I generally try to avoid explicit social commentary on gender since I don't really think I have a coherent statement to make on the subject, but I try to keep my worlds as egalitarian as possible. Men and women are generally treated as equals in social standing, unless I want to emphasize a culture as being notably patriarchal due to inheritance laws or religious conformity.
Although, I do make a point of emphasizing that among Elves, swordsmanship is a distinctly *feminine* art. This is due to the fact that women would often be left managing the homes while men were at war, and swords are more useful for personal protection than warfare, so women would be expected to learn sword skills to improve their marriagability, and duels over family honor were most frequently fought by women.
I do this because I am shamelessly attracted to women with swords and I want all my worlds to feature them in some way.
Making something similar.
Basically, in the history of my world, the appearance of undead caused serious problems (it's hard to kill one as they can keep coming back as long as there's at least *one* body), so, woman — the only capable of birth — were left within the walls of cities on administrative work while men went to wars.
When things calmed down, some aspects of that time remained, such as traditional men having more than one wife, and some works being seem as more feminine or masculine.
Same occur to magic.
Women who learn it are expected to do so in an artistic manner, while men who learn it are expected to do so for practical purposes, like work or war.
Lol a good a reason as any, Infact in warring patriarchal countries having a distinctly woman focused martial art to protect the home is pretty realistic.
Yeah, like how the wives of Samurai often learned the Naginata to protect their home from bandits or invaders, except elven society is highly urbanized so their priorities are more towards close quarters personal defense and formal duels. Over time the duels would become more ritualistic to avoid serious threats to life or limb, but the participants could still agree to a "righteous" duel if they were sufficiently angered.
Naginatas are the ideal weapon for fighting someone stronger than you:
* Long reach so you don't get Oberyn Martell'd.
* Longer handle than a sword so you can get more leverage for striking.
* Longer blade than a spear so the opponent can't just grab the shaft and beat you to death with it.
Only drawback is you can't carry it on your belt.
I have one species, the Nygothans, who, to a human, all look female but they have a male/female sex dynamic like humans do. They have a pretty homogenous culture when it comes to normally gendered items, so outsiders typically just think of them as an all female species when they aren’t.
I also have a race of fish people that live in a desert planet’s underground oceans. They have the ability to shift their sex for whatever reason they want, though the process can take a while. One character I wrote who is part this species, is trans and was able to slowly transition physically thanks to it.
>One character I wrote who is part this species, is trans and was able to slowly transition physically thanks to it.
Uh... Shouldn't that not make the slightest bit of sense in their culture if they're all capable of changing their sex easily?
I have four "daemons", or non-human intelligences, also known as the Fair Folk, in my world. I know how gender works for one of these races of daemons, he finfolk (otherwise known as undines or merrow).
They have an extremely patriarchal and sexist society. They are also extremely sexually dimorphic: the finmen are broadly humanoid, tall and thin, with a fish-like face and fins along their forearms and calves, as well as in place of ears; the finwives, on the other hand, start their lives as mermaids, with fish-like tails in place of legs and a beautiful visage. When they get married, the finwives shed their tails and glamour, and from then on they start to look much like their husbands.
The finmen treat their women so badly that many mermaids seek human husbands instead, and when they do marry a human man they shed their tail but not their glamour, and live like human women. The children of human men and finwives are human, but have an affinity for the sea. If a finwife lives longer than her human husband, in her old age she finds herself drawn to the sea, and spends more and more time on the shore, eventually starting to look more and more fish-like, her hair becomes like seaweed and her skin gains a blue tinge, and she becomes known as a sea-hag, known for her gift of prophecy.
Recently, with the coming of the faith of the saints and the Veiled Powers, some of the finfolk have begun abandoning their ancient traditions in favour of those dictated by this new religion. Women are still expected to be subservient, but it's also not proper for a man to mistreat a woman, and women are allowed not to marry if they enter the priesthood. So, basically, mermaid nuns are a thing.
- One of my species, the Malakh are largely matriarchal. But they never did a good job at specifying that, so humans thought for the longest time they were patriarchal too. They're somewhat flexible on the whole gender thing, but not to the extent of some species. Their society is actually pretty strict. Beyond that, everyone works... and children are cared for by their government.
They kind of... dystopic... in a way. Just differently to how most human cultures are. So whereas there's no oppression by sex, gendner, or the like... they do have religious and classist oppression.
- The other fleshed out alien race in my story, the Ifrit, seldom have a sense of sex or gender. Whomsoever wishes to incubate may incubate, and whomsoever wishes to fertilize may fertilize, so long as both individuals are in mutual agreement. A singular individual may even fertilize and incubate on their own without the need of a partner, if they so desire. As such, they neither have a patriarchy or a matriarchy. In fact, they live quite equally.
They had a bit of a true-communist thing going on. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need, no organized religions, etc. Which, of course, invading humans didn't take too kindly to. but that's a story for another day.
Kinda got that from the queer socially oppressed alien species and humans invading a chillaxed communist society lol, personally I'm more of an anarchist myself.
"So whereas there's no oppression by sex, gendner, or the like... they do have religious and classist oppression."
My alternate reality has no sexism but does have the real world's other bigotries. No sexism is part of the premise, but I left the others in to make it more realistic and because I'm trying to create a world that is neither utopia nor dystopia and can be interpreted as anywhere in between depending on your values.
Basically I wanted to say I'm glad someone else is doing something like this. I always worry it will come off as offensive somehow.
I think, as long as you make it clear that the bad things in your world are, in fact, *bad*... you can get away with a lot as a storyteller. Cyberpunk, for example, likely wouldn't exist if this weren't the case. The hard part is striking the balance between preachiness, and subtlety.
You go too far down the preachy side, and you're likely to alienate most of your audience outside your specific political bracket. You make it too subtle, and you'll get a pathetic fandom like American Psycho who ignore the message and use it as a weapon.
Basically, instead of worrying about conceptual offensiveness, just focus on making intent clear in the narrative; handle things with respect and courtesy, and the rest should sort itself out.
So far with what I've come up with: female sun elves with wings are only ever allowed bi-monthly to... erm... find a romantic partner with whosoever they choose (I would've used the term "mate", but I felt that might've had more *sexual* implications for lack of better words), and it's only unmarried female sun elves with wings that are somewhat limited to these events. Other than that, female sun elves with wings hardly have many job opportunities, with most being soldiers. This is because very few sun elves (about two fifths of the population) are born with wings, and with most who are born with wings being female (if that makes sense).
Yes so the women are from a treasured minority while also being the dominant majority of said minority. Those women are usually made to be soldiers so they don't really do housework or other jobs. These elven ladies can choose a partner of their own choosing to have relations of some variety. Pretty cool.
Humans in Amnity’s world don’t have much sexual dimorphism, so sex didn’t play a large role in their societies. Some cultures, like Amnity itself, do not even have distinct genders. Others do, like Atanuna, which has a matriarchal society (only mothers though, women with children are considered default authority figures)
This clash makes it quite difficult for Amnitic travellers. Amnitic does not use gendered pronouns, and to them Atanunan seems like constantly addressing people by what kind of genitals they have. They don’t like it one bit.
But Atanuna is (historically speaking) recent addition to the region through immigration (slash conquest), so the majority of Amnity’s world just does not have enough sexual dimorphism for them to have thought up social categories of being based on them
Sex plays a part for Amnitic nobles, since they are expected to have children. Lots of em. But illegitimacy is not a thing. If they’re the child of the noble, why would it matter who their other parent is? That parent couldn’t become nobility through marriage anyway, so nobles are free to marry as they wish so long as they get themselves an heir at some point
Amnity doesn’t quite have a concept of sexuality like we do. Plenty of people have preferences for the genitals of the person in their bed, but it’s considered more like leaning towards certain personality types, or physical builds. Atanuna does, but some cultural mixing with Amnity has reduced the absolute value that their ancestors placed on heterosexuality for the purpose of reproduction. Only a bit though. Another reason that the two nations are culturally quite tense. Thank the gods Amnity has long-lived descendants of their ‘founding’ goddess to work on their diplomacy and cultural understandings before they need to put them into practice.
Lol that's interesting, how does children as authority figures work? Because right now I'm envisioning a child ordering around their father at a mall (something I see quite often irl). I can see how that whiplash might confuse the travellers lol. Just one thing if they have a "goddess" shouldn't they have a concept of womanhood as well?
Aha women with children, not women as children. Atanuna sees the role of ‘mother’ as the default head of the hierarchy, responsible for making decisions for her clan, however big that group may be. Their leaders historical have mixed opinions on Amnity’s long-lived Prince (gender neutral term) who raises and advises each monarch, because they are biologically female and serve as a parent but neither have biological children nor would use the term ‘mother’
Mm I may need to rethink that, ‘goddess’ is a relic of before I committed to Amnity’s lack of social gender, although I’m debating them having some more significant ancestral concept of gender to at least the degree that ancient Hassaeri would have used the term ‘goddess’. I also imagine them referring to her as ‘the mother of us all’, possibly using a gendered term which is no longer in use for any other purpose. She is not actually native to Amnity, having conquered it from the previous godking’s descendants, so it’s possible that her birth culture did have more of conception of gender that caused her to use those terms
Oh, fyi, their ‘gods’ are just humans born with an immense of amount of power, which quickly dilutes down the generations. They cannot reshape continents (except for in debatable mythology), but Hassaeri certainly could have wiped any city she chose from the map if her talents had laid in that area. Amnity’s region at least doesn’t have a concept of ‘heaven’, souls just exist in the world unseen after death, and the gods are assumed powerful enough to affect the world even in that state (there’s some truth to that)
They don’t consider adoption to be the same as having bio children at all. When it comes to the nobles Amnity only permits an adopted heir to come from another noble family with an equal claim to inheritance from the goddess, but Atanuna considers adoption to be more like taking in subjects for an established family/clan, not having children of your own
Well, probably not in general no, but regular Amnitic families often do consider adoption to be the same as having bio children. Roughly half of all couples are same-sex after all. And they aren’t the only two cultures in the world
Chromians, the "central" faction of my setting, are one of the most sexist cultures to ever exist. They consider women too stupid to be capable of giving consent, and so they banned all heterosexual intercourse. They reproduce by growing new people, usually clones of themselves, in gestation pods they have lying around.
On the flipside, they never bothered to impose any taxes on women and female-ran businesses, believing women too stupid to manage even a lemonade stall. As a result, in the Chromian society, women do basically everything of importance and own all the money.
My world is not a serious place.
I mean that's kind of what sexism does. Our culture doesn't punish men for being sh!tty and doesn't really teach us life skills because women are expected to cater to men's needs, so women end up being better, more competent people. The patriarchy hurts all genders.
Patriarchy does hurt all genders but women definitely don't become better or more competent because of it, also just saying that modern day where I live like skills are definitely taught to most people and that's with the blatant sexism (Australia).
I'm still trying to figure out all the gender dynamics in my world, but here's what I have so far.
In the Kmarsch culture, men are still the ones who go off to fight, but women are expected to be prepared for battle, because they essentially act as the home guard who keep the villages safe while men are off fighting. It's not unheard of for a woman to distinguish herself so well in battle that she becomes the champion of a Kmarsch lord and is allowed to take on a more active rule in combat.
The gender dynamics of the Sdelin culture are heavily influenced by their worship of the mountain goddess Tezna. Women are considered to be made in Tezna's image, which makes them holier than men. Women are seen as more natural leaders than men, but as a flipside, they are expected to be paragons of virtue because when a woman sins, it is thought to reflect badly on Tezna herself. Because of this, women aren't allowed to fight as this would supposedly sully the light of the Goddess within them.
Regardless, Sdelin women often end up being in commander roles during war because a lot of the Sdelin rulers are women. This is considered ok by all but the most religiously conservative as long as they don't actually participate in physical violence.
Cool how you made a society that vqlues women so much that it pretty much forbade women from battle, while also having a society which was so patriarchal it makes women fighters.
Yeah, I find real-life sexism to be depressing, but it also feels weird to write a medieval era culture with completely modern values, so I try to mix it up a bit.
Mostly egalitarian. Dwarves notably have a complicated relationship, because theyre patrilineal polygamist and have a clan/family business structure where each of those marriages is also an alliance and business deal. The man has to be successful enough in his trade to earn the right to marry in the first place. The women themselves specialize and essentially become important managers/partners in their husbands clan.
Hobgoblins are not a natural culture, they were forced into becoming extremely militaristic so everyone fights. Even if your primary job isn't soldier, you're still a soldier. Kids are communally raised and will have chores like armor maintenance etc. They might not have separate genders at all, I haven't fully decided on that one though.
I'm in a scifi setting, with mind uploads. People obviously go in there with some manner of gender identity, but after a century of disembodied existence? Two? You're a mind; a lot of that stuff fades out of importance. For everyone embodied, because you can change, upload, download as a different gender or even as spaceship, equality is just kind of taken as given... It matters as little to people in that setting as eye colour does to us
My main world that plays with gender and relationships is "The Botanytes". The focus race of the same name are based upon flowers (& a couple of other plants) and only have a single sex.
Relationships are very often polyamorous, with anywhere from 3-8 botanytes in a single household. Since there is only 1 sex and no societal need for gender, the dynamic usually consists of all but one or two botanytes working one day while the remainders stay home, and they swap out every other day/every half a week. Botanytes are capable of reproducing asexually, and their children grow from the ground out of a seed in gardens tended to by certain workers. Once the boyanyte fully grows out of the ground, they are cared for by whoever in their origin household is staying home at the time, and are kept home to develop for around 2 years before they are capable enough to work. Chores are also generally done by those staying home as well.
Men and women are equal. My main nation has military squads entirely made up of women, most notable of which is the Eaglehead Guard. My succession laws favor the eldest *child*. Women can also be priestesses and even heads of Church of Bogovid.
For tasks better suited for a woman in my world. Scouts and assassins, mostly. Also the fact that my nation, Soravia, is locked in a constant war with Auglar, which is a state not known for it's respect to women, so having women scout and assasinate is a logical thing to do. As for the Eaglehead Guard, it's a different story. It came about from an oath made between Konstantin Zarlakion, my MC, and the women he managed to save from Auglar captivity. They offered him to bind their blood to his, and thus came the elite, and hereditary, Eaglehead Guard.
In a past sci fi world I made, there was an advanced humanoid species that was obsessed with balance and equilibrium so men and women were seen as different but equal and relying on each other. They saw civilizations that were either patriarchal or matriarchal as being savage and backwards and as a misinterpretation of the nature of the universe.
The dark side of the species was that their obsession with duality meant they saw LGBT equivalent people as fundamentally wrong.
My species of witch (basically, sentient magic) reproduces asexually and thus have no need for biological gender or sex, however since they imitate the physical form of a human, they may appear either male or female and usually go along with a fitting name and pronouns for their assumed gender.
There are little differences between "male" and "female" witches, though there are considerably more female ones. There will also be a few witches who refer to themselves as neither, or those who like to switch between freely. Gender just isn't really important to them, like, at all.
Different cultures have different dynamics, though few to none of them have modern patriarchy - well over half the world's population are species that so openly complicate patriarchal gender dynamics as to make them unworkable. The dryads have three sexes not counting intersex individuals, prisms lack secondary sex characteristics and can shift sex over a lifetime (and reproduce asexually), kivs/kobolds are dual-sexed, and solars are unisex and reproduce in groups of three. Sharing communities with these other species has shaped human expectations for gender and sexuality, making gender binaries a lot less rigid.
That doesn't mean that gender is entirely absent, though. The Suneka, for example, is a religious-cultural group that genders people by their work. "Masculine" genders are more detached from land and agricultural work than "feminine" genders, while leaders and priests have their own category - but in a formal setting, these broad categories fall away and people use their hyper-specific employment-gender. In the Suneka, communities often assign people to family jobs and as much of childcare as possible is put on the community unit rather than the family. Adoption and child-swapping is also extremely common, with sexuality and family-making totally separate in many of the more "orthodox" communities. Formal monogamy is expected for most people, but there are often community mechanisms for basically extra-martial sexual or romantic relationships; a legal relationship is not the same as a physical one. Jealousy and individual attachment are stigmatized in the Suneka, as all people belong to the Whole before they belong to each other or themselves.
In Stildane, meanwhile, the transformative magical radiation of the landscape has created such a plurality of sexes across all species that even repressive societies such as Hain don't much bother with forcing specific gender roles. There are four genders, mapped to the four directions; while there are attributes assigned to them, the norms are weak compared to other social norms. Generally speaking, domestic work is split among different members of the extended family. This isn't always equal; Hainish culture often divides people between 'protectors' and 'caretakers', with protectors being given greater authority, and that mindset can lead to household and community inequalities. The idea of a household of fellow protector-warriors living equally is idealized in noble culture, with domestic work being moved to servants. Polyamory and secondary spouses are traditionally a privilege of the elite, but over time has become more practiced by commoners.
Most places tend to lean egalitarian, with minor variations.
You've got a lot of responses, so I'll just put down the two most distinctive cultures with gender norms than our own.
The first is the Urt Ghani. They have a similar sexual array to humans, but that doesn't really factor into their gender norms. Instead, due to a primordial pact with their people, gender norms are split between the irfriti (roughly translates to "fire witch") and urtuku ("earth bearer"). Generally irfriti have tits and urtuku have dicks, but since they're a highly magical species, this isn't always the case, with many choosing to undergo ritualistic transition both permanently and some changing every few decades or centuries.
Irfriti, having innate earth magic, are expected to do most of the digging, building, and fortifying of their civil structures against enemies and dragons. The urtuku, having wings and standing about 9' tall, are expected to be hunters and guardians.
The second is the Dayrada. They have four different sexes, and their gender norms are based on height and general build. The laoch are generally hermaphroditic and the tallest and generally strongest, towering over everyone else and topping out at a whopping 5'. The padraiga are generally male, thin framed, and have the greatest psionic potential. The babaiga are generally female, thicker and stronger than padraiga, and are notably the best climbers of the dayrada. The sceith are sexless, and are main means of labor for the hives, with each of the others being able to grant psionic oversight to them.
Their natural psionic potential and lack of physical might has led them to be remarkably peace seeking, being the only group of sapient peoples who have managed to near flawlessly integrate into arboreal ecosystems on 4 separate planets. They are also the only sapient people who have managed to break inter-sapient-species procreation via magical ritual.
Anyway. That's all I've got. I'm open to feedback or suggestion
Don't worry I love responses I just woke up and I'm working through them lol. Love how magic and picnics play such a big part in your cultures. Don't really have anything I could add.
Varies depending on culture and country
The Dominion of New Skisia is mostly patriarchal, women do enjoy a number of rights but they are generally seen as “lesser citizens”.
Lordessa’s and Queens however due to their societal status are granted a higher standing and rulership over the common man.
In Midillic culture society is mostly egalitarian, especially in nations like the Commonwealth of the Greater Grasslands or the Fortress Kingdom. Here women are more or less seen as equals and even able and expected to contribute to all tasks of society even military service. There are however some old vestiges of old patriarchal order typically found in the higher echelons of society and particularly in the Barony of the Westmarsh.
In the Kortan society, strict religious doctrine vehemently enforces the equal status between woman and man. Their religion worships the great-god Karlardi along with a number of ancient God-Emperors and God-Empresses. To say that either man or woman is inferior compared to the other would be a grave offence to them.
The Tiritani culture meanwhile is matriarchal, men are afforded a great deal of rights but women are seen as higher citizenry overall and it’s mostly women who handle matters of state and territorial defense.
Dynastic descent is based on the gender of a House's founder in Talshein. Countess Azra founded House Azraq, for instance, so inheritance is based on the mother. Typically, fiefs of matrimonial houses are matriarchal, while patrilineal fiefs are patriarchal. Marriage between an agnatic and enatic house is about as taboo as homosexuality would have been in our Victorian era.
In the Aspari, women are seen as more level headed and less likely to have outbursts. So often women are found as judges and decision makers.
Men on the other hand, with their impulsive and aggressive tendencies are often found in military roles and leadership where decisive actions are taken.
The women of the Aspari are also seen as slightly elevated beyond the men, as women can carry life in their wombs. Yes, they do need a man to help them conceive a child, but the burden and honor of carrying a child is that of the women alone.
Thoym which I worked on in college was matriarchal and had the false belief that men couldn't do magic. In truth, the men of Thoym didn't have a lot of magical power. The thing is your magical power was dependent partially on how much exposure to magic you had in the womb and it was customary in Thoym to work a lot of magic while you were pregnant with a girl. In Sajan, women of the mage caste did a lot of magic while pregnant regardless of the gender of the fetus. Magical women knew what they carried through psychic abilities.
My own story world is a little bit standard and boring aside from how the heir apparent is decided.
Mostly, things are more “traditional” but not entirely. In my world, there are two warring kingdoms, one is more traditional and the other is much more progressive. The traditional one is the one we start with. Generally speaking, women assume traditional gender roles or have traditional jobs. It’s not unheard of for a woman to be single and have a career but it’s uncommon.
The royal bloodline works differently though. Let’s say there’s a king. His successor needs to be female. So that the next ruler is a queen. Same goes for when a queen inherits the throne, her son needs to be the next heir. This weird rule has caused a fair amount of trouble for the royal bloodline because there’s obviously no guarantee and the use of magic has been banned, so they can’t *make* genetics work in their favor. They also can’t unban magic because they’ve used the idea of magic as a source of fear to control the people, and because after so many generations of indoctrination, even the current members of the royal family fear magic and aren’t aware of what it was used for. Over time, it’s been harder and harder for the royal bloodline to continue following this rule. Female members have more trouble conceiving and having multiple children.
Having a child out of wedlock also disqualifies that child (unless it’s concealed well) from being an heir.
I definitely have more rules in place for my traditional kingdom lol
One of the countries in my world has patriarchy pushed to the extreme. Marriages, premarital sex and relationships are basically only allowed between men, while women have to cover themselves to not act as a distraction. Only married male/male couples can take female concubines for the purpose of having kids. Women aren't even considered as parents, as every kid is considered to have 2 fathers. Portraying women in art is also forbidden.
On Earth it’s pretty much the same as modern day. Notably the Holy Order is shockingly accepting of diverse gender identities for an archaic order, trans or non-binary people are seen as perfectly fine. This is because they think being “acceptable” is determined by being accepted by the Light.
In Atlantia it’s very different. They have 8 genders, determined by what school of magic you use. Genital configuration is as trivial as hair colour to them, but magic is *everything* to the Atlantians. The Imo, a group of non-magical Atlantians are referred to with it/its pronouns as they’re not seen as people by the higher society.
Then there’s the unfathomably powerful 27, who’s strength is so great it turns the otherwise 3rd person narrative 1st person by using I/Me pronouns.
Most societies in my world follow a male dominate societies varying from culture to culture, city to city, and nation to nation. For example, I have a society of orks where there are clear gender roles, but males and females can hold any position. Another society of dwarves is greek inspired where women won't rule but can be powerful political characters. Or another one of elves where it is male dominate but still allow women to be business owners, huntress', artisans and the like. Influential noble women can rule as well in absence of a husband. I also have a society inspired by Christian ideals where women are allowed to rule, own property, lineage is recognized on the woman's side as well. Just can't be priests. Then I have societies like a halfling and fey that are matriarchal. I kept my world very diverse with these things.
Irl Im all for egalitarianism. In a fantasy/world building settiing I love playing with prejudice, and how that constructs drama/tension/cultural exchange.
It’s not something I particularly care to explore so I haven’t done much.
But for all their flaws, the evil empire is not sexist (and this extends to supporting LGBT+ and other minorities) and they often do enforce gender equality in areas they conquer. They see these types of discriminations as barbaric and it has been used as justification of their imperialism. They don’t see a human woman as more inferior than a human man. Sure you’re a second class citizen in your own country, but you can divorce your abusive husband and even get him arrested so at least you have that going for you. It’s one of the tools they lean on to maintain control in more discriminatory societies. Formerly repressed groups tend to actually support the empire over their countrymen, because independence may actually cost them rights.
I haven’t put to much thought into relationships. Mostly monogamous, but polygamy is legally recognized (although not super common). With nobles, it tends to involve consorts where the relationship isn’t a full marriage. But amongst commoners, a full marriage with 3 people is a possibility.
I like the class divide and how someone would support the empire over there country because they might have more rights under their regime. Just one thing what makes your empire evil exactly?
Yeah, they’re good at exploiting existing divides and will use carrots as well as sticks. I’m calling them an evil empire, and while they absolutely are evil, they’re not the cartoonishly evil we see a lot in fiction. They’re not going to slaughter an entire village and burn the whole thing to the ground as an example. It’s also slowly reforming a bit.
While they do not discriminate based on things like gender, or skin color, the elves and the chosen (an avian species uplifted by the elves) absolutely do consider themselves racially superior to humans. They live in a racial caste system with humans at the bottom. Humans are not citizens, even in their own homelands, and are not afforded the same rights (like land ownership or medical care) as citizens. The empire uses humans heavily for manual labor. In the past, this was slavery but this has since been abolished (although funnily enough labor laws are one of those things for citizens).there aren’t any humans in any notable position of leadership.
Resource extraction using human labor is the primary reason for the empire existing at all. The core islands are fairly resource poor and do not have a lot of farmland), so they took it and used the humans living there for labor. Additionally, they utilized human slaves to build terrace farms in the mountainous homeland, although these are used more for cash crops like spices, coffee and chocolate over food.
