Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on

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Sharad9
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Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on

Post by Sharad9 »

I have an idea for a setting with a magic theocracy that i would like feedback on. This nation operates as a matriarchy with women in most of the top leadership positions. After listening to opinions from others , I discovered that most find it unrealistic for a matriarchy to remain in power for long without men seizing control (bigger, stronger, etc). So I tried to make a setting in which women are seen as more essential and to justify the social heirachy. The culture is not meant to be completely misandric or dystopic, but it does have its flaws and it's stereotypes of the sexes.

Suppose you had an inverse of the Bible creation story, where woman was create by god first. Man came from woman''s womb to serve and protect her, and play the complementary role. religious reverence would be given to the sex that gives birth, seen as a symbol of divine authority to bring new life into the world. Women would have the innate ability to control their reproductive functions. They can determine the sex of their child in the womb and choose to make it a boy or girl. They can also carry to term, pause, and abort at will. Magic would also be present in the world, but only accessible by women. It takes the form of rituals and would be powerful, but slow, exhausting, often require multiple ingredients, and time consuming.

Most of humanity is united against supernatural forces, such as demons, monsters, and other things that exist outside of reality. Magic has become essential to the survival of the human race, and forms the bedrock of society. It is used with technology, healing, alchemy, among other things. Golem-like mech suits, crystals used as batteries to power machinery, barriers meant to keep these monsters outside of reality from crossing over or banishing them in worse case scenarios, and enchancing materials and weaponry are some of the ways magitech is used in everyday life.

Although magi tech can be used by anyone, women are the only ones capable of accessing magic directly. Religion has formed around their ability to access these powers, which are said to come from god, and the ability to create life (which is also viewed as a form of magic). This has led to women being seen as sacred and more "valuable". Females are discourged from soldiering and warfare, due to the religious taboo that to take life interferes with the ability to give life.

I tried to take some positive and negative masculine and feminine stereotyes from real life and incorporate them, but also change what society deemed important. Men are valued for their physical strength and prowess, and for their protective nature. However, they are hot headed and emotional creatures. Not stupid by any means, but prone to making poor decisions and acting rashly. Women, by contrast, are perceived to be more rational and clinical in their thinking.They are nurturing, better able to cooperate to achieve long term goals, and are the glue that holds society together.

I would like to know what people think about this premise. Does it work as a realistic and believable setting? What works and what doesnt? What ideas or conflicts should be fleshed out? And how would you make a matriarchal setting distinct from real life?
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Re: Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on

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Sharad9 wrote:I have an idea for a setting with a magic theocracy that i would like feedback on. This nation operates as a matriarchy with women in most of the top leadership positions. After listening to opinions from others , I discovered that most find it unrealistic for a matriarchy to remain in power for long without men seizing control (bigger, stronger, etc).
I often wonder who these mysterious "most (people)" and "others" are...

Anyway, it seems to me a bit simplistic to pooh-pooh matriarchy simply because males are bigger and stronger. Unless you're positing a culture & history where brawn is more important than brains.

I think so long as there is a balance and both males and females have positions they can aspire and rise to, I don't see a problem with this occurring within a matriarchal government.

Among the Daine of The World, the vast majority of their polities are in fact matriarchal (no one has any idea how this got started). There's no excuse for a take-over by the boys and males and females are about the same size, build and overall strength. There are certainly differences between the two main genders (some (startlingly) physical; others mental / intellectual). They learned long ago to rely on the strengths of each other, so girls tend towards the principal leadership roles of a community's government. Boys tend towards leadership in other domains.
So I tried to make a setting in which women are seen as more essential and to justify the social heirachy. The culture is not meant to be completely misandric or dystopic, but it does have its flaws and it's stereotypes of the sexes.

Suppose you had an inverse of the Bible creation story, where woman was create by god first.
Kind of like Lilith. She came along cotemporaneously with Adam (rather than before or after). She saw no need to make herself subservient to Adam so went her own way. I guess Adam moped and complained enough that God made Eve.
Man came from woman''s womb to serve and protect her, and play the complementary role. religious reverence would be given to the sex that gives birth, seen as a symbol of divine authority to bring new life into the world. Women would have the innate ability to control their reproductive functions. They can determine the sex of their child in the womb and choose to make it a boy or girl. They can also carry to term, pause, and abort at will. Magic would also be present in the world, but only accessible by women. It takes the form of rituals and would be powerful, but slow, exhausting, often require multiple ingredients, and time consuming.
Makes sense, given the underlying factors of this world.
Most of humanity is united against supernatural forces, such as demons, monsters, and other things that exist outside of reality. Magic has become essential to the survival of the human race, and forms the bedrock of society. It is used with technology, healing, alchemy, among other things. Golem-like mech suits, crystals used as batteries to power machinery, barriers meant to keep these monsters outside of reality from crossing over or banishing them in worse case scenarios, and enchancing materials and weaponry are some of the ways magitech is used in everyday life.
I like!

