# Premise for a theocratic matriarchy I want feedback on



## Sharad9 (Apr 5, 2017)

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 believable setting? What works and what doesnt? What ideas or conflicts can be fleshed out to make a matriarchy feel "realistic"? What would be the consequences of women being in complete control of reproduction and how would it affect childrearing?


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## pmmg (Apr 5, 2017)

Sounds good to me. Write it 

I think the only thing I might take issue with is abort at will. Where in, this would seem to not be a mystical function, but a physical one. Women can certainly abort at will in any sense, as they can do many physical things to end a pregnancy. A more mystical use might be to conceive or not conceive at will. But once conceived, the life created would have to be destroyed. I would question if God, who decided here to create Eve first, would want that. Rather than a willful act to undo what has already been created.

I might also question, if magic can be used to create life, are the men needed at all for causing pregnancy? I am not sure if you meant that sentence in that way. But if magic is all that is needed, then men might not even be seen as something that could be desired.

The question you ask at the end, about how would it affect childrearing, well, you are already rewriting all the rules for society. If women are in charge they might choose to switch a lot of the gender roles entirely, and so just about everything, including child rearing, would quite likely be different. 

However, none of the above raises enough red flags for me to not just go with it. You get create it all. I think it sounds like a fun experiment. I am interested already in what you might come up with.


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## Sharad9 (Apr 5, 2017)

Creating life still required a physical union between man and woman. However, males do not pass on their genes, but their "spirit". The spirit is basically  the life force of a human being  it also contains the seat of consciousness.  Their personality, ethics, values, and everything that makes that person "them" is housed there.


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## Sharad9 (Apr 5, 2017)

pmmg said:


> Sounds good to me. Write it
> 
> I think the only thing I might take issue with is abort at will. Where in, this would seem to not be a mystical function, but a physical one. Women can certainly abort at will in any sense, as they can do many physical things to end a pregnancy. A more mystical use might be to conceive or not conceive at will. But once conceived, the life created would have to be destroyed. I would question if God, who decided here to create Eve first, would want that. Rather than a willful act to undo what has already been created.
> 
> ...



Creating life still required a physical union between man and woman. However, males do not pass on their genes, but their "spirit". The spirit is basically  the life force of a human being  it also contains the seat of consciousness.  Their personality, ethics, values, and everything that makes that person "them" is housed there.


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## elemtilas (Apr 5, 2017)

Sharad9 said:


> Creating life still required a physical union between man and woman. However, males do not pass on their genes, but their "spirit". The spirit is basically  the life force of a human being  it also contains the seat of consciousness.  Their personality, ethics, values, and everything that makes that person "them" is housed there.



Oh, this is interesting!

So, the children all resemble the mother and her family members physically, but resemble the father and his family members spiritually and temperamentally? Neat!


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## Sharad9 (Apr 5, 2017)

pmmg said:


> Sounds good to me. Write it
> 
> I think the only thing I might take issue with is abort at will. Where in, this would seem to not be a mystical function, but a physical one. Women can certainly abort at will in any sense, as they can do many physical things to end a pregnancy. A more mystical use might be to conceive or not conceive at will. But once conceived, the life created would have to be destroyed. I would question if God, who decided here to create Eve first, would want that. Rather than a willful act to undo what has already been created.
> 
> ...


Well what I meant was that a man's spirit interacts with the genes in a different way. As a result, everyone looks unique. But they tend to have the personalities of their father.


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## staiger95 (Apr 5, 2017)

If you plan to alter the genetic progression inherent in biological reproduction, then you should be cautious to consider how that would effect biological dimorphism within the society.  You mention males being big and strong, but remember that males only became 'big and strong' to compete with other males for reproductive rights.  Consider within your society what would be the desirable traits of each gender and how those would be selected and nurtured.  If magic gives control over so many aspects of reproduction, think of what traits men would be selected for in terms of 'passing on their spirit'.  This could result in a relatively few jealously guarded (and controlled) 'studs' within a predominately female society, with the females themselves restructuring into differing castes of birthers, warriors, sorcerers, etc..   Just things to consider.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Apr 5, 2017)

This is interesting and well thought out. 

