Building Worlds - Extreme Patriarchal Society

[GarfunkeL]

I've had this idea flopping around in my head for a while now so I decided to write some stuff down and utilize the Hivemind for further deliberations. I may or may not actually write any stories in this setting, as of now its purely a mental exercise. I don't want to create a pure Gor/fapping-fantasy; I'd like it be consistent and have logical, rational thinking behind it if possible. It should not be misogynistic utopia, rather I'm trying to create a dystopia for 90% of its inhabitants.

To the point then! What would a high-technology society look like if it was extremely patriarchal and how could it have remained so through its development and finally, can it remain as one without excessive handwaving?

1) Political power rests completely in the hands of an upper caste of men whose sons will eventually surpass them. They make up a parliament or a ruling council or whatever. There should be perhaps a dozen castes and up/downward movement would be impossible.

2) Education is available only to men and the amount of education one receives would be determined by his caste - lowest cast members are literate and have basic technical understanding but no more while upper caste members make up the managers, scientists, officers and politicians and receive sufficient education for it.

3) There should be a some sort of law system in place, applicable at least to men as I feel that otherwise the society would explode if the lower castes would have no shielding from the whims of the upper castes. Could it be applied to women as well? Perhaps they are property, in the eyes of law. Lower castes should not equal serfdom automatically.

4) Classic marriage and family unit should not exist. Inheritance and lineage are traced completely through the father's side. Since only the position of the father matters but its significance is huge, it means that polygamy would be one sided, ie men could have multiple wives while female sexuality would still be controlled to a large extent. Unless the actual genetics do not matter, rather the "owner" of a woman determines the status of the children she bears? So a girl would be owned by her father or possibly brother until he trades her away to move under the ownerships of another male.

5) Society would evolve very little if at all, furthermore scientific progress would be very slow because majority of population would be excluded from it and pressure for new innovation would be minimal. Majority of population should be complacent in their position as otherwise the system would collapse immediately. I loathe to use religion to justify this complacency, as this would detract from the sci-fi portion of it though maybe it could be plugged in somehow. Perhaps mindless mass entertainment and prolific use of recreational drugs that dull the mind, government sanctioned of course?

6) Can job market be completely closed to women? This would mean a significant "idle" population, even if they maintain household and work as servants. Could the society described above perhaps sustain 1920/30s style where women work for as low-paid entry-level jobs until getting married. But as there would be no institution of marriage in this society - would the women always work for their "owner", whether that man would be their father or brother. Perhaps low castes use women helpers in labour-intensive jobs (many agricultural operations). On the other hand would the presence of women in public life and perhaps factories and offices create pressure for their legislative and cultural role to change?

That's what I've thought about so far. Gimme feedback!

 

[GarfunkeL]

Aaaand I just read the FATAL-tread in GRPGD which seems to touch upon this topic a little. So just to clarify - I don't want to create the ideal world that Hall would love, thankyouverymuch.

 

[Murk]

I'm curious as to what kind of stories you would plan to tell in such a setting? Is this chalk-up for basic adventuring of the "kill stuff, take stuff" variety or are you aiming for an intrigue based plot that revolves more around working through/against a system similar to Blade Runner?

 

[GarfunkeL]

The idea that is running around in my head is the classic "fish-out-of-water" story. For some reason or another an outsider(s) will be introduced into this society. Most likely a world originally colonized by humans at 2192 or so, lost contact with humanity in large, degenerated/evolved into what I described above, BOOM human space ship crash-lands for whatever reason, survivor(s) have to adapt in order to survive. I'm thinking of the classic 3-person team, Male A (the cynic), Male B (the pervert) and Female A (the idealist) who would naturally have differentiating viewpoint. So I can jump between characters of which one is horrified but only wants to survive, one is delighted and wants to join in and one is horrified and wants to change things

But I'd like to flesh out the world first. I do not want it to be Yank in King Arthur's Court, rather more towards The Planet of the Apes in that I don't want the outsiders to have incredible levels of knowledge, skills and equipment that dwarfs the locals. Thus a society which would be at least 20th century Earth equivalent or even 21st century and which leads into this thread.

 

[saenz]

I'm glad to see you've got a specific endstate in mind ("the what") and are looking for "the how," but you really should be thinking about "the why" instead. Create your causes and allow your effects to happen logically. Keep tweaking your causes until you get the effects you want.

1) Political power rests completely in the hands of an upper caste of men

WHY? Why do they have this power? Were they the first ones to discover/steal/develop the land/technology? This is the second-most most important question you have to answer.