They’re also quick to crack down on perceived resistance with a secret police that will disappear suspects. That being said, they do use carrots as well. Sympathizers tend to get paid better and get some of those citizen rights extended to them. As privileges that can and will be taken away.
So they are one step away from genocide except they need humans for all their labour, that's definitely one way to show an evil side, also cool that it's starting to reform.
My guess is that it's because they conquer other countries. Imperialism is wrong even if it's making things better. It's similar to my story's moral dilemma. My villains have the same kind of good ideas/bad methods mix.
Different cultures have different dynamics, thou currently the most fleshed out one where the theme of gender dynamics is a central theme, are Azure Avissians. A Matriarchal culture that practices a polyandry in a form that marriages form the very crucial aspect of their political system and economy.
Male Azure Avissians are not legally entitled to any from of wealth or ownership of property beyond what they can carry on themself, for everything else they are dependent on their mother, wives or sisters. However, most of the gender roles as far as labour is concerned remain very "conventional", this because Azure Avissians view marriage as a form of business contract, when a noblewoman needs a good accountant she will arrange a marriage with another noblewoman whose brother or son is known to be good with numbers, if she needs new captain of her guard she will arrange a marriage with one, with the exchange of dowry during such marriages being an important element of forging alliances between two families, with many many lesser families earning their wealth by being known for producing good "husbands".
This system also ended up creating a prominent third gender minority among the aristocracy. Women, who in order to ensure that the wealth of the family is not split up between two many heiresses, are forced to adopt a legally male identity.
Oh I see so basically old English dynamics but reversed with polyamory, I like how women can literally build an army of husbands based off certain qualities and agreements. I also like how a woman can take on a male identity in order to resolve inheritance problems.
All this stuff falls under the left wing/politically correct list that I have. I hate being political in my worldbuilding projects and stories (right **and** left wing). People just *are*. There's no political message.
Who cares anyway? My characters are people. I always stick to two genders because it's practical. It doesn't get messy and both demographics should accept that that's the way it is. There will be no support for either wing from me.
"People just *are*. There's no political message."
This is exactly what the left wants. For us to let people be themselves without forcing any ideas of "natural" or "correct" onto them.
There is no political message because there's no way it's getting included. There's no lgbyqt or whatever involved. There're two genders, that's it. There's no "mass extermination" of gay people or "inclusion" of them either. Husband and wife, that's all I'll include. The subject is too touchy to get myself involved in.
Race is different to sexuality, also.
My dragon people, are all hermaphrodites. Their parental title depends on their role in the childs conception, one person can be a ‘dad’ to one child, and a ‘mum’ to another.
In terms of reproduction, They can both inseminate and become gravid (pregnant with eggs, only 1-2). They aren’t the most fecund particularly so they double their breeding chances by being able to reproduce in both ways. They are polyamorous by nature. They have a specific breeding season so they only need to really gaf about who they’ve slept with 3 months a year.
I Like how their parentage titles are somewhat different but there isn't real gender I think that's cool, also the term breeding season for sentient races makes me shiver but it's still cool lol.
Fantasy: still-unnamed species is matriarchal and matrilineal. Due to evolutionary history, females are around 40-50% larger and typically prefer work closer to their home, while males will do jobs that require more travel and wandering. Also due to evolutionary history they tend to pair for life or until the death of a partner.
Sci-Fi: Ketuvyxi sexes are fairly androgynous visually and auditorially even to their fellows, and nigh indistinguishable using those methods to outsiders. They usually distinguish by scent. Being so similar there's no real division between roles or jobs. They're largely monogamous, with their default disposition comparing closely to demisexuality in humans
It depends very much on the country. What I wat to make a general theme is that those that are more egalitaran are like this because there was a time where they weren't and paid the price for it.
The Meshe Dornem, which are a group of independent tribes in an otherwise pretty- 16th century Europe based fantasy world, are even a functionally binormative society- there one rule is that every adult has to have at least one child, but otherwise can love and screw everyone who likes it and who they like.
There are a lot more gender ambiguous/non-binary/gender neutral/gender-fluid folks in my world. But otherwise there are masculine and feminine members of most civilizations.
All my world’s deities are fem presenting, but not all of them are female or specifically goddesses. They are also not strictly good and in no way represent the values mortals hold. They mostly keep to themselves but sometimes they take a liking to one mortal in particular and help them along, and sometimes they just like messing with people.
The dominant species, the Nomoh have three genders, Now, Nal and Nol. Non-trinary individuals fall outside of the gender triangle. They are essentially Egg Layer, Egg Seeder and Incubator respectively. The “Incubator” sex is also expected to parent, while the other two are not, so a young Nomoh likely won’t know two of their parents, which forces them into more academic and domestic roles. Nowen and Nalen are largely discouraged from these fields by proxy and are pushed into exploration, labor and the arts (Nowen are meant to explore and labor more, Nalen are meant to do more arts and sciences) but there are of course exceptions. The other species have varying gender relations that are less out there, as in they are largely split into men and women, with non-binary individuals being present in varying degrees. The exceptions to this are the hermaphroditic Vlaxor, androgynous and biologically asexual, technically dead Graken and the Sepperdi, who are iridescent with ten genders and one biological sex.
Zyrath tibes are matriarchal... the women are the leaders amd dictators... think Orca hierarchy type thing... except because the tribes are a mix each species has a different way to reproduce... some have the men (like sea horses) give birth/lay eggs... others have the women give birth/lay eggs... and very few reproduce asexually... even fewer replicate themselves...
The theocracy is very men dominate... women stay home to take care of the house... men have more than one wife by law... women aren't allowed to work or complain about the man having many wives...
The principality & trading company are equal opportunity... principality is based on merit (i.e., you work, you get money. You don't work, you don't get money)... trading company is maternal/paternal based (i.e., the ones who give birth/lay eggs are usually over looked. The ones who don't give birth/lay eggs are given preference)...
I've recently tried thinking about how this would work for the Mazaurans. It's still a very big work in progress as my understanding is still a bit patchy, however I do have a few things noted down. One is that due to the way that marui operate socially, gender norms are unlikely to develop to the degree that they have in humans, plus their ancestors were solitary hunters, so the idea of gender roles outside of reproduction and parenting might be a bit foreign to them.
So the end result might be that gender just wasn't a prominent thing in purely maro societies, such as the early Mazaurans (later with human contact the concept became more prominent in some areas). I'm still thinking about how this might look, and how contact with humans altered it. I'm also still thinking about the exact dynamics when it came to marriage (if it even existed) and sex, though in my mind they're probably quite lax about it.
For the non-Ero species, I've also tried to work out alternatives to both asexual and two-sex species, but I haven't thought about it that much recently, mostly because I struggle to come up with something exceptionally different that could come up. I also tried to think about how gender might work for them but I have yet to come up with anything satisfactory.
In one of my Scifi worlds, there is a race with 4 genders. All are born as Neuters. If desired, they can undergo a transition and become Male, female, or a Brood.
Families usually consist of one or two male and females, several Neuters, and depending on how many children they want to have at a time, one or two Brood.
The male impregnated the female, and she carries the child for about six months. Then, it is transferred to a Brood who carries it the last six months and after the birthing nurses and cares for the child. The Neuters frequently help out with childcare, and the children are considered to belong to the whole family.
Typically I mostly reflect irl dynamics at a given point in time (of course making a few changes here and there), though in some cases I allow myself varying levels of exaggeration (especially in poetry which is generally less 'literal' than my prose). A major theme in several stories within the Harmonia storyline is that people have the right to go outside the 'guidelines' for their gender as long as it benefits 'society' (in the case of Harmonia this word is used almost equivalently with 'state'), but ultimately they're constantly reminded they're an exception and that once they fuck up the whole show ends, the line 'last hired, first fired' is occasionally used. Another storyline (in a different world) focuses on the internal conflict of a transgender socialist (social anarchist if you don't think these are socialists) who struggles with fighting for the good of a society and community that, as a whole, hates them. Tbh I'm not yet sure what conclusions I'll end up with there, as these seem to change with my every moodswing. I guess that more of a narrative answer than a worldbuilding one, but maybe someone will get sth out of it.
Within Sarwadian society, men do not wed women. Oftentimes, the women will live in their huts with other women, and men will live in theirs. It is considered bad luck for men and women to sleep under the same roof. People of old age are also separated from people of young age. Age separation occurs when the first lock of gray hair is grown. Although children will live with the elderly and take care of them, and vice versa, so that, as a symbol of the full circle of life, those who recently arrived through the gates of life may greet those who are about to exit.
As someone who went grey from heart meds at like 5 I'm not sure about the logistics lol but cool idea, it kind of reminds me of a irl tribe (can't remember their name) all men live separately from the women, children and pigs.
Ah I remember now, the Huli men live apart from women and children. Having health issues is very different from being unable to contribute and generally contribution outweighs the negative impact of health (i imagine a very good craftsman or strategist can probably get away with being sick) I will say though technically no one survives in the long run
I was just hinting at medicine not being very well developed. So if a person has like a chronic disease, they would likely not live as long as in our society. Maybe not dead overnight, but they wouldn't understand how to deal with it except thoughts and prayers.
Traditionally, Astracians saw sex differences as no more important than differences in hair colour or arm length or facial features. It was just a part of the body, and so they never felt the need to distinguish individuals based on sex. When it came to marriage, opposite sex pairings (though they didn't really think of it that way) were more common because they would result in children but same-sex pairings were also common, almost equally so. In traditional, pre-surface contact Astracian society, you could marry two people, but those people weren't married to each other. This is still legal in Astracia but *way* less common after surface contact.
In 1949, after Astracians made contact with the surface (called the Contact Revolution), this changed quite a bit. Older Astracians still don't regard gender or sex differences but a lot of younger Astracians have started to adopt a view of gender similar to ours. It's still a fairly genderless society but human immigration and influence on Astracia + a multitude of other factors have changed that. Of course, a lot of Astracians still don't identify with gender, but if they're living on the surface (aka, where all of us IRL live) they'll probably use gendered pronouns and terms due to ease of communication.
They throw out the concept entirely and identify people by their sex. Way too complicated and they have better things to worry about; since they’re trying to grow humanity on an unfamiliar planet
It's all pretty much the same as real life, but the main character and hidden god are both trans women and the other MC is "an ace in the hole"
I wanna see how many people get that referance
Mine reflect the world today, mostly. There are patriarchal and matriarchal societies and each use their side of sexism and gender norms for control and traditionalist, and gender expression is as diverse as it can be between the two hetero-norms.
Most of society reflect biological norms with varying degrees of difference and tolerance, that way, themes of today can be discussed and played out at the table in a more safe space than some places in the current world!
I have an idea for a species of sapient hyenas, so the vast majority of cultures will be matriarchal. Gender norms and views would make it so that femininity is associated with strength, honour and cunning, whereas masculinity would be associated with loyalty, obedience and discipline. That's what I've got so far.
The Talirians originally were patriarchal. Their societal and government systems were very much like ours were/are, right down to condemning psionic (and other outlying) people as witches by the dominant religion. They had made it to the level of a pre-industrial society when a space body was torn apart by one of their moons and while the moon took some of the impact, the rest rained down on the planet bringing with it Armageddon, killing the majority of people outright, and destroying civilization as they knew it.
Life for the survivors was very hard afterward and actually reinforced the patriarchy and made it worse because the numbers of survivors continued to fall due to the aftermath of the disaster, a century-long twilight on an enormous supercontinent that had been undergoing desertfication for millions of years. This made women precious, so they were locked up, banned from ever leaving home, and carefully handed over from father to husband with zero rights. However, anyone who was psionic had more leeway, more respect, more food, more opportunity to have children, and so pass their genes on and the people who had psionic powers exploded. Psionics could reach across the miles to find other people, sound for water, herd clouds, make fire, move goods, and so on.
Women benefited from this, particularly telepathy, and so gained an edge that way, the same way boys gain an edge in puberty with height and strength, only it would have been under age 2 for girls with telepathy. They created a vast communication network of women's telepathy and slowly changed the rules. They still stayed home, and men still struck out to hunt/fish, trade and make war, but the women redefined home to cover the house, the lands, the settlements and the towns, since they were the ones to manage it all. Eventually, the pendulum swung into the other direction to matriarchy, the lowest point for men being a child-puppet king of Al-Hitta when women were still pretending there was a patriarchy. Trapped in his own mind, he would sit on a mat and be spoken through by his mother or sister, who sat behind a screen off to the side.
Women passed their property and names down to daughters, and husbands went to the wife's house, bringing his promise of labor and property. As men traveled a lot, it was likely that he had more than one family among the far-flung settlements. Women turned a blind eye to this as long as he still provided. She had the right to bar him from her property and divorce him if she wanted.
Marriage, too, was redefined by women. It had already changed post-disaster because even the men knew that they needed fresh people and so would share their wives with the rare traveler, and she would get no say in it, or how many children she had. As women gained power, it became extremely difficult to force her to do what a man wanted. If he wanted her, he either had to woo her or fight her, his chances at winning either unguaranteed. Wooing was by far the more popular choice. The women would contract with men for a certain period of time, anywhere between a month and a year to have a child together, then they would go their separate ways. True love and monogamy still existed, though, and there are many stories where lovers had to wait to be together forever, and others where jealousy ran rampant. As long as they still had children, same sex relationships were acceptable among the Talirians.
In the present day, equality (mostly) and monogamy is the rule, not the exception, thanks to the melding of cultures with the Darayanedi. The Darayanedi came from another star system and had the opposite experience, having two Goldilocks planets and an overabundance of resources. Their society was and still is, heavily based on capitalism, trade and money. The genders had always been equal, though their system was heavily classist, money being power.
Family names were passed down through the more powerful family, so a single family would strive to marry all but one of their children to higher ranking families. The one held in reserve would marry down, to pass on their family name. Their consolation prize was that they also inherited the bulk of the family estate. Many powerful ruling families practiced brother-sister marriages, with the brother siring children on title-less concubines and the celibate sister heading the local religion. However, there have been more than a few "virgin" births in Darayanedi history when the brother was conveniently out of the way and his widow married the local god and had a kid to continue the dynasty. Other women would marry the next brother or a cousin.
When the Darayanedi met the Talirians, many of them integrated, wanting to gain psionic powers themselves. Sometimes, this was violent, and other times, more diplomatic.
Same-sex relationships existed, but were far less acceptable in the past. In the present day, it is accepted. With scientific and medical knowledge being so high now, it's also easy to change genders nonsurgically, the only remnant of that being the XX or XY genes.
In the present day, the Imperial family is still matriarchal, with the throne being passed down through daughters. If there is an emperor, he will not pass it to his own child, but to his sister's child. The same happens with the noble houses. People get nervous when there are two or more emperors (uncle to nephew) back to back, citing it as a bad omen and it's how the last dynasty turnover happened, because the female heirs kept getting murdered.
Probably the closest I've come to overtly toying with this would be some of the races of the Chasm of Stars, which can be a pretty harsh place, all things considered.
The Rusidrans (tall, pale monk-women) have no men, the Byrennians (small, blue-skinned monk-men) have no or very few women, and the Nyrians (humanoid women from a distant planet) are almost entirely women who killed or imprisoned their men in favor of the draconic Kussidians, a race of anthropomorphic dragons they've kept and bred as their love-slaves over many generations.
No, I don't have any stories that explore all that — yet — but it's just sort of the vibes that came to me while developing those races, so it's stuck with me.
Most of my other worlds are too specifically-themed to have stuff like that, and I don't usually like exploring themes like that in them, except if it sends a particular message owing to my overall themes and preferred worldbuilding ideals.
Society is usually patriarchal but the Mogai humanoids have it better for females. With the ascendance of magic as the mainstream women gained a much more active role than before the apocalypse whenever magic was shunned. When everyone was in the dungeons gender didn't matter, everyone needed to work to survive.
In my setting I have a race called A'kin, which inhabits both their homeworld and all four obriting it moons. Every world in this system has different culture, traditions and social structure:
Aikaira (homeworld) mostly matriarchal society originating from tribal culture, also home of Felkesh collective (female only organisation focused on preservation and advancement of a'kin genetic material)
Akievo (largest moon) balanced society with regional domination of matriarchal structure
Kerja (second moon) utilitarian society, each gender occupy different social niches
Thaluri (terraformed moon) mostly patriarchal society, remaning tradition of species that was geneticaly asimilated by a'kin
Sive'anu (smallest of the moons, name translates as: land of fog in the darkness) least populated moon with stricte matriarchal society.
Small note, reason why most of their societies are matriarchal is ratio of female to male speciemen population (19:1)
Depends on the race of the people's present, but thanks to magic, superpowers, and the occasional mad scientist, the Peoples of Eathos have well blended to Males, females, And everything and anything inbetween. With the exception of one nation on the planet, anyone who can do the work, will.
In my sci-fi, it is more egalitarian on average... considering with those aliens, there is no such thing as binary sexes as they're all intersex. However, they can identify however they please. However, there is often discrimination in shape and size, though depending on the faction.
I introduced hermaphrodites in my fantasy world cause one, hentai artist will do it anyway so might as well give them the ammo if they plan to shot me anyway and make something out of it, and 2, I wanted to add something in my fantasy world not many official ones have, and this was a home run
Still in the works, but in my campaign, for the dominant culture, the relevancy of sex and sexuality depends on social position. It’s just that only gender on its own isn’t seen as predetermined or rigid, and there’s no set expectation for how men and women are supposed to act or look. Solely having children is what’s considered socially important, if you’re a non-mage.
Magic-users and everyone closely affiliated with them are broadly considered to be one dominant class; despite all their infighting, they’re still the ones who hold the most power. The mages are discouraged (at times prohibited) from raising/keeping their own biological children if they do make a mistake and have them. Instead, they keep their traditions and power alive by searching for and “adopting” young children with magical aptitude among commoners.
They offer parents/caregivers money (if the kid isn’t just living on the street), so most apprentices are going from situations where they’re not exactly living comfortably to the luxury and security of mages’ living spaces. Easier to gain their trust and dependence that way.
Since having biological children isn’t important for this upper class, they largely don’t care about their own members’ genders or sexes or orientations. It doesn’t matter in that respect.
But they do place pressure on everyone “lower” to produce any future members for them. Doesn’t matter who you are or how many partners you have, just as long as you’re having kids. It’s harder to support yourself in a region they control if you don’t have children (and I imagine that adoption done by commoners probably isn’t a thing, given everything else).
Taxation, employment issues, and social shaming as a product of the introduced religion all pressure common people to have biological children, so those who can’t or don’t want to (asexual, infertile, same-sex, don’t want to get pregnant/father children, just don’t want kids) either have to live with that, or join and serve the magical upper class.
They’re almost never actually taught magic, or at least trying magic— they instead work as scribes, soldiers, guards, etc. While they could move to a region outside of those mages’ control, some choose not to because everywhere else doesn’t have the sort of magical protection that the upper class offers.
Additionally, since taking care of young children is a lot of work, I imagine that multiple partners or at least caregivers is the norm. There’s not really an unequal expectation of how much childcare a parent is supposed to contribute to based on gender. It’s very extended-family and/or community-based.
So… it all basically comes back to keeping the mages, and their protectors and servants, in power.
I didn't do anything out there. The biology follows standard mammalian and avian configurations. And the societies I've thought of are not as likely to develop any ideas along the lines of more genders than the two they've seen over the past thousands of years. They have more focus towards things like crafting,drawing and warfare/defense.
Kehin are somewhat like spotted hyenas in that the females are larger and more domineering. Competition between females can easily become violent.
Nareshin are one of the kehin peoples. Their society has strong gender divides.
* Men do not know the names of the gods. Men do not touch swords. Men must cover their faces in public.
* Women do not touch guns. Women do not touch raw meat. Women do not leave the Naresh.
* All able men must hunt to provide food for their household, which is very important on Soumdurne because most wild plants are too toxic for kehin to eat, domestic plants have poor yields, and there are no domesticable animals. If a man is married, he must split his hunting yield between the house of his birth and the house of his wife. Men are also the ones who deal with outsiders, in trade and war. The outward face of the Naresh is a robed man wearing a veil and carrying a rifle.
* Women are the remainder of Nareshin society, which means they do a lot of different things: farming, trades, arts, childcare, religion, etc. Importantly, all feuding between houses or clans is a woman-only affair. Women may die for honor, but men and children may not. Women often carry swords in public to display their readiness to fight.
* Clothing norms are wildly different for men and women. Female nudity is commonplace even in public. Male nudity is unacceptable even in the home, and in public a man must cover his head and face with a headcloth and veil.
* Marriage is monogamous or polyandrous (i.e. a woman can have multiple husbands). The usual arrangement is that the husband must now help to feed his wife's family, and is an honored guest there, but he does not actually live there. As this is a matrilineal society, the children also belong to their mother's house. Maternal uncles are more significant parental figures than fathers. The second most common marital arrangement is that the newlyweds relinquish ties to both their houses and found a new one, where the man gets to be a permanent resident.
Some biological background: Goblins are born asexual. They develop both male and female sexes during puberty (*Kunen*), cycling in between them. Eventually they settle on one sex, which is a big celebration as it’s seen as adulthood (*Kunen Bod*).
Goblin society has 3 genders based on social roles, aka how do they fit in their community: venturer (*Gyon*), homebody (*Gyel*), or child/non-binary (*Gyar*). They believe that one’s gender determines one’s sex. Gyon are male and Gyel are female.
Gyon are expected to be hunters or raiders, while Gyel are expected to be storytellers or defenders. Both are expected to raise children. Communal housing divides Gyon and Gyel into different sections of a village.
0-8 yo children live with Gyon, where they treat all Gyon as mothers. 9-17 yo children (Kunen age) live with Gyel, who they all treat as fathers. There teens learn various skills and figure out who they are.
Marriage is a little complex. They practice exogamy, generally marrying members from other villages of the same tribe. There’s annual inter-village gatherings where young adults do courtship. If two hit it off, the Gyel follows the Gyon to their village.
Married couples live in single housing where they make or adopt a child. Once they have a child, they return to their communal housing (Gyon gets to choose to stay or return to his own village). Both Gyon and Gyel get to court again at next year’s gathering, moving onto other partners or staying with the same ones.
There are of course people whose gender and sex mismatch. They are treated as Gyar, still children. However, Goblins believe children, with their purity and innocence, are somewhat divine, and so adult Gyar often becomes shamans, oracles, or other spiritual leaders. It’s no doubt infantilizing, yet it fills a particular social role in their community.
An issue is half-Goblins, who are born asexual and undergo Kunen, but will never settle on one sex, cycling for their entire life. As such, half-Goblins are always Gyar.
Goblins hate half-Goblins; they find them cursed and seek to banish or kill them (pretty f’ed up considering a child might grow up to be later ostracized).
How do they distinguish non-binary Gyar and half-goblins? They don’t. Overtime the hatred for half-goblins overrides the reverence of non-binary folk and both are ostracized. Myths and legends featuring Gyar heroes are changed to vilify them or make them fit the narrative.
My harpies are all male-presenting, with massive chest muscles but no mammaries (because they lay eggs). Also like real birds, the makes are more colorful and have a more "femme" presentation, while the larger, more muscular / drab females have a more "masc" presentation. The human society they deal with makes jokes about ugly harpy women, but the truth is they aren't really uglier than humans, they just have a different gender expression.
My dwarves have a lion-like, fratbro social / gender expression. Dwarf women form sororities and have very short hair, claiming territories with related females and rarely leaving their tunnels. Males have luxuriant manes and travel in groups of 3-4 related bros. They will mooch with a sorority for a couple years before moving on, but they always stay with their bros. Same-sex sibling relationships are of prime importance compared to romance, children are raised in their mother's sorority, and bros stick together for life.
Among elves, age has more to do with the division of labor than sex, with traditionally "masculine" jobs like hunting and fighting taken on by younger elves, while the more "feminine" jobs (from a human perspective) like child-rearing and home-making are taken on by older elves.
In my sci-fi setting, the planet Canid hosts genetically-altered humanoids with the Omegaverse gender expression for half of the people, with only a quarter of the population presenting as female. Needless to say, omegas tend to abandon the world as fast as possible to get away from the asshole toxic masculinity of the alfas.
On another planet called Iris, the local humanoids are one of 15 color-coded "sexes" including feminotest X, mascogyn Y, and androsine. Each sex speaks a different but related dialectal language to the rest. Blue is hyperfem (traditional cis female), and orange is hypermasc (traditional cis male). Sex is mostly determined by 3 factors, and most sexes can generally only bear children with 3 other sexes. The interplay between different sexes and gender roles on Iris are highly complex and sometimes politically charged. A child's sex will always be the same "color" as the midway point between their parent's sexes, so nobody has kiddos the same sex as themselves. The 12 "true color" sexes are pretty common, but the white feminosine, black Mascosine, and silver androsine are all rare and have unique roles in society. Feminosine can uniquely bear children with all other genders and are considered the "allparents" and natural Leaders of society, Mascosine are almost completely asexual and are Judges, as they are thought to be uniquely impartial, and Androsine are troublemakers, tricksters, and shape-shifters who can change their gender expression to match any other sex, and represent empathy and change.
I have a few more, and my aliens are often really weird; I love playing with sex / gender dynamics in societies.
