what would make males valuable in a world run by witch covens?

[Sharad9]

The setting is one where only women can use magic. All females can access it as it is naturally inborn. It requires training, some females being stronger than others. Magic takes the form of spells and rituals, is time consuming, and requires multiple components. However, it is very powerful and forms the bedrock of society. It is often combined with technology to form a sort of magitech civilization.

Men would be relatively useless other than as cannon fodder compared to spellcasting women. On the other hand, you can afford to lose many men in a society and maintain birth rates, so losing them doesn't cost much.

Magic would be used to save women in child birth (as a wizard, I'd want to make childbirth safer, it would be a high priority). Magic using soldiers would be far more effective than non-magic using soldiers; societies that made the women march to war would wipe out ones that did not. On the other hand, spending women's lives cheaply would cost you your next generation of soldiers.

Finding ways to use relatively useless men to fight effectively would be highly useful; creating magical weapons and tools to give men a chance against female wizards would be useful. The loss of the magic-clad soldier could be cheaper than losing the powerful wizard who equipped them.

We should expect the usual hyperbolic social power curve. So we'd have many women who, despite using magic, are peasants, prior to the equivalent of an industrial revolution. Hedge magic to grow crops and the like. Again, being able to enchant tools to have the men do grunt work becomes useful here, boosting male productivity beyond the simple mundane. Such a society, where armies of expendible men fight for their wizard-queens, and lesser wizards generate weapons for them to use in these proxy-wars, while women who where less good at magic get relegated to hedge-magic, could go on for a while.

The creation of better enchanted tools, where a guide of male-dominated artificers who design and build mundane items to be enchanted, could lead to a technological signularity. As these tools become able to rival and eventually exceed the productivity of a competent wizard at doing various tasks, not only does half of the population become no longer a dead weight on society, but the ability to store value longer than a wizard concentrates on a spell grows the economy. First at a few percentage points faster than population growth, and eventually faster.

The society that embraces this technological revolution and (limited) men's liberation ould experience an increase in power. The art and craft of using magic and technology efficiently together, making lesser wizard's and mere men able to produce goods, weapons and resources at increasing rates, could raise a backwater isolated community to being a regional, then world power in the matter of centuries or decades.

Locally, socieities that mimic this technomagic revolution keep up; those that do not are overwealmed. The leaders of this revolution start to spread over the world, drawing on magical and technological resources via a growing trade network. The increased agricultural productivity and reduced death rate from pointless wars gives them a large population, and their trade craft can destroy entire wizard-citadels if they don't bow down and obey. Still, remnants remain. The idea that men are more expendible and women are in command (the matriarchy) is part and parcel of religion, society, military and trade.

Men carry the enchanted weapons of war and are the blunt edge of the knife. Women command and maintain these weapons and tools, and are only used in combat when everything else fails. Safe "core" zones are built (be they ships or forts), with soldiers deploying out from it in conflict. Women only engage in combat in extreme situations, or in defensive war; it is better to waste a hundred men clad in moonshine and steel than one combat wizard.

With a tradition of a large female:male ratio, the binary family is unlikely. So, women form "covens" of family support. These covens have a variable amount of men in service to them, of varying status, and the men are considered possessions of the coven that own them. A naval vessel will have one or more covens on it, with the crew being owned by that(ose) coven(s). Men can be traded or lent from one coven to another; but men without a coven are considered unnatural and unsafe (feral).

The magictech revolution resulted in men having more rights than they used to; covens can no longer do whatever they want to their men, they have some limited human rights. In some societies men may even have to actually consent to being owned by a coven. Extremely liberal covens exist that let their men have lots of freedom. Some women take a man into a coven and don't manage them at all, as part of "men's liberation". This satisfied the law, while thumbing its nose at tradition.

Given the scenario, what would make males valuable enough to be traded or lent among coves of witches?

[redwizard007]

...Given the scenario, what would make males valuable enough to be traded or lent among coves of witches?