The only thing that confuses me is the ability to abort at will...if women have so much power they can determine the sex of their child in the womb, can they not choose when and when not to conceive? Control their hormones/ovulation?...


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## Sharad9 (Apr 5, 2017)

Yes. But I was thinking they should have it just as an option. Since they have that much control, it made sense to me. You don't think it works?


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## Sharad9 (Apr 5, 2017)

I was thinking that males who conformed to conformed to masculine ideals of the culture ( loyalty, protective, muscular, dutiful) would be the alpha males of society. Those who support the social structure and reinforce it's values and traditions would rise in power and influence, but their authority would ultimately come from their female relatives.


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## Annoyingkid (Apr 5, 2017)

> and for their protective nature.



Men have no such thing. Men need to be socialized into becoming white knight providers  for women. Especially magically empowered women who need no protecting. In a matriarchy, women are dominant  and can leave relationships easily, and take the kids, and make the father pay for them still. Men have  no  guarantees of loyalty no matter how much work they put in. Women would have no social stigma against sleeping around and cucking a man. Having a higher status man impregnate and the lower status provider raise it. Single motherhood is norm in a matriarchy .Men would have no due process allowed against rape charges/violence against women (listen and believe/yes means yes) etc. More men would stay single than stay with a domineering, combative, nag of an empowered woman who could kick you out on the street anytime, take the kids, while having you fight wars for her and toil yourself toward a short lifespan. Simps are made, not born. Oh and you'll have a massive boy shortage, as women will choose the more valuable sex. A reverse China.


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## skip.knox (Apr 6, 2017)

When you say matriarchy, and positions of power, what do you have in mind? Monarchs, sure. Judges? Heads of corporations or business partnerships? Village elders? Commanders of armies? Teachers? Doctors?

In any of these, it seems to me that magic would trump everything, so you would have males in none of those positions, and many more besides. In fact, in any socio-economic-political-religious role, it feels like you would need an explanation for why a woman was *not* in that role. If I'm on the right track, if that's how you are thinking, then I do see a couple of issues.

One, you will have a manpower ... *ahem* ... womanpower shortage. (huh. interesting. spellcheck underlines womanpower but is untroubled by manpower) Er, where was I? Oh yeah. You will have a womanpower shortage. And a surplus of males. Maybe even a plethora.

Two, this is more of a question, are positions hereditary or elective? If the latter, can men stand for office? If the former, what happens when the line fails? There is a third way, which is by co-optation. Historically this rarely works well or for long, but you could probably sell it.


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## La Volpe (Apr 6, 2017)

Sharad9 said:


> They can determine the sex of their child in the womb and choose to make it a boy or girl.
> ...
> What would be the consequences of women being in complete control of reproduction and how would it affect childrearing?



If they can determine the sex of the baby, then I'd imagine the society would be 90+% female. And all the males are simply kept for their necessity in the reproduction process. And you don't need many males to have a good reproduction rate, since their direct involvement in the biological process is very short compared to a woman's. In fact, they'd have a better reproduction rate, and have a huge population growth, unless the men are kept only for a certain caste of women.



> 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.



Women are more valuable in our world. As mentioned above, you don't need many males to keep population growth up. E.g. if you have 100 men and 20 women, you can get maximum 20 babies every 9 months (excepting twins and the like). While if you have 100 women and 20 men, you can get 100 babies every 9 months.

So because of this, women are inherently more valuable from a biological point of view. That's why men and not women went out to fight and hunt -- it wasn't worth risking a woman's life.


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## Annoyingkid (Apr 6, 2017)

A variety of men competing for women keeps the genepool at a high quality. But if women  with their own group preferance*  decide the sex, _and_ if women have higher status in a matriarchy, you will have hardly any males born at all. Then these few men are sent to war and die, your society ends. Game over.

*"Women are wonderful" effect - Wikipedia *women's in-group biases were 4.5 times stronger[5]* than those of men


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## Sharad9 (Apr 6, 2017)

I took some ideas from Iroquois culture, in which men and women had separate roles in society. Society would be broken down into semi independent matrilineal clans Females would focus more on matters that keep society running. These are the business leaders, judges,teachers, etc. However, they wouldnt normally get involved with politics directly. Since magic is basically the bedrock of society, they are it's most important members and would be too valuable to risk. Clan mothers would elect males as "leaders" to run day to day tasks. However, true authority would lie with their female relatives who could remove them if neccessary.
The idea was to create a world with men as external leaders but with a women centric culture. Rather than men having agency, women wield their agency through men. Does that make sense?