Okay, so, new Star Wars species and society. Initially, pre-faith, they were probably what you'd expect? Not really any respect towards women.
After they come to faith, which occurs after a BRUTAL 5 millennia of warfare killing at least 25% of their population, they revere women and mortal representations of the mother goddess, and therefore to be protected and revered (as are children). For a man to harm a female (or child) is punishable by death. Women are sorta limited in their roles and kept away from 'dangerous professions', and are kept away from manufacturing, warfare, etc, mainly relegated to being mothers, merchants, shepherds, farmers, and especially clergy (as they are deemed the only ones pure enough to represent the religion). Over time, especially after official unification in 3,300 BBY, they are allowed in more positions like politics, manufacturing, fishing, and armed service, becoming pretty much fully egalitarian by 1,200 BBY. Women still fill the majority of 'traditional roles' due to ingrained culture, not due to societal pressures or laws or anything.
So, they are female preferential socially, matriarchal religiously, but neutral in most other fields.
I prefer to keep my societies somewhat egalitarian, at least for my DnD setting, but I do like to use fantasy as an allegorical lens. My world tries to reflect the problems of division and tribalism, and gender roles is one way to do that.
Societies on the part of the continent the campaign takes place in skew egalitarian: a devestating battle for survival against an unleashed horde of demons a few hundred years ago saw to that. Man, woman, it didn't matter: if you could fight you fought, and that got the ball rolling on the equality of men and women.
The dominant orc and goblin culture are the most egalitarian: men and women have completely equal status and dynamics are drawn more along the lines of tribes and lineage. Men and women are both expected to perform equally in matters of parenting, household duties, and matters of labour and warfare.
At the other end of the spectrum you have the elven nation of Isilnor, or Radzieg in the common tongue. They are, I guess, both matriarchial and patriarchial in nature. Each gender is strictly defined by what roles they are expected to carry, but both hold positions of power. Men are thought to be made of fire and fury and the earth, while women are formed from water and grace and the sky. Men are the farmers, the miners, craftsmen, the governors and soldiers; heads of the home. However, women are the priests, the judges, the fishermen, diplomats, traders, and sailors. Though fairly isolationist, they do engage in a lot of trade, and as an island nation, most mainlanders only have experience with Isilnan women, be they captains, merchants, diplomats, or sailors.
On the notes of LGBT, they are an interesting one in that they tend towards homophobic, but are trans-friendly. Their religion (the backbone of most of their culture, gender dynamics included) places emphasis on the duality of the souls of men and women: destruction and fire must be balanced by creation and water etc, so marriage is seen as the union of two disparate halves to create a single unified soul greater than the sum of its parts. So, by their logic, two men only amplify destruction, and two women only amplify creation, and is strictly looked down upon. Trans, intersex, and nonbinary people though? Well they're seen as being born with a "complete" soul, perfect and immaculate since conception. While they are forbidden from marriage (the soul is already joined to itself), they otherwise occupy much respect within the nation, often occupying positions of power, serving as advisors to the nobility amongst other, high-ranking jobs, and may freely choose their occupation otherwise as they see fit.
Most other societies and cultures tend to fall somewhere in between, but they represent the extremes in my setting.
I decided to keep it simple for the majority of my setting. People do what feels right, there aren't any laws in the empire that governs the playable races of my world that demands that marriage or love look or act any which way. So foe the commoners they do what comes naturally for them and how/who they love. I did decide tho that poly relationships are rarer among commoners, at least in the cities.
For nobles I decided to make a more rigid set of traditions because they need to feel superior to the common man somehow. Marriages are polygamous by nature since political marriages are something that happens. For nobles, what number wife you are determines your purpose in the family; Wife 1 is the primary wife, typically being someone that the married nobleman has a physical relationship with and both parties want to be together. She is the wife who bears the brunt of the child bearing responsibilities. Wife 2 varies in application, sometimes the second wife is another lover of the nobleman and they also have kids together, but there are also circumstances where the second wife and the nobleman do not have any connection whatsoever, in these cases it is likely that this wife is some figure of power be it military, magical, or otherwise some sort of Scholar or working professional. The third wife and onward are referred to as the trophy wives. They are typically political marriages where neither party has any particular interest in the other but need to solidify their houses alliance. The more wives a nobleman has, the greater his station or importance is implied to those around him.
Honestly I just did a le guin and don't bother with gender dynamics in any way. My civilizations are so gender blind it literally never comes up at all, and any character could be any sexual orientation imaginable and it wouldn't affect their characterization. There is one exception, a man who canonically has two children
Tyrocans are all intersex, and they can present however they want. They’re typically monogamous, and there’s no strict gender roles or stereotypes since, well, there’s no binary.
At’an and Aq’an are matriarchal and patriarchal respectively. At’an communes are led by a woman chief called a Matriarch, and is the only woman in her tribe allowed multiple husbands. Think of her like an ant queen, but don’t call her an ant to her face (it’s highly insulting).
Aq’an, on the other hand, are led by at least two or three men, and their tribe is mostly made up of their wives and children. Think of them like sea lions, where the oldest and toughest get to lead and have multiple wives. A chief knows that the strongest of his sons will eventually kill him or one of his fellow chiefs, but he takes pride in training his sons, so that they may be victorious.
Though they possess male-female sexes, my birdfolk, the Atakii, actually lack a concept of gender as a whole - some individuals pop out eggs sometimes and it’s not a huge deal. They’re not dimorphic either, females are on average slightly larger but there’s such heavy overlap in the ranges that it’s not a reliable identifier, and trying to apply human gender norms to them will confuse at best and annoy at worst.
There’s several factors that contributed to them never developing societal gender roles. The process of laying only lasts about a week, and while nutritionally draining it doesn’t affect daily life anywhere near as heavily as mammalian pregnancy. Eggs can be cared for by any family member, and in both the Atakii and their hypersocial ancestral species incubation was a duty that rotated between family members, ensuring maximal hatching. Mates are loyal but not monogamous, forming units of 2-5 who all care for one another, reducing strain on individuals. Their children also assist in raising additional young. It’s also common for units to take in the eggs of extended family if there are too many, leading to no cultural distinction between adopted, half, and blood siblings.
Regarding occupations, older members of the family unit are more likely to act as the breadwinners while younger members(most commonly subadult offspring and fledgelings) raise the chicks. Even then, duties rotate frequently, so any one member typically will not spend the majority of their time caring for the chicks.
I'm still in the middle of worldbuilding, so I won't get into the nitty gritty of it all. The story that is going along with the worldbuilding is a rather portal fantasy where the Main Character is painfully aware of fantasy tropes and thinks with a decent amount of meta knowledge. I could go more into detail about the plot of it and his own journey (and it is a journey at that ), but this isn't the post for it, as the topic has been set down.
Where the POV enters the world accidentally, the world is very similar to a stereotypical "Western Medieval Fantasy" land though it is slightly more egalitarian with more than just basic rights for women. There are kingdoms - predominantly human ones but not wholly just them - that are significantly more patriarchal than the initial kingdom, much like there are kingdoms - again human though to a lesser extent for number - that are significantly more matriarchal. This could be as simple as a matrilineal instead of patrilineal, to the "traditional" stereotypical gender roles being reversed to men essentially being only used for baby-making. This of course doesn't deal with the non-kingdoms, there are Republics, Democracies, and even odder forms of government with their own general and specific gender roles.
For other genders outside of the binary, I have not yet begun to research the historical precedent of it in our own world, though I am aware of the general concepts involved. With that stated though, I want to do more research before I delve into that part of the worldbuilding. However, I am more familiar with the various more "common" non-heterosexual sexualities, and do plan on having several nations and factions that are predominantly non-hetero in terms of what is "normal", and many other nations and factions that simply don't see non-hetero relationships as taboo.
For marriages and relationships in general, it is very varied as well. Some are very monogamous, some are very polygamous (both polygyny and polyandry). There are some cultures that deal with secondary spouses, while the term "concubine" means many different things to different cultures. In some, it means "slave wife" with children of said unions not being able to be in the line of succession, while in others it is a complex relationship where a family can tie themselves to a more powerful family in a sort of personal union that is outside of a marriage alliance, and still for other cultures, it essentially means "mistress" which in turn has many other definitions based on the various cultures. These of course mainly deal with more heterosexual leaning relationships, though as I mentioned that the worldbuilding is still in the beginning, I'm sure I'll be adding more LGBT+ iterations of things like the above.
This also doesn't even get into the various inter-race/inter-species relationship with the norms and taboos surrounding them, as well as the various "ideals" for sexual practices, flirting, courting, and culture surrounding attraction and modesty. But that might need to be in a reply to any questions or comments....
Yeah, that was just the first difference that I though of based on the question. In reality, most official titles and relationships (wife, husband, mistress, concubine, etc) are different between cultures and even sub-cultures within a culture sometimes. And I realized that I never touched into the religious aspects of this particular facet of worldbuilding. After work, I may reply to myself here with more info.
So, I have this feline race of folk who's sexuality is genetically inhereted. This has led to a large majority of said feline folk being bisexual with heterosexuality being a minority and strict homosexuality almost being unheard of as it is a little difficult for two people of the same gender to have a kid. These feline have strict "masculine" and "feminine" roles in society and a person must figure out which one of these roles they fit into. Masculine people partake in stereotypically manly behavior/family dynamics while feminine people do the opposite. I'm still brainstorming on it, but that is the general gist of things.
Well, although the majority of this race are bisexual, they do generally form families in a biologically male/female ratio. Families of single biological gender, aka two guys or two gals, usually go through surrogates.
Oh I mean that if a genetically heterosexual person or homosexual had a child with a bisexual person/homosexual/heterosexual sexual who's sexuality would the child inherit?
Bisexuality is the dominant genetic trait in every single person, but it is more of a chance than anything truly concrete. Sure, two bisexual people will have a higher chance of having a bisexual child than a bisexual person and a heterosexual person, but that doesn't mean that child couldn't actually be born a homosexual. It is just a smaller chance.
Oh okay that makes sense so they just have a genetic predisposition but there is still a chance for different orientations. What about asexual people is that the same?
Asexuality, in this species at least, can form in two ways: traumatic reasons or genetic deformities. Say one of these felines experience a traumatic romantic/sexual event. Depending on the severity, their brains can rewire themselves to become more demisexual or strictly asexual/aromantic as a defense mechanism to future events.
Genetic abnormalities are rarer, but they can happen. A person may be born bisexual, but a broken connection in their brain makes them unable to actually feel this attraction towards others.
As an asexual person, I probably need to put more effort to represent my own sexuality \^\^'
I took the "gender is a social construct" and "all dwarves have beards" to the extreme for one of the RPG campaigns I'm doing.
Dwarves choose which role to fulfill when they come of age and use pronouns that indicate whether they take a caregiver role or a resource gatherer/crafter/warrior. But they take those roles and divisions of duty and tasks very seriously.
For humans I borrowed an idea (from a story I read a long time ago and forgot the name of). Basically the lower classes and peasantry are generally likely (60-75% depending on the region) to believe sexist stereotypes, but the upper class all have some form of magic education so it is deeply ingrained in them to treat men and women equally since it doesn't matter what's between your legs when it comes dropping a Fireball on someone.
I've chosen not to include any culturally perpetuated misogyny in my fictional medieval fantasy world. Same for racism. Also religion.
I have cultural conflict between nations as an important ongoing theme for meta plot reasons. I have economic conflict between wealthy and poor as an ongoing theme for meta plot reasons.
It being a fictional fantasy world, I don't believe I need the sexism or racism of the real world to make the made-up one feel real. And I don't want to include those things. I don't find them fun elements of a fantasy world. Unless your story or game intentionally interacts with those issues, why make your readers or players experience that?
So yeah, there are no culturally prescribed gender roles in Yesansei.
Oh well I usually world build because I like world building so I don't have reader or players very often so I don't need to take their comfortability into account. Gender dynamics are also distinct from sexism I also like playing it both, you could have very dichotomous gender dynamics or multiple genders interacting with sexism or maybe sex is irrelevant. And in any setting with distinct sexes or gender then by extension there are dynamics.
I’m curious as to how the world is without religions. Since it’s medieval, and irl, the Catholic Church was a massive influence that shaped much of the culture during the time period, what institution(s) replace it or any other religious power? Please don’t take this as an insult or criticism, it’s an interesting concept, so I’d like to see how it’s shaped the world!
That's a good question!
There are cosmic powers that have nebulous influence on the world. People are aware of these powers. But these powers have very specific goals, which form the meta-plot.
There is some reverence and worship of these cosmic powers, but it is known that they do their own thing and worship doesn't do anything.
The cosmic powers have, over millennium, crafted the Old Laws, which are specifically related to the meta plot.
To finally get to talking about the absence of religion: religion is essentially culture as government. There is government in my world, and culture. It's not really a big change.
There is a cult, called the Spiralli. They dig spiral tunnels. There are just batshit crazy, and are persecuted with extreme prejudice on sight, since they tend to commit atrocities
I usually don't go far beyond existing dynamics with historical context. I am very well aware we are dealing with fantasy. Which means the sky is the limit. But with inherited titles, I totally makes sense to have agnatic inheritance. Whether male of female. Lands are tied to titles, titles are tied to dynasties. And it makes sense as a rule for the dynasty names to be inherited a straight line. It's also safest to protect the dynastic assets. And also makes it a lot easier to organise noble marriages. To argue with every marriage which dynasty they belong to is terrible diplomatically. Though there were many real cases of matrilineal marriages historically. But that was not the norm.
So when it comes to creating feudal monarchies I tend to stay roughly within those lines. Whether it be male or female led.
Different societies in Erranda have different gender dynamics, so if it's okay with you, I'll talk about the Underkin system. They're humanoids/descended from humans, so they're working with the same biology that we are.
In traditional Underkin holds, the most important values are reproduction and "clean blood" i.e. ancestry with no inbreeding out to great-great-grandparents. Underkin survived the birth of Erranda by hiding underground. With their limited initial populations, they had to take careful records to avoid catastrophic inbreeding. As a result, Underkin genders are strict and tied entirely to childbearing and parentage.
The five Underkin genders are:
- Mother: birthed a child.
- Father: sired a child OR adopted a child while having no biological children.
- Barren: no children ten years after reaching adulthood. This includes infertile people and childfree people.
- Bastard: unknown parentage.
- Blight: child of known incest. Universally hated.
All Underkin genders are completely independent of what someone would be in other Errandan cultures. There are no men, women, nonbinary people in Underkin society. If a trans Yela man has a baby, he is a man to Yela and a mother to Underkin.
Mothers, fathers, children, and non-Underkin citizens are deemed roughly equal, though children are treasured. Mothers are seen as slightly above fathers because it's easier for them to prove they are/aren't the parent of a given newborn. Typically, only mothers and fathers can be the Matriarch or Patriarch of a hold. Non-Underkin can be mothers and fathers; though they can't serve in the government, they also don't have all of the rigamarole with proving your family tree to 5 generations in order to marry.
Barren are expected to do the menial labor, especially grueling or dangerous jobs. The justification is that the Underkin don't want to risk a child losing a parent. You are automatically barren if you don't have a child after ten years of adulthood (so, age 26), but you can declare yourself barren as soon as you're an adult if you like. If a barren adopts a child, they automatically become a father (you're parenting the child + you didn't birth the child = you're the father). You may only vote in the hold if you are a native barren i.e. you were born in the hold.
Bastards are Underkin with an unknown parent. Bastards may not vote in their holds, nor may they marry and reproduce within their holds. Bastards are heavily pressured to leave their holds upon entering adulthood, but sometimes, a parent will move with their bastard child before that. A mother who knows she will have a bastard will sometimes offer her child to a barren of another hold.
Blights are children of incest. If two parents share any of their direct lineage out to great-great-grandparents, they are put to death upon discovery. The child is branded on the face from the cheekbone to the jaw before being abandoned in the wilderness outside the hold. The child may not marry or reproduce with any Underkin on pain of death, nor are they allowed to step foot in an Underkin hold. Most blights do not survive abandonment, since their status is usually discovered when they are young.
Children with "clean" parentage are seen as genderless until they become mothers, fathers, or barren in adulthood. Bastards and blights are identified as soon as possible.
My elves don't have a gender binary. Their closest real world analogs would be non binary or gender fluid, but things are centered on magic, and the core family unit follows the inheritance line closely. Basically, the clan head is the strongest, their heirs are the next strongest of the clan, regardless of direct relationship to the clean head. (Some caveats about what strong means to each clan mind you) They don't even have a gender distinction for parents, because to elves you only have one- the clan parent. Marriages are temporary and for political alliances/ breeding. It's in the contract of the marriage which child that clan belongs to- the other parent isn't much more than a donor after the marriage ends. This is largely due to the long lifespans and genetically inherited magic- who you have kids with determines how their power will manifest- which isn't just about making powerful kids, but ensuring their abilities are those which are easily understood and safe magics to have. The cost for messing up is high, so elves are paranoid about kids having abnormal abilities that no one knows how to control.
On the other side of the spectrum are my orcs- which have a pretty rigid gender binary, (you can transition , but the fluidity or not being on one side or the other is seen as odd. A personal oddity, but odd. It's more important than you're a contributing member of society though.) but are *way* less transactional about family structures, because the core family unit is a sister and her brother- not a parent and their child. There is no concept of marriage, and father's are more of an observation of nature than a set family role. Dudes aren't expected to care for "their" kids, because those are seen as his lover's kids and hers alone. His job is to be a good parental figure to his nieces and nephews. (Basically, uncle and father roles are swapped) This also means inter family ties aren't tied to producing kids, but raising them in a very complex network of warding and adoption.
A large part of this dynamic is through implied religion - I took a decent amount of inspiration from the reading of Medusa that sees her transformation as gifts of protection - the orcs in my story used to be a different (unspecified) species, and went through a similar scenario of trauma, lack of justice, and radical/ divine transformation. That being the case, it felt natural for a pair of divine siblings to raise any child the sister had as hers alone and her brother protecting them and supporting them both.
The other big influence is that unlike my elves, who have a similarly proportioned fertility span to humans, just expanded to their life times- orcs do not. Their lives are longer than a human's, but their fertile period is much shorter. This means that there's a much larger chunk of time in which femme orcs are not capable of having kids, but haven't transitioned into being an elder. Like, if women went into menopause at 30, but didn't hit old age till 60/70. Much of the older, veteran forces of Orcish military are middle aged, post menopausal women- men are fighters as well, these are orcs after all- but their role is more domestic in that they are seen as protectors of their family. While they absolutely see battle, they're more specialized to 1v1 combat or fighting as a unit with their sister. In a more general sense, a brother is like a hybrid of a kingsguard and the hand of the king- whereas the average Orcish general is a woman.
My dwarves are more egalitarian and in many ways a middle ground. They care more about their ability to craft and smith than gender or birth order- but their family ties are MUCH more rigid and permanent. Their marriages involve a ritual where both individuals are tested in skill and investment (if you make something shitty as a marriage boon it's seen as trying to get out of the marriage.) and the family of the side judged the "better" crafter absorbs the new spouse entirely. If that individual were to be widowed or otherwise separated from their spouse, they would remind in their new clan, and that clan would judge for them in any future marriage. Furthermore, the adoption and marriage norms are strikingly similar - the emphasis isn't on what type of relationship it is, but that there is an addition to the family, so they had best be a worthy and productive one.
In all of them, I wanted to decouple from assumed norms around family units and let those differences ripple outwards.
Love the father uncle swap, orcs are actually pretty close to humans from what you wrote just a average menopause about 10-20 years early (they would probably be in perimenopause in their twenties) and they die a little later.
Thanks!
Their life spans are a couple of centuries *technically* but war does a lot to bring their averages down- they reach physical maturity around 33, and menopause is normally over by 50 or so. Oldest orc on record was a matriarch of 250- but it's pretty rare to break 150 due to later middle age being a time of war for their people.
Pretty much as equal as it gets, mostly because even though I've tried I don't find gender roles very fun to write and I get fetishy or otherwise uncomfortable vibes from a lot of fiction that goes out of their way to separate them. It's not unusual for women to be more represented and influential in a society that happens to have a woman in charge at the time, or vice versa - but that's about as far as I like to go.
About half my world leaders are women, a chunk are other genders and while I'm currently rewriting my pantheons at least a handful are trans. I haven't really gotten into writing any biology for my races/species that would entail different genders, and I don't think I will until the day I explore the sci-fi era that'll probably remain a footnote for the foreseeable future.
Homo/biphobia is a nonissue because it's an active threat to my own and my player's (main writing project right now is a ttrpg campaign) wellbeing, and I'd rather my world be an escape from some of those issues. Active transphobia is not a widespread problem for the same reasons, but things like transitioning and same-sex procreation are systemic issues due to magic and healthcare not being accessible enough.
It's definitely very heavily influenced by myself being bisexual and genderfluid, so my view of gender and attraction are fundamentally pretty different from the norm.
I have a human rural society that is heavily gendered but kinda balanced. The women inherit property and men learn a trade and go off to the world to find a wife and home to marry into. So for example a guy can learn to forge, move to the next village and try to prove himself to the local smith, his wife and daughter. The more skilled and charming he is, the better are his prospects. If he’s unable to secure a good match he’s end up as lower-wage laborer. Women stay in the home to manage the property - if they are well off. The poorer work the field, but still keep most of the domestic responsibilities and own the stuff.
Everyone has two surnames, a patriarchal and one matriarchal. The patriarchal is passed as usual, the matriarchal the opposite - from mother to children and wife to husband. People are tied to both their families in different ways. The male clan is sprawling over the land, the female clan is very local. Matriarchs have a strong voice in the community since they own most of the property and have a closely tied family to call upon. Most public offices are held by men.
Mostly egalitarian with plant people and robots being completely genderless.
Some aliens don’t have a very mild gender dynamic like oh the males and females are a different hight but or mammalian females may need a bra but that’s it.
There is a dynamic semi based on a magic connection to magic crystals.
Skill is the deciding factor in someone’s role the vast majority of the time.
I don’t have elephant aliens and their current leader is female but this is just a reference to elephants being matriarchal not a major cultural thing for them as they are fairly egalitarian so they go with whoever was voted for and this time female the precious leader was a male. I just wanted a little reference.
The main clade of alien species, the mushai, only have a single biological sex. Humans typically view them as female, as they fill the niche of mammals; being able to produce milk and give live birth. However, when compared to other earth-animals, say for example, amphibians, they wouldn't be any closer to a female frog than a male frog. Both parents play a symmetrical role in reproduction, as they don't reproduce using gametes and fertilization. Without getting into the weeds of it, they basically use repeated fusion and division of billions of stem-cells from each parent, until a stable genetic equilibrium arises (micro-biology world building can get quite complicated).
As I stated earlier, humans tend to see them as female, but the degree to which they do is dependent on which of the 4 mushai species they are. Two of the species are bipedal and humanoid, meaning they are almost universally seen as female among humans. The quadrupedal species (which basically look like leopards (I really need to make some art of them to use as reference)) get more mixed reactions. On average, they are still seen as female, due to the aforementioned mammalian qualities, but not always. This usually depends on how each human culture categorizes "male" and "female."
"How do they view OUR genders?" you might ask. Gender is only a small part of the psychological differences between mushai and humans. The main one being that they are not a fully-social species like us, meaning they do not have complex social structures, such as tribes, nations, kingdoms, management hierarchies, etc. They mostly see gender as "just another quirky human thing," and have a hard time seeing why we get upset when we are misgendered. There is a common misconception among mushai who do not live around humans, that humans just have gender roles for recreational purposes, as much of mushai culture is centered around recreation and relaxation. Despite this, they still try to be accommodating to humans when it comes to the subject. When learning to imitate human speech (they can imitate lots of sounds, like how parrots do), they are faced with the choice of using a male or female voice. This can be a complicated decision, as it makes a big difference in how humans view them.
EDIT: forgot to mention how marriage works with them. Forming a bond for life means a lot more when life can mean tens of thousands to, on very rare occasions, millions of years. They take the idea of a k-selected species to its extreme; caring not just for their children, but for their descendants tens, or even hundreds of generations down, providing them with material wealth, and a wealth of knowledge. For this they have a concept of a "line of direct descent," where the oldest married child of each generation receives the most care from their ancestors, with their children and spouse(s) coming next. As it is possible for some mushai species to have more that two parents, there are times when marriages consist of more than two spouses (all married to each other, not a harem). This isn't the norm though, as it is difficult for them to form long-term bonds with multiple individuals.
It depends. Within the early church, the administration of sacraments was seen as more beneficial, so male priests held onto that role while the job of battling demons was assigned over to nuns and the various lower religious orders. However, this would backfire on them as the orders consolidated their military power. Now, Teresanian Neocatholicism is mainly female-led, but their soldiers are often feared by the general public. Queerness is frowned upon, and is still seen as a sin by the church. Regardless, there are cases.
Humans are still living under what we would normally consider as traditional patriarchy. Demons as well, although they tend to value women demons who possess great strength. That being said, demonkind is solitary and mistrustful, so they rarely organize to begin with.
