All male/female societies and their implications

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Hi everyone,

there was a discussion at a blog of Angharard's yesterday, I sparked with a not so thought through comment... Someone made an interesting statement though... The fact that an all female society would be vastly different from the society we have today. I think that's quite an interesting topic, considering all those gender war stories that tend to crop up and expanding anti-male/female chauvinism.

I personally think there is a good reason why men and women behave differently in society and taking one away would only mean disaster. I wonder how it would affect society though. It's not about politics since those tend to be indifferent to gender. I wonder how it would change the culture and economy.

Supremacists on both sides of the gender divide tend to say the world would be a paradise without all the opressors/parasites, but I severly doubt it. I'm planning to write a story about the aftermath of a genderwar and need to know some different opinions on male and female culture to avoid being too biased. I hate reading stories where I have to groan about the amount of chauvinism and supremacist beliefs - I want to do better.
What would happen if the male and the female part of humanity would be sepperated? Will men only care for economical and scientific progress and stop caring for their fellow humans? Will women be too caught into vanity to think about progress? (yeah I know, awful clichées...) Or will something else entirely happen?

This is quite an emotional topic, but I really need help, so it would be nice if everyone could refrain from grave insults to either gender. Prejudices are sometimes justified, but please explain why you think something would happen.

Thanks to everyone participating, I hope you'll have many different ideas and can keep this discussion civil,

Beyogi

Familiarity

It depends on what you're starting from. If your societies are being founded by people who grew up in a culture with both males and females, they'd probably recreate the same structures with certain members taking on aspects of the traditional "male" and "female" roles just by gravitating to the familiar. But then give each group a few generations of development in isolation, (however they've figured out how to reproduce) and those roles would probably drift a bit.

The general idea was that the

The general idea was that the fanatists got the majority among womenkind and started a war on the men and won. They'd try to start their matriarchal utopia. I guess it's rather obvious what will happen from the side of politics, but how would that actually affect culture and economy. Will womenkind stagnate in a self-suficient conservative society or will they actually create something dynamic that goes beyond keeping the status quo? What will happen to things like makeup and fashion? Will women waste more ressources on grooming, or less? Will they create a society that replaces males with butches or will they try to make every woman equal?

About the men: Would they really want to recreate the female role? After females started a gendercide and only few escaped into space, while the rest was either killed or transformed into subserviant females? I have a bit of a problem to imagine an all male society without females. Normally men are driven by their sexual drive to impress females. That is a big motor for innovation - but that would completly fall away.
Would guys make themselves gay, or would they just cast away sexuality completly? I guess female sex-bots would be an option, but would the guys want to be confronted with their nemesis all the time, even if it's just a puppet?
I figured the men would lack much of their drive for progress - progress would only come from necessity and curiosity.
Guys can be rather cold to each other, but how does that work among gays? If your gender mates aren't only rivals but also potential partners. I guess it would be a rather strane society.

Male/female societies...

I got off to a really bad start with men in my life at a very early age. My Father was a drunk, and my stepfather was a brutal misogynist bastard. When still very young, I still remember my being told I was a boy. I felt a great sense of injustice and did not accept it for a while. It was a solemn day that I realized that I too was one of the enemy.

Self hate followed me through life, though I did my best to care for a wife and 3 children. None of them had any idea of what was really going on in my head. I did my best to be faithful, kind, gentle, dependable and loving. Then it all fell apart and in a short time I was off on the path to find myself. Still, I did not totally break down until the youngest was married. I am not ashamed of the man I was.

Now, it's been 7 years, 3 months since I began to transform to a woman, and I must say that life is very different. Still, in most ways it is more pleasant than the bone grinding task of being a man; working so hard that your body eventually fails; arthritis sets in, your back fails and then you are the useless dreggs of society.

There are some things about being a woman that it is best to just accept. No matter how much you know, some men will discount and devalue you. It is not actually to devalue you, no matter how it feels, but most men really need to feel superior and um NEEDED.

You have to be three times smarter than a man to succeed. Fortunately that is not too hard. Still, especially for younger women, many of us feel the hormonal, pherimonic driven hook that nature put in us and makes us long for men. And, lets face it, when you have a baby hanging on your breast, and two crawling around, it is wonderful to have a man around to slay the tiger, take out the garbage and wash the car. LOL And, when men know that we like them, it just makes their day! Most will go to great lengths to get that admiration from us.

There are things that men do that make no sense at all to us, from not putting the seat up to just wandering off after dinner and not helping with the dishes. They'll just roll over and go to sleep after they've had their way with us, and we want to talk and cuddle for a while.

Learning to manipulate a man to get what we want is an art, but no woman will admit to doing it to any mere man. A lot of what I have said is not within my own personal experience, but in talking to other women and just observing, those things, it is apparent.

Gwendolyn

We humans are flexible

I think that there _could_ be a significantly different society, at first glance, whether it'd be an all female or all male society. But! When looking a little deeper I guess there you would see more similarities with the existing society now.