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## Sharad9 (Apr 6, 2017)

I would think that reproduction would have to be regulated to prevent a gender imbalance. Instead of men regulating women like most of our history, women regulate each other. Sex and reproduction would be seen as separate. The former would not be a concern, but the latter would be strictly controlled.


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## TheKillerBs (Apr 6, 2017)

But why would men even go to war in this scenario? They're a rare reproductive resource and weaker since they have no access to magic. It makes no sense that they would risk their men like that.


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## FifthView (Apr 6, 2017)

Sharad9 said:


> 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 believable setting? What works and what doesnt? What ideas or conflicts can be fleshed out to make a matriarchy feel "realistic"? What would be the consequences of women being in complete control of reproduction and how would it affect childrearing?



The biggest potential trap would be to begin with the idea of homogeneity and construct your society from that basis.

In general, I think your ideas will work. But I think it'd be a mistake to visualize that society as if any single point within it is like every other single point: This household is like every other household; this neighborhood is like every other neighborhood; this family living on the edges of society is like the families who occupy the upper echelons; this individual is like every other individual; this man is like every other man and this woman is like every other woman; this woman's view of men is like every woman's view of men, and this man's view of women is like every man's view of women.

In a realistic society, there will be great variation.

If you begin with a limited extreme and universalize it, and make that the absolute and universal nature of your people, institutions, etc., at every point in society, you could possibly end up with something like La Volpe's description of a society that is 90+% female and men are around for their role in reproduction _only_. Or you could end up with Annoyingkid's prediction of a society that would drive itself to extinction long before your book begins.

But I think these are unrealistic views, or at least rather limited.

First, I assume that your society is still around because it developed in ways that permitted and even encouraged its continuation. So I'm curious to explore those factors that ameliorated the effects that extreme homogeneity and stringent absolutism would otherwise have wrought on your society.

Second, I think that you've already given some clues about those ameliorating factors. I'll look at those:



> 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.



You haven't said that all women can access that magic, nor that every woman's access is equally strong. So I'm curious about this, and I'd suggest that you include variation in these things, for reasons I'll explain in a bit. 

Magic is not the sort where you can launch a fireball at a suddenly violent aggressor—including male aggressors—or whip up chains to restrain an attacker. There is at least one burden to magic use, then: complexity, involving time constraints and resource restraints. This limits its use as a vehicle for domination (including of men), although by "limit" I don't think we should disregard those effects altogether.



> 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....This has led to women being seen as sacred and more "valuable". Females are [discouraged] from soldiering and warfare, due to the religious taboo that to take life interferes with the ability to give life.



As La Volpe has said, evolutionary paths have already followed a route for humans in which women are valued for their childbearing while men rush off to hunt and fight; so, this isn't particularly new. Also, in our society, the women's childbearing has been utilized for segregation of roles, already, i.e. institutionalized. But you've added some factors that are ahistorical and that lend weight to this segregation. In our own history, male domination of society could work (whether you like it or not) because most major warfare could be resolved by force of arms, whether interstate or intrastate warfare. In your society, this is not the case. So I can see this history of your world reinforcing the notion of segregation of roles in the way you propose. Religious and social norms could place greater emphasis on the idea of protection of women—even men would recognize that their own survival _depended_ on these women.

But, the magic these women use is slow, resource-intensive. For comprehensive defense, they would need the "physical strength and prowess" of men.

So...so far so good. I can buy this.

But I would suggest drilling down into various different layers of your society to find the true variation within that society.

Perhaps what works in the humans vs demons/monsters dynamic would work in intrastate conflict, i.e. powerful women in conflict with other powerful women within the society. Each may well have powerful magic, but it's slow; keeping a personal army or bodyguard of men around would be a good idea. Merchant women may well need a sturdy set of transporters for their goods, to prevent thefts. Women who lead thieving guilds or assassin guilds—i.e., crime bosses—may well need dependable men for protection and for doing various dirty deeds in the night where danger levels are greatest. Perhaps other dangerous jobs in the society would be the province of men. (I.e., women are so valued naturally, they might not be placed in direct danger.)