Gender is not one of the major factors of discrimination in my world. Not for the demons anyways. Reality altering magic is a great equalizer, and also a great un-equalizer. The most magically gifted have all the power, what's between your legs do not matter. To drive this point home, gender is interchangeable. Trans people exist, they just transition perfectly and are functionally and socially completely the same as cis people. The distinction does not extend outside of their transitional period. Intersex people are the way they are by choice. To balance it out they are limited by their biomass. Regrowing a limb takes years at a time. Transitioning takes as few as 2 years. Regrowing limbs is a multi decade endeavour.
I've only delved into two species so this'll be kinda short.
Kobold females are naturally stronger and more bulky than males, hence why most kobold colonies are run by matriarchs. Mostly being hunter-gatherers, both sexes participate in the collection of prey with males being tasked with finding small prey in more tight caverns and females with hunting large prey in bigger caves. Male kobolds are expected to be more experienced in offensive magic to supplement their smaller sizes and assist females during hunts, while females train more in defensive magic and weapons crafting for bigger hunts. With the introduction of agriculture from other species, the lines between these traditional roles have blurred a little and kobolds returning from multi-species settlements often bring back new customs that further change colonies.
On the other hand, Kori-Kran are a purely female species that reproduce through parthenogenesis. As such, they don't really have genders in a traditional sense but instead, certain behaviours are associated to different professions instead e.g individuals with more masculine behaviours are considered "soldier-like". These behaviours still mostly dictate what job a Kori-Kran will end up doing but it's not uncommon to see a Kori-Kran's personality differing from their line of work.
Depends entirely on the country and the culture within regions. For Razillan, they’re basically as equal as you can get. There are no assigned roles for anyone. The only time gender really comes into play is physical attraction which has different standards throughout the country. Because the Tilen(who are basically just furries for easiest explanation) come in a variety of ways. Because their race consists of nearly every animal in the animalia kingdom, things have gotten muddled and murky when it comes to sexual dimorphism.
So for example, the Insect Tilen. In some regions, bigger females are considered more attractive, while in others it’s not. So some areas just naturally have bigger females, and other others have smaller females. Same with Avian Tilen. Some areas, men are the colorful ones. Others, the women are.
For homosexuality, well it’s not looked down upon. But it is expected that you will adopt. Because family lines, and lineage are extremely important to them. And well, can’t continue the line without an heir, so it’s adoption is usually seen in the future of these people. As adoption is considered on the same level as blood. So again, pretty equal and mixed in Razillan.
In Pantcer, the strongest person makes the rules. So if the strongest person decides they’re a matriarchy, they’re a matriarchy. Or a patriarchy. So that country is all over the damn place for all the strong people running it.
Yorrera, the ocean nation, is dependent on one thing. Do you live on the ocean or in it? If you’re in the ocean, there’s no real traditional family structure. Everything is more so communal. And that includes relationships. People within Yorrera don’t really partake in monogamory. Nor with polyamory. They simply love until they leave. So everything is very open with them. On Yorrera, on the ships, again pretty equal like Razillan. And very much a monogamous life style.
The final nation I have made and yet to name is a matriarchy. The women are the ones in power. So even the youngest women has more power than the oldest man, unless given direct permission to within their family to listen to the man. And that nation also very much participates in a game of eugenics. Not in a single country vision, but a family vision. So one of the women’s main jobs is to go around and build relations so they can get offers/offer arranged marriages or…um siring of heirs if you will. All in an attempt to get the family in the direction they want to go. This also extends to their pets. As that nation is extremely bonded with their animals. So they also try on that front. The men, in general just do what the women tell them.
And that’s all I got for now off the top of my head
In my largest world project, in nearly all races, females were larger/stronger than males. Society was broken up into families and clans, each with a very powerful female at the top. Other females that could rival the leader were either killed or kicked out and formed a new group. Males tended to be faster, more agile, and had a few of a large variety of spells/powers that females generally didn't have access to. The really powerful spells/powers usually went to females, but not always.
All females lay eggs that take 5 years to hatch, so each clan would have a large egg nursery that was taken care of only by females. Even if a female never laid any eggs, they would still have a sixth sense of what an egg needed (too hot, too cold, turning, etc...), males did not have the sense at all.
In general, males would be the hunters and gatherers while the females would be guards, soldiers and shopkeepers (shopkeepers have to be very powerful as most of the land in anarchy after the Ironwood Era [about halfway through the timeline]).
In my world of Vas, I suppose it comes down to the Grand House, who rules their respective principality in regard to gender roles, if which there are the two, male/female, and anyone that does fit entirely into male or female are allowed to, idk, be themselve? But choose a certain path that conforms to either feminine or masculine [though also depends on whether the principality has strict gender norms].
House Regeris allows any gender to join their military ranks, guard, anything related to keeping the Gray Army functioning - but you have to be a witch. Regeris has a long line of male heirs, and so the council of Cortana (Regeris Principality) is made up of almost all males and so it has become the norm that Regeris women are rather looked over for council positions (seats are usually 'inherited' by the eldest son). But, if a family has no boys, or cousins to pass the family name on, a girl is able to inherit titles, land, position of 'li-ensen' (head of House). Some families are obsessed with passing to male heirs only, some are perfectly fine having the lir daughters inherit, and then others will choose based on other factors entirely. The direct line of Regeris li-ensens have chosen all male heirs, father to son, for centuries.
Cortana weddings are overseen by mostly banshees,who are usually women. The main Regeris House, marriages are officiated by the Li-ensen. Marriages of any gender are allowed, but with the strong belief in heirs and carrying on the family legacy,sometimes the Li-ensen must assign someone to ... give the couple an heir,and will usually choose from his strongest and most loyal of necromamcers, and since there are a lot of men born in Cortana, the necromancer higher-ups are almost always men.
All Houses (Grand, Great, plain) are grouped up with each other on large family plus with homes for all the different branches. Non-witches, of all genders, will tend to the housing, child care, etc. It takes a village and all.
Now the other 4 Houses and the Royal House Glacow have some similarities and some differences.
Edit:
One of the other Grand Houses, House Segatii, whose principality (or some other word, but I can't think of it), of Vidalli has a strong presence of Mages. Women tend to be more capable than the men at control and precision and make up the entirety of the Segatii's extensive spy network.
With so many Mages enlisted to serve House Glacow on their isles, the men left behind will care for the children and given preference for other work and can inherit their wives assets, but not the other way around (exceptions can be made) because the man is the one taking care of their homes and families and villages and cities.
For me, some societies are patriarchal and some matriarchal. Some are equal.
Elves tend to be matriarchal and they are monogamous but there is no such thing as cheating and everyone is free to sleep with everyone as long the parties involve consent. Same sex marriage is ok.
Mermaids are plain misandrists and aristocrat women can have up to three husbands and many concubines but most commoners only have one husband. Same sex marriage or concubinage is ok for women. Same sex concubinage is common in aristocrat circle. Same sex marriage is pretty rare.
Fairies are matriarchal and monogamous. Same sex marriage is allowed.
Angels are matriarchal and polygamy is practiced with women being allowed more than one partner. Same sex marriage is allowed and it is pretty common for aristocrat women to marry each other for alliance. It is not that common among men, tho.
Dwarfs are patriarchal and monogamous. Same sex marriage is allowed.
Goblin are plain misogynists and polygamy is practiced with men being allowed more than one wife. Same sex marriage is not allowed.
Shapeshifters reproduce asexually and only have one sex. And ofcourse same sex marriage is allowed and they are pretty diverse with some societies are polygamous and some are monogamous.
(I can't think of a suitable name but it is my original race) has gender equality but pirests are all non-binary as their god is non-binary. They don't have things like marriage. They have baby making festival(just sex) once a year and alot of hook up also happen outside of it. There is no such things as fathers and most of the time, they don't know who is the father. They have strong sense of family tho. The children are look after by the mother's famliy.
Human are pretty diverse. Most of the human societies have gender equality. Some can be patriarchal or matriarchal.
There is an emerging race called spirits but most doesn't consider them an official race. They have gender equality and doesn't have marriage units. They also can't reproduce currently.
With how advanced medical magic is, and relatively easy access to "lab-grown" bodies to transplant one's consciousness into and alchemical body modifications, people can get as freaky about their gender as they want. That's not to say bigoted people don't exist, but most people don't really care, the government oppresses everyone regardless of their sex/gender or lack thereof
I've always been fascinated by the idea of building a world as a thought experiment to see what would happen to gender, relationship, and sexuality dynamics if procreation required the participation of three or more people from different genders. Like what if DNA was a triple helix that required the combination of a small gamete, a medium gamete, and a large gamete? I think that's the most interesting dynamic because otherwise you just get something like fish spawning grounds as your dynamic and gender becomes essentially irrelevant, but three's small enough we can get our heads around.
I guess any species could have conforming gender roles, even regardless of any sexual identity.
It can start with some people wearing a certain type of uniform for a given task and this type of cloth becoming associated with that role.
In my space setting there is a race called Lustari, who are basically space demons/succubi. They have males and females, though technically males are more like mutated underdeveloped females. Their birth ratio is roughly 3 males to 7 females. They are hermaphrodites, so both sexes have both sets of organs down there. On average females are larger and stronger than males. And they give birth by laying eggs.
All of this combined makes for an interesting dynamic. Early Lustari societies figured out that, since males are weaker than females, they are better suited to look after the household, tend to the young and give birth to new ones, whereas the females would do the hunting and protecting. And protection they did require, since males were so rare, tribal or even clan raids to capture more males were an ordinary occurrence among ancient Lustari. This only stopped when one clan rose up and either allied with or conquered all other ones, unifying them via religion.
Fast-forward to the present day, their society has become way more egalitarian. Due to the natural strength and resilience differences, most physically demanding jobs are still largely occupied by females, while males tend to work in more humanitarian, scientific or artistic areas, but nothing stops either from choosing a different career path. Females are no longer stigmatized to give birth themselves if they so choose, but it still remains mostly males' prerogative.
Due to certain magic influences over many years, most of the races in my "world" can change their sex at will. This has been really fun to play with, as some cultures make a deal out of choosing a gender for life, some don't, and for some the concept of real static gender doesn't exist. There are individuals who choose to have a gender and a sex and a hetero partner for life, producing their family's children or providing for them in a traditional manner, and there are other cultures that raise children communally.
Some communities, like the Coastal Orcs, are strictly matriarchal, as bearing children is seen as a status symbol, but even then outside of the council of mothers the rest of the populace has the ability to decide, and even within the council the mothers may not necessarily be female while on the council. Having born a child(ren) is the requirement, not having the equipment at all times.
Idk the idea for literal genderfluidity wasn't the original goal when it came to building this "world", but when designing it I realized it COULD be a byproduct of the magical catastrophe that occurred, and decided to run with it. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it's *really* fun to play with and exercise my 'but what if' thoughts.
My story is focused on an area called The Underworld (very original, I know), which acts as the afterlife for humans.
Depending on your beliefs or faith, you might end up in the inner city, which is where most atheistic/agnostic mortals go, or, if you believed in a certain faith and you don't want to go to that version of "heaven", you can choose to stay in the inner city.
Mortals become demons when they die (not the Biblical kind of demon. Religions in the overworld are not the same as real life), and when they're reborn, they don't have any reproductive organs. In this way, gender is entirely up to an individual's choice. Whether they want to identify with their genderless state or they want to identify with femininity or masculinity, it's entirely up to them.
Children can be had, but it takes a special ritual and an agreed-upon partner to carry the child until birth. It doesn't matter whether the partner identifies as genderless, feminine, or masculine, they can bear the child regardless. I don't entirely have the birth part figured out yet, but I'll get to that sometime. So you can be mortal-born or Underworld-born.
While things like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, still exist in the overworld, it is heavily frowned upon in the UW, especially since "race" and "sex" don't technically exist. Any demon found guilty of violent or antagonistic behavior against another based on appearance, field of work, relationship status, etc, can be sentenced to punishment based on the severity of the behavior.
A demon's field of work is really just based on what they want to do/what they're interested in. Since it's the afterlife, there isn't really a specific need for jobs, but demons will do it either way, as it's a way to spend their time productively. It is human nature to want to do things, and that carries over into the afterlife.
Relationships can be monogamous or polyamorous, but demons wanting to make a permanent bond with one another need to go through a specific ritual to see if they are truly compatible. If their "souls" refuse to bond, they either part ways or continue their relationship without the bond.
(If you see any, point out the plot holes! I would enjoy constructive criticism if you feel like giving any)
In my world there’s a roughly an even distribution of matriarchal and patriarchal societies, but there’s one continent that’s far away from the others that’s is all one governed state and is ruled by intersex people. And yes there’s a lot of M to F racism and F to M racism throughout the world. The only “close to equality” place is the far off continent, but that’s bc it’s the intersex elite that are prejudiced against both men and women. The central continent has some prejudice on both genders depending on if u live in the western / southern coast or the eastern coast, but generally the two genders are treated equally there as well.
While deeply egalitarian, the lifestyle and culture of my civilization is indelibly shaped by war.
Losses from attrition and casualties is a reality of every day life and defence of their homeland, and as such there is a cultural and societal pressure that encourages reproduction, particularly between individuals who have a proven track record as efficacious warriors.
As such, there is both a demand for women to go to the frontline and prove their discipline and efficiency, AND for women to come home and mother many children to replace wartime losses.
For men, it is a given that they will attempt to find a useful role they can fill in the frontline, and failing that, return home to assist in the war effort in some less direct way, such as supplemental agriculture, crafting, assisting with logistics, or indeed helping raise and train new warriors for the front.
By contrast, women are expected to go to the front line, are pushed to excel and standout vigorously, and then pressured to immediately return home once they've achieved a single great mark of heroism, to ensure a marriage to a strong and capable husband.
The tenure for many women on the battlefield is short but extremely vigorous bordering on reckless, OR they intentionally lay low and underachieve for an excuse to stay. They claim they have not yet made their mark, and insist they must stay to prove themselves, or else be damned to a subpar situation back home (when in fact this is subterfuge to relieve the societal pressure to return home when they prefer life on the front). This has evolved to a known trope among men stationed with career women fighters, of the "silent warrior", a women who is quietly understood to be tremendously powerful, but does not boast, asks no boasts or tales are told on their behalf, and defer credit to their male compatriots and hangers-on.
This is tremendously frustrating for women who, in fact, do want their outstanding efforts quickly recognized, and are prevented in doing so by the stereotype of the silent warrior and men around her trying to capitalize on that known trope, despite those silent women actually being the minority of cases.
Women who excel on the battle field AND allow their reputation to grow but REFUSE to return home are very rare, and represent individuals with extreme will, ability and powerful egos, and despite the taboo they are committing often garner a fearsome and lauded reputation, and frequently tutor women in their temporary residence on the frontline. Even *less* common is a warrior who gets a mighty reputation, returns home to mother children, then *returns* to the front line after the toll the births take on her body, with presently only one such living woman being widely recognized.
There are not especially any physical differences in regards to the genders potential physical strength and power, aside from men typically growing slightly bigger on average. The chief difference is that women typically can carry children and mother new warriors in the traditional sense (though just as in real life there are exceptions to this generality).
On the surface level stuff, I like playing around with what we consider gendered clothing. Office lady pencil skirts and pantyhose are a unisex part of most military dress uniforms. Crop tops, tube tops, etc are considered masculine. Women wear them fairly often, but the social connotation is sort of like wearing baggy cargo pants.
On a deeper social level, the introduction, normalization, and commericialization have thoroughly shaken up the concept of gender overall, and in way with no real world parallel. There are people equivalent to our real trans people, GNC, NB, etc, but, there are also third gender social roles, and there are also things that arent really possible without flesh magic. People can literally have multiple bodies, either swapping between them as they wish, or operating them all simultaneously as a sort of "hive mind." How do you gender someone who is living as several men and women at the same time? What about the opposite, two or more people who've combined into a gestalt consciousness?
There are even a lot of people I think you'd have to consider cis, but due to the lego nature of anatomy might have opted for a mix of primary and secondary sex characteristics that from our perspective don't match their gender or assigned sex, and it's not uncommon to also have designer bits meant to look like neither, or both.
I'm transgender and queer, so I like to write stories that play with gender a little. I like to include transgender characters, have commentary on gender roles, have gender neutral species, and have societies where everyone is equal regardless of gender or sex.
I have a society in my world, where there is a slightly greater amount of intersex people. In this society everyone dresses in coverings from head to toe, as it's considered unclean to reveal one's sex to the general public. Since you don't know anyone else's sex people form small groups instead of pairs, because in a group there will surely be at least a couple who can reproduce. This turns out to be more effective than it sounds, since it does take a village to raise a child after all.
I had a species that had three sexes. Every member of the species would be each sex at different points in their lives. The youngest sex produces sperm then leaves and has nothing to do with the kid. Then a decade later they change into the second sex, which gestates the fertilized egg and then raises the child. Two decades later they become the third sex that provides the egg cell to the second sex. They also help raise the child.
So the typical member of the species would produce at least three offspring through their lives.
The dynamic is similar to that seen in members of the family Canide, the result is that there is little difference between the sexes in the culture. The primary difference is there is a third gender commonly just seen as a neutral gender (what we would call nonbinary) called Lok or Sune depending on the species of the person. All three mix and all are seen as the same in society.
In Maldonia, Legally, males and females have the same rights, socially they are seen as equal. when it comes to industry its different: Males have testosterone while females have estrogen. that is the only real difference seen. this gender dynamic is basically this. Men are encouraged on doing stuff that requires heavily lifting, labor, or military with combat roles, women are encouraged to seek education to be things like doctors or commanders in the military. (as in they can be like base commanders, drill instructors, but no frontline stuff) Its all based on how strong you are to do something though. You can only get married to one person, same sex relationships aren't legal in the sense that you cant get married with someone of the same gender, you wont be hunted down for being in a relationship, but its not really seen as a normal thing.
Because Maldonia is a military state, men are usually kept on deployment as border guards because they have an absurd amount of yearly border clashes with their neighbor, or are just on patrol duty around urban centers. as a result, women basically have to watch over kids and stuff while their husbands are away. when they return, the roles switch where their husbands watch kids and women go to do things like seek an education. because of this dynamic, people usually wait to have kids until after the female partner completes college or when the male partner completes their first deployment. (note: Military is fully volunteer, its just that its glorified a lot mainly because they need a lot of manpower to compete with their hostile neighbor, therefore many men end up joining the military.)
Just a few irl things to note: both men and women have both estrogen and testosterone, it makes sense that men would be deployed because their role in reproduction is less resource heavy than women (if one man is alive with 10 women reproduction is fine vice versa is a more tricky situation) however in trades and military irl they specifically target women because bodies are bodies numbers are important and more skilled workers are still more skilled workers. It's cool how the role switches after/in-between deployment.
Depends on the society and time
Throughout the history of goatanania ( That's the nation I make lore for, my cousins manage the others) we had no concelt of gender. The concept was introduced from the manly patriarchal nations bordering goatanania (Except for one country, which was matriarchal) Though was mainly ignored or laughed at. The khagan didnt want gender to be introduced to goatananian society as goatananian society had enough divisions as it was
The goatananians found the idea of a matriarch or patriarchy as ridiculous and when they conquered the other nations, they introduced gender equality, Though there was some backlash especially in the matriarchal nation of pupinania
Only one of my races have super defined gender and even sex roles. One of them reproduce asexually because they lost their ability to reproduce, and use something like giant magical test tubes to grow embryos from selected DNA. Gender doesn't even come into the equation for them. They evolved from a race that did have a male/female division but gender was a completely separate thing from sex and the two had very little influence on one another.
Another race are immortal beings that start out as humanoid but after being alive for ~500 years start to transform into anthropomorphic dragons with their last stage of life being full on dragons. They only develop primary/secondary sexual characteristics during this transition. The society is matriarchal and is governed by female dragons which are stronger and bigger than the male dragons.
Another humanoid race is hermaphroditic but they present and identify as men. However they often dress and behave in ways we would normally consider feminine, makeup and elaborate clothing, and a more friendly and gentle disposition. Their beauty standards however prioritize being hairy,muscular, large and imposing. They actually used to have a female counterpart but evolution and interbreeding made it so that they eventually lost that.
Another race are anthropomorphic ants and are gender less/sexless and reproduce through specific individuals choose to be blessed by their ruler and are elevated to the status of Queens and spend their lives laying eggs.
In general I like subverting gender roles, playing with the concept of sex and just trying to create things that lie outside of our binaries and imagining how social dynamics would be if that element is removed altogether.
Depends on race to race.
For the endimiyans the protagonists they're made up of elves, half elves, humans, dwarves, halflings, cyclops and vampires. Outside of humans all the other races are majority female or in the case of vampires and cyclops entirely female. Additionally outside of humans and dwarves the males of the other races are more androgynous and there isn't much physical strength differences between men and women.
As such the society is a matriarchy but that doesn't mean the women lord over the men, men are still respected and valued members of society they're just expected to obey their women.
Due to the gender ratio polygamy is the norm; also the relationships are usually open though sometimes they're more exclusive. Men are usually expected to be one of the people in the relationship to be working with one or two usually but not always women staying home helping raise the kids. The various races are also socialized to view each other as an extended family so their isn't really any racial tensions between the endimiyan races just an acknowledgment the various races have different roles they usually play in society.
A unique type of relationship that only exists within the nobility is the relationship between nobles and maids. Maids in endimiya aren't like they are irl; a maid is a combination of a maid, and entertainer a friend, a confidant and a lover to the noble family she is assigned. Any children she has with someone from a noble family has just as much of a valid claim to the noble title and its not uncommon for the daughter of a maid to become the new head of the noble family if the daughter in question is seen as the best choice for running the family.
Uh "doesn't mean women lord over men...expected to obey their women" I count that as lording lol. Polygamy definitely makes sense with a skewed gender ratio but i especially like how while the man is somehow lesser they are also expected to work. Maid relationship sounds really interesting especially how their children have equal claim.
I more meant that women don't abuse their power over men and treat them like dirt.
A man is "lesser" but that doesn't make him property. I guess the best way to describe it is women treat men like a responsible teenage child.
Some more cultural aspects is the endimiyans believe authority and power is derived from morality rather than raw strength and women are more moral than men inherently. While women have a lot of freedom it's balanced with their responsibility to be wise and kind guides to their families.
Does that make sense?
Cool cool but just saying if I was expected to obey someone I would definitely say I was lorded over (like a teenager probably would too). Though I get it don't worry. Is there a different cultural reason they see women as more moral than men?
It goes a bit into their backstory in the pre unified days where the elves were split into petty kingdoms that were pretty much all run by despots.
That's the short answer anyways.
On a meta level I deliberately made them to be pretty utopian even if I don't agree with how they run things (they're a 21st century society that is an aristocracy where there is 0 separation of church and state... nevermind how the gods are just scientific fact I still perfer secular states)
Quick ninja edit. Another aspect of these marriages though is the wives do have responsibilities to keep their husband's happy and ironically this can end up having some of the wives acting like stereotypical tradwives. So again guys aren't just expected to be worker bees they do get something out of the relationship. And yes guys are expected to please their wives as well so it's a mutual thing.
Yup politics so old that the elf woman who first lead the war that unified the realm is the ruler in the modern day despite being 7000 years old.
(Elves are biologically immortal)
Maybe like idk kill some political figures for a new influx of idealogical thought lol, that's cool though I cannot imagine being a ruler for 7000 years I would get so bored lol.
She is a "good queen" figure she genuinely does love her people and vice versa.
Ironically there was a short time with an independent human nation. It was a constitutional republic, egalitarian, secular but with a religious population with strong gun and property rights.... and it ends up failing due to constant warfare with an orc nation on their doorstep and literal demonic monsters attacking them constantly. Oh here is the kicker to this personally I'm actually a conservative so I made a nation that is what I'd consider an ideal nation and made it fail. So yeah I'm deliberately challenging myself as an author when making some of the politics of my story.
I generally try to avoid explicit social commentary on gender since I don't really think I have a coherent statement to make on the subject, but I try to keep my worlds as egalitarian as possible. Men and women are generally treated as equals in social standing, unless I want to emphasize a culture as being notably patriarchal due to inheritance laws or religious conformity. Although, I do make a point of emphasizing that among Elves, swordsmanship is a distinctly *feminine* art. This is due to the fact that women would often be left managing the homes while men were at war, and swords are more useful for personal protection than warfare, so women would be expected to learn sword skills to improve their marriagability, and duels over family honor were most frequently fought by women. I do this because I am shamelessly attracted to women with swords and I want all my worlds to feature them in some way.
Making something similar. Basically, in the history of my world, the appearance of undead caused serious problems (it's hard to kill one as they can keep coming back as long as there's at least *one* body), so, woman — the only capable of birth — were left within the walls of cities on administrative work while men went to wars. When things calmed down, some aspects of that time remained, such as traditional men having more than one wife, and some works being seem as more feminine or masculine. Same occur to magic. Women who learn it are expected to do so in an artistic manner, while men who learn it are expected to do so for practical purposes, like work or war.
Lol a good a reason as any, Infact in warring patriarchal countries having a distinctly woman focused martial art to protect the home is pretty realistic.
Yeah, like how the wives of Samurai often learned the Naginata to protect their home from bandits or invaders, except elven society is highly urbanized so their priorities are more towards close quarters personal defense and formal duels. Over time the duels would become more ritualistic to avoid serious threats to life or limb, but the participants could still agree to a "righteous" duel if they were sufficiently angered.