Well, having a big *@&/ wouldn't hurt.

Truthfully, in the world I'm picturing from your post, it's more like Planet of the Apes, or Bicentennial Man (with men as the disadvantaged.) That doesn't seem particularly likely to me. Women have magic and men don't, changes the power structure between the sexes, but it doesn't shred how humans see one another.

Have you ever seen a woman get jealous when her fella talks to another lady? (It happens when you reverse the sexes as well.) Now you expect me to believe that those jealous impulses, the desire to possess a mate exclusively, have disappeared and that men are valued less than pets... I just don't see it.

[ArlEammon]

Maybe only men could be Sorcerers.

[brian 333]

Having magic does not equate to being invulnerable.

Imagine two powerful wizards counterspelling one another as each tries to get off a devastating attack. Then Joe throws a rock at one of them.

The role of the fighter, be it meat shield or tank, is to deal with nusances while the mages hold back their power for real need. The more effective the fighters, the less often the mages have to dip into their limited daily supply of magic.

I think one side effect might be polyandry as powerful mages collect desireable meatshields, and heirarchies of organized women might be required to marry or keep as concubines those males who prove useful. Aside from physical attributes, never underesitmate the power of music over a woman's heart. Guitar Guy can be a skinny little twerp who can't lift a sword, but girls will call him sensative and deep even though his original three-chord melody was old when his daddy taught it to him.

First husband is for passion. He ain't too bright, but look at those abs!
Second husband is for stability. Someone has to have a job.
Third husband is for family harmony. Taking care of a family is a job!
Fourth husband is for arm candy. Because Mama has needs only a beautiful young man can fulfil.

While the majority of women could never afford more than one husband, and on occasion small groups may share a husband, the wealthy would display their wealth by having their men wear it. Thus non-adventuring women buy jewelry for their men while adventuring women buy magical arms and armor for them.

[Max_Killjoy]

Maybe some men have a markedly higher resistance to magic than other people.

Maybe the manifestation of magic only occurs in women, but the strength of the trait is recessive and had to pass down through the father as well as the mother. Or the "genetics" of magic don't follow rules we'd recognize, and really strong magic "blood" passes down the male line only.

[jqavins]

Given the scenario, what would make males valuable enough to be traded or lent among coves of witches?

Short answer: sperm and brawn. Other stuff Brian has mentioned.

[I]t is better to waste a hundred men clad in moonshine and steel than one combat wizard.

Mmmaybe. The combat wizard is only valuable if she participates in combat. When you refuse to use a resource because that puts it at risk and it's too valuable to risk, then it's not really a resource and not really valuable. So the women have to be in the fight. When you look at it that way, is each one really more than a hundred times as valuable than a male grunt soldier? Just how few of these wizards are there?

[Vogie]

There's a couple things that could pop in.

• Innate Talents or skills that aren't encouraged by the ruling class. Things like craftsmanship, expertise or specializations, maybe as a bodyguard, tutor, accountant, chef, medic, et cetera. It could also be an additional source of income for a matriarch or coven.
• Innate genetics that could be of value, in a very livestock-esque husbandry aspect. This could be for things ranging from height & hair color to magical ability or bloodlines.
• Fighting prowess / Championship potential. If a duels exist in the world, to settle disagreements, slights, or lawsuits, having an access to an accomplished fencer would be paramount.
• Celebrity appeal. If there's any type of sports or entertainment in the world, those athletes or stars would show social status.

[Cluedrew]

Having any one of the enumerable skills that exist in real life (of which spell-casting is not one of).

Sure magical aids will exist all over the place with that high of a magic-user population. But maybe magic levitation is actually more effort than it is worth went you can someone carry it. Going up the chain, guards, chiefs, blacksmiths, architects, doctors, lawyers and heads of state don't have to know magic to be good at their job.

Especially if you are doing in an industrial setting where magic tools exist. At that point being able to make the tools yourself is probably a moot point.

[brian 333]

oops, wrong topic.