Also, if you have variation in access to magic and magical proficiency among the women, perhaps those who have none or only limited ability would be more prone to have men in their employ and lots of sons. Men can work, earn a living, provide protection.

Basically, men are valued for more than their role in reproduction.

I'd look at the way women are not universally valued to the same degree, don't have identical status—among themselves, also. I'd look at the effects of economic inequality. I can see the way some women in powerful positions _wouldn't_ want lots of daughters in a society because daughters are competition. The boss of a crime syndicate might not want her subordinates producing powerful magic-using daughters by the bushel-full. If a society has great need for men, perhaps the ruling families would have more freedom to produce daughters but would restrain the production of daughters among the lower classes—need the men for the army, labor, etc., and don't want lots of powerful competition being produced in the lower classes.

So...there are plenty of ways to go about creating a vibrant, self-sustaining matriarchal society in which only women can access magic while also having great reproductive control.


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## Sharad9 (Apr 6, 2017)

Some stipulation among lower classes that only men can be born, while daughters may be restricted to higher ups.


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## Annoyingkid (Apr 6, 2017)

Women tend to  want the best outcomes for their  children, so will choose the sex with the much higher quality of life. There would need to be powerful  personal motives to choose the lower status  sex knowing their baby will have a much harsher, poorer life. Asking people to forego personal  gain  for  the long term good of society doesn't work. We'd all be vegan and take the bus/cycle and donate blood much more if we were that selfless.


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## FifthView (Apr 6, 2017)

Annoyingkid said:


> Women tend to  want the best outcomes for their  children, so will choose the sex with the much higher quality of life. There would need to be powerful  personal motives to choose the lower status  sex knowing their baby will have a much harsher, poorer life. Asking people to forego personal  gain  for  the long term good of society doesn't work. We'd all be vegan and take the bus/cycle and donate much more if we were that selfless.



There are only so many managerial positions available. A lot of what makes society work is time-intensive drudgery. Whether the child is male or female would make no difference in quality of life if that child spends a lifetime working the fields. And yet, fields must be worked. Mines mined. Horses shod.

I'd say there's also an odd assumption in thinking that just because women have special value in a society, the men have much less value. The women in this proposed society are valued for a) childbearing capabilities, b) magic use, and I suppose, c) "more rational and clinical" thinking. Putting them in the fields to work, or the mines, seems anathema. But these other roles in society are valuable, particularly for the families who would benefit most directly from having manual laborers within the family. They _could_ choose to produce only daughters; but if they hold no expectations of having their daughters govern, lead a business, etc., or be paid highly to participate in magic rituals for defense, there'd be no special impetus for having only daughters. A family that has worked the mines for generations and earned special status within that milieu might well already have a family tradition of producing mostly sons.  Not to mention that there could be a negative stigma for a family that puts only daughters in the mines: As if, that's really a waste of daughters, anathema to the principle value of females, and possibly (depending on the society) a kind of blasphemy.


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## Annoyingkid (Apr 6, 2017)

> A lot of what makes society work is time-intensive drudgery.



"I want my kid to be a garbage man, because working societies need garbage men"

....thought no mother ever.


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## FifthView (Apr 6, 2017)

Annoyingkid said:


> "I want my kid to be a garbage man, because working societies need garbage men"
> 
> ....thought no mother ever.



"We need food on the table, and positions are always open at the mine"

....thought lots of mothers.

Much historical infanticide was a result of perceived economic advantage in having one sex (usual male) over the other born into the family. Sometimes a general sexism played a role, i.e., one sex (usually female) was thought to be an inferior sex.

The economic advantage was often to the family/parents. A son could bring in more wealth to the family. A daughter might require that a dowry be paid. It wasn't so much the thought that "My son will live a happier life because he's male" but that "My son, being male, will be able to earn money"–as a garbage man, for instance–"and that will bring more money into the family."


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## Annoyingkid (Apr 6, 2017)

FifthView said:


> "We need food on the table, and positions are always open at the mine"
> 
> ....thought lots of mothers.
> 
> ...



