Women in fantasy

[Scribble]

In general the men were dictative and political whereas the women were collaborative and open. Maybe that is a cliché but maybe it's true as well.

I've had 3 women bosses over the years. The first two were authoritarian and political, working in a very "boy's club" corporate environment. They were far stronger and brighter than the 25 other department directors who were all men, but they had to be.

My last boss who was a woman embraced the collaborative and open mode that you describe. I felt that she was very naturally "a woman" in her role, being herself, leading through collaboration and not dictation. When I came from that other world, I was used to barking orders and having them followed, putting people against the wall if they didn't do what I told them. I had the authority, I was used to using it. When she hired me, I delivered projects in three months that had been floundering for years. However, I stepped on a few fragile egos - one VP wanted me fired. The others came to my defense, saying I was in the right. This was in the executive meeting, I didn't even know!

I have a tough job. I report to the COO, and my clients are the CEO, the VPs, and the directors. I am trying to push my vision for our systems to people who technically I report to. From her, I learned how to "garden". How to work with people to lead when you aren't in charge. How to get people to take risks, and that is through trust, by being open. When you are able to make mistakes, you give other people the freedom to make mistakes, and that is how we take risks. When you are super-smart and authoritative, everyone is afraid to voice their opinion.

If they have doubts in your project, they may be afraid to voice them. By nurturing a collaborative environment where we are free to question, to doubt, to make suggestions that might sound dumb, then we move forward. We avoid failing based on the wrong idea of one person at the top. We take advantage of our collective knowledge and reasoning.

That's the sort of thing I learned from her. To me, that is what I would expect to see in a realistic matriarchy, a kind of collaborative hive, where the queen bee is making executive decision, but based on the communal results of women. Otherwise, you have the male based hierarchy structure which works perfectly well in military engagements, but certainly less healthy in managing modern societies.

Based on brain science and personal experience, women appear to have wider association. Where men are more compartmentalized and role based, I would expect a matriarchy to be less role based, and more committee based. Where in a patriarchy you have a single male answerable for all defenses, in a matriarchy, I would imagine a group responsible with links to other groups, a sort of multi-role situation.

 

[Mindfire]

I haven't seen what I would call a matriarchy. In the few stories I've read they were a conventional patriarchy with women instead of men. I would hope for something new and different and not just find-&-replace king for queen...
I would hope for a different approach from a female dominated society to that of a male.

I doubt it. Whenever one group of humans claims supremacy over another group, it pretty much always turns out the same. For example, despite being on totally opposite ends of the political spectrum, fascism and communism are eerily similar in practice.

 

[Scribble]

I doubt it. Whenever one group of humans claims supremacy over another group, it pretty much always turns out the same. For example, despite being on totally opposite ends of the political spectrum, fascism and communism are eerily similar in practice.

And in the west we've revamped feudalism into serfdom under credit slavery. The trouble with human societies in reality in that we never, or rarely, get a clean slate or perfect isolation. We've always got to deal with the old mess, we may try to get rid of it, but really we are always building on top of it. It's easy to conceive of a fantasy utopia. Marxism is an elegant idea, but the path to it in several experiments is communism, which like capitalism, is full of both good and bad things. Both are good for people at the top, bad for people at the bottom.

The novel still serves as the best way to explore different kinds of societies. If we follow the chain, we find a series of people trying to create better forms of society through reforms, and I believe this is where we get our ideas. I believe in equality, not the supremacy of one sex or the other. Through equality we will find our way to better societies.

It is through the imagination of what other forms societies could take that we come to understand our own better, and enable ourselves to make more intelligent and insightful decisions about it. A purely matriarchal society would be no more fair than a patriarchal one, but we could learn about it's strengths and the weaknesses of our own model.

 

[Mindfire]

I think an interesting story idea would be to have travelers from a male-dominated society be captured by warriors from a female-dominated society who escort them to their leader. Along the way, the travelers speculate on what the government of a society built by women would be like, only to discover once they arrive... that everything is exactly the same, just reversed.