... up/downward movement would be impossible ... there should be some sort of law system otherwise society would explode ... society would evolve very little ... majority of the population should be complacent

WHY?!? Why don't the streets run red with the blood of the bourgeisie? Why can't a smart and ambitious anybody go from rags-to-riches and defacto move up the food chain? Why is the all-powerful force of class struggle seemingly non-existant? Hence the most important question you have to answer, why does the power in the society stay concentrated in the small upper class?

Once you get those two questions settled, everything else falls into place.

Here's some more pointers to keep you ontrack though.

family unit should not exist

To disband the most fundamental anthropological unit is pretty damn hard. "Loving" your offspring is one of the strongest instincts out there. You're going to need some pretty hardcore cultural structure to sell this one logically. Have you read Huxley's "Brave New World?" Completely outsourcing child-rearing is the only way I can see this making sense.

patriarchy... job market closed to women

Patriarchy happens because men are physically stronger, allowing them to dominate the primative physical world. Technology's goal is to make the world less physically challenging. Consequently, feminism arises as the physical advantage of men becomes increasingly irrelevant.

polygamy

Polygamy happens because of a surplus of females. Usually this is because warrior cultures create alot of male casualties. If that society also captures/enslaves/absorbs the widows and daughters of the foes, that's even more surplus females. Polygamy occurs because otherwise, vast quantities of the population would be denied breeding rights. However, as the world becomes more civilized, men are provided less opportunities to get themselves killed, and the surplus of females disappears along with the viability of polygamy.

As an endnote, don't get too fixated on making too perfect a world. Faults lead to conflicts which lead to plots. At the very least, a significant feminist insurgency strikes me as a hell of a basis for some stories here.

 

[GarfunkeL]

If in the society power would be parceled out, it should, logically, eventually lead to a republic or a similar, at least somewhat democratic society at which point it would be hard to find rational justification for the extreme version of patriarchy. That was the justification behind the oligarchy and the caste-system. I know in India the whole Hindu/Nirvana/Re-incarnation thingy is what enabled the caste-system to emerge in the first place. I probably need something similar.

The upper-most caste holds power because it has always done so; originally they were the landholders. Now they have morphed into industrialists while also being landholders. The secondary caste gets their power from upholding the status quo; they are the soldiers and police and enforcers of the upper caste. Their symbiotic nature has enabled them to keep the lower castes in their place.

Have you read Huxley's "Brave New World?" Completely outsourcing child-rearing is the only way I can see this making sense.

Yes, it is one of the bigger hurdles. I can see it somewhat possible if fathers take no part in the raising of their daughters while, from an early age, taking fully over the lives of their sons. The genders need to be separated in an early stage for there to be a credible divide between them. During most of human history, genders have been quite equal amongst working classes because of growing up, working and living in close proximity to each other.

Perhaps the upper-castes have extensive boarding schools for their sons? Where they are taught the merits of the current system while being kept away from getting too familiar with either the lower castes or the opposite gender. But how to solve the problem at the lower level? Perhaps I'll turn the state into a wholly totalitarian thing and follow Huxley - women get placed into State-run "hatcheries" when their pregnancy nears ninth month - newborns are immediately taken away from their mothers, wet nurses are rotated regularly enough so to avoid the forming of strong emotional bonds and from early age both sexes are separated and the brainwashing/education begins.

But that does not really fit well with my original idea of hereditary castes. Have to think about it.

Consequently, feminism arises as the physical advantage of men becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Not quite. Women have always worked alongside men on the fields. Hunter-gatherer societies apparently divided tasks - men into hunters and women into gatherers as they took care of the childred but after agriculture came around the workload was similar for both sexes.

I'm bit worried about the motivation for technological development in general. If the wheels keep rolling, why would there be any progress at all? China managed to avoid technological development for a long time thanks to the bureaucratic status quo.

Polygamy happens because of a surplus of females. Usually this is because warrior cultures create alot of male casualties.

Yes, that's one way. Other possibility is what happened in UK during 17th, 18th and 19th centuries as colonization pulled hundreds of thousands of mostly men from the homeland, leaving mostly women behind. But because the culture of the society, dominated by the Church was adamant against it, instead of polygamy, spinsters emerged in such large numbers that Parliament had to make laws allowing spinsters to run their own businesses etc.