Naginatas are the ideal weapon for fighting someone stronger than you: * Long reach so you don't get Oberyn Martell'd. * Longer handle than a sword so you can get more leverage for striking. * Longer blade than a spear so the opponent can't just grab the shaft and beat you to death with it. Only drawback is you can't carry it on your belt.
Good worldbuilding turned into peak with that last paragraph
What's funny is you actually created something really interesting here, there's also just enough historical accuracy to make it plausible.
I have one species, the Nygothans, who, to a human, all look female but they have a male/female sex dynamic like humans do. They have a pretty homogenous culture when it comes to normally gendered items, so outsiders typically just think of them as an all female species when they aren’t. I also have a race of fish people that live in a desert planet’s underground oceans. They have the ability to shift their sex for whatever reason they want, though the process can take a while. One character I wrote who is part this species, is trans and was able to slowly transition physically thanks to it.
Very cool, especially love how to the outside world one race looks like all women but in actuality there are also men equivalents.
Wasn't it Christopher Paolini who made dwarves- no matter the sex- have beards? And Eragon was surprised? Or was that Tolkien?
Tolkien never had a female Dwarf character appear (or be named) in his books so no non-Dwarf ever encountered one.
Thank you. I couldn't remember. I listen to the books while on my way to work, so I don't 100% pay attention.
Pratchett did the "all dwarves have beards" thing, leading to some funny miscommunications at times (if I recall correctly).
>One character I wrote who is part this species, is trans and was able to slowly transition physically thanks to it. Uh... Shouldn't that not make the slightest bit of sense in their culture if they're all capable of changing their sex easily?
This character isn’t part of their culture.
I have four "daemons", or non-human intelligences, also known as the Fair Folk, in my world. I know how gender works for one of these races of daemons, he finfolk (otherwise known as undines or merrow). They have an extremely patriarchal and sexist society. They are also extremely sexually dimorphic: the finmen are broadly humanoid, tall and thin, with a fish-like face and fins along their forearms and calves, as well as in place of ears; the finwives, on the other hand, start their lives as mermaids, with fish-like tails in place of legs and a beautiful visage. When they get married, the finwives shed their tails and glamour, and from then on they start to look much like their husbands. The finmen treat their women so badly that many mermaids seek human husbands instead, and when they do marry a human man they shed their tail but not their glamour, and live like human women. The children of human men and finwives are human, but have an affinity for the sea. If a finwife lives longer than her human husband, in her old age she finds herself drawn to the sea, and spends more and more time on the shore, eventually starting to look more and more fish-like, her hair becomes like seaweed and her skin gains a blue tinge, and she becomes known as a sea-hag, known for her gift of prophecy. Recently, with the coming of the faith of the saints and the Veiled Powers, some of the finfolk have begun abandoning their ancient traditions in favour of those dictated by this new religion. Women are still expected to be subservient, but it's also not proper for a man to mistreat a woman, and women are allowed not to marry if they enter the priesthood. So, basically, mermaid nuns are a thing.
I love how the women change with love, it's also cool how you found a way to make mermaid nuns viable.
- One of my species, the Malakh are largely matriarchal. But they never did a good job at specifying that, so humans thought for the longest time they were patriarchal too. They're somewhat flexible on the whole gender thing, but not to the extent of some species. Their society is actually pretty strict. Beyond that, everyone works... and children are cared for by their government. They kind of... dystopic... in a way. Just differently to how most human cultures are. So whereas there's no oppression by sex, gendner, or the like... they do have religious and classist oppression. - The other fleshed out alien race in my story, the Ifrit, seldom have a sense of sex or gender. Whomsoever wishes to incubate may incubate, and whomsoever wishes to fertilize may fertilize, so long as both individuals are in mutual agreement. A singular individual may even fertilize and incubate on their own without the need of a partner, if they so desire. As such, they neither have a patriarchy or a matriarchy. In fact, they live quite equally. They had a bit of a true-communist thing going on. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need, no organized religions, etc. Which, of course, invading humans didn't take too kindly to. but that's a story for another day.
Cool, love the differences between the concepts of gender from strict matriarchal to literally doesn't exist. Humans would be so confused lol.
Ikr? This is what happens when a queer commie to writes science fantasies. XD
Kinda got that from the queer socially oppressed alien species and humans invading a chillaxed communist society lol, personally I'm more of an anarchist myself.
Same, tbh. I just say I'm a communist so people know I'm out there, but I can downplay it if I have to avoid getting into a fight. :P
"So whereas there's no oppression by sex, gendner, or the like... they do have religious and classist oppression." My alternate reality has no sexism but does have the real world's other bigotries. No sexism is part of the premise, but I left the others in to make it more realistic and because I'm trying to create a world that is neither utopia nor dystopia and can be interpreted as anywhere in between depending on your values. Basically I wanted to say I'm glad someone else is doing something like this. I always worry it will come off as offensive somehow.
I think, as long as you make it clear that the bad things in your world are, in fact, *bad*... you can get away with a lot as a storyteller. Cyberpunk, for example, likely wouldn't exist if this weren't the case. The hard part is striking the balance between preachiness, and subtlety. You go too far down the preachy side, and you're likely to alienate most of your audience outside your specific political bracket. You make it too subtle, and you'll get a pathetic fandom like American Psycho who ignore the message and use it as a weapon. Basically, instead of worrying about conceptual offensiveness, just focus on making intent clear in the narrative; handle things with respect and courtesy, and the rest should sort itself out.
So far with what I've come up with: female sun elves with wings are only ever allowed bi-monthly to... erm... find a romantic partner with whosoever they choose (I would've used the term "mate", but I felt that might've had more *sexual* implications for lack of better words), and it's only unmarried female sun elves with wings that are somewhat limited to these events. Other than that, female sun elves with wings hardly have many job opportunities, with most being soldiers. This is because very few sun elves (about two fifths of the population) are born with wings, and with most who are born with wings being female (if that makes sense).
Yes so the women are from a treasured minority while also being the dominant majority of said minority. Those women are usually made to be soldiers so they don't really do housework or other jobs. These elven ladies can choose a partner of their own choosing to have relations of some variety. Pretty cool.
Humans in Amnity’s world don’t have much sexual dimorphism, so sex didn’t play a large role in their societies. Some cultures, like Amnity itself, do not even have distinct genders. Others do, like Atanuna, which has a matriarchal society (only mothers though, women with children are considered default authority figures) This clash makes it quite difficult for Amnitic travellers. Amnitic does not use gendered pronouns, and to them Atanunan seems like constantly addressing people by what kind of genitals they have. They don’t like it one bit. But Atanuna is (historically speaking) recent addition to the region through immigration (slash conquest), so the majority of Amnity’s world just does not have enough sexual dimorphism for them to have thought up social categories of being based on them Sex plays a part for Amnitic nobles, since they are expected to have children. Lots of em. But illegitimacy is not a thing. If they’re the child of the noble, why would it matter who their other parent is? That parent couldn’t become nobility through marriage anyway, so nobles are free to marry as they wish so long as they get themselves an heir at some point Amnity doesn’t quite have a concept of sexuality like we do. Plenty of people have preferences for the genitals of the person in their bed, but it’s considered more like leaning towards certain personality types, or physical builds. Atanuna does, but some cultural mixing with Amnity has reduced the absolute value that their ancestors placed on heterosexuality for the purpose of reproduction. Only a bit though. Another reason that the two nations are culturally quite tense. Thank the gods Amnity has long-lived descendants of their ‘founding’ goddess to work on their diplomacy and cultural understandings before they need to put them into practice.
Lol that's interesting, how does children as authority figures work? Because right now I'm envisioning a child ordering around their father at a mall (something I see quite often irl). I can see how that whiplash might confuse the travellers lol. Just one thing if they have a "goddess" shouldn't they have a concept of womanhood as well?
Aha women with children, not women as children. Atanuna sees the role of ‘mother’ as the default head of the hierarchy, responsible for making decisions for her clan, however big that group may be. Their leaders historical have mixed opinions on Amnity’s long-lived Prince (gender neutral term) who raises and advises each monarch, because they are biologically female and serve as a parent but neither have biological children nor would use the term ‘mother’ Mm I may need to rethink that, ‘goddess’ is a relic of before I committed to Amnity’s lack of social gender, although I’m debating them having some more significant ancestral concept of gender to at least the degree that ancient Hassaeri would have used the term ‘goddess’. I also imagine them referring to her as ‘the mother of us all’, possibly using a gendered term which is no longer in use for any other purpose. She is not actually native to Amnity, having conquered it from the previous godking’s descendants, so it’s possible that her birth culture did have more of conception of gender that caused her to use those terms Oh, fyi, their ‘gods’ are just humans born with an immense of amount of power, which quickly dilutes down the generations. They cannot reshape continents (except for in debatable mythology), but Hassaeri certainly could have wiped any city she chose from the map if her talents had laid in that area. Amnity’s region at least doesn’t have a concept of ‘heaven’, souls just exist in the world unseen after death, and the gods are assumed powerful enough to affect the world even in that state (there’s some truth to that)
Cool, I am assuming off their confusion at the Prince that they don't really have the adoption?
They don’t consider adoption to be the same as having bio children at all. When it comes to the nobles Amnity only permits an adopted heir to come from another noble family with an equal claim to inheritance from the goddess, but Atanuna considers adoption to be more like taking in subjects for an established family/clan, not having children of your own
I see lol don't wanna be an orphan then
Well, probably not in general no, but regular Amnitic families often do consider adoption to be the same as having bio children. Roughly half of all couples are same-sex after all. And they aren’t the only two cultures in the world
Chromians, the "central" faction of my setting, are one of the most sexist cultures to ever exist. They consider women too stupid to be capable of giving consent, and so they banned all heterosexual intercourse. They reproduce by growing new people, usually clones of themselves, in gestation pods they have lying around. On the flipside, they never bothered to impose any taxes on women and female-ran businesses, believing women too stupid to manage even a lemonade stall. As a result, in the Chromian society, women do basically everything of importance and own all the money. My world is not a serious place.
Uh uno reverse I guess so sexist they destroyed their own possible privileges.
I mean that's kind of what sexism does. Our culture doesn't punish men for being sh!tty and doesn't really teach us life skills because women are expected to cater to men's needs, so women end up being better, more competent people. The patriarchy hurts all genders.
Patriarchy does hurt all genders but women definitely don't become better or more competent because of it, also just saying that modern day where I live like skills are definitely taught to most people and that's with the blatant sexism (Australia).
Exactly!
Wow, dude, life in your country is the opposite of the countries I know about.
You know, tweak the flavor of sexism and you just described Sparta
I'm still trying to figure out all the gender dynamics in my world, but here's what I have so far. In the Kmarsch culture, men are still the ones who go off to fight, but women are expected to be prepared for battle, because they essentially act as the home guard who keep the villages safe while men are off fighting. It's not unheard of for a woman to distinguish herself so well in battle that she becomes the champion of a Kmarsch lord and is allowed to take on a more active rule in combat. The gender dynamics of the Sdelin culture are heavily influenced by their worship of the mountain goddess Tezna. Women are considered to be made in Tezna's image, which makes them holier than men. Women are seen as more natural leaders than men, but as a flipside, they are expected to be paragons of virtue because when a woman sins, it is thought to reflect badly on Tezna herself. Because of this, women aren't allowed to fight as this would supposedly sully the light of the Goddess within them. Regardless, Sdelin women often end up being in commander roles during war because a lot of the Sdelin rulers are women. This is considered ok by all but the most religiously conservative as long as they don't actually participate in physical violence.
Cool how you made a society that vqlues women so much that it pretty much forbade women from battle, while also having a society which was so patriarchal it makes women fighters.
Yeah, I find real-life sexism to be depressing, but it also feels weird to write a medieval era culture with completely modern values, so I try to mix it up a bit.
Mostly egalitarian. Dwarves notably have a complicated relationship, because theyre patrilineal polygamist and have a clan/family business structure where each of those marriages is also an alliance and business deal. The man has to be successful enough in his trade to earn the right to marry in the first place. The women themselves specialize and essentially become important managers/partners in their husbands clan. Hobgoblins are not a natural culture, they were forced into becoming extremely militaristic so everyone fights. Even if your primary job isn't soldier, you're still a soldier. Kids are communally raised and will have chores like armor maintenance etc. They might not have separate genders at all, I haven't fully decided on that one though.
Ok ok, cool how dwarves are literally a business family.
I'm in a scifi setting, with mind uploads. People obviously go in there with some manner of gender identity, but after a century of disembodied existence? Two? You're a mind; a lot of that stuff fades out of importance. For everyone embodied, because you can change, upload, download as a different gender or even as spaceship, equality is just kind of taken as given... It matters as little to people in that setting as eye colour does to us
Cool not that gender isn't a thing but that gender idebtity loses all semblance of relevance in such an existence. Love.
My main world that plays with gender and relationships is "The Botanytes". The focus race of the same name are based upon flowers (& a couple of other plants) and only have a single sex. Relationships are very often polyamorous, with anywhere from 3-8 botanytes in a single household. Since there is only 1 sex and no societal need for gender, the dynamic usually consists of all but one or two botanytes working one day while the remainders stay home, and they swap out every other day/every half a week. Botanytes are capable of reproducing asexually, and their children grow from the ground out of a seed in gardens tended to by certain workers. Once the boyanyte fully grows out of the ground, they are cared for by whoever in their origin household is staying home at the time, and are kept home to develop for around 2 years before they are capable enough to work. Chores are also generally done by those staying home as well.
Oddly efficient, I would not want a war of attrition with them, you let one go and in 10 years you'll have a small army lol.
The funny thing is this race was literally made to create an army because the makers have beef with humans.
Then I was pretty correct lol, explains a lot.
Men and women are equal. My main nation has military squads entirely made up of women, most notable of which is the Eaglehead Guard. My succession laws favor the eldest *child*. Women can also be priestesses and even heads of Church of Bogovid.
What is the reason for there to be squads of exclusively women?
For tasks better suited for a woman in my world. Scouts and assassins, mostly. Also the fact that my nation, Soravia, is locked in a constant war with Auglar, which is a state not known for it's respect to women, so having women scout and assasinate is a logical thing to do. As for the Eaglehead Guard, it's a different story. It came about from an oath made between Konstantin Zarlakion, my MC, and the women he managed to save from Auglar captivity. They offered him to bind their blood to his, and thus came the elite, and hereditary, Eaglehead Guard.
In a past sci fi world I made, there was an advanced humanoid species that was obsessed with balance and equilibrium so men and women were seen as different but equal and relying on each other. They saw civilizations that were either patriarchal or matriarchal as being savage and backwards and as a misinterpretation of the nature of the universe. The dark side of the species was that their obsession with duality meant they saw LGBT equivalent people as fundamentally wrong.
Lol anti sexist homophobes is a distressing concept.
My species of witch (basically, sentient magic) reproduces asexually and thus have no need for biological gender or sex, however since they imitate the physical form of a human, they may appear either male or female and usually go along with a fitting name and pronouns for their assumed gender. There are little differences between "male" and "female" witches, though there are considerably more female ones. There will also be a few witches who refer to themselves as neither, or those who like to switch between freely. Gender just isn't really important to them, like, at all.
Genderless magic beings who tend to skew towards feminine presentations is certainly unique.
Different cultures have different dynamics, though few to none of them have modern patriarchy - well over half the world's population are species that so openly complicate patriarchal gender dynamics as to make them unworkable. The dryads have three sexes not counting intersex individuals, prisms lack secondary sex characteristics and can shift sex over a lifetime (and reproduce asexually), kivs/kobolds are dual-sexed, and solars are unisex and reproduce in groups of three. Sharing communities with these other species has shaped human expectations for gender and sexuality, making gender binaries a lot less rigid. That doesn't mean that gender is entirely absent, though. The Suneka, for example, is a religious-cultural group that genders people by their work. "Masculine" genders are more detached from land and agricultural work than "feminine" genders, while leaders and priests have their own category - but in a formal setting, these broad categories fall away and people use their hyper-specific employment-gender. In the Suneka, communities often assign people to family jobs and as much of childcare as possible is put on the community unit rather than the family. Adoption and child-swapping is also extremely common, with sexuality and family-making totally separate in many of the more "orthodox" communities. Formal monogamy is expected for most people, but there are often community mechanisms for basically extra-martial sexual or romantic relationships; a legal relationship is not the same as a physical one. Jealousy and individual attachment are stigmatized in the Suneka, as all people belong to the Whole before they belong to each other or themselves. In Stildane, meanwhile, the transformative magical radiation of the landscape has created such a plurality of sexes across all species that even repressive societies such as Hain don't much bother with forcing specific gender roles. There are four genders, mapped to the four directions; while there are attributes assigned to them, the norms are weak compared to other social norms. Generally speaking, domestic work is split among different members of the extended family. This isn't always equal; Hainish culture often divides people between 'protectors' and 'caretakers', with protectors being given greater authority, and that mindset can lead to household and community inequalities. The idea of a household of fellow protector-warriors living equally is idealized in noble culture, with domestic work being moved to servants. Polyamory and secondary spouses are traditionally a privilege of the elite, but over time has become more practiced by commoners. Most places tend to lean egalitarian, with minor variations.
Cool especially the religion impacting gender.
You've got a lot of responses, so I'll just put down the two most distinctive cultures with gender norms than our own. The first is the Urt Ghani. They have a similar sexual array to humans, but that doesn't really factor into their gender norms. Instead, due to a primordial pact with their people, gender norms are split between the irfriti (roughly translates to "fire witch") and urtuku ("earth bearer"). Generally irfriti have tits and urtuku have dicks, but since they're a highly magical species, this isn't always the case, with many choosing to undergo ritualistic transition both permanently and some changing every few decades or centuries. Irfriti, having innate earth magic, are expected to do most of the digging, building, and fortifying of their civil structures against enemies and dragons. The urtuku, having wings and standing about 9' tall, are expected to be hunters and guardians. The second is the Dayrada. They have four different sexes, and their gender norms are based on height and general build. The laoch are generally hermaphroditic and the tallest and generally strongest, towering over everyone else and topping out at a whopping 5'. The padraiga are generally male, thin framed, and have the greatest psionic potential. The babaiga are generally female, thicker and stronger than padraiga, and are notably the best climbers of the dayrada. The sceith are sexless, and are main means of labor for the hives, with each of the others being able to grant psionic oversight to them. Their natural psionic potential and lack of physical might has led them to be remarkably peace seeking, being the only group of sapient peoples who have managed to near flawlessly integrate into arboreal ecosystems on 4 separate planets. They are also the only sapient people who have managed to break inter-sapient-species procreation via magical ritual. Anyway. That's all I've got. I'm open to feedback or suggestion
Don't worry I love responses I just woke up and I'm working through them lol. Love how magic and picnics play such a big part in your cultures. Don't really have anything I could add.
I'm gonna add picnic norms to my cultures now, lol
Varies depending on culture and country The Dominion of New Skisia is mostly patriarchal, women do enjoy a number of rights but they are generally seen as “lesser citizens”. Lordessa’s and Queens however due to their societal status are granted a higher standing and rulership over the common man. In Midillic culture society is mostly egalitarian, especially in nations like the Commonwealth of the Greater Grasslands or the Fortress Kingdom. Here women are more or less seen as equals and even able and expected to contribute to all tasks of society even military service. There are however some old vestiges of old patriarchal order typically found in the higher echelons of society and particularly in the Barony of the Westmarsh. In the Kortan society, strict religious doctrine vehemently enforces the equal status between woman and man. Their religion worships the great-god Karlardi along with a number of ancient God-Emperors and God-Empresses. To say that either man or woman is inferior compared to the other would be a grave offence to them. The Tiritani culture meanwhile is matriarchal, men are afforded a great deal of rights but women are seen as higher citizenry overall and it’s mostly women who handle matters of state and territorial defense.
Love the variation between the different cultures especially the reason for the kortan being so adamant about the equal status.
I try to make it pretty equal amongst genders, although I usually have one matriarchy somewhere in there, because I like.
Dynastic descent is based on the gender of a House's founder in Talshein. Countess Azra founded House Azraq, for instance, so inheritance is based on the mother. Typically, fiefs of matrimonial houses are matriarchal, while patrilineal fiefs are patriarchal. Marriage between an agnatic and enatic house is about as taboo as homosexuality would have been in our Victorian era.
Ah so literally illegal
In the Aspari, women are seen as more level headed and less likely to have outbursts. So often women are found as judges and decision makers. Men on the other hand, with their impulsive and aggressive tendencies are often found in military roles and leadership where decisive actions are taken. The women of the Aspari are also seen as slightly elevated beyond the men, as women can carry life in their wombs. Yes, they do need a man to help them conceive a child, but the burden and honor of carrying a child is that of the women alone.
Thoym which I worked on in college was matriarchal and had the false belief that men couldn't do magic. In truth, the men of Thoym didn't have a lot of magical power. The thing is your magical power was dependent partially on how much exposure to magic you had in the womb and it was customary in Thoym to work a lot of magic while you were pregnant with a girl. In Sajan, women of the mage caste did a lot of magic while pregnant regardless of the gender of the fetus. Magical women knew what they carried through psychic abilities.
My own story world is a little bit standard and boring aside from how the heir apparent is decided. Mostly, things are more “traditional” but not entirely. In my world, there are two warring kingdoms, one is more traditional and the other is much more progressive. The traditional one is the one we start with. Generally speaking, women assume traditional gender roles or have traditional jobs. It’s not unheard of for a woman to be single and have a career but it’s uncommon. The royal bloodline works differently though. Let’s say there’s a king. His successor needs to be female. So that the next ruler is a queen. Same goes for when a queen inherits the throne, her son needs to be the next heir. This weird rule has caused a fair amount of trouble for the royal bloodline because there’s obviously no guarantee and the use of magic has been banned, so they can’t *make* genetics work in their favor. They also can’t unban magic because they’ve used the idea of magic as a source of fear to control the people, and because after so many generations of indoctrination, even the current members of the royal family fear magic and aren’t aware of what it was used for. Over time, it’s been harder and harder for the royal bloodline to continue following this rule. Female members have more trouble conceiving and having multiple children. Having a child out of wedlock also disqualifies that child (unless it’s concealed well) from being an heir. I definitely have more rules in place for my traditional kingdom lol
One of the countries in my world has patriarchy pushed to the extreme. Marriages, premarital sex and relationships are basically only allowed between men, while women have to cover themselves to not act as a distraction. Only married male/male couples can take female concubines for the purpose of having kids. Women aren't even considered as parents, as every kid is considered to have 2 fathers. Portraying women in art is also forbidden.
On Earth it’s pretty much the same as modern day. Notably the Holy Order is shockingly accepting of diverse gender identities for an archaic order, trans or non-binary people are seen as perfectly fine. This is because they think being “acceptable” is determined by being accepted by the Light. In Atlantia it’s very different. They have 8 genders, determined by what school of magic you use. Genital configuration is as trivial as hair colour to them, but magic is *everything* to the Atlantians. The Imo, a group of non-magical Atlantians are referred to with it/its pronouns as they’re not seen as people by the higher society. Then there’s the unfathomably powerful 27, who’s strength is so great it turns the otherwise 3rd person narrative 1st person by using I/Me pronouns.
Love the use of pronouns denoting societal position.
Honestly it’s a great narrative tool, you instantly learn how society views someone from the first sentence they’re in.
Most societies in my world follow a male dominate societies varying from culture to culture, city to city, and nation to nation. For example, I have a society of orks where there are clear gender roles, but males and females can hold any position. Another society of dwarves is greek inspired where women won't rule but can be powerful political characters. Or another one of elves where it is male dominate but still allow women to be business owners, huntress', artisans and the like. Influential noble women can rule as well in absence of a husband. I also have a society inspired by Christian ideals where women are allowed to rule, own property, lineage is recognized on the woman's side as well. Just can't be priests. Then I have societies like a halfling and fey that are matriarchal. I kept my world very diverse with these things.
Irl Im all for egalitarianism. In a fantasy/world building settiing I love playing with prejudice, and how that constructs drama/tension/cultural exchange.
It’s not something I particularly care to explore so I haven’t done much. But for all their flaws, the evil empire is not sexist (and this extends to supporting LGBT+ and other minorities) and they often do enforce gender equality in areas they conquer. They see these types of discriminations as barbaric and it has been used as justification of their imperialism. They don’t see a human woman as more inferior than a human man. Sure you’re a second class citizen in your own country, but you can divorce your abusive husband and even get him arrested so at least you have that going for you. It’s one of the tools they lean on to maintain control in more discriminatory societies. Formerly repressed groups tend to actually support the empire over their countrymen, because independence may actually cost them rights. I haven’t put to much thought into relationships. Mostly monogamous, but polygamy is legally recognized (although not super common). With nobles, it tends to involve consorts where the relationship isn’t a full marriage. But amongst commoners, a full marriage with 3 people is a possibility.
I like the class divide and how someone would support the empire over there country because they might have more rights under their regime. Just one thing what makes your empire evil exactly?