I see a number of parallels with The World and how it operates. While there are terrible Things that inhabit the Voids beyond reality, there is (at the present time) no particular war or struggle against them. Devils and monsters are quite ordinary and nonsupernatural inhabitants of All That Is. Magic can be & has been applied to ordinary technology (to create a hybrid, thaumology); no thaumological suits (but that is a brilliant idea!), but there are golems, salamander batteries and other interesting bits of thaumology that become inserted into everyday life in some parts of The World.
Although magi tech can be used by anyone, women are the only ones capable of accessing magic directly.
Interesting!
Religion has formed around their ability to access these powers, which are said to come from god, and the ability to create life (which is also viewed as a form of magic). This has led to women being seen as sacred and more "valuable". Females are discourged from soldiering and warfare, due to the religious taboo that to take life interferes with the ability to give life.
Any ideas why this should be so? Is it in some way connected tó their ability to create (and destroy) life?

Are there any examples of women who can't access magic directly? (Infertile women, perhaps? Post-menopausal / pre-menstrual?) Any examples of men who can?
I tried to take some positive and negative masculine and feminine stereotyes from real life and incorporate them, but also change what society deemed important. Men are valued for their physical strength and prowess, and for their protective nature. However, they are hot headed and emotional creatures. Not stupid by any means, but prone to making poor decisions and acting rashly.
Sigh. And therein lies the kernel of Truth! Even male Daine can be described as acting more rashly and hot-headedly! Though not because of poor decision making. Perhaps overly quick decision making. Acting all hasty, where a girl would be more likely to think and consult and consider dozens of steps ahead.
Women, by contrast, are perceived to be more rational and clinical in their thinking.They are nurturing, better able to cooperate to achieve long term goals, and are the glue that holds society together.
Such parallel! I certainly look forward to reading more about this world and its countries and histories and people!
I would like to know what people think about this premise. Does it work as a realistic and believable setting? What works and what doesn't? What ideas or conflicts should be fleshed out? And how would you make a matriarchal setting distinct from real life?
It works for me! And I think the premise is believable and even probable, especially because of the female-magic and the much greater part this plays in human history *there*.
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Re: Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on

Post by Salmoneus »

I would like to know what people think about this premise. Does it work as a realistic and believable setting? What works and what doesnt? What ideas or conflicts should be fleshed out? And how would you make a matriarchal setting distinct from real life?
The problem with matriarchies is that in the real world they don't happen - at least, not in the way that people want them to, with matriarchal power being the same as patriarchal victorian power but gender-flipped. This is because there's no reason for them to happen, in the long term.

All the religious stuff makes no difference at all. For one thing, much of the religious stuff you mention is the same as in the real world. Women have been seen as more sacred and valuable for most of European history - but it hasn't translated into power. Quite the opposite!

The root of the problem is economics, and to change it you need something to change economically. Magic could do the trick. However, I'm not sure that it'll necessary change things in the way that you'd like...