I don't think that in the long run there would be much difference, based on fundamental basic needs for all humans, regardless of there gender. We all have a male and female side within us, although many might vehemently object, but we women don't differ too much from men. We are capable of violence just as much as men, and men do have a significant caring nurturing side to them. To name just two of the more obvious assumed differences between the two.

On another note. Have you read the serial Sappho from Aardvark? It's a beautiful story about a male landing in a female-only society, where he must cope with what you might call an aftermath of genderwar. Although maybe a self chosen exile for a female-only society and severing all ties with their ancestors isn't wholly the same as a war.
But Aardvark comes with a very nice original view, and solution, on what could be seen as a flaw in a one-gender society, and is essentially leaning on the basis of the adage of 'we are all a little male and female in ourselves'. Some a little more this, others a little more so. If you haven't read it yet, do so. It's a wonderful story. I like it better than Warrior from Batuk.

And another source of information, or basis of experience, if you will, can be the penitentiary system. Look at the -inside of- men and women prisons and try to determine the lay of the land in these societies. As I've read and heard of these institutions there are exponents of contra-gender behaviour in these one-gendered societies who, because they seem to fulfill a basic human need apparently, which keeps them -reasonably- safe. And no, I don't mean the pure obvious sexual need alone, while it _is_ there, there is more to it than just that.

Just some thoughts.

Jo-Anne

A Shore of Women.

Pam Sargent wrote this diestopia story about just that. The women lived in city states protected by high tech, The men lived like cave men and were actively repressed by the leaders of the women. In this story the women stagnate not striving to even use the knowledge they have, but depend on a repressive grip on everyone around them becoming just as bad as the men who almost ended life.
I have been working on a project of the working title Blessings and Resurrection which are to be two towns in the Cascade mountains. Blessings is the town that many of the men by choice live in the mountains surrounding the town and use the services of the town and trade with the town for what they need. The women mostly live in the town with there children but the connection between the genders is maintained by mutual needs and respect. The separation allows the men to be men and the women to be women with all the variations between. It is a society that takes choice of the individual as being sacred. This is not a perfect society and has problems getting things done due to endless debate. Resurrection is the shinny city on the hill that evolves from many hard times and disasters to become a very conservative christen male driven society. Both come to need each other after a disaster stops supplies from getting through.
I am interested in evolving these town through this situations not looking for black and white solutions to there problems.

The only bad question is the one not asked.

If you think ...

... that a female run society would be more gentle then all I can suggest is that you look at the UK government under Thatcher, our first female PM. She was more macho than any of her male predecessors (or any since). In fact those of her party (usually male) who showed compassion were labelled 'wets' and 'not one of us'. ('Wet' is a British term for wimp, I suppose)

The hierarchical structures that all societies seem to engender encourage what are usually seen to be masculine traits in leaders (perhaps leaders of any kind?). In my experience that includes those of either gender. Men are quite as likely to have tender and sympathetic personalities as women. It's just that it's often been difficult to display them openly. There are good and bad people - gender is irrelevant.

Until recently British society discouraged emotion from men. Despite being my only parent I can hardly remember my father ever touching me until the last few months of his life when he was showing signs of tragic senility. That seems to be changing and both my half-brothers seem to have very close relationships with their children. Perhaps that's why my wife and I chose to remain childless - we were afraid that a family would spoil the relationship we had (and have) with each other.

IMO a single gender society of either type would be a dystopia. In general, men and women offer different things to a society and both are necessary, or at least desirable, for a harmonious whole.

All that from an atheist with no 'family values' agenda :)

Robi

I don't think gender matters

I don't think gender matters with politics. Thatcher is a good example and there are others. I wonder, if one would take all female leaders and all males one's who started more wars by percentage.

I think leadership itself is seen as a masculine trait. Therefore everything associated with leadership is masculine too - by that definition.

I think the a male must not show hurt attitude is part of all societies. It really sucks and I think there is a real need for male emancipation from archaic values. The big problem is that most societies rely on males fullfilling those values.

1951 Take...

...on the subject: The Disappearance, by Philip Wylie. (I was hoping it had showed up online, but Google says there's no ebook version.) Briefly, an unexplained event splits Earth into two worldlines, one with only men and one with only women.

Haven't read it in about 30 years, but based on my memory:

Given the Cold War and postwar conformist behavior, you can probably guess where this goes: at the climax, the men of the US and USSR are about to start a nuclear war while the women of the two countries exchange delegations and try to find a cooperative future, since Soviet women have more industrial skills and the Western standard of living is so much higher. (One scene shows the awe of the Soviet group on touring a normal working-class house in the U.S., electric kitchen and all, "and they were about to get a television set!".)

The men have started various crash projects in hopes of making reproduction possible. They're frantically following up every rumor of one woman surviving in some isolated third-world country. Morphine and other controlled medical substances are quietly being distributed to "responsible citizens" so that they'll be able to help when everything collapses, whether it's war or other causes.

