I had an e-mail exchange with a good friend tonight. He had shared the special text that I have been working on in secret that is a new graphic design presentation to teach people RPGs with his better half. She was intrigued. Especially with the idea of a female dominant society that Novarium puts forward. She had lots of questions about how the social structure has changed with women on top of the food chain.
Of course, I have thought about this a LOT. However, I haven't written a lot yet, because I have been working on more important things. Like you know... the actual ruleset. :)
Anyway, the idea of someone intrigued to know more has got me thinking in this area and will probably drive some writing in the near future.
To boost the signal, let me crowd-source you a bit. I would love to hear any thoughts you have on what aspects of female gender subjugation would be easily ported over to males.
Some of the things I have already thought of and worked into my draft text:
- Property rights can only be held by women, direct inversion of traditional system. Need another name for Dowager though. Men are excluded from holding offices in the church as well. Considering this is a feudal system, this means no political rights. Demi-humans (regardless of gender) also lack these rights.
- A man's testimony is worth less than a woman's, thus you need two male witnesses in a legal proceeding to counter the testimony of a single female.
- Exclusion from skilled professions due to inability to get apprenticeship, guild memberships, etc.
- Men are subject to domestic violence from their spouse and this is almost always impossible to resolve with a legal solution. It must simply be borne by the man.
- Matriarchs are responsible for the moral rectitude of their house and they wield the same kind of social controls domestically that men have done with their daughters in history.
- Men are treated as inherently irresponsible, incapable of rational thought, having poor judgement, having terrible money management, having a lack of frugality, and so on.
- Relegation to household maintenance as primary responsibility, only this version is worse than women because men are also leaned upon for strength-intensive tasks as well such as construction and farming.
- Powerful women keep men as concubines (should I change this word? it doesn't sound as bad as dowager at least) purely for sexual purposes. Due to the inability to prove parentage of the father, this also allows infertile husbands to be bypassed, thus ensuring the survival of the lineage.
- Women are capable of adopting other females as legitimate children, even if their parent is alive, very much like in the Roman tradition. There is no such thing as a "bastard". Men can only be adopted if their natural parent is dead and they are treated as if natural born as well, though this does them no favors.
- Finally, this is not something from actual history but it does blend in serfdom. I think it is a nice unique add-on of my own. Large land-holding elites (of course, females) may take on large numbers of singular male tenants in a form of indenture where the elite maintains title on the land and rents it to the male that works it in a manner similar to serfdom. However, the elite also maintains social control of the males and it responsible for their moral rectitude as if their mother. They must approve any marriage that is entered into, the men becoming kind of like the female child from history that is used as a bargaining chip to secure political alliances and treaties. These men are referred to as the noble's "stallions" to differentiate them from actual children of the female.
So, how can I go beyond this? Hit me with your creativity, folks.
No comments:
Post a Comment