouldn't be too much trouble. You usually want somewhere dark and quiet if you're trying to put the kid to sleep, which is kind of unusual hours for young young children, but it would be manageable.


I was asking "by what means is it restricted?" and you haven't told me anything there.

As above, you can restrict it just by making it really time consuming to learn to control, and denying a whole class of people the time and means to work on that. You could restrict it by making it require some exhaustible commodity that the society only allows certain types of people access to. Or, you can restrict it by saying that male genitals literally get in the way so any body that has those is just going to be magically inert.

Is the way that it is restricted undefined? Did any of my examples land in the right ballpark? Is it something totally different?

Are they supposed to have that advantage right now, or is it specifically an advantage at some crucial point in the past that matters?

*is restricted in the sense that god specifically gives magic to women. In the beginning of history, both sexes had magic. The ability was taken from man as a punishment due to reasons in the past. It's meant to mirror the creation story in the bible, where humanity was punished for Adam and eve's sin, but her being held mostly responsible for its fall.

Regular Magic is meant to be time consuming and slow. Attack magic is meant to be fast and powerful, but dangerous and difficult to control.

[Zorku]

Oh, we're not keeping divine and arcane distinct in this setting?

[King of Nowhere]

Would women even be comfortable breastfeeding in public while debating poltics? It's kind of a private personal thing for people.

That's because our society developed some conventions. Other ancient societies had women going around barechested alll the time and nobody made a fuss about it. But anyway, you can google "minister breastfeed in parliament" and you'll see that it's already happened in more than one country. what is private and what is acceptable public behavior are purely social conventions.

[Sharad9]

Oh, we're not keeping divine and arcane distinct in this setting?

All magic comes from God directly. Women have a "special" connection with the divine and are a kind of vessel that god chose for magic to enter the real world.