The son is likely to be sent off to die in war and probably has alot fewer employment opportunities in a matriarchy than a woman. Especially if;
_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._

In advanced, feminized societies -and if they have the tech make Golem-like mech suits, they are advanced- employers look for the qualities the women have. Not rash,poor decision makers 

Even if a family had no aspirations beyond drudgery, you'd  choose women for better decision making and rationality. Unless mining isn't machine operated and the workers are getting paid by the quantity they mine instead of a flat rate. Only then would men make sense. The fact is alot of drudgery can be done by women just as well. I have difficulty believing a mother would choose that and birth a male without state compensation.


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## La Volpe (Apr 6, 2017)

Fifth, you make some excellent points here. I agree with most of what you said, but there are a few things that I'm pondering about now.

One, we seem to be working on the assumption that men will be better at combat and/or physical tasks in this world (even with the magic being exclusive to the women). Did I understand this correctly? If so, it would definitely make sense to have more men so that they can do the fighting.

However, population-wise, more women equals more eventual bodies on the ground. So wouldn't it be useful to a society (especially one that is in constant war with demons and whatnot) to have more people? I mean, a 50/50 population vs a 10/90 (m/f) population would have almost half as many people after just 9 months. And when you get to war, having twice the number of people with sharp things is probably going to earn you the victory.


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## Sharad9 (Apr 6, 2017)

So I should dispense with the"choose the sex of your child" idea? What about the other aspects of reproductive control? Do they work?


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## FifthView (Apr 6, 2017)

La Volpe said:


> However, population-wise, more women equals more eventual bodies on the ground. So wouldn't it be useful to a society (especially one that is in constant war with demons and whatnot) to have more people? I mean, a 50/50 population vs a 10/90 (m/f) population would have almost half as many people after just 9 months. And when you get to war, having twice the number of people with sharp things is probably going to earn you the victory.



I think much would depend on death/attrition rates vs birth rates, level of warfare (constant, sporadic, swarms or skirmishes?) and the role that magic plays in it. Babies will still need to be raised up before they can fight, and having more births specifically to increase the size of the fighting force would mean an explosion in the male population relative to the female population anyway, right, so....? 

Too hard to know without more info!

But I'm not sure this is like Plato trying to design his Republic, where an ideal society is designed in a non-organic way. Much will depend on what the OP wants to do in the story; just about anything could be accomplished, with the right tweaks.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Apr 6, 2017)

FifthView said:


> I think much would depend on death/attrition rates vs birth rates, level of warfare (constant, sporadic, swarms or skirmishes?) and the role that magic plays in it. Babies will still need to be raised up before they can fight, and having more births specifically to increase the size of the fighting force would mean an explosion in the male population relative to the female population anyway, right, so....?
> 
> Too hard to know without more info!
> 
> But I'm not sure this is like Plato trying to design his Republic, where an ideal society is designed in a non-organic way. Much will depend on what the OP wants to do in the story; just about anything could be accomplished, with the right tweaks.



The perfect situation for a good statistical modeling program. Set up the parameters, pit one group against the other, let the simulation run, and see who comes out ahead. Of course, the results depend on how good your model is, but you can tweak the parameters and run again as many times as needed to get a good feel for what the real result might be.

I remember doing this sort of thing back in my college days a few decades ago. Sounds like a fun little project for some statistical-minded person with time on their hands.


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## TheKillerBs (Apr 6, 2017)

Annoyingkid said:


> The son is likely to be sent off to die in war



No he bloody isn't, why do you insist on this? Males are rarer and weaker, therefore a resource to be protected rather than the expendables that they were in human history. They have a completely different reproductive biology so you can't treat them as a human society, but rather as a different species with more females who are also stronger than the males. They would not send the males to war, not just because of that, but also, very likely, _men would not be trusted in battle_. The stereotype is that men are hotheads, therefore, the line of thinking will be that they'll die pointlessly because they did some foolhardy thing due to their need to satisfy their male ego. Instead, women, who besides magic, possess cooler heads and more rational thinking, would be better at warfare than men because they grasp strategy better and stick to the plan more than men.