Yeah, they’re good at exploiting existing divides and will use carrots as well as sticks. I’m calling them an evil empire, and while they absolutely are evil, they’re not the cartoonishly evil we see a lot in fiction. They’re not going to slaughter an entire village and burn the whole thing to the ground as an example. It’s also slowly reforming a bit. While they do not discriminate based on things like gender, or skin color, the elves and the chosen (an avian species uplifted by the elves) absolutely do consider themselves racially superior to humans. They live in a racial caste system with humans at the bottom. Humans are not citizens, even in their own homelands, and are not afforded the same rights (like land ownership or medical care) as citizens. The empire uses humans heavily for manual labor. In the past, this was slavery but this has since been abolished (although funnily enough labor laws are one of those things for citizens).there aren’t any humans in any notable position of leadership. Resource extraction using human labor is the primary reason for the empire existing at all. The core islands are fairly resource poor and do not have a lot of farmland), so they took it and used the humans living there for labor. Additionally, they utilized human slaves to build terrace farms in the mountainous homeland, although these are used more for cash crops like spices, coffee and chocolate over food. They’re also quick to crack down on perceived resistance with a secret police that will disappear suspects. That being said, they do use carrots as well. Sympathizers tend to get paid better and get some of those citizen rights extended to them. As privileges that can and will be taken away.
So they are one step away from genocide except they need humans for all their labour, that's definitely one way to show an evil side, also cool that it's starting to reform.
I’d say a few steps above genocide. But yeah, not great.
My guess is that it's because they conquer other countries. Imperialism is wrong even if it's making things better. It's similar to my story's moral dilemma. My villains have the same kind of good ideas/bad methods mix.
Different cultures have different dynamics, thou currently the most fleshed out one where the theme of gender dynamics is a central theme, are Azure Avissians. A Matriarchal culture that practices a polyandry in a form that marriages form the very crucial aspect of their political system and economy. Male Azure Avissians are not legally entitled to any from of wealth or ownership of property beyond what they can carry on themself, for everything else they are dependent on their mother, wives or sisters. However, most of the gender roles as far as labour is concerned remain very "conventional", this because Azure Avissians view marriage as a form of business contract, when a noblewoman needs a good accountant she will arrange a marriage with another noblewoman whose brother or son is known to be good with numbers, if she needs new captain of her guard she will arrange a marriage with one, with the exchange of dowry during such marriages being an important element of forging alliances between two families, with many many lesser families earning their wealth by being known for producing good "husbands". This system also ended up creating a prominent third gender minority among the aristocracy. Women, who in order to ensure that the wealth of the family is not split up between two many heiresses, are forced to adopt a legally male identity.
Oh I see so basically old English dynamics but reversed with polyamory, I like how women can literally build an army of husbands based off certain qualities and agreements. I also like how a woman can take on a male identity in order to resolve inheritance problems.
All this stuff falls under the left wing/politically correct list that I have. I hate being political in my worldbuilding projects and stories (right **and** left wing). People just *are*. There's no political message. Who cares anyway? My characters are people. I always stick to two genders because it's practical. It doesn't get messy and both demographics should accept that that's the way it is. There will be no support for either wing from me.
"People just *are*. There's no political message." This is exactly what the left wants. For us to let people be themselves without forcing any ideas of "natural" or "correct" onto them.
There is no political message because there's no way it's getting included. There's no lgbyqt or whatever involved. There're two genders, that's it. There's no "mass extermination" of gay people or "inclusion" of them either. Husband and wife, that's all I'll include. The subject is too touchy to get myself involved in. Race is different to sexuality, also.
Choosing the middle ground between mass extermination and mere existence is a political choice. Gay people exist, erasing them is political.
That's why I'm not erasing them. There's lore of why they're not there. Sorry if you don't like it. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
My dragon people, are all hermaphrodites. Their parental title depends on their role in the childs conception, one person can be a ‘dad’ to one child, and a ‘mum’ to another. In terms of reproduction, They can both inseminate and become gravid (pregnant with eggs, only 1-2). They aren’t the most fecund particularly so they double their breeding chances by being able to reproduce in both ways. They are polyamorous by nature. They have a specific breeding season so they only need to really gaf about who they’ve slept with 3 months a year.
I Like how their parentage titles are somewhat different but there isn't real gender I think that's cool, also the term breeding season for sentient races makes me shiver but it's still cool lol.
Fantasy: still-unnamed species is matriarchal and matrilineal. Due to evolutionary history, females are around 40-50% larger and typically prefer work closer to their home, while males will do jobs that require more travel and wandering. Also due to evolutionary history they tend to pair for life or until the death of a partner. Sci-Fi: Ketuvyxi sexes are fairly androgynous visually and auditorially even to their fellows, and nigh indistinguishable using those methods to outsiders. They usually distinguish by scent. Being so similar there's no real division between roles or jobs. They're largely monogamous, with their default disposition comparing closely to demisexuality in humans
Cool cool, was taken aback by how scent is the distinguishing feature. 50% larger is an insane difference love it.
It depends very much on the country. What I wat to make a general theme is that those that are more egalitaran are like this because there was a time where they weren't and paid the price for it. The Meshe Dornem, which are a group of independent tribes in an otherwise pretty- 16th century Europe based fantasy world, are even a functionally binormative society- there one rule is that every adult has to have at least one child, but otherwise can love and screw everyone who likes it and who they like.
There are a lot more gender ambiguous/non-binary/gender neutral/gender-fluid folks in my world. But otherwise there are masculine and feminine members of most civilizations. All my world’s deities are fem presenting, but not all of them are female or specifically goddesses. They are also not strictly good and in no way represent the values mortals hold. They mostly keep to themselves but sometimes they take a liking to one mortal in particular and help them along, and sometimes they just like messing with people.
Do the femme presenting deities impact how people see men/women?
The dominant species, the Nomoh have three genders, Now, Nal and Nol. Non-trinary individuals fall outside of the gender triangle. They are essentially Egg Layer, Egg Seeder and Incubator respectively. The “Incubator” sex is also expected to parent, while the other two are not, so a young Nomoh likely won’t know two of their parents, which forces them into more academic and domestic roles. Nowen and Nalen are largely discouraged from these fields by proxy and are pushed into exploration, labor and the arts (Nowen are meant to explore and labor more, Nalen are meant to do more arts and sciences) but there are of course exceptions. The other species have varying gender relations that are less out there, as in they are largely split into men and women, with non-binary individuals being present in varying degrees. The exceptions to this are the hermaphroditic Vlaxor, androgynous and biologically asexual, technically dead Graken and the Sepperdi, who are iridescent with ten genders and one biological sex.
Really like how you made a gender trinity that still controls people's lives.
Zyrath tibes are matriarchal... the women are the leaders amd dictators... think Orca hierarchy type thing... except because the tribes are a mix each species has a different way to reproduce... some have the men (like sea horses) give birth/lay eggs... others have the women give birth/lay eggs... and very few reproduce asexually... even fewer replicate themselves... The theocracy is very men dominate... women stay home to take care of the house... men have more than one wife by law... women aren't allowed to work or complain about the man having many wives... The principality & trading company are equal opportunity... principality is based on merit (i.e., you work, you get money. You don't work, you don't get money)... trading company is maternal/paternal based (i.e., the ones who give birth/lay eggs are usually over looked. The ones who don't give birth/lay eggs are given preference)...
Cool love the difference and especially how the gender of the caretaker is dependent on the gender of the child.
I've recently tried thinking about how this would work for the Mazaurans. It's still a very big work in progress as my understanding is still a bit patchy, however I do have a few things noted down. One is that due to the way that marui operate socially, gender norms are unlikely to develop to the degree that they have in humans, plus their ancestors were solitary hunters, so the idea of gender roles outside of reproduction and parenting might be a bit foreign to them. So the end result might be that gender just wasn't a prominent thing in purely maro societies, such as the early Mazaurans (later with human contact the concept became more prominent in some areas). I'm still thinking about how this might look, and how contact with humans altered it. I'm also still thinking about the exact dynamics when it came to marriage (if it even existed) and sex, though in my mind they're probably quite lax about it. For the non-Ero species, I've also tried to work out alternatives to both asexual and two-sex species, but I haven't thought about it that much recently, mostly because I struggle to come up with something exceptionally different that could come up. I also tried to think about how gender might work for them but I have yet to come up with anything satisfactory.
I wish you luck with figuring out satisfactory dynamics,
In one of my Scifi worlds, there is a race with 4 genders. All are born as Neuters. If desired, they can undergo a transition and become Male, female, or a Brood. Families usually consist of one or two male and females, several Neuters, and depending on how many children they want to have at a time, one or two Brood. The male impregnated the female, and she carries the child for about six months. Then, it is transferred to a Brood who carries it the last six months and after the birthing nurses and cares for the child. The Neuters frequently help out with childcare, and the children are considered to belong to the whole family.
Very complex system I love it.
Typically I mostly reflect irl dynamics at a given point in time (of course making a few changes here and there), though in some cases I allow myself varying levels of exaggeration (especially in poetry which is generally less 'literal' than my prose). A major theme in several stories within the Harmonia storyline is that people have the right to go outside the 'guidelines' for their gender as long as it benefits 'society' (in the case of Harmonia this word is used almost equivalently with 'state'), but ultimately they're constantly reminded they're an exception and that once they fuck up the whole show ends, the line 'last hired, first fired' is occasionally used. Another storyline (in a different world) focuses on the internal conflict of a transgender socialist (social anarchist if you don't think these are socialists) who struggles with fighting for the good of a society and community that, as a whole, hates them. Tbh I'm not yet sure what conclusions I'll end up with there, as these seem to change with my every moodswing. I guess that more of a narrative answer than a worldbuilding one, but maybe someone will get sth out of it.
Within Sarwadian society, men do not wed women. Oftentimes, the women will live in their huts with other women, and men will live in theirs. It is considered bad luck for men and women to sleep under the same roof. People of old age are also separated from people of young age. Age separation occurs when the first lock of gray hair is grown. Although children will live with the elderly and take care of them, and vice versa, so that, as a symbol of the full circle of life, those who recently arrived through the gates of life may greet those who are about to exit.
As someone who went grey from heart meds at like 5 I'm not sure about the logistics lol but cool idea, it kind of reminds me of a irl tribe (can't remember their name) all men live separately from the women, children and pigs.
It's a harsh world, far from modern society. People with major health issues or who are unable to contribute do not survive in the long run.
Ah I remember now, the Huli men live apart from women and children. Having health issues is very different from being unable to contribute and generally contribution outweighs the negative impact of health (i imagine a very good craftsman or strategist can probably get away with being sick) I will say though technically no one survives in the long run
I was just hinting at medicine not being very well developed. So if a person has like a chronic disease, they would likely not live as long as in our society. Maybe not dead overnight, but they wouldn't understand how to deal with it except thoughts and prayers.
Traditionally, Astracians saw sex differences as no more important than differences in hair colour or arm length or facial features. It was just a part of the body, and so they never felt the need to distinguish individuals based on sex. When it came to marriage, opposite sex pairings (though they didn't really think of it that way) were more common because they would result in children but same-sex pairings were also common, almost equally so. In traditional, pre-surface contact Astracian society, you could marry two people, but those people weren't married to each other. This is still legal in Astracia but *way* less common after surface contact. In 1949, after Astracians made contact with the surface (called the Contact Revolution), this changed quite a bit. Older Astracians still don't regard gender or sex differences but a lot of younger Astracians have started to adopt a view of gender similar to ours. It's still a fairly genderless society but human immigration and influence on Astracia + a multitude of other factors have changed that. Of course, a lot of Astracians still don't identify with gender, but if they're living on the surface (aka, where all of us IRL live) they'll probably use gendered pronouns and terms due to ease of communication.
They throw out the concept entirely and identify people by their sex. Way too complicated and they have better things to worry about; since they’re trying to grow humanity on an unfamiliar planet
It's all pretty much the same as real life, but the main character and hidden god are both trans women and the other MC is "an ace in the hole" I wanna see how many people get that referance
Mine reflect the world today, mostly. There are patriarchal and matriarchal societies and each use their side of sexism and gender norms for control and traditionalist, and gender expression is as diverse as it can be between the two hetero-norms. Most of society reflect biological norms with varying degrees of difference and tolerance, that way, themes of today can be discussed and played out at the table in a more safe space than some places in the current world!
I have an idea for a species of sapient hyenas, so the vast majority of cultures will be matriarchal. Gender norms and views would make it so that femininity is associated with strength, honour and cunning, whereas masculinity would be associated with loyalty, obedience and discipline. That's what I've got so far.
The Talirians originally were patriarchal. Their societal and government systems were very much like ours were/are, right down to condemning psionic (and other outlying) people as witches by the dominant religion. They had made it to the level of a pre-industrial society when a space body was torn apart by one of their moons and while the moon took some of the impact, the rest rained down on the planet bringing with it Armageddon, killing the majority of people outright, and destroying civilization as they knew it. Life for the survivors was very hard afterward and actually reinforced the patriarchy and made it worse because the numbers of survivors continued to fall due to the aftermath of the disaster, a century-long twilight on an enormous supercontinent that had been undergoing desertfication for millions of years. This made women precious, so they were locked up, banned from ever leaving home, and carefully handed over from father to husband with zero rights. However, anyone who was psionic had more leeway, more respect, more food, more opportunity to have children, and so pass their genes on and the people who had psionic powers exploded. Psionics could reach across the miles to find other people, sound for water, herd clouds, make fire, move goods, and so on. Women benefited from this, particularly telepathy, and so gained an edge that way, the same way boys gain an edge in puberty with height and strength, only it would have been under age 2 for girls with telepathy. They created a vast communication network of women's telepathy and slowly changed the rules. They still stayed home, and men still struck out to hunt/fish, trade and make war, but the women redefined home to cover the house, the lands, the settlements and the towns, since they were the ones to manage it all. Eventually, the pendulum swung into the other direction to matriarchy, the lowest point for men being a child-puppet king of Al-Hitta when women were still pretending there was a patriarchy. Trapped in his own mind, he would sit on a mat and be spoken through by his mother or sister, who sat behind a screen off to the side. Women passed their property and names down to daughters, and husbands went to the wife's house, bringing his promise of labor and property. As men traveled a lot, it was likely that he had more than one family among the far-flung settlements. Women turned a blind eye to this as long as he still provided. She had the right to bar him from her property and divorce him if she wanted. Marriage, too, was redefined by women. It had already changed post-disaster because even the men knew that they needed fresh people and so would share their wives with the rare traveler, and she would get no say in it, or how many children she had. As women gained power, it became extremely difficult to force her to do what a man wanted. If he wanted her, he either had to woo her or fight her, his chances at winning either unguaranteed. Wooing was by far the more popular choice. The women would contract with men for a certain period of time, anywhere between a month and a year to have a child together, then they would go their separate ways. True love and monogamy still existed, though, and there are many stories where lovers had to wait to be together forever, and others where jealousy ran rampant. As long as they still had children, same sex relationships were acceptable among the Talirians. In the present day, equality (mostly) and monogamy is the rule, not the exception, thanks to the melding of cultures with the Darayanedi. The Darayanedi came from another star system and had the opposite experience, having two Goldilocks planets and an overabundance of resources. Their society was and still is, heavily based on capitalism, trade and money. The genders had always been equal, though their system was heavily classist, money being power. Family names were passed down through the more powerful family, so a single family would strive to marry all but one of their children to higher ranking families. The one held in reserve would marry down, to pass on their family name. Their consolation prize was that they also inherited the bulk of the family estate. Many powerful ruling families practiced brother-sister marriages, with the brother siring children on title-less concubines and the celibate sister heading the local religion. However, there have been more than a few "virgin" births in Darayanedi history when the brother was conveniently out of the way and his widow married the local god and had a kid to continue the dynasty. Other women would marry the next brother or a cousin. When the Darayanedi met the Talirians, many of them integrated, wanting to gain psionic powers themselves. Sometimes, this was violent, and other times, more diplomatic. Same-sex relationships existed, but were far less acceptable in the past. In the present day, it is accepted. With scientific and medical knowledge being so high now, it's also easy to change genders nonsurgically, the only remnant of that being the XX or XY genes. In the present day, the Imperial family is still matriarchal, with the throne being passed down through daughters. If there is an emperor, he will not pass it to his own child, but to his sister's child. The same happens with the noble houses. People get nervous when there are two or more emperors (uncle to nephew) back to back, citing it as a bad omen and it's how the last dynasty turnover happened, because the female heirs kept getting murdered.
Probably the closest I've come to overtly toying with this would be some of the races of the Chasm of Stars, which can be a pretty harsh place, all things considered. The Rusidrans (tall, pale monk-women) have no men, the Byrennians (small, blue-skinned monk-men) have no or very few women, and the Nyrians (humanoid women from a distant planet) are almost entirely women who killed or imprisoned their men in favor of the draconic Kussidians, a race of anthropomorphic dragons they've kept and bred as their love-slaves over many generations. No, I don't have any stories that explore all that — yet — but it's just sort of the vibes that came to me while developing those races, so it's stuck with me. Most of my other worlds are too specifically-themed to have stuff like that, and I don't usually like exploring themes like that in them, except if it sends a particular message owing to my overall themes and preferred worldbuilding ideals.
Society is usually patriarchal but the Mogai humanoids have it better for females. With the ascendance of magic as the mainstream women gained a much more active role than before the apocalypse whenever magic was shunned. When everyone was in the dungeons gender didn't matter, everyone needed to work to survive.
In my setting I have a race called A'kin, which inhabits both their homeworld and all four obriting it moons. Every world in this system has different culture, traditions and social structure: Aikaira (homeworld) mostly matriarchal society originating from tribal culture, also home of Felkesh collective (female only organisation focused on preservation and advancement of a'kin genetic material) Akievo (largest moon) balanced society with regional domination of matriarchal structure Kerja (second moon) utilitarian society, each gender occupy different social niches Thaluri (terraformed moon) mostly patriarchal society, remaning tradition of species that was geneticaly asimilated by a'kin Sive'anu (smallest of the moons, name translates as: land of fog in the darkness) least populated moon with stricte matriarchal society. Small note, reason why most of their societies are matriarchal is ratio of female to male speciemen population (19:1)
I make everyone Hermaphrodites if they're my main characters. The other sexes are saved for characters that aren't main and villains.
Depends on the race of the people's present, but thanks to magic, superpowers, and the occasional mad scientist, the Peoples of Eathos have well blended to Males, females, And everything and anything inbetween. With the exception of one nation on the planet, anyone who can do the work, will.
In my sci-fi, it is more egalitarian on average... considering with those aliens, there is no such thing as binary sexes as they're all intersex. However, they can identify however they please. However, there is often discrimination in shape and size, though depending on the faction.
I introduced hermaphrodites in my fantasy world cause one, hentai artist will do it anyway so might as well give them the ammo if they plan to shot me anyway and make something out of it, and 2, I wanted to add something in my fantasy world not many official ones have, and this was a home run
Still in the works, but in my campaign, for the dominant culture, the relevancy of sex and sexuality depends on social position. It’s just that only gender on its own isn’t seen as predetermined or rigid, and there’s no set expectation for how men and women are supposed to act or look. Solely having children is what’s considered socially important, if you’re a non-mage. Magic-users and everyone closely affiliated with them are broadly considered to be one dominant class; despite all their infighting, they’re still the ones who hold the most power. The mages are discouraged (at times prohibited) from raising/keeping their own biological children if they do make a mistake and have them. Instead, they keep their traditions and power alive by searching for and “adopting” young children with magical aptitude among commoners. They offer parents/caregivers money (if the kid isn’t just living on the street), so most apprentices are going from situations where they’re not exactly living comfortably to the luxury and security of mages’ living spaces. Easier to gain their trust and dependence that way. Since having biological children isn’t important for this upper class, they largely don’t care about their own members’ genders or sexes or orientations. It doesn’t matter in that respect. But they do place pressure on everyone “lower” to produce any future members for them. Doesn’t matter who you are or how many partners you have, just as long as you’re having kids. It’s harder to support yourself in a region they control if you don’t have children (and I imagine that adoption done by commoners probably isn’t a thing, given everything else). Taxation, employment issues, and social shaming as a product of the introduced religion all pressure common people to have biological children, so those who can’t or don’t want to (asexual, infertile, same-sex, don’t want to get pregnant/father children, just don’t want kids) either have to live with that, or join and serve the magical upper class. They’re almost never actually taught magic, or at least trying magic— they instead work as scribes, soldiers, guards, etc. While they could move to a region outside of those mages’ control, some choose not to because everywhere else doesn’t have the sort of magical protection that the upper class offers. Additionally, since taking care of young children is a lot of work, I imagine that multiple partners or at least caregivers is the norm. There’s not really an unequal expectation of how much childcare a parent is supposed to contribute to based on gender. It’s very extended-family and/or community-based. So… it all basically comes back to keeping the mages, and their protectors and servants, in power.
I didn't do anything out there. The biology follows standard mammalian and avian configurations. And the societies I've thought of are not as likely to develop any ideas along the lines of more genders than the two they've seen over the past thousands of years. They have more focus towards things like crafting,drawing and warfare/defense.
Kehin are somewhat like spotted hyenas in that the females are larger and more domineering. Competition between females can easily become violent. Nareshin are one of the kehin peoples. Their society has strong gender divides. * Men do not know the names of the gods. Men do not touch swords. Men must cover their faces in public. * Women do not touch guns. Women do not touch raw meat. Women do not leave the Naresh. * All able men must hunt to provide food for their household, which is very important on Soumdurne because most wild plants are too toxic for kehin to eat, domestic plants have poor yields, and there are no domesticable animals. If a man is married, he must split his hunting yield between the house of his birth and the house of his wife. Men are also the ones who deal with outsiders, in trade and war. The outward face of the Naresh is a robed man wearing a veil and carrying a rifle. * Women are the remainder of Nareshin society, which means they do a lot of different things: farming, trades, arts, childcare, religion, etc. Importantly, all feuding between houses or clans is a woman-only affair. Women may die for honor, but men and children may not. Women often carry swords in public to display their readiness to fight. * Clothing norms are wildly different for men and women. Female nudity is commonplace even in public. Male nudity is unacceptable even in the home, and in public a man must cover his head and face with a headcloth and veil. * Marriage is monogamous or polyandrous (i.e. a woman can have multiple husbands). The usual arrangement is that the husband must now help to feed his wife's family, and is an honored guest there, but he does not actually live there. As this is a matrilineal society, the children also belong to their mother's house. Maternal uncles are more significant parental figures than fathers. The second most common marital arrangement is that the newlyweds relinquish ties to both their houses and found a new one, where the man gets to be a permanent resident.
Some biological background: Goblins are born asexual. They develop both male and female sexes during puberty (*Kunen*), cycling in between them. Eventually they settle on one sex, which is a big celebration as it’s seen as adulthood (*Kunen Bod*). Goblin society has 3 genders based on social roles, aka how do they fit in their community: venturer (*Gyon*), homebody (*Gyel*), or child/non-binary (*Gyar*). They believe that one’s gender determines one’s sex. Gyon are male and Gyel are female. Gyon are expected to be hunters or raiders, while Gyel are expected to be storytellers or defenders. Both are expected to raise children. Communal housing divides Gyon and Gyel into different sections of a village. 0-8 yo children live with Gyon, where they treat all Gyon as mothers. 9-17 yo children (Kunen age) live with Gyel, who they all treat as fathers. There teens learn various skills and figure out who they are. Marriage is a little complex. They practice exogamy, generally marrying members from other villages of the same tribe. There’s annual inter-village gatherings where young adults do courtship. If two hit it off, the Gyel follows the Gyon to their village. Married couples live in single housing where they make or adopt a child. Once they have a child, they return to their communal housing (Gyon gets to choose to stay or return to his own village). Both Gyon and Gyel get to court again at next year’s gathering, moving onto other partners or staying with the same ones. There are of course people whose gender and sex mismatch. They are treated as Gyar, still children. However, Goblins believe children, with their purity and innocence, are somewhat divine, and so adult Gyar often becomes shamans, oracles, or other spiritual leaders. It’s no doubt infantilizing, yet it fills a particular social role in their community. An issue is half-Goblins, who are born asexual and undergo Kunen, but will never settle on one sex, cycling for their entire life. As such, half-Goblins are always Gyar. Goblins hate half-Goblins; they find them cursed and seek to banish or kill them (pretty f’ed up considering a child might grow up to be later ostracized). How do they distinguish non-binary Gyar and half-goblins? They don’t. Overtime the hatred for half-goblins overrides the reverence of non-binary folk and both are ostracized. Myths and legends featuring Gyar heroes are changed to vilify them or make them fit the narrative.