But if there is no marriage "contract" as we know and females lack basic human rights, the only requirement would be a lopsided male-female ratio. Perhaps lower castes toil in incessant frustration, working towards the goal of earning enough credits to be able to purchase their own "wife" as the upper castes hoard females to themselves, using them as reward for underlings? Too freaky?

At the very least, a significant feminist insurgency strikes me as a hell of a basis for some stories here.

Yes, escaped women live on the fringes of civilized society, deep in the wilderness, in lesbian communities, waging low-level asymmetric warfare against the Patriarchy!

Our heroine, as a woman of sharp tongue and quick wit, so captures the attention of a young lad of the upper-caste that his eyes get opened to the possibility of women actually being able to govern their own bodies and lives?!

I'm hoping that if I flesh out the world enough I'll get something written as well. My Shadowrun story ran into 8 chapters, while my Peter F Hamilton'esque sci-fi had two chapters and my Arcanum fic was just about a single chapter. Oh well, too little time and too many things to do!

 

[laclongquan]

Such a society will be very very stagnant and destructive. And such stagnance require religions to maintain itself, as social dynamics will resolve it. Oppressive Religions.

Example? Caste system of India upto near modern time.

You want to destroy the most basic brick of society: a family. Then you damn well better have something to replace it: an unit of religious organization? a social unit? And since humans cant spend personal energy into family no longer, they will spend it on that unit and lemme tell you, it gonna be damn weird: Obessessive behaviours, kinda like Japanese otaku on steroids.

And since all of it go against human nature, there gonna have a lots of illicit affairs 'illicit family' as it were. And an extremely tense society. Quiver on a brink of explode, I should think.

 

[bhlaab]

Okay, my first thought is "Handmaid's Tale" which if you haven't read it I suggest that you do.

You seem to be focusing on the logistics, but with your setting having such a loaded backbone you really need to be considering what the emotional center of your setting will be. You say you want it to be a dystopia, but I'm not seeing the human element that a dystopia needs.

 

[Monocause]

Fun!

1)

1) Political power rests completely in the hands of an upper caste of men whose sons will eventually surpass them. They make up a parliament or a ruling council or whatever. There should be perhaps a dozen castes and up/downward movement would be impossible.

If there would be no social mobility and the caste system would be very rigid, you have to create a mechanism that serves to placate the masses. Democratic/capitalistic societies function well because everyone has at least the illusion of upward mobility, like a Latino immigrant with poor English and a shitty job praying for the American Dream to come true and imagining himself as the next Donald Trump, fully considering it possible.
Since this is not the case, I suggest a special soldier caste/ secret police organisation that would have certain priviledges and keep order but was counterbalanced by some other institution (so as to prevent them from doing a coup d'etat). I personally don't find a 'soma' concept reminiscent of the Brave New World to be convincing.

2)

There should be a some sort of law system in place, applicable at least to men as I feel that otherwise the society would explode if the lower castes would have no shielding from the whims of the upper castes. Could it be applied to women as well? Perhaps they are property, in the eyes of law. Lower castes should not equal serfdom automatically.

I'd say that it cannot equal serfdom, at least not in an obvious way.You could create a law system in which every caste has its 'privileges' and 'duties'. Like - the lowest caste has a privilege of not working doing saturday and it's the only caste which can do so, so it's a privilege. Not so if you consider the fact that the lowest caste does the most tedious and physically demanding tasks available and even with a one day off works longer than all the other castes. Again, some illusions that those affected can cling to - illusions of 'honourable caste identity' and 'special privileges' which enables the subjects to create a sense of pride and empowerment.

3)

Classic marriage and family unit should not exist. Inheritance and lineage are traced completely through the father's side. Since only the position of the father matters but its significance is huge, it means that polygamy would be one sided, ie men could have multiple wives while female sexuality would still be controlled to a large extent. Unless the actual genetics do not matter, rather the "owner" of a woman determines the status of the children she bears? So a girl would be owned by her father or possibly brother until he trades her away to move under the ownerships of another male.