 

[Steerpike]

Read Sheri Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country​. Not only a great read, but deals with a matriarchal system.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I think an interesting story idea would be to have travelers from a male-dominated society be captured by warriors from a female-dominated society who escort them to their leader. Along the way, the travelers speculate on what the government of a society built by women would be like, only to discover once they arrive... that everything is exactly the same, just reversed.

You know, it's kind of awesome you said that. We're actually working on a space opera with that exact theme. A female-dominated space-faring empire encounters and conquers a (basically) stone-age race of warriors who are, while not exactly male-dominated, feature very large, very skilled male warriors. Culture clash hijinks ensue as the rigidly conservative Empress comes into conflict with her socially liberal and eventually rebellious heir. The themes for this series will be sexism (obviously), racism, and classism (the empire is a slave-owning culture). Societally, we're basically taking Western gender politics and turning them upside down. Just because the culture is female dominated does not make it peaceful - it is militaristic and aggressively expansive. It is also pathologically eco-friendly, viewing poor planet stewardship as a good reason for planetary conquest (look out, Earth!). Citizenship is an earned privilege, not a right, and men are not citizens. They belong to their mothers, then their wives, then their daughters.

As much fun as this culture is to write about, what we are discovering is that the language itself is HARD. You don't realize how gendered our language is until you change it. For example, I'll be a little crude. Two soldiers are talking, and one admires the other's bravery by telling him he has "balls." Our American women do the same thing. But these aliens sure wouldn't. Then we have weapons. These women wouldn't use swords or anything of a phallic nature. Gender domination in language and culture is fascinating to think about, and hard to write, but when you really get into playing with it the possibilities are endless.

 

[Scribble]

These women wouldn't use swords or anything of a phallic nature.

Would they use... vulvar weapons? How would those work exactly? Maybe don't answer that.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Would they use... vulvar weapons? How would those work exactly? Maybe don't answer that.

Well, they're vaguely feline, so they use fist weapons and claws, so we sort of get a minor pass on that. But yes, we're trying to figure out a more vulvar or engulfing mindset to war and combat rather than a phallic or penetrative. Being feline, they do think in terms of slashing and cutting, but stabbing and penetration is not a go-to, psychologically.

 

[Scribble]

I tossed around some ideas on my visitor message page, feel free to borrow or steal

The Vultex - a hand-held, seed-shaped object that expands to form energy weaves.

Used singly, it can create a net, that envelops the target, immobilizing it. Maybe strangulation, or asphyxiation for fatal attacks. It could form an energy body armor to deflect piercing weapons.

They can also use it in conjunction with others to create an interlinking web, the more participants, the stronger the web. Also can be used as a shield. It enables a sort of visual coordinated telepathy, to help the group visualize the structure they need.

It also has other uses:

Over time, it can draw atoms from the surrounding and form solid structures, sort of like a mold. It could be used to create a bridge, a tool, a splint for a broken limb, binders (handcuffs). They share and learn recipes. An interesting twist on the idea of 3D printing.

Heck, they could even weave the buildings they need, creating organic, strong, but elegant architectures. Several sisters maintaining the weave for long periods, perhaps as part of a ritual to keep focus. When a woman comes of age, they "sing" her a new house of her own, but connected to her mother, sisters, etc...

The substance... maybe some kind of calcium carbonate, the same substance that sea shells are made of. That would make them strong, but not indestructible. They have to have a weakness.

Wouldn't that be a perfect Venusian civilization, where the cities are made of giant sea shells?

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I tossed around some ideas on my visitor message page, feel free to borrow or steal

The Vultex - a hand-held, seed-shaped object that expands to form energy weaves.

Used singly, it can create a net, that envelops the target, immobilizing it. Maybe strangulation, or asphyxiation for fatal attacks. It could form an energy body armor to deflect piercing weapons.

They can also use it in conjunction with others to create an interlinking web, the more participants, the stronger the web. Also can be used as a shield. It enables a sort of visual coordinated telepathy, to help the group visualize the structure they need.