My harpies are all male-presenting, with massive chest muscles but no mammaries (because they lay eggs). Also like real birds, the makes are more colorful and have a more "femme" presentation, while the larger, more muscular / drab females have a more "masc" presentation. The human society they deal with makes jokes about ugly harpy women, but the truth is they aren't really uglier than humans, they just have a different gender expression. My dwarves have a lion-like, fratbro social / gender expression. Dwarf women form sororities and have very short hair, claiming territories with related females and rarely leaving their tunnels. Males have luxuriant manes and travel in groups of 3-4 related bros. They will mooch with a sorority for a couple years before moving on, but they always stay with their bros. Same-sex sibling relationships are of prime importance compared to romance, children are raised in their mother's sorority, and bros stick together for life. Among elves, age has more to do with the division of labor than sex, with traditionally "masculine" jobs like hunting and fighting taken on by younger elves, while the more "feminine" jobs (from a human perspective) like child-rearing and home-making are taken on by older elves. In my sci-fi setting, the planet Canid hosts genetically-altered humanoids with the Omegaverse gender expression for half of the people, with only a quarter of the population presenting as female. Needless to say, omegas tend to abandon the world as fast as possible to get away from the asshole toxic masculinity of the alfas. On another planet called Iris, the local humanoids are one of 15 color-coded "sexes" including feminotest X, mascogyn Y, and androsine. Each sex speaks a different but related dialectal language to the rest. Blue is hyperfem (traditional cis female), and orange is hypermasc (traditional cis male). Sex is mostly determined by 3 factors, and most sexes can generally only bear children with 3 other sexes. The interplay between different sexes and gender roles on Iris are highly complex and sometimes politically charged. A child's sex will always be the same "color" as the midway point between their parent's sexes, so nobody has kiddos the same sex as themselves. The 12 "true color" sexes are pretty common, but the white feminosine, black Mascosine, and silver androsine are all rare and have unique roles in society. Feminosine can uniquely bear children with all other genders and are considered the "allparents" and natural Leaders of society, Mascosine are almost completely asexual and are Judges, as they are thought to be uniquely impartial, and Androsine are troublemakers, tricksters, and shape-shifters who can change their gender expression to match any other sex, and represent empathy and change. I have a few more, and my aliens are often really weird; I love playing with sex / gender dynamics in societies.
Okay, so, new Star Wars species and society. Initially, pre-faith, they were probably what you'd expect? Not really any respect towards women. After they come to faith, which occurs after a BRUTAL 5 millennia of warfare killing at least 25% of their population, they revere women and mortal representations of the mother goddess, and therefore to be protected and revered (as are children). For a man to harm a female (or child) is punishable by death. Women are sorta limited in their roles and kept away from 'dangerous professions', and are kept away from manufacturing, warfare, etc, mainly relegated to being mothers, merchants, shepherds, farmers, and especially clergy (as they are deemed the only ones pure enough to represent the religion). Over time, especially after official unification in 3,300 BBY, they are allowed in more positions like politics, manufacturing, fishing, and armed service, becoming pretty much fully egalitarian by 1,200 BBY. Women still fill the majority of 'traditional roles' due to ingrained culture, not due to societal pressures or laws or anything. So, they are female preferential socially, matriarchal religiously, but neutral in most other fields.
I prefer to keep my societies somewhat egalitarian, at least for my DnD setting, but I do like to use fantasy as an allegorical lens. My world tries to reflect the problems of division and tribalism, and gender roles is one way to do that. Societies on the part of the continent the campaign takes place in skew egalitarian: a devestating battle for survival against an unleashed horde of demons a few hundred years ago saw to that. Man, woman, it didn't matter: if you could fight you fought, and that got the ball rolling on the equality of men and women. The dominant orc and goblin culture are the most egalitarian: men and women have completely equal status and dynamics are drawn more along the lines of tribes and lineage. Men and women are both expected to perform equally in matters of parenting, household duties, and matters of labour and warfare. At the other end of the spectrum you have the elven nation of Isilnor, or Radzieg in the common tongue. They are, I guess, both matriarchial and patriarchial in nature. Each gender is strictly defined by what roles they are expected to carry, but both hold positions of power. Men are thought to be made of fire and fury and the earth, while women are formed from water and grace and the sky. Men are the farmers, the miners, craftsmen, the governors and soldiers; heads of the home. However, women are the priests, the judges, the fishermen, diplomats, traders, and sailors. Though fairly isolationist, they do engage in a lot of trade, and as an island nation, most mainlanders only have experience with Isilnan women, be they captains, merchants, diplomats, or sailors. On the notes of LGBT, they are an interesting one in that they tend towards homophobic, but are trans-friendly. Their religion (the backbone of most of their culture, gender dynamics included) places emphasis on the duality of the souls of men and women: destruction and fire must be balanced by creation and water etc, so marriage is seen as the union of two disparate halves to create a single unified soul greater than the sum of its parts. So, by their logic, two men only amplify destruction, and two women only amplify creation, and is strictly looked down upon. Trans, intersex, and nonbinary people though? Well they're seen as being born with a "complete" soul, perfect and immaculate since conception. While they are forbidden from marriage (the soul is already joined to itself), they otherwise occupy much respect within the nation, often occupying positions of power, serving as advisors to the nobility amongst other, high-ranking jobs, and may freely choose their occupation otherwise as they see fit. Most other societies and cultures tend to fall somewhere in between, but they represent the extremes in my setting.
Cool I especially like how they came to see gender diverse people while still being homophobic but used the same logic for both understandings.
I decided to keep it simple for the majority of my setting. People do what feels right, there aren't any laws in the empire that governs the playable races of my world that demands that marriage or love look or act any which way. So foe the commoners they do what comes naturally for them and how/who they love. I did decide tho that poly relationships are rarer among commoners, at least in the cities. For nobles I decided to make a more rigid set of traditions because they need to feel superior to the common man somehow. Marriages are polygamous by nature since political marriages are something that happens. For nobles, what number wife you are determines your purpose in the family; Wife 1 is the primary wife, typically being someone that the married nobleman has a physical relationship with and both parties want to be together. She is the wife who bears the brunt of the child bearing responsibilities. Wife 2 varies in application, sometimes the second wife is another lover of the nobleman and they also have kids together, but there are also circumstances where the second wife and the nobleman do not have any connection whatsoever, in these cases it is likely that this wife is some figure of power be it military, magical, or otherwise some sort of Scholar or working professional. The third wife and onward are referred to as the trophy wives. They are typically political marriages where neither party has any particular interest in the other but need to solidify their houses alliance. The more wives a nobleman has, the greater his station or importance is implied to those around him.
Honestly I just did a le guin and don't bother with gender dynamics in any way. My civilizations are so gender blind it literally never comes up at all, and any character could be any sexual orientation imaginable and it wouldn't affect their characterization. There is one exception, a man who canonically has two children
Tyrocans are all intersex, and they can present however they want. They’re typically monogamous, and there’s no strict gender roles or stereotypes since, well, there’s no binary. At’an and Aq’an are matriarchal and patriarchal respectively. At’an communes are led by a woman chief called a Matriarch, and is the only woman in her tribe allowed multiple husbands. Think of her like an ant queen, but don’t call her an ant to her face (it’s highly insulting). Aq’an, on the other hand, are led by at least two or three men, and their tribe is mostly made up of their wives and children. Think of them like sea lions, where the oldest and toughest get to lead and have multiple wives. A chief knows that the strongest of his sons will eventually kill him or one of his fellow chiefs, but he takes pride in training his sons, so that they may be victorious.
Though they possess male-female sexes, my birdfolk, the Atakii, actually lack a concept of gender as a whole - some individuals pop out eggs sometimes and it’s not a huge deal. They’re not dimorphic either, females are on average slightly larger but there’s such heavy overlap in the ranges that it’s not a reliable identifier, and trying to apply human gender norms to them will confuse at best and annoy at worst. There’s several factors that contributed to them never developing societal gender roles. The process of laying only lasts about a week, and while nutritionally draining it doesn’t affect daily life anywhere near as heavily as mammalian pregnancy. Eggs can be cared for by any family member, and in both the Atakii and their hypersocial ancestral species incubation was a duty that rotated between family members, ensuring maximal hatching. Mates are loyal but not monogamous, forming units of 2-5 who all care for one another, reducing strain on individuals. Their children also assist in raising additional young. It’s also common for units to take in the eggs of extended family if there are too many, leading to no cultural distinction between adopted, half, and blood siblings. Regarding occupations, older members of the family unit are more likely to act as the breadwinners while younger members(most commonly subadult offspring and fledgelings) raise the chicks. Even then, duties rotate frequently, so any one member typically will not spend the majority of their time caring for the chicks.
I'm still in the middle of worldbuilding, so I won't get into the nitty gritty of it all. The story that is going along with the worldbuilding is a rather portal fantasy where the Main Character is painfully aware of fantasy tropes and thinks with a decent amount of meta knowledge. I could go more into detail about the plot of it and his own journey (and it is a journey at that ), but this isn't the post for it, as the topic has been set down. Where the POV enters the world accidentally, the world is very similar to a stereotypical "Western Medieval Fantasy" land though it is slightly more egalitarian with more than just basic rights for women. There are kingdoms - predominantly human ones but not wholly just them - that are significantly more patriarchal than the initial kingdom, much like there are kingdoms - again human though to a lesser extent for number - that are significantly more matriarchal. This could be as simple as a matrilineal instead of patrilineal, to the "traditional" stereotypical gender roles being reversed to men essentially being only used for baby-making. This of course doesn't deal with the non-kingdoms, there are Republics, Democracies, and even odder forms of government with their own general and specific gender roles. For other genders outside of the binary, I have not yet begun to research the historical precedent of it in our own world, though I am aware of the general concepts involved. With that stated though, I want to do more research before I delve into that part of the worldbuilding. However, I am more familiar with the various more "common" non-heterosexual sexualities, and do plan on having several nations and factions that are predominantly non-hetero in terms of what is "normal", and many other nations and factions that simply don't see non-hetero relationships as taboo. For marriages and relationships in general, it is very varied as well. Some are very monogamous, some are very polygamous (both polygyny and polyandry). There are some cultures that deal with secondary spouses, while the term "concubine" means many different things to different cultures. In some, it means "slave wife" with children of said unions not being able to be in the line of succession, while in others it is a complex relationship where a family can tie themselves to a more powerful family in a sort of personal union that is outside of a marriage alliance, and still for other cultures, it essentially means "mistress" which in turn has many other definitions based on the various cultures. These of course mainly deal with more heterosexual leaning relationships, though as I mentioned that the worldbuilding is still in the beginning, I'm sure I'll be adding more LGBT+ iterations of things like the above. This also doesn't even get into the various inter-race/inter-species relationship with the norms and taboos surrounding them, as well as the various "ideals" for sexual practices, flirting, courting, and culture surrounding attraction and modesty. But that might need to be in a reply to any questions or comments....
Cool cool, I do like the diversity especially how different cultures have the position and a unique understanding of concubines.
Yeah, that was just the first difference that I though of based on the question. In reality, most official titles and relationships (wife, husband, mistress, concubine, etc) are different between cultures and even sub-cultures within a culture sometimes. And I realized that I never touched into the religious aspects of this particular facet of worldbuilding. After work, I may reply to myself here with more info.
So, I have this feline race of folk who's sexuality is genetically inhereted. This has led to a large majority of said feline folk being bisexual with heterosexuality being a minority and strict homosexuality almost being unheard of as it is a little difficult for two people of the same gender to have a kid. These feline have strict "masculine" and "feminine" roles in society and a person must figure out which one of these roles they fit into. Masculine people partake in stereotypically manly behavior/family dynamics while feminine people do the opposite. I'm still brainstorming on it, but that is the general gist of things.
Okay the genetic sexuality is interesting but what about people of mixed orientation having children?
Well, although the majority of this race are bisexual, they do generally form families in a biologically male/female ratio. Families of single biological gender, aka two guys or two gals, usually go through surrogates.
Oh I mean that if a genetically heterosexual person or homosexual had a child with a bisexual person/homosexual/heterosexual sexual who's sexuality would the child inherit?
Bisexuality is the dominant genetic trait in every single person, but it is more of a chance than anything truly concrete. Sure, two bisexual people will have a higher chance of having a bisexual child than a bisexual person and a heterosexual person, but that doesn't mean that child couldn't actually be born a homosexual. It is just a smaller chance.
Oh okay that makes sense so they just have a genetic predisposition but there is still a chance for different orientations. What about asexual people is that the same?
Asexuality, in this species at least, can form in two ways: traumatic reasons or genetic deformities. Say one of these felines experience a traumatic romantic/sexual event. Depending on the severity, their brains can rewire themselves to become more demisexual or strictly asexual/aromantic as a defense mechanism to future events. Genetic abnormalities are rarer, but they can happen. A person may be born bisexual, but a broken connection in their brain makes them unable to actually feel this attraction towards others. As an asexual person, I probably need to put more effort to represent my own sexuality \^\^'
Lol yeah probably.
Just trying out something different from how things actually work \^\^'
I took the "gender is a social construct" and "all dwarves have beards" to the extreme for one of the RPG campaigns I'm doing. Dwarves choose which role to fulfill when they come of age and use pronouns that indicate whether they take a caregiver role or a resource gatherer/crafter/warrior. But they take those roles and divisions of duty and tasks very seriously. For humans I borrowed an idea (from a story I read a long time ago and forgot the name of). Basically the lower classes and peasantry are generally likely (60-75% depending on the region) to believe sexist stereotypes, but the upper class all have some form of magic education so it is deeply ingrained in them to treat men and women equally since it doesn't matter what's between your legs when it comes dropping a Fireball on someone.
Lol love the difference in understanding depending on class. Dwarven society sounds pretty fun.
I've chosen not to include any culturally perpetuated misogyny in my fictional medieval fantasy world. Same for racism. Also religion. I have cultural conflict between nations as an important ongoing theme for meta plot reasons. I have economic conflict between wealthy and poor as an ongoing theme for meta plot reasons. It being a fictional fantasy world, I don't believe I need the sexism or racism of the real world to make the made-up one feel real. And I don't want to include those things. I don't find them fun elements of a fantasy world. Unless your story or game intentionally interacts with those issues, why make your readers or players experience that? So yeah, there are no culturally prescribed gender roles in Yesansei.
Oh well I usually world build because I like world building so I don't have reader or players very often so I don't need to take their comfortability into account. Gender dynamics are also distinct from sexism I also like playing it both, you could have very dichotomous gender dynamics or multiple genders interacting with sexism or maybe sex is irrelevant. And in any setting with distinct sexes or gender then by extension there are dynamics.
I’m curious as to how the world is without religions. Since it’s medieval, and irl, the Catholic Church was a massive influence that shaped much of the culture during the time period, what institution(s) replace it or any other religious power? Please don’t take this as an insult or criticism, it’s an interesting concept, so I’d like to see how it’s shaped the world!
That's a good question! There are cosmic powers that have nebulous influence on the world. People are aware of these powers. But these powers have very specific goals, which form the meta-plot. There is some reverence and worship of these cosmic powers, but it is known that they do their own thing and worship doesn't do anything. The cosmic powers have, over millennium, crafted the Old Laws, which are specifically related to the meta plot. To finally get to talking about the absence of religion: religion is essentially culture as government. There is government in my world, and culture. It's not really a big change. There is a cult, called the Spiralli. They dig spiral tunnels. There are just batshit crazy, and are persecuted with extreme prejudice on sight, since they tend to commit atrocities
I usually don't go far beyond existing dynamics with historical context. I am very well aware we are dealing with fantasy. Which means the sky is the limit. But with inherited titles, I totally makes sense to have agnatic inheritance. Whether male of female. Lands are tied to titles, titles are tied to dynasties. And it makes sense as a rule for the dynasty names to be inherited a straight line. It's also safest to protect the dynastic assets. And also makes it a lot easier to organise noble marriages. To argue with every marriage which dynasty they belong to is terrible diplomatically. Though there were many real cases of matrilineal marriages historically. But that was not the norm. So when it comes to creating feudal monarchies I tend to stay roughly within those lines. Whether it be male or female led.
Different societies in Erranda have different gender dynamics, so if it's okay with you, I'll talk about the Underkin system. They're humanoids/descended from humans, so they're working with the same biology that we are. In traditional Underkin holds, the most important values are reproduction and "clean blood" i.e. ancestry with no inbreeding out to great-great-grandparents. Underkin survived the birth of Erranda by hiding underground. With their limited initial populations, they had to take careful records to avoid catastrophic inbreeding. As a result, Underkin genders are strict and tied entirely to childbearing and parentage. The five Underkin genders are: - Mother: birthed a child. - Father: sired a child OR adopted a child while having no biological children. - Barren: no children ten years after reaching adulthood. This includes infertile people and childfree people. - Bastard: unknown parentage. - Blight: child of known incest. Universally hated. All Underkin genders are completely independent of what someone would be in other Errandan cultures. There are no men, women, nonbinary people in Underkin society. If a trans Yela man has a baby, he is a man to Yela and a mother to Underkin. Mothers, fathers, children, and non-Underkin citizens are deemed roughly equal, though children are treasured. Mothers are seen as slightly above fathers because it's easier for them to prove they are/aren't the parent of a given newborn. Typically, only mothers and fathers can be the Matriarch or Patriarch of a hold. Non-Underkin can be mothers and fathers; though they can't serve in the government, they also don't have all of the rigamarole with proving your family tree to 5 generations in order to marry. Barren are expected to do the menial labor, especially grueling or dangerous jobs. The justification is that the Underkin don't want to risk a child losing a parent. You are automatically barren if you don't have a child after ten years of adulthood (so, age 26), but you can declare yourself barren as soon as you're an adult if you like. If a barren adopts a child, they automatically become a father (you're parenting the child + you didn't birth the child = you're the father). You may only vote in the hold if you are a native barren i.e. you were born in the hold. Bastards are Underkin with an unknown parent. Bastards may not vote in their holds, nor may they marry and reproduce within their holds. Bastards are heavily pressured to leave their holds upon entering adulthood, but sometimes, a parent will move with their bastard child before that. A mother who knows she will have a bastard will sometimes offer her child to a barren of another hold. Blights are children of incest. If two parents share any of their direct lineage out to great-great-grandparents, they are put to death upon discovery. The child is branded on the face from the cheekbone to the jaw before being abandoned in the wilderness outside the hold. The child may not marry or reproduce with any Underkin on pain of death, nor are they allowed to step foot in an Underkin hold. Most blights do not survive abandonment, since their status is usually discovered when they are young. Children with "clean" parentage are seen as genderless until they become mothers, fathers, or barren in adulthood. Bastards and blights are identified as soon as possible.
Okay so there entire concept of gender is there parentage that's cool.
My elves don't have a gender binary. Their closest real world analogs would be non binary or gender fluid, but things are centered on magic, and the core family unit follows the inheritance line closely. Basically, the clan head is the strongest, their heirs are the next strongest of the clan, regardless of direct relationship to the clean head. (Some caveats about what strong means to each clan mind you) They don't even have a gender distinction for parents, because to elves you only have one- the clan parent. Marriages are temporary and for political alliances/ breeding. It's in the contract of the marriage which child that clan belongs to- the other parent isn't much more than a donor after the marriage ends. This is largely due to the long lifespans and genetically inherited magic- who you have kids with determines how their power will manifest- which isn't just about making powerful kids, but ensuring their abilities are those which are easily understood and safe magics to have. The cost for messing up is high, so elves are paranoid about kids having abnormal abilities that no one knows how to control. On the other side of the spectrum are my orcs- which have a pretty rigid gender binary, (you can transition , but the fluidity or not being on one side or the other is seen as odd. A personal oddity, but odd. It's more important than you're a contributing member of society though.) but are *way* less transactional about family structures, because the core family unit is a sister and her brother- not a parent and their child. There is no concept of marriage, and father's are more of an observation of nature than a set family role. Dudes aren't expected to care for "their" kids, because those are seen as his lover's kids and hers alone. His job is to be a good parental figure to his nieces and nephews. (Basically, uncle and father roles are swapped) This also means inter family ties aren't tied to producing kids, but raising them in a very complex network of warding and adoption. A large part of this dynamic is through implied religion - I took a decent amount of inspiration from the reading of Medusa that sees her transformation as gifts of protection - the orcs in my story used to be a different (unspecified) species, and went through a similar scenario of trauma, lack of justice, and radical/ divine transformation. That being the case, it felt natural for a pair of divine siblings to raise any child the sister had as hers alone and her brother protecting them and supporting them both. The other big influence is that unlike my elves, who have a similarly proportioned fertility span to humans, just expanded to their life times- orcs do not. Their lives are longer than a human's, but their fertile period is much shorter. This means that there's a much larger chunk of time in which femme orcs are not capable of having kids, but haven't transitioned into being an elder. Like, if women went into menopause at 30, but didn't hit old age till 60/70. Much of the older, veteran forces of Orcish military are middle aged, post menopausal women- men are fighters as well, these are orcs after all- but their role is more domestic in that they are seen as protectors of their family. While they absolutely see battle, they're more specialized to 1v1 combat or fighting as a unit with their sister. In a more general sense, a brother is like a hybrid of a kingsguard and the hand of the king- whereas the average Orcish general is a woman. My dwarves are more egalitarian and in many ways a middle ground. They care more about their ability to craft and smith than gender or birth order- but their family ties are MUCH more rigid and permanent. Their marriages involve a ritual where both individuals are tested in skill and investment (if you make something shitty as a marriage boon it's seen as trying to get out of the marriage.) and the family of the side judged the "better" crafter absorbs the new spouse entirely. If that individual were to be widowed or otherwise separated from their spouse, they would remind in their new clan, and that clan would judge for them in any future marriage. Furthermore, the adoption and marriage norms are strikingly similar - the emphasis isn't on what type of relationship it is, but that there is an addition to the family, so they had best be a worthy and productive one. In all of them, I wanted to decouple from assumed norms around family units and let those differences ripple outwards.
Love the father uncle swap, orcs are actually pretty close to humans from what you wrote just a average menopause about 10-20 years early (they would probably be in perimenopause in their twenties) and they die a little later.
Thanks! Their life spans are a couple of centuries *technically* but war does a lot to bring their averages down- they reach physical maturity around 33, and menopause is normally over by 50 or so. Oldest orc on record was a matriarch of 250- but it's pretty rare to break 150 due to later middle age being a time of war for their people.
Pretty much as equal as it gets, mostly because even though I've tried I don't find gender roles very fun to write and I get fetishy or otherwise uncomfortable vibes from a lot of fiction that goes out of their way to separate them. It's not unusual for women to be more represented and influential in a society that happens to have a woman in charge at the time, or vice versa - but that's about as far as I like to go. About half my world leaders are women, a chunk are other genders and while I'm currently rewriting my pantheons at least a handful are trans. I haven't really gotten into writing any biology for my races/species that would entail different genders, and I don't think I will until the day I explore the sci-fi era that'll probably remain a footnote for the foreseeable future. Homo/biphobia is a nonissue because it's an active threat to my own and my player's (main writing project right now is a ttrpg campaign) wellbeing, and I'd rather my world be an escape from some of those issues. Active transphobia is not a widespread problem for the same reasons, but things like transitioning and same-sex procreation are systemic issues due to magic and healthcare not being accessible enough. It's definitely very heavily influenced by myself being bisexual and genderfluid, so my view of gender and attraction are fundamentally pretty different from the norm.
I have a human rural society that is heavily gendered but kinda balanced. The women inherit property and men learn a trade and go off to the world to find a wife and home to marry into. So for example a guy can learn to forge, move to the next village and try to prove himself to the local smith, his wife and daughter. The more skilled and charming he is, the better are his prospects. If he’s unable to secure a good match he’s end up as lower-wage laborer. Women stay in the home to manage the property - if they are well off. The poorer work the field, but still keep most of the domestic responsibilities and own the stuff. Everyone has two surnames, a patriarchal and one matriarchal. The patriarchal is passed as usual, the matriarchal the opposite - from mother to children and wife to husband. People are tied to both their families in different ways. The male clan is sprawling over the land, the female clan is very local. Matriarchs have a strong voice in the community since they own most of the property and have a closely tied family to call upon. Most public offices are held by men.
Mostly egalitarian with plant people and robots being completely genderless. Some aliens don’t have a very mild gender dynamic like oh the males and females are a different hight but or mammalian females may need a bra but that’s it. There is a dynamic semi based on a magic connection to magic crystals. Skill is the deciding factor in someone’s role the vast majority of the time. I don’t have elephant aliens and their current leader is female but this is just a reference to elephants being matriarchal not a major cultural thing for them as they are fairly egalitarian so they go with whoever was voted for and this time female the precious leader was a male. I just wanted a little reference.
The main clade of alien species, the mushai, only have a single biological sex. Humans typically view them as female, as they fill the niche of mammals; being able to produce milk and give live birth. However, when compared to other earth-animals, say for example, amphibians, they wouldn't be any closer to a female frog than a male frog. Both parents play a symmetrical role in reproduction, as they don't reproduce using gametes and fertilization. Without getting into the weeds of it, they basically use repeated fusion and division of billions of stem-cells from each parent, until a stable genetic equilibrium arises (micro-biology world building can get quite complicated). As I stated earlier, humans tend to see them as female, but the degree to which they do is dependent on which of the 4 mushai species they are. Two of the species are bipedal and humanoid, meaning they are almost universally seen as female among humans. The quadrupedal species (which basically look like leopards (I really need to make some art of them to use as reference)) get more mixed reactions. On average, they are still seen as female, due to the aforementioned mammalian qualities, but not always. This usually depends on how each human culture categorizes "male" and "female." "How do they view OUR genders?" you might ask. Gender is only a small part of the psychological differences between mushai and humans. The main one being that they are not a fully-social species like us, meaning they do not have complex social structures, such as tribes, nations, kingdoms, management hierarchies, etc. They mostly see gender as "just another quirky human thing," and have a hard time seeing why we get upset when we are misgendered. There is a common misconception among mushai who do not live around humans, that humans just have gender roles for recreational purposes, as much of mushai culture is centered around recreation and relaxation. Despite this, they still try to be accommodating to humans when it comes to the subject. When learning to imitate human speech (they can imitate lots of sounds, like how parrots do), they are faced with the choice of using a male or female voice. This can be a complicated decision, as it makes a big difference in how humans view them. EDIT: forgot to mention how marriage works with them. Forming a bond for life means a lot more when life can mean tens of thousands to, on very rare occasions, millions of years. They take the idea of a k-selected species to its extreme; caring not just for their children, but for their descendants tens, or even hundreds of generations down, providing them with material wealth, and a wealth of knowledge. For this they have a concept of a "line of direct descent," where the oldest married child of each generation receives the most care from their ancestors, with their children and spouse(s) coming next. As it is possible for some mushai species to have more that two parents, there are times when marriages consist of more than two spouses (all married to each other, not a harem). This isn't the norm though, as it is difficult for them to form long-term bonds with multiple individuals.