The anticommunist witch-hunt has reached epic proportions, on the two countries' assumption that something like this could only have been caused by the other side. Everyone wears American Flag lapel buttons reading "110% American" in public to avoid the risk of being ostracized or worse.

The day after the event, professional female impersonators are beckoning people in with an almost contemptuous "we're all you've got left", but as time goes on, a small percentage of men take on the role of "b-girls" (usually traveling in groups, presumably for their own safety), dressing and behaving as women and apparently feeling the need to provide the country with some of what's been lost emotionally. It's just a two-paragraph digression with no impact on the plot; the author notes that some of those who have chosen this life are ones that one never would have expected.)

The women are starting reproductive projects too, but IIRC aren't quite as urgent about it; after all, they can still get pregnant if they can synthesize sperm or an equivalent. Their instinct, as noted before, is to cooperate, with enough empathy for those who no longer fit in to allow them to save face as they're set aside. (The First Lady is the acting president; can't recall if any female politicians turn up, though she has many knowledgeable advisors from in and out of government circles.)

On both sides of the divide, estranged families reunite, seeking strength in each other.

The story ends with the two worlds reunited in the same unexplained way that they separated, with humanity having learned that men and women both provide something essential to society on more than the reproductive level.

That said, I don't recall any clear indication that the women couldn't have made it work, though I may have forgotten over time and there are certainly nuances that I could have missed. (I've omitted just about all the interpersonal story events as irrelevant to your question, but truth is that I probably read the story mostly for the background.) The primary women in the cast, as I recall, showed great relief in having the men they loved back in their lives, and felt good (or at least claimed to) that they no longer needed to make leadership decisions, but I think they had an improved sense of their abilities and self-worth. (Sort of weird, since this was published just six years or so after Rosie the Riveter, that such lessons had been forgotten in 50s America, but from what I've read elsewhere, that seems to have been the case.)

Eric

Philip Wylie on Mom as Satan

laika's picture

I've never found a copy of THE DISAPPEARANCE but it should be an interesting, if aggravating read.
Philip Wylie has been known to go off the deep end about women, American women in particular.
I'll never forget how he characterized us in his GENERATION OF VIPERS:
"Butterscotch on top, underneath raw sewage..."

He comes down fairly hard on the new (circa 1940) emasculated American male, on greed and venality of all sorts, but he reserves a special revulsion for females. Here is his chapter from VIPERS, his most famous book; on why Mom is Satan:
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/momism...

Interestingly he was raised in some fairly grim institutional orphanage, having neither parent in his life. While I'm not sure about his claims this gave him a special objectivity lacking in all those sorry men poisoned by "momism", it certainly seems to have colored his philosophy.

Some of what he said in that famous IED of a book, I agree with,
like his conclusion that if we want a better world we'll have to become better people.
I guess if you go off on everything and everyone youre bound to get a few things right.
And I admire him as a stylist- the rhetorical equivalent of punk rock.
Nobody this side of Swift or Voltaire can rant like Philip Wylie...
~~hugs, Veronica

.
"The federal government will only recognize 2 genders,
as assigned at birth-" (The man in his own words:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1lugbpMKDU

Sewers...

Puddintane's picture

In that he quotes Tertullian: Woman is a temple built over a sewer, the gateway to the devil. Woman, you are the devil's doorway. You led astray one whom the devil would not dare attack directly. It was your fault that the Son of God had to die; you should always go in mourning and rags.

Most of the early church "Fathers," are one extended misogynist rant, based of course on "authoritative texts."

To embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure...
-- Saint Odo of Cluny

P.S. I actually have a copy of The Disappearance. It's a thoroughly icky book, in my humble opinion, filled with Fifties-style casual sexism and facile generalisations. Tertullian wouldn't be terribly offended. I've seen it available as a torrent of a self-extracting Windows .exe zip file. It supposedly contains mobi and epub versions of the text, and is of course thoroughly illegal and possibly quite dangerous to download. *I* wouldn't do it, but then I look both ways before crossing the road.

Namby pamby...

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Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

Yeah... they didn't like

Yeah... they didn't like women very much. Thinking about it, it might have been a psychological self defense. If you say women are dirty and thus not worthy of your attention you might start to believe it and not fall to the sin of sexual contact.
Seriously, someone who believes them ought to deliver him/herself to a mental institution. I only have pity for that poor guys, I hope they took their duty to god seriously and volunteered for a darvin award by keeping their seed out of the wombs of women ;)

Oddly enough...

Puddintane's picture

Up until the Thirteenth century, the Church partially supported itself through monopolies (in some nations) on the brothel business. That was one of the things Martin Luther was upset about. One of the first things the Reformation did was shut down the Church brothels.

That's also why, in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince Hamlet refers to brothels as "nunneries." England was Protestant at the time.

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Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style