It also has other uses:

Over time, it can draw atoms from the surrounding and form solid structures, sort of like a mold. It could be used to create a bridge, a tool, a splint for a broken limb, binders (handcuffs). They share and learn recipes. An interesting twist on the idea of 3D printing.

Heck, they could even weave the buildings they need, creating organic, strong, but elegant architectures. Several sisters maintaining the weave for long periods, perhaps as part of a ritual to keep focus. When a woman comes of age, they "sing" her a new house of her own, but connected to her mother, sisters, etc...

The substance... maybe some kind of calcium carbonate, the same substance that sea shells are made of. That would make them strong, but not indestructible. They have to have a weakness.

Wouldn't that be a perfect Venusian civilization, where the cities are made of giant sea shells?

Oh, that is awesomely perfect! Biotech is their thing (no cold robotics for these ladies) - I can see so much potential here. Thank you so much!

 

[Mindfire]

Would they use... vulvar weapons? How would those work exactly? Maybe don't answer that.

Okay, this is when all this quasi-Freudian stuff goes too far. A sword isn't shaped like it is in order to resemble a phallus (well, except for a few African cultures). It's shaped that way because thousands of years of experimenting have proved it's the most practical and efficient shape for butchering the other guy.

Well, they're vaguely feline, so they use fist weapons and claws, so we sort of get a minor pass on that. But yes, we're trying to figure out a more vulvar or engulfing mindset to war and combat rather than a phallic or penetrative. Being feline, they do think in terms of slashing and cutting, but stabbing and penetration is not a go-to, psychologically.

See, this is what I mean. You don't stab someone because somewhere in the back of your mind stabbing = lolpenis. You stab people because stab wounds are harder to repair and thus more likely to be lethal. Not everything is gender politics. Some things are simply practical. And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Okay, this is when all this quasi-Freudian stuff goes too far. A sword isn't shaped like it is in order to resemble a phallus (well, except for a few African cultures). It's shaped that way because thousands of years of experimenting have proved it's the most practical and efficient shape for butchering the other guy.

Note - Butchering the other "guy." Granted, it was highly theoretical at the time, but the phallic origins of our bladed weapons was very much a subject of debate among the academics we talked to when we were doing our initial research for this project. And yes, I was a Women's Studies minor in university. And as all our cultures do ultimately derive from Africa, saying a bladed weapon resembles a phallus is not much of a stretch. Going further and saying that a culture that does not see the phallus as an object of aggression would not be prone to weaponize it is also not much of a stretch.

See, this is what I mean. You don't stab someone because somewhere in the back of your mind stabbing = lolpenis. You stab people because stab wounds are harder to repair and thus more likely to be lethal. Not everything is gender politics. Some things are simply practical. And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Stab wounds are actually easier to repair than slices. It's why the scimitar is a more lethal weapon that the broadsword. But, I digress, as usual.

You are right. Sometimes, a cigar really is just a cigar. And if you read the Greeks, a swallow is a swallow. But, in the mind... yeah, things get interesting. Occam's Razor - if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck... add an "i" to that and I'll get banned.

 

[Scribble]

Freud went a little too far, I think we all agree. Knowing this, it's fun to play with those ideas. Maybe just me, I'm weird like that.

I do like the concept of imagining a development of warfare coming from a collaborative approach rather than a competitive one. Males in most species compete for mating. This evolves a certain kind of behavior. The male mode of combat evolved from mate competition into group warfare.

Combat techniques developed by collaboration are designed to reduce risk to the group. Combat techniques developed by competition are based on individual strengths and and individual aggression, with the group protection at a lower priority. It makes sense that warfare would be based on models already practiced: in our utopia of female management.. containment of malefactors, working as a group to diffuse a situation, working together to defend and protect, rather than to seek and destroy.

 

[Mindfire]

Stab wounds are actually easier to repair than slices. It's why the scimitar is a more lethal weapon that the bronadsword. But, I digress, as usual.