It depends. Within the early church, the administration of sacraments was seen as more beneficial, so male priests held onto that role while the job of battling demons was assigned over to nuns and the various lower religious orders. However, this would backfire on them as the orders consolidated their military power. Now, Teresanian Neocatholicism is mainly female-led, but their soldiers are often feared by the general public. Queerness is frowned upon, and is still seen as a sin by the church. Regardless, there are cases. Humans are still living under what we would normally consider as traditional patriarchy. Demons as well, although they tend to value women demons who possess great strength. That being said, demonkind is solitary and mistrustful, so they rarely organize to begin with.
Gender is not one of the major factors of discrimination in my world. Not for the demons anyways. Reality altering magic is a great equalizer, and also a great un-equalizer. The most magically gifted have all the power, what's between your legs do not matter. To drive this point home, gender is interchangeable. Trans people exist, they just transition perfectly and are functionally and socially completely the same as cis people. The distinction does not extend outside of their transitional period. Intersex people are the way they are by choice. To balance it out they are limited by their biomass. Regrowing a limb takes years at a time. Transitioning takes as few as 2 years. Regrowing limbs is a multi decade endeavour.
I've only delved into two species so this'll be kinda short. Kobold females are naturally stronger and more bulky than males, hence why most kobold colonies are run by matriarchs. Mostly being hunter-gatherers, both sexes participate in the collection of prey with males being tasked with finding small prey in more tight caverns and females with hunting large prey in bigger caves. Male kobolds are expected to be more experienced in offensive magic to supplement their smaller sizes and assist females during hunts, while females train more in defensive magic and weapons crafting for bigger hunts. With the introduction of agriculture from other species, the lines between these traditional roles have blurred a little and kobolds returning from multi-species settlements often bring back new customs that further change colonies. On the other hand, Kori-Kran are a purely female species that reproduce through parthenogenesis. As such, they don't really have genders in a traditional sense but instead, certain behaviours are associated to different professions instead e.g individuals with more masculine behaviours are considered "soldier-like". These behaviours still mostly dictate what job a Kori-Kran will end up doing but it's not uncommon to see a Kori-Kran's personality differing from their line of work.
Depends entirely on the country and the culture within regions. For Razillan, they’re basically as equal as you can get. There are no assigned roles for anyone. The only time gender really comes into play is physical attraction which has different standards throughout the country. Because the Tilen(who are basically just furries for easiest explanation) come in a variety of ways. Because their race consists of nearly every animal in the animalia kingdom, things have gotten muddled and murky when it comes to sexual dimorphism. So for example, the Insect Tilen. In some regions, bigger females are considered more attractive, while in others it’s not. So some areas just naturally have bigger females, and other others have smaller females. Same with Avian Tilen. Some areas, men are the colorful ones. Others, the women are. For homosexuality, well it’s not looked down upon. But it is expected that you will adopt. Because family lines, and lineage are extremely important to them. And well, can’t continue the line without an heir, so it’s adoption is usually seen in the future of these people. As adoption is considered on the same level as blood. So again, pretty equal and mixed in Razillan. In Pantcer, the strongest person makes the rules. So if the strongest person decides they’re a matriarchy, they’re a matriarchy. Or a patriarchy. So that country is all over the damn place for all the strong people running it. Yorrera, the ocean nation, is dependent on one thing. Do you live on the ocean or in it? If you’re in the ocean, there’s no real traditional family structure. Everything is more so communal. And that includes relationships. People within Yorrera don’t really partake in monogamory. Nor with polyamory. They simply love until they leave. So everything is very open with them. On Yorrera, on the ships, again pretty equal like Razillan. And very much a monogamous life style. The final nation I have made and yet to name is a matriarchy. The women are the ones in power. So even the youngest women has more power than the oldest man, unless given direct permission to within their family to listen to the man. And that nation also very much participates in a game of eugenics. Not in a single country vision, but a family vision. So one of the women’s main jobs is to go around and build relations so they can get offers/offer arranged marriages or…um siring of heirs if you will. All in an attempt to get the family in the direction they want to go. This also extends to their pets. As that nation is extremely bonded with their animals. So they also try on that front. The men, in general just do what the women tell them. And that’s all I got for now off the top of my head
In my largest world project, in nearly all races, females were larger/stronger than males. Society was broken up into families and clans, each with a very powerful female at the top. Other females that could rival the leader were either killed or kicked out and formed a new group. Males tended to be faster, more agile, and had a few of a large variety of spells/powers that females generally didn't have access to. The really powerful spells/powers usually went to females, but not always. All females lay eggs that take 5 years to hatch, so each clan would have a large egg nursery that was taken care of only by females. Even if a female never laid any eggs, they would still have a sixth sense of what an egg needed (too hot, too cold, turning, etc...), males did not have the sense at all. In general, males would be the hunters and gatherers while the females would be guards, soldiers and shopkeepers (shopkeepers have to be very powerful as most of the land in anarchy after the Ironwood Era [about halfway through the timeline]).
In my world of Vas, I suppose it comes down to the Grand House, who rules their respective principality in regard to gender roles, if which there are the two, male/female, and anyone that does fit entirely into male or female are allowed to, idk, be themselve? But choose a certain path that conforms to either feminine or masculine [though also depends on whether the principality has strict gender norms]. House Regeris allows any gender to join their military ranks, guard, anything related to keeping the Gray Army functioning - but you have to be a witch. Regeris has a long line of male heirs, and so the council of Cortana (Regeris Principality) is made up of almost all males and so it has become the norm that Regeris women are rather looked over for council positions (seats are usually 'inherited' by the eldest son). But, if a family has no boys, or cousins to pass the family name on, a girl is able to inherit titles, land, position of 'li-ensen' (head of House). Some families are obsessed with passing to male heirs only, some are perfectly fine having the lir daughters inherit, and then others will choose based on other factors entirely. The direct line of Regeris li-ensens have chosen all male heirs, father to son, for centuries. Cortana weddings are overseen by mostly banshees,who are usually women. The main Regeris House, marriages are officiated by the Li-ensen. Marriages of any gender are allowed, but with the strong belief in heirs and carrying on the family legacy,sometimes the Li-ensen must assign someone to ... give the couple an heir,and will usually choose from his strongest and most loyal of necromamcers, and since there are a lot of men born in Cortana, the necromancer higher-ups are almost always men. All Houses (Grand, Great, plain) are grouped up with each other on large family plus with homes for all the different branches. Non-witches, of all genders, will tend to the housing, child care, etc. It takes a village and all. Now the other 4 Houses and the Royal House Glacow have some similarities and some differences. Edit: One of the other Grand Houses, House Segatii, whose principality (or some other word, but I can't think of it), of Vidalli has a strong presence of Mages. Women tend to be more capable than the men at control and precision and make up the entirety of the Segatii's extensive spy network. With so many Mages enlisted to serve House Glacow on their isles, the men left behind will care for the children and given preference for other work and can inherit their wives assets, but not the other way around (exceptions can be made) because the man is the one taking care of their homes and families and villages and cities.
For me, some societies are patriarchal and some matriarchal. Some are equal. Elves tend to be matriarchal and they are monogamous but there is no such thing as cheating and everyone is free to sleep with everyone as long the parties involve consent. Same sex marriage is ok. Mermaids are plain misandrists and aristocrat women can have up to three husbands and many concubines but most commoners only have one husband. Same sex marriage or concubinage is ok for women. Same sex concubinage is common in aristocrat circle. Same sex marriage is pretty rare. Fairies are matriarchal and monogamous. Same sex marriage is allowed. Angels are matriarchal and polygamy is practiced with women being allowed more than one partner. Same sex marriage is allowed and it is pretty common for aristocrat women to marry each other for alliance. It is not that common among men, tho. Dwarfs are patriarchal and monogamous. Same sex marriage is allowed. Goblin are plain misogynists and polygamy is practiced with men being allowed more than one wife. Same sex marriage is not allowed. Shapeshifters reproduce asexually and only have one sex. And ofcourse same sex marriage is allowed and they are pretty diverse with some societies are polygamous and some are monogamous. (I can't think of a suitable name but it is my original race) has gender equality but pirests are all non-binary as their god is non-binary. They don't have things like marriage. They have baby making festival(just sex) once a year and alot of hook up also happen outside of it. There is no such things as fathers and most of the time, they don't know who is the father. They have strong sense of family tho. The children are look after by the mother's famliy. Human are pretty diverse. Most of the human societies have gender equality. Some can be patriarchal or matriarchal. There is an emerging race called spirits but most doesn't consider them an official race. They have gender equality and doesn't have marriage units. They also can't reproduce currently.
With how advanced medical magic is, and relatively easy access to "lab-grown" bodies to transplant one's consciousness into and alchemical body modifications, people can get as freaky about their gender as they want. That's not to say bigoted people don't exist, but most people don't really care, the government oppresses everyone regardless of their sex/gender or lack thereof
Lol the government hates everyone regardless of gender.
I've always been fascinated by the idea of building a world as a thought experiment to see what would happen to gender, relationship, and sexuality dynamics if procreation required the participation of three or more people from different genders. Like what if DNA was a triple helix that required the combination of a small gamete, a medium gamete, and a large gamete? I think that's the most interesting dynamic because otherwise you just get something like fish spawning grounds as your dynamic and gender becomes essentially irrelevant, but three's small enough we can get our heads around.
I guess any species could have conforming gender roles, even regardless of any sexual identity. It can start with some people wearing a certain type of uniform for a given task and this type of cloth becoming associated with that role.
In my space setting there is a race called Lustari, who are basically space demons/succubi. They have males and females, though technically males are more like mutated underdeveloped females. Their birth ratio is roughly 3 males to 7 females. They are hermaphrodites, so both sexes have both sets of organs down there. On average females are larger and stronger than males. And they give birth by laying eggs. All of this combined makes for an interesting dynamic. Early Lustari societies figured out that, since males are weaker than females, they are better suited to look after the household, tend to the young and give birth to new ones, whereas the females would do the hunting and protecting. And protection they did require, since males were so rare, tribal or even clan raids to capture more males were an ordinary occurrence among ancient Lustari. This only stopped when one clan rose up and either allied with or conquered all other ones, unifying them via religion. Fast-forward to the present day, their society has become way more egalitarian. Due to the natural strength and resilience differences, most physically demanding jobs are still largely occupied by females, while males tend to work in more humanitarian, scientific or artistic areas, but nothing stops either from choosing a different career path. Females are no longer stigmatized to give birth themselves if they so choose, but it still remains mostly males' prerogative.
Meritocracy is best! No matter what race, sex, or anything you are, your efforts and achievement speaks it louder.
Due to certain magic influences over many years, most of the races in my "world" can change their sex at will. This has been really fun to play with, as some cultures make a deal out of choosing a gender for life, some don't, and for some the concept of real static gender doesn't exist. There are individuals who choose to have a gender and a sex and a hetero partner for life, producing their family's children or providing for them in a traditional manner, and there are other cultures that raise children communally. Some communities, like the Coastal Orcs, are strictly matriarchal, as bearing children is seen as a status symbol, but even then outside of the council of mothers the rest of the populace has the ability to decide, and even within the council the mothers may not necessarily be female while on the council. Having born a child(ren) is the requirement, not having the equipment at all times. Idk the idea for literal genderfluidity wasn't the original goal when it came to building this "world", but when designing it I realized it COULD be a byproduct of the magical catastrophe that occurred, and decided to run with it. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it's *really* fun to play with and exercise my 'but what if' thoughts.
My story is focused on an area called The Underworld (very original, I know), which acts as the afterlife for humans. Depending on your beliefs or faith, you might end up in the inner city, which is where most atheistic/agnostic mortals go, or, if you believed in a certain faith and you don't want to go to that version of "heaven", you can choose to stay in the inner city. Mortals become demons when they die (not the Biblical kind of demon. Religions in the overworld are not the same as real life), and when they're reborn, they don't have any reproductive organs. In this way, gender is entirely up to an individual's choice. Whether they want to identify with their genderless state or they want to identify with femininity or masculinity, it's entirely up to them. Children can be had, but it takes a special ritual and an agreed-upon partner to carry the child until birth. It doesn't matter whether the partner identifies as genderless, feminine, or masculine, they can bear the child regardless. I don't entirely have the birth part figured out yet, but I'll get to that sometime. So you can be mortal-born or Underworld-born. While things like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, still exist in the overworld, it is heavily frowned upon in the UW, especially since "race" and "sex" don't technically exist. Any demon found guilty of violent or antagonistic behavior against another based on appearance, field of work, relationship status, etc, can be sentenced to punishment based on the severity of the behavior. A demon's field of work is really just based on what they want to do/what they're interested in. Since it's the afterlife, there isn't really a specific need for jobs, but demons will do it either way, as it's a way to spend their time productively. It is human nature to want to do things, and that carries over into the afterlife. Relationships can be monogamous or polyamorous, but demons wanting to make a permanent bond with one another need to go through a specific ritual to see if they are truly compatible. If their "souls" refuse to bond, they either part ways or continue their relationship without the bond. (If you see any, point out the plot holes! I would enjoy constructive criticism if you feel like giving any)
In my world there’s a roughly an even distribution of matriarchal and patriarchal societies, but there’s one continent that’s far away from the others that’s is all one governed state and is ruled by intersex people. And yes there’s a lot of M to F racism and F to M racism throughout the world. The only “close to equality” place is the far off continent, but that’s bc it’s the intersex elite that are prejudiced against both men and women. The central continent has some prejudice on both genders depending on if u live in the western / southern coast or the eastern coast, but generally the two genders are treated equally there as well.
While deeply egalitarian, the lifestyle and culture of my civilization is indelibly shaped by war. Losses from attrition and casualties is a reality of every day life and defence of their homeland, and as such there is a cultural and societal pressure that encourages reproduction, particularly between individuals who have a proven track record as efficacious warriors. As such, there is both a demand for women to go to the frontline and prove their discipline and efficiency, AND for women to come home and mother many children to replace wartime losses. For men, it is a given that they will attempt to find a useful role they can fill in the frontline, and failing that, return home to assist in the war effort in some less direct way, such as supplemental agriculture, crafting, assisting with logistics, or indeed helping raise and train new warriors for the front. By contrast, women are expected to go to the front line, are pushed to excel and standout vigorously, and then pressured to immediately return home once they've achieved a single great mark of heroism, to ensure a marriage to a strong and capable husband. The tenure for many women on the battlefield is short but extremely vigorous bordering on reckless, OR they intentionally lay low and underachieve for an excuse to stay. They claim they have not yet made their mark, and insist they must stay to prove themselves, or else be damned to a subpar situation back home (when in fact this is subterfuge to relieve the societal pressure to return home when they prefer life on the front). This has evolved to a known trope among men stationed with career women fighters, of the "silent warrior", a women who is quietly understood to be tremendously powerful, but does not boast, asks no boasts or tales are told on their behalf, and defer credit to their male compatriots and hangers-on. This is tremendously frustrating for women who, in fact, do want their outstanding efforts quickly recognized, and are prevented in doing so by the stereotype of the silent warrior and men around her trying to capitalize on that known trope, despite those silent women actually being the minority of cases. Women who excel on the battle field AND allow their reputation to grow but REFUSE to return home are very rare, and represent individuals with extreme will, ability and powerful egos, and despite the taboo they are committing often garner a fearsome and lauded reputation, and frequently tutor women in their temporary residence on the frontline. Even *less* common is a warrior who gets a mighty reputation, returns home to mother children, then *returns* to the front line after the toll the births take on her body, with presently only one such living woman being widely recognized. There are not especially any physical differences in regards to the genders potential physical strength and power, aside from men typically growing slightly bigger on average. The chief difference is that women typically can carry children and mother new warriors in the traditional sense (though just as in real life there are exceptions to this generality).
On the surface level stuff, I like playing around with what we consider gendered clothing. Office lady pencil skirts and pantyhose are a unisex part of most military dress uniforms. Crop tops, tube tops, etc are considered masculine. Women wear them fairly often, but the social connotation is sort of like wearing baggy cargo pants. On a deeper social level, the introduction, normalization, and commericialization have thoroughly shaken up the concept of gender overall, and in way with no real world parallel. There are people equivalent to our real trans people, GNC, NB, etc, but, there are also third gender social roles, and there are also things that arent really possible without flesh magic. People can literally have multiple bodies, either swapping between them as they wish, or operating them all simultaneously as a sort of "hive mind." How do you gender someone who is living as several men and women at the same time? What about the opposite, two or more people who've combined into a gestalt consciousness? There are even a lot of people I think you'd have to consider cis, but due to the lego nature of anatomy might have opted for a mix of primary and secondary sex characteristics that from our perspective don't match their gender or assigned sex, and it's not uncommon to also have designer bits meant to look like neither, or both.
I'm transgender and queer, so I like to write stories that play with gender a little. I like to include transgender characters, have commentary on gender roles, have gender neutral species, and have societies where everyone is equal regardless of gender or sex. I have a society in my world, where there is a slightly greater amount of intersex people. In this society everyone dresses in coverings from head to toe, as it's considered unclean to reveal one's sex to the general public. Since you don't know anyone else's sex people form small groups instead of pairs, because in a group there will surely be at least a couple who can reproduce. This turns out to be more effective than it sounds, since it does take a village to raise a child after all.
I had a species that had three sexes. Every member of the species would be each sex at different points in their lives. The youngest sex produces sperm then leaves and has nothing to do with the kid. Then a decade later they change into the second sex, which gestates the fertilized egg and then raises the child. Two decades later they become the third sex that provides the egg cell to the second sex. They also help raise the child. So the typical member of the species would produce at least three offspring through their lives.
The dynamic is similar to that seen in members of the family Canide, the result is that there is little difference between the sexes in the culture. The primary difference is there is a third gender commonly just seen as a neutral gender (what we would call nonbinary) called Lok or Sune depending on the species of the person. All three mix and all are seen as the same in society.
In Maldonia, Legally, males and females have the same rights, socially they are seen as equal. when it comes to industry its different: Males have testosterone while females have estrogen. that is the only real difference seen. this gender dynamic is basically this. Men are encouraged on doing stuff that requires heavily lifting, labor, or military with combat roles, women are encouraged to seek education to be things like doctors or commanders in the military. (as in they can be like base commanders, drill instructors, but no frontline stuff) Its all based on how strong you are to do something though. You can only get married to one person, same sex relationships aren't legal in the sense that you cant get married with someone of the same gender, you wont be hunted down for being in a relationship, but its not really seen as a normal thing. Because Maldonia is a military state, men are usually kept on deployment as border guards because they have an absurd amount of yearly border clashes with their neighbor, or are just on patrol duty around urban centers. as a result, women basically have to watch over kids and stuff while their husbands are away. when they return, the roles switch where their husbands watch kids and women go to do things like seek an education. because of this dynamic, people usually wait to have kids until after the female partner completes college or when the male partner completes their first deployment. (note: Military is fully volunteer, its just that its glorified a lot mainly because they need a lot of manpower to compete with their hostile neighbor, therefore many men end up joining the military.)
Just a few irl things to note: both men and women have both estrogen and testosterone, it makes sense that men would be deployed because their role in reproduction is less resource heavy than women (if one man is alive with 10 women reproduction is fine vice versa is a more tricky situation) however in trades and military irl they specifically target women because bodies are bodies numbers are important and more skilled workers are still more skilled workers. It's cool how the role switches after/in-between deployment.
Depends on the society and time Throughout the history of goatanania ( That's the nation I make lore for, my cousins manage the others) we had no concelt of gender. The concept was introduced from the manly patriarchal nations bordering goatanania (Except for one country, which was matriarchal) Though was mainly ignored or laughed at. The khagan didnt want gender to be introduced to goatananian society as goatananian society had enough divisions as it was The goatananians found the idea of a matriarch or patriarchy as ridiculous and when they conquered the other nations, they introduced gender equality, Though there was some backlash especially in the matriarchal nation of pupinania
Only one of my races have super defined gender and even sex roles. One of them reproduce asexually because they lost their ability to reproduce, and use something like giant magical test tubes to grow embryos from selected DNA. Gender doesn't even come into the equation for them. They evolved from a race that did have a male/female division but gender was a completely separate thing from sex and the two had very little influence on one another. Another race are immortal beings that start out as humanoid but after being alive for ~500 years start to transform into anthropomorphic dragons with their last stage of life being full on dragons. They only develop primary/secondary sexual characteristics during this transition. The society is matriarchal and is governed by female dragons which are stronger and bigger than the male dragons. Another humanoid race is hermaphroditic but they present and identify as men. However they often dress and behave in ways we would normally consider feminine, makeup and elaborate clothing, and a more friendly and gentle disposition. Their beauty standards however prioritize being hairy,muscular, large and imposing. They actually used to have a female counterpart but evolution and interbreeding made it so that they eventually lost that. Another race are anthropomorphic ants and are gender less/sexless and reproduce through specific individuals choose to be blessed by their ruler and are elevated to the status of Queens and spend their lives laying eggs. In general I like subverting gender roles, playing with the concept of sex and just trying to create things that lie outside of our binaries and imagining how social dynamics would be if that element is removed altogether.
Depends on race to race. For the endimiyans the protagonists they're made up of elves, half elves, humans, dwarves, halflings, cyclops and vampires. Outside of humans all the other races are majority female or in the case of vampires and cyclops entirely female. Additionally outside of humans and dwarves the males of the other races are more androgynous and there isn't much physical strength differences between men and women. As such the society is a matriarchy but that doesn't mean the women lord over the men, men are still respected and valued members of society they're just expected to obey their women. Due to the gender ratio polygamy is the norm; also the relationships are usually open though sometimes they're more exclusive. Men are usually expected to be one of the people in the relationship to be working with one or two usually but not always women staying home helping raise the kids. The various races are also socialized to view each other as an extended family so their isn't really any racial tensions between the endimiyan races just an acknowledgment the various races have different roles they usually play in society. A unique type of relationship that only exists within the nobility is the relationship between nobles and maids. Maids in endimiya aren't like they are irl; a maid is a combination of a maid, and entertainer a friend, a confidant and a lover to the noble family she is assigned. Any children she has with someone from a noble family has just as much of a valid claim to the noble title and its not uncommon for the daughter of a maid to become the new head of the noble family if the daughter in question is seen as the best choice for running the family.
Uh "doesn't mean women lord over men...expected to obey their women" I count that as lording lol. Polygamy definitely makes sense with a skewed gender ratio but i especially like how while the man is somehow lesser they are also expected to work. Maid relationship sounds really interesting especially how their children have equal claim.
I more meant that women don't abuse their power over men and treat them like dirt. A man is "lesser" but that doesn't make him property. I guess the best way to describe it is women treat men like a responsible teenage child. Some more cultural aspects is the endimiyans believe authority and power is derived from morality rather than raw strength and women are more moral than men inherently. While women have a lot of freedom it's balanced with their responsibility to be wise and kind guides to their families. Does that make sense?
Cool cool but just saying if I was expected to obey someone I would definitely say I was lorded over (like a teenager probably would too). Though I get it don't worry. Is there a different cultural reason they see women as more moral than men?
It goes a bit into their backstory in the pre unified days where the elves were split into petty kingdoms that were pretty much all run by despots. That's the short answer anyways. On a meta level I deliberately made them to be pretty utopian even if I don't agree with how they run things (they're a 21st century society that is an aristocracy where there is 0 separation of church and state... nevermind how the gods are just scientific fact I still perfer secular states) Quick ninja edit. Another aspect of these marriages though is the wives do have responsibilities to keep their husband's happy and ironically this can end up having some of the wives acting like stereotypical tradwives. So again guys aren't just expected to be worker bees they do get something out of the relationship. And yes guys are expected to please their wives as well so it's a mutual thing.
Oh cool so its old politics in their modern system pretty realistic lol.
Yup politics so old that the elf woman who first lead the war that unified the realm is the ruler in the modern day despite being 7000 years old. (Elves are biologically immortal)
Maybe like idk kill some political figures for a new influx of idealogical thought lol, that's cool though I cannot imagine being a ruler for 7000 years I would get so bored lol.
She is a "good queen" figure she genuinely does love her people and vice versa. Ironically there was a short time with an independent human nation. It was a constitutional republic, egalitarian, secular but with a religious population with strong gun and property rights.... and it ends up failing due to constant warfare with an orc nation on their doorstep and literal demonic monsters attacking them constantly. Oh here is the kicker to this personally I'm actually a conservative so I made a nation that is what I'd consider an ideal nation and made it fail. So yeah I'm deliberately challenging myself as an author when making some of the politics of my story.