I suggest a role like this. Women are pleasure slaves/reproductors. They are the only ones that are allowed to do housekeeping, but they can't work anywhere else, even work in the fields is done by males. Forcing a male of any caste to serve in one's house is the biggest humiliation possible and forbidden by law - but abused by the highest echelons of power.
Let's borrow a page from the Muslims - "owned" women are allowed to appear publicly only in a veil. If she appears without a veil it means that the owner wishes to sell her/give her away and invites others to assess how attractive/able the woman is so that they might watch her closely and touch her before purchase/take-over. It is also common for potential buyers to ask the "on-sale" women about their fertility.
Wooing or otherwise showing interest publicly in a veiled, "owned" woman is forbidden by law.
I wouldn't dismantle the family unit completely since it's too common in dystopias. I'd suggest that there is an extended family model restricted only to males - the fathers, the sons and close male friends of the family. Women are out, of course, as are the daughters who grow up amongst other women to be sold when she matures - an important part of the economy, some males with good genetical material have harems to spawn large amounts of girls "with a pedigree", girls with good genetic material which are a better buy because they're prettier/more fertile and give better children.

5)

5) Society would evolve very little if at all, furthermore scientific progress would be very slow because majority of population would be excluded from it and pressure for new innovation would be minimal. Majority of population should be complacent in their position as otherwise the system would collapse immediately. I loathe to use religion to justify this complacency, as this would detract from the sci-fi portion of it though maybe it could be plugged in somehow. Perhaps mindless mass entertainment and prolific use of recreational drugs that dull the mind, government sanctioned of course?

This again is too much like the Brave New World. I suggest leaving some progress due to the upper castes inventing and improving things - but it would be a distorted "noblesse oblige". They would consider it a means to projecting their power and higher status, and indeed, the lower castes would see the creations of the upper castes and would never think that they can be equal.

6) Can job market be completely closed to women? This would mean a significant "idle" population, even if they maintain household and work as servants. Could the society described above perhaps sustain 1920/30s style where women work for as low-paid entry-level jobs until getting married. But as there would be no institution of marriage in this society - would the women always work for their "owner", whether that man would be their father or brother. Perhaps low castes use women helpers in labour-intensive jobs (many agricultural operations). On the other hand would the presence of women in public life and perhaps factories and offices create pressure for their legislative and cultural role to change?

In this dystopia women should be as limited in their contacts with the general world as possible, so they should be outside the job market - again, limited to housekeeping, giving pleasure to their men and giving birth. Such an economy is entirely feasible.

EDIT: Added the bolded out part so that the last paragraph won't make me look like a total dick if taken out of context.

 

[J1M]

As far as a strong patriarchy goes, I would suggest you look into the Nietzschean culture from the Andromeda TV show. http://andromeda.wikia.com/wiki/Nietzschean

It's based completely around genetics and strong family unit and I suppose it allows for more upward mobility than you would like, but it will give you some ideas.

I would also suggest that for this society to see technological progress but remain with power in the hands of so few there is the option of them having come into technology by happenstance ie. finding alien tech or resuming living in another culture's city. (Think the re-population of Rome) Now, I'm not suggesting you go the Imperium of Man route and make technological use into some sort of religion, just that it is a good way of justifying its mystery and lack of use/knowledge by a large segment of society.

Anyway, it's all about establishing cultural values. The indian caste syste works because it values karma over all else. Royalty broke down in europe because it valued wealth and people who weren't royalty became wealthy. Maybe using machines and repairing them is considered bitch work in this society as people would consider fruit picking today? (Both are essential if you want both electricity and fruit)

I think that at the least the family unit of the father-son dynamic must be kept in tact. If polygamy is going to exist then children can view all of their father's wives as their mother in equal measure, and the girls could be sent off to some sort of boarding school where they learn to be proper ladies to get the segregation and disconnect you require between both the genders and father/daughter.

EDIT: Also, if women were viewed as property of the state and not of individuals I think that would be an interesting twist on the standard 'women have no rights' setting. Would explain some protections they have.

And obviously I don't think any of this is how *our* world should be, but do we really need to add those kind of disclaimers here?

 

[GarfunkeL]

And obviously I don't think any of this is how *our* world should be, but do we really need to add those kind of disclaimers here?

I sincerely hope not. 'tis the Codex.

This again is too much like the Brave New World.

Hard to not borrow from the classics :D

 

[Lyric Suite]

Patriarchy not detected anywhere in this thread. I is disappoint.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Patriarchy not detected anywhere in this thread. I is disappoint.

Hey, if your condition allows, please enlighten us!

 

[Brotherman Bill]

I would suggest looking to Afghanistan for real-world inspiration. As you know women are treated as shit there (it's the only country in the world where women have a higher rate of suicide than men), and it is all based on deeply rooted cultural norms, traditions and attitudes.

Introducing hatcheries and bartering with women sounds like a bit too much of a stretch, as if the patriarchy are just hatin women for the lulz of it.