Stab wounds are most definitely not easier to repair. If you get slashed, as long as the cut misses your major arteries, you'll be okay with medical attention. A stab wound however, all it takes is a couple inches to hit something vital. Plus multiple layers of tissue have been punctured. Cuts can be sewn up. If you have multiple stab wounds, especially with something serrated, it's a surgeon's nightmare. Plus, a stab or thrust is usually faster, more efficient, and harder to block than a slash is.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Freud went a little too far, I think we all agree. Knowing this, it's fun to play with those ideas. Maybe just me, I'm weird like that.

I do like the concept of imagining a development of warfare coming from a collaborative approach rather than a competitive one. Males in most species compete for mating. This evolves a certain kind of behavior. The male mode of combat evolved from mate competition into group warfare.

Combat techniques developed by collaboration are designed to reduce risk to the group. Combat techniques developed by competition are based on individual strengths and and individual aggression, with the group protection at a lower priority. It makes sense that warfare would be based on models already practiced: in our utopia of female management.. containment of malefactors, working as a group to diffuse a situation, working together to defend and protect, rather than to seek and destroy.

The Spartans, known to be ridiculously obsessed with masculinity, told stories in which they portrayed their combat as competitive--that is to say, they didn't describe formations, they just talked about how this and that champion on their side butchered this and that champion on the other side. (300 isn't accurate history, but it's pretty accurate to the kind of stories the Spartans told about themselves.) However, when the Spartans actually fought in real life, they did so in formation, working together to keep each other alive. When you're trying not to die, practicality beats pride.

 

[Devor]

Okay, this is when all this quasi-Freudian stuff goes too far. A sword isn't shaped like it is in order to resemble a phallus (well, except for a few African cultures). It's shaped that way because thousands of years of experimenting have proved it's the most practical and efficient shape for butchering the other guy.

I had an ad management professor who would disagree with you. He spent a whole lecture - having given everyone warning - showing the sexual imagery in something like a hundred ads which otherwise seemed pretty inconspicuous. Most of the class thought he was crazy, and some people filed complaints. All I remember was two drops of lotion falling off the tip of a slender bottle, and a study that said women (and just women) were in revolt at the prospect of changing the packaging of toothpaste.

Don't look at me.

But I do think we can say, whatever subtextual imagery some people might be affected by, many more are not. There's no way the shape of a sword would survive if it wasn't the most effective.

Would they use... vulvar weapons? How would those work exactly? Maybe don't answer that.

You mean something shaped kind of like a shield?

 

[Mindfire]

Freud went a little too far, I think we all agree. Knowing this, it's fun to play with those ideas. Maybe just me, I'm weird like that.

I do like the concept of imagining a development of warfare coming from a collaborative approach rather than a competitive one. Males in most species compete for mating. This evolves a certain kind of behavior. The male mode of combat evolved from mate competition into group warfare.

Combat techniques developed by collaboration are designed to reduce risk to the group. Combat techniques developed by competition are based on individual strengths and and individual aggression, with the group protection at a lower priority. It makes sense that warfare would be based on models already practiced: in our utopia of female management.. containment of malefactors, working as a group to diffuse a situation, working together to defend and protect, rather than to seek and destroy.

So basically, all your soldiers would be hoplites. Or legionnaires I suppose.

 

[Scribble]

So basically, all your soldiers would be hoplites. Or legionnaires I suppose.

What I am imagining (and I am kind of hijacking someone else's story with my ideas....) these are women not lining up in ranks like men would. Ranks remove individual identity from men. This is done to make them subject to orders. Also, that kind of organization works when you have things in your hands to hit people with.

Women would keep their identity, and work collaboratively rather than sacrificing the first line. The weapon I imagined are weaves of energy, used as shields, as webs, as killing fields, to funnel enemies, to capture, immobilize, weaving, taunting, luring, and then killing. It's fantasy combat with weapons and people who don't exist, but I think the principles can hold. Not hive mind, but something like it. How do lionesses hunt? How do spiders weave? How does the black widow mate?

I would imagine something more... organic. Clusters of women operating in a very different mode of combat. They would be subtle, seemingly chaotic at times to the eye of a man, but actually working in tight concert, only in patterns that are iterative. I am talking about a style of combat that rises out of womanliness, and not evolving from the roots of maleness.