[
Why women don't have political, military and commercial power: because of babies. If it is profitable to have babies, women will tend to have lots of babies. Having babies takes a lot of time and effort - even if you only include the pregnancy and the childbirth and the breastfeeding and assume that men will help out with later childrearing, full-time baby-manufacture is a massive time drain. This makes it hard for mothers to sustain political, military or commercial careers. Thus, they tend to find themselves relegated to the home (which is why they end up doing the rest of the childrearing too). If they have jobs, they tend to be jobs that don't require a rigid career progression and that are compatible with working from home - which is why things like low-output pottery and textile work are female occupations in many societies. If women tend not to be found in political, military and commercial careers, they become male-dominated and considered inherently male, so that even the women who aren't having babies find it hard to penetrate them - in particular, primitive societies lack the complex institutions required to assess and respond to the skills and interests of each individual on a case by case basis (eg there's no formal education, and if there is education there's standardised qualifications at the end of it), so they tend to make sweeping distinctions based on obvious criteria. For instance, if you're hiring blacksmiths and you have no data to judge which teenager will be a good blacksmith other than their physical appearance, and all the blacksmiths you know are very large, strong men, then you are very unlikely to take a gamble that this one woman who applies might actually turn out to be really good at it - training an apprentice is a big investment, so you take the safe option and hire the guy who "looks like a blacksmith".
The are some limited ways around this. Some societies allow women to become men and take on male roles. Some societies may have special occupational castes reserved for unusual women. And of course there can always be exceptions made for particularly rich or powerful women. But in general, once baby-profitability takes the great majority of women out of the "external" workplace (where armies and companies and governments happen), it becomes an uphill struggle for the remaining women to fight their way up the slope that that generates.
Our current society has an unusually high degree of interchangeability between men and women precisely because having babies is now very expensive. So women have fewer and fewer babies (and more and more women have none), so women are not drawn out of the external workplace, so the external workplace is more egalitarian. It also helps that those institutions I mentioned have now improved - things like women being able to prove their talent by getting qualifications, which also takes the economic risk of training away from local businesses and toward central government. But because the number of babies can never be less than zero, there's no way to flip this over into matriarchy.

"Matriarchies", however, are found at the other extreme: where women have lots of babies because babies are very profitable. These societies may be considered misogynist, in that they often involve extreme gender roles and "protection" of women from things like jobs and politics. But they can also enable women to gain significant power within the domestic sphere. So you may not find societies where women run the government, the army, or the corporations - but you do find societies where women own the houses and the farmland, and where women have the power to exile misbehaving men from their families (and hence their children, their homes, their farms, etc).
]


What happens if you give women (but not men) magic is that you give women more economic power - they can produce a form of labour that can command a high price. That's obviously, in one respect, good for the women. But wait a minute: women already have a form of labour that command a high price - it's called childbirth. And as we've seen, babies don't let women take over the external workplace - quite the contrary. I think magic would work similarly. There would be intense pressure on women to study magic, and to work in the magical sector of the economy. Why do you want to become a politician, parents will ask, when you could make so much more as a magician? How can you justify risking the economic security of your family by becoming a blacksmith, or a merchant, or a painter, when you could make so much more as a magician! Magic would simply be added to maternity as a lure to drag women out of the external workplace and into their own ghetto.
So I think that this route could create a matriarchy, but it would be a 'misogynist' matriarchy, in which women were limited to childbearing and magicmaking, too precious and too valuable to let them waste their lives doing risky things like running the country. They would be largely absent from the external marketplace, and from the things that our society considers importance - trade, industry, politics, the military, and largely art.

A potential exception, however, is if magic is very practical in nature. What I mean is: if magic is you enchanting a sword in your house, then the above will happen, with women limited to their own houses. If, on the other hand, magic is hammering the enchantments into the sword as you make it, then the need for magic to be intimately combined with swordsmithing will force women to double-train, and hence to remain involved in the external marketplace. Likewise, if you can shoot fireballs but only within your line of sight, some women will be found on battlefields; if you can control minds through touch, women will be shaking hands on business deals.
In short, if you want women to have an advantage in the spheres of the economy that we in the West traditionally consider important and powerful, you need to give them some advantage directly applicable to those spheres. Giving them power outside of those spheres will probably not only not give them power in those spheres, it'll actually direct them away from those spheres even further.