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## Sharad9 (Apr 6, 2017)

Magic is slow and time consuming. It is not the fireball throwing type. Therefore, they wouldn't be at the front lines.


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## skip.knox (Apr 7, 2017)

What about in a siege? Either offensive or defensive, there would be time for most any sort of magic. Also, there are magics that can gather intelligence, sow confusion, or do other things ... I don't have the details of what your magic does. But I find it hard to imagine a scenario in which magic would not be used in war, which concerns life and death.

For that matter, I see it being used in just about every aspect of society. In tax collection, for example. In law courts. Certainly in diplomacy; maybe in legislation. The suspicion of magic would sow mistrust in any village council. 

And would not men, being without this power, be resentful, suspicious and even superstitious in the face of it? What sort of effect would this have on young boys? When do girls acquire power? Infancy?


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## Sharad9 (Apr 7, 2017)

Magic is used in growing food, creating stronger than steel materials for buildings and constructs, creating crystal-like batteries that provide unlimited power for machinery but that wear down over time, making portals that can make short jumps from place to place, etc.

Magic is used in all walks of life, including war. However, it isn't like throwing fire or lightning at people. It's slow and time consuming, and may require other materials. This limits it's functionality in war.


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## FifthView (Apr 7, 2017)

Sharad9 said:


> So I should dispense with the"choose the sex of your child" idea?



That's really up to you. The idea opens up a can of worms, introduces other issues. But I think it can be used.

If you use the idea, you can introduce other factors to insure that women who are giving birth may have valid, equally important reasons for choosing to bear a son rather than a daughter. Men can have valued roles within the society even if they do not occupy all the positions of power. Certain traditions, laws, methods of reinforcing the male population could be created; for instance, something like China's old one-child policy for the lower classes, but maybe it's one daughter for every two men, or whatever.

You might also consider something else I mentioned earlier. Perhaps not all women can use magic. If controlling the sex of their unborn child is something related to magic, and some women do not have access to magic, then it would stand to reason that those women may have an equal chance to have sons. You could go a step further and say that only _some_ women who possess magic have the ability to predetermine the sex of their child, i.e. it's a special ability that only a small percentage of magic-using women posses (perhaps these will turn out to be women in powerful positions, often.) 

Another possibility:  Only certain priestesses can use magic to set an unborn child's sex, for other women, for a fee of some kind, and these priestesses may refuse the service for whatever reason. Or say that the child must be born male. (They might be a type of Population Control Squad, heh, maintaining the ratio of men to women within the society. But I'd imagine that rulers, rich merchants, important leaders might often get preferential treatment.)

So there are options.




> What about the other aspects of reproductive control? Do they work?



Reproductive control has been a major issue in _our_ world for important reasons relating to the empowerment or disempowerment of women, i.e. due to many factors in our history and societies, but I'm vaguely wondering if a different society with a different history, like yours, will place such emphasis on reproductive control for maintaining power within the society. I don't know. I do think that if women are already empowered and fill most leadership roles, reproductive control will organically become an effect of this.  But I wonder about cause and effect here, the order of these two things.

More generally, I wonder if you may have heeded warnings about the realism of your society by going a bit too far in the opposite direction. A metaphor. Someone tells me that the meal I placed before them is cold, so I get a blowtorch and burn it, and then burn the table down, in response. Heh.


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## skip.knox (Apr 7, 2017)

I have to ask: why are you doing this? Why create this alternate reality? Just to see where it might go? Or to make a specific point? The former is just world-building. The latter is writing. Each brings with it its own constraints and possibilities.

You might look at some of Ursula Le Guin's works to see examples of how to handle gender roles in order to make a point. And for just plain good writing.


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## Sharad9 (Apr 7, 2017)

It's more of a world building project. I wanted to build a "realistic" matriarchal setting to see how different it would be from our reality.


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## Annoyingkid (Apr 7, 2017)

> No he bloody isn't, why do you insist on this



Because the OP states that women do not fight in war. So men must. And as they're assailed  by supernatural enemies, Men would be sent off to die in war.

As for men being weaker, who says they have to be?



> And would not men, being without this power, be resentful, suspicious and even superstitious in the face of it? What sort of effect would this have on young boys? When do girls acquire power? Infancy?