I would even go so far as to compare combat paradigms using our different modes of achieving orgasms.

Man rushes forward and fires. Done.

Woman... slow and subtle building, increasing pressure and tempo, and then crashing waves, and then receding waves.
Repeat as many times as you like.

I'm trying to be funny here, and hopefully not offensive... but, the point I am making is if you want to imagine a style of combat evolved by women from the earliest point of history, based on the nature of women, you have to take all the things men do and think is a good idea and throw it out the window. What to replace that with takes some imagination, but this is fantasy. We don't have a matriarchal culture of women who use energy weaves to fight. Yet.

 

[Kit]

Stab wounds are most definitely not easier to repair. If you get slashed, as long as the cut misses your major arteries, you'll be okay with medical attention. A stab wound however, all it takes is a couple inches to hit something vital. Plus multiple layers of tissue have been punctured. Cuts can be sewn up. If you have multiple stab wounds, especially with something serrated, it's a surgeon's nightmare. Plus, a stab or thrust is usually faster, more efficient, and harder to block than a slash is.

Unless you luck out and hit something really good with your stab, your foe is likely to be able to keep fighting you for LONGER than if you slash him. If you get some good slashes, he will start to bleed out. That will weaken a person and make them lose consciousness and die within a few minutes if they're really gushing. Stab wounds often don't bleed much (outwardly, at first). Many people don't even realize for a decent while that they have in fact been stabbed. Additionally, it's much harder to keep ahold of your weapon and- er- remove it from the target.

As far as the long-term fate of that person- especially without modern medical care- yeah, the stabs (even if you didn't hit anything vital) are probably going to do for him sooner or later- infection if nothing else. But I'm assuming that most people are going to be far more concerned with the *immediate* viability of their opponent.

 

[Mindfire]

What I am imagining (and I am kind of hijacking someone else's story with my ideas....) these are women not lining up in ranks like men would. Ranks remove individual identity from men. This is done to make them subject to orders. Also, that kind of organization works when you have things in your hands to hit people with.

Women would keep their identity, and work collaboratively rather than sacrificing the first line. The weapon I imagined are weaves of energy, used as shields, as webs, as killing fields, to funnel enemies, to capture, immobilize, weaving, taunting, luring, and then killing. It's fantasy combat with weapons and people who don't exist, but I think the principles can hold. Not hive mind, but something like it. How do lionesses hunt? How do spiders weave? How does the black widow mate?

I would imagine something more... organic. Clusters of women operating in a very different mode of combat. They would be subtle, seemingly chaotic at times to the eye of a man, but actually working in tight concert, only in patterns that are iterative. I am talking about a style of combat that rises out of womanliness, and not evolving from the roots of maleness.

I would even go so far as to compare combat paradigms using our different modes of achieving orgasms.

Man rushes forward and fires. Done.

Woman... slow and subtle building, increasing pressure and tempo, and then crashing waves, and then receding waves.
Repeat as many times as you like.

I'm trying to be funny here, and hopefully not offensive... but, the point I am making is if you want to imagine a style of combat evolved by women from the earliest point of history, based on the nature of women, you have to take all the things men do and think is a good idea and throw it out the window. What to replace that with takes some imagination, but this is fantasy. We don't have a matriarchal culture of women who use energy weaves to fight. Yet.

The problem with this whole idea is simply this: where do the energy weaves come from? If you're saying that this style of fighting has been evolving ever since the race's inception that's fine, but once you really think about it you realize that things like energy weaves aren't going to be readily accessible to a primitive civilization. So there's nothing for these tactics to evolve from. There's no root or plausible anthropological source. See, modern weapons evolved from ancient weapons, which evolved from prehistoric weapons, which were made of things you could find lying around: sticks and rocks that could be sharpened and lashed together into primitive spears and such. What is the "ancestor" of the energy weave? Rope? Rope is good for building traps, but makes for a very poor weapon. Unless making these "weaves" is an innate talent of their species or a form of magic that their race discovered very early on in history, I see no reason they would not have developed the weapons and fighting styles that we view as conventional.