[Non-gender example: inventors. Except for occasions where inventors are able to open up entirely new markets (like at the birth of computing, for example), inventors rarely end up particularly rich. This is because their talents push them into the inventing sphere, NOT into the owning-businesses sphere. So the people who own the businesses are able to use their power to, as it were, co-opt the value of the inventors. Hence the Wire joke about the inventor of the McNugget not being rich, but just being some guy in a lab in the basement. Even at chaotic times, it tends to work that way: Jobs was more economically and politically powerful than Wozniak. Wozniak had the actual ideas and the talent, but Jobs was the guy who was better at the commercial side. Now, imagine that Wozniak is a female wizard and Jobs is... her father, her brother, her husband, her male friend, her village headman, whatever. No matter how great Wozniak-wizard is at casting enchantments, Jobs-man is likely to end up more powerful than her, unless she leaves the basement and does the commercial stuff herself. But the better a wizard she is, the more incentive she has to stay in her lab - her time is valuable! Why give up time when she could be making money in the lab, in order to pursue a boring career in negotiation and corporate strategy, in which the vast majority of people fail?]
Suppose you had an inverse of the Bible creation story, where woman was create by god first. Man came from woman''s womb to serve and protect her, and play the complementary role.
As I say, this doesn't matter. Whatever economics dictates will be how "serve and protect" is defined. Victorian men thought they were serving and protecting their womenfolk by not giving them legal rights [those delicate creatures don't want their heads to explode getting themselves caught up in lawsuits!].
religious reverence would be given to the sex that gives birth, seen as a symbol of divine authority to bring new life into the world.
As in many religions - Christianity, for instance.
Women would have the innate ability to control their reproductive functions. They can determine the sex of their child in the womb and choose to make it a boy or girl. They can also carry to term, pause, and abort at will.
Probably wouldn't have a major impact on the economics, because women are generally able to control their reproductive functions already (abstinence; plus, abortifacients have been known about since time immemorial). It might, though, change the situation around rape, abortion, female promiscuity and so forth. It might end up being a poison chalice, though - any woman who doesn't conceive will be seen as betraying her husband intentionally...
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Re: Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on

Post by Sharad9 »

but if women control the means of production through magic ( growing crops, creating materials for construction, keeping demons out, forming a "magical" internet, etc) wont that make the society a matriarchal system in all but name? men as the external leaders, but with a very women centered culture?
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Re: Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on

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Sharad9 wrote:but if women control the means of production through magic ( growing crops, creating materials for construction, keeping demons out, forming a "magical" internet, etc) wont that make the society a matriarchal system in all but name? men as the external leaders, but with a very women centered culture?
If the power of women is thát deep, then external male control is just window dressing. The king becomes a figurehead and can say what he wants; but it's the queen has the real power.

I don't necessarily think this will drive women further from power (though I agree that child rearing is a full time and a half job, and will, for most women, keep them from the external workplace). If every woman, to some degree or other, shares in these capacities, then even within the rudest of families, it will be the women that have the real power.

Social dynamics must be interesting in such an environment --- how does the alpha female gain her position? How does she keep it? What if she's gotten her position and doesn't want to give it up when some young upstart niece comes along who's better at the magic?
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Re: Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on

Post by Sharad9 »

elemtilas wrote:
Sharad9 wrote:but if women control the means of production through magic ( growing crops, creating materials for construction, keeping demons out, forming a "magical" internet, etc) wont that make the society a matriarchal system in all but name? men as the external leaders, but with a very women centered culture?
If the power of women is thát deep, then external male control is just window dressing. The king becomes a figurehead and can say what he wants; but it's the queen has the real power.

I don't necessarily think this will drive women further from power (though I agree that child rearing is a full time and a half job, and will, for most women, keep them from the external workplace). If every woman, to some degree or other, shares in these capacities, then even within the rudest of families, it will be the women that have the real power.

Social dynamics must be interesting in such an environment --- how does the alpha female gain her position? How does she keep it? What if she's gotten her position and doesn't want to give it up when some young upstart niece comes along who's better at the magic?
Do you think that reproduction would be more regulated than it is today?
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Re: Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on

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Sharad9 wrote:
elemtilas wrote:
Sharad9 wrote:but if women control the means of production through magic ( growing crops, creating materials for construction, keeping demons out, forming a "magical" internet, etc) wont that make the society a matriarchal system in all but name? men as the external leaders, but with a very women centered culture?
If the power of women is thát deep, then external male control is just window dressing. The king becomes a figurehead and can say what he wants; but it's the queen has the real power.

I don't necessarily think this will drive women further from power (though I agree that child rearing is a full time and a half job, and will, for most women, keep them from the external workplace). If every woman, to some degree or other, shares in these capacities, then even within the rudest of families, it will be the women that have the real power.

Social dynamics must be interesting in such an environment --- how does the alpha female gain her position? How does she keep it? What if she's gotten her position and doesn't want to give it up when some young upstart niece comes along who's better at the magic?
Do you think that reproduction would be more regulated than it is today?
Could be --- but, it would obviously be the Top Women doing the regulating.

I'm guessing you mean "regulating" in the legal sense, rather than the biological. I could be wrong and would appreciate clarification!