Get resentful for what? I say let the women have their fancypants magic. Men and boys instead train their bodies and cunning to perfection like Batman. And coming up with plans to neutralize their girly magic if they ever  abuse their power.  And no girls allowed! One can only do one thing at a time. If women practice magic they're not practicing martial arts or shooting as much. etc.


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## Lisselle (Apr 7, 2017)

You could look at examples of Matriarchal societies in the Animal world, and see how they succeed. With Hyenas the female clitoris is as large as the male penis, and the females are bigger and more aggressive, so the lines between male and female as we judge them are blurred. Hyena societies are truly interesting.

I like the contrast between Chimpanzee and Bonobo primates; Chimps are Patriarchal and Bonobos are Matriarchal. As a general outline of how their societies work Chimps use warfare, aggression and dominance to control their tribe, and Bonobos use sexual displays, touching, grooming and female camaraderie to manage their tribes.
Apparently Bonobos are our closest genetic cousin.


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## Russ (Apr 10, 2017)

Hey S9, 

What an interesting and thought provoking question.

I have read this thread, and would like to repeat for you the advice my wife got from her writing mentor on a number of occasions.  That advice is simply "go deeper".

Now it this context it means discarding a whole heap of preconceived notions.  Many of the posts above simply take an aspect of our world (let's call it patriarchal if we dare) and then change it in a way a patriarchally raised individual suspects a matriarchal system might work.  It is hard to escape all the assumptions of our western capitalist culture, but that is really what you have to do when you take on a project like like this.

For instance, when AK says:



> "I want my kid to be a garbage man, because working societies need garbage men"
> 
> ....thought no mother ever.



What he is really saying is "thought no mother raised in a capitalist stratified patriarchal society ever."  

People in different cultures think differently.  Very differently.  There have been cultures were parents were honoured to have their child sacrificed.  That is a tad worse than being a garbage collector.

You can  start from a blank slate.  Your culture may value roles and ambition differently.  The idea of sacrificing may be revered instead of accumulation.  There is no reason to believe that women would not chose to have male children if they could control the gender of their child without certain modern assumptions.

You have a completely blank slate when you build your own world.  In a fantasy world you don't even have to obey the laws of physics or have a good grasp on how evolution really works.  Evolution is a very tricky beast, and many things you read about it on the internet are quite flawed.

Do your best to completely discard almost all of your assumptions about human behaviour and society and start afresh.  Then you have a shot of producing something really amazing.

As an aside, you might want to have a look at Margaret Murray's work on pre-Christian matriarchal cultures.  The cultures she wrote about almost certainly didn't exist, but her, and certain feminist spirituality writers like her might well have some material that could inform or inspire your work.


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## valiant12 (Apr 10, 2017)

> People in different cultures think differently. Very differently. There have been cultures were parents were honoured to have their child sacrificed.




Please give me a (non fictional) example of a culture in which people are ok with other people murdering their children for religious reasons.


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## Russ (Apr 10, 2017)

valiant12 said:


> Please give me a (non fictional) example of a culture in which people are ok with other people murdering their children for religious reasons.



Are you suggesting that my statement is inaccurate or just hoping I will do some research for you?


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## Michael K. Eidson (Apr 10, 2017)

valiant12 said:


> Please give me a (non fictional) example of a culture in which people are ok with other people murdering their children for religious reasons.



It wasn't always other people do the sacrificing. There is the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Even if you consider the Bible as fictional, the story likely has at least some basis in fact.

Child sacrifice - Wikipedia - mentions, among other theories, it's believed that in Maya culture, parents would allow their children to be sacrificed, thinking they would continue to exist in some form even after the sacrifice.


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## Russ (Apr 10, 2017)

The bible actually deals with child sacrifice beyond that one story.

I will keep this super short because I don't want to drag this thread way off topic.

My understanding is that there is significant evidence for voluntary child sacrifice in Europe, North America, South and Central America and Africa.  I don't know about Asia.

Even the Carthaginians apparently did it:

Ancient Carthaginians really did sacrifice their children | University of Oxford


> A collaborative paper by academics from institutions across the globe, including Oxford University, suggests that Carthaginian parents ritually sacrificed young children as an offering to the gods.