You've already stated that women "control the means of production", which I would also imagine include their own "means of production"! That kind of autoregulation is something unknown among any human society *here*.
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Re: Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on

Post by Sharad9 »

elemtilas wrote:
Sharad9 wrote:
elemtilas wrote:
Sharad9 wrote:but if women control the means of production through magic ( growing crops, creating materials for construction, keeping demons out, forming a "magical" internet, etc) wont that make the society a matriarchal system in all but name? men as the external leaders, but with a very women centered culture?
If the power of women is thát deep, then external male control is just window dressing. The king becomes a figurehead and can say what he wants; but it's the queen has the real power.

I don't necessarily think this will drive women further from power (though I agree that child rearing is a full time and a half job, and will, for most women, keep them from the external workplace). If every woman, to some degree or other, shares in these capacities, then even within the rudest of families, it will be the women that have the real power.

Social dynamics must be interesting in such an environment --- how does the alpha female gain her position? How does she keep it? What if she's gotten her position and doesn't want to give it up when some young upstart niece comes along who's better at the magic?
Do you think that reproduction would be more regulated than it is today?
Could be --- but, it would obviously be the Top Women doing the regulating.

I'm guessing you mean "regulating" in the legal sense, rather than the biological. I could be wrong and would appreciate clarification!

You've already stated that women "control the means of production", which I would also imagine include their own "means of production"! That kind of autoregulation is something unknown among any human society *here*.
I was thinking in the legal sense, like who gets to reproduce and what sex is to be created to avoid gender imbalances. Some sort of high council or governing body.
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Re: Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on

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Sharad9 wrote:I was thinking in the legal sense, like who gets to reproduce and what sex is to be created to avoid gender imbalances. Some sort of high council or governing body.
Definitely not a 'traditional' notion of matriarchy.

It seems like in the kind of society you're describing, most of the negatives Salmoneus lists either turn positive or at least cease being hinderances. Here, child-rearing women don't necessarily have to be relegated to the house or tucked away in the kitchen. There's no reason they can't be in the Curia with their babes at their breasts. Generally speaking, when it comes to rulers of complex social systems, they are kind of removed from some of the more mundane duties. I would hazard the guess that in a society like this, unmarried girls & boys and those determined to be unfit to procreate will take on roles that support the Top Women of the power structure.

Men won't rebel against the system, even if they wanted to and even if they had some economic or physical means to do so, because any such rebellion would be nipped in the bud by ensuring that no next generation would be born to them. A most gentle and agreeable coercion! You support the social structure and your queens, and in return, the women will ensure the continuance of abundant life in your country! Cross the rulers and your country will become desolate waste: withered crops and withered bloodlines.
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Re: Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on

Post by Axiem »

One issue with childbirth to keep in mind historically is the high mortality rate from it. That also changes the economics of "whom do you train for these tasks?"

Matriarchy (/gynarchy) has been one of those things I've been thinking about and toying with for quite some time, and it's interesting to see various people's takes on it. (Sheri Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country is an interesting one, for instance, though I have a number of gripes)

I have noticed a variety of responses from people when I've inquired about things like "what would society look like if women were in charge", and have gotten responses ranging from "men would end up in charge within a generation" to "not much". I think one's views on matriarchy (and its structure) end up being heavily influenced on one's beliefs about the sexes.

One matriarchy I put together for a novel a while back achieved it via immense sex imbalance thanks to a curse that grossly impacted sex ratios. My logic was essentially that if you had 4–5 women per man, they would end up being in charge simply by virtue of someone having to run things.

In Mto, I have a not-exactly-theocratic matriarchy that I'm tooling with, and grappling with a lot of the same issues.

I do think that child-bearing and child-rearing is an issue that needs to be addressed very much. Children are extraordinarily needy their first 12–18 months, and there are limited ways they can obtain calories during that timeframe. Once the children are able to work, it's less of an issue (child labor being a thing in pre-modern societies), though they probably still require some degree of supervision.

The Patriarchy, such as it is, did not arrive ex nihilo. There are reasons tied to survival why things in every pre-modern society are the way they are. We have such an abundance of food and other goods in the modern era that it's frequently difficult to see it. (Which is not, per se, to defend The Patriarchy; there is much about its modern incarnation that I think we should do away with)

I do, however, generally think that once certain major trends are established in a society regarding e.g. who has money and power, it can be difficult to shake them. In other words, if you're able to establish a solid matriarchy, with women clearly in control and power, I don't think it will suddenly switch to something else in a generation or three. Families with money tend to keep money, and set the political agenda. If the families with money are all woman-led, then, well, that has an influence.
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