But the point I was making to the OP and on the thread topic.  Different cultures deal with things very, very differently than our modern western cultures.  You really have to try to leave as much of that behind as you can and stretch your mind to create a culture based on fundamentally different premises than ours.


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## FifthView (Apr 10, 2017)

Attitudes toward children: An interesting topic, and one I don't think about much when designing a world but probably should.

Children have had it tough throughout history. 

Plenty of archeological evidence, from bones for instance, suggests that children often began manual labor at a very young age. It wasn't all kindergarten, toys, and trips to Disneyland.

Evidence for child sacrifice/murder abounds, although in those cases where it happened, we may not have much trustworthy evidence that parents had much desire to offer up their children for sacrifice _normally_. That Wikipedia page suggests that a culture like the Mayan culture may have believed children were closer to the gods, already, or weren't really "dying" in the way we think of death, so sacrifice may have had a different meaning than we'd place on it. Plutarch mentioned that the Carthaginians offered up their own children for sacrifice; then, decades passed in which scholars sought to overturn the notion that Carthaginians sacrificed children at all; then, archeological evidence turned up that suggested the Carthaginians really did do child sacrifices.

But probably we shouldn't label attitudes toward children as if these where universal attitudes within a culture. Even within our own culture, parents still prostitute their children, sell their children for profit, murder their children, abuse their children, and abandon their children to the elements. It's just not the norm for our culture. I'd also imagine that any culture in which child sacrifice was a norm would have parents who didn't want that for their children.

And then there is The 100.


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## Annoyingkid (Apr 10, 2017)

The OP doesn't sound like he's writing backward primitives. In this society of magitech, men are only needed for breeding and killing and not even the latter as they could just say soldiers aren't expected to get pregnant to begin with.


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## Russ (Apr 10, 2017)

Annoyingkid said:


> The OP doesn't sound like he's writing backward primitives.



The assumptions built into this statement about values is exactly what you need to leave behind when you want to create a society from a Tabla Rasa and different roots than ours.


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## FifthView (Apr 10, 2017)

Annoyingkid said:


> The OP doesn't sound like he's writing backward primitives. In this society of magitech, men are only needed for breeding and killing and not even the latter as they could just say soldiers aren't expected to get pregnant to begin with.



Twice now you've mentioned the magitech to suggest that the OP's world is somewhat analogous to our own current world and that this level of advancement would affect other attitudes–but I'm not so sure. I guess we'd need to ask Sharad9 whether this is indeed intended to be a technologically advanced society. Very little was mentioned in the OP, and alchemy was mentioned, so my impression was that the society falls a little behind ours, at least, if we are making comparisons.

In any case, in our own world the Industrial Revolution came and was well under way before strong child labor laws became a reality.


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## valiant12 (Apr 10, 2017)

> Are you suggesting that my statement is inaccurate or just hoping I will do some research for you?



I think you are wrong.



> Maya culture, parents would allow their children to be sacrificed, thinking they would continue to exist in some form even after the sacrifice.



Is their any prof that this story didn't originated from the conqustadors or from a rival meso american civilization. 
Also if one or two people did it, this doesn't mean that it was socially acceptable from the majority. 



> There is the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Even if you consider the Bible as fictional, the story likely has at least some basis in fact.



Some people probably have sacrifaced their relatives to prove their devotion and faith, however I don't think that was realy consentual. 
I think the story of Isaac and Abraham simbolise a yong man send to war against a stronger nation, surviving and returning home. 




> Even the Carthaginians apparently did it:
> 
> Ancient Carthaginians really did sacrifice their children | University of Oxford



I still belive this to be a roman propaganda.


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## Annoyingkid (Apr 10, 2017)

I'm just confused as to why men's strength is valued as protective when they can make crystal powered golem mech suits. Women can far outclass men's strength with tech like that.


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## Russ (Apr 11, 2017)

valiant12 said:


> I think you are wrong.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



While you are perfectly entitled to  your beliefs you should be aware that there is a significant international academic consensus of the existence of child sacrifice occurred in Europe, Africa, South America and North America.  Your view runs quite counter to what virtually all of the experts in the field suggest.


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