Writing Unequal Societies (Without Supporting Inequality)

Historically, occidental cultures were not as biased against women as you might think. Look, for example, at this source on trial by combat between men and women. It suggests that at least some women learnt how to fight, and were able to do so. Furthermore, a noblewoman in the middle ages would be administrating her husband's castle, as often as not managing its defence against enemies, while her husband was on crusade / fighting in some war of the King. Some women wielded considerable political power: Isabella I of Castille and Madame de Pompadour are just two examples of different kinds of power. A medieval literary example of strong women would be the Nibelungenlied: two women, Brunhilda and Kriemhild, are the main characters, holding de-facto power, manipulating the men around them, eventually wreaking destruction aplenty for the revenge they sought. The men in the story, even the great hero Siegfried, have little will of their own. Society was by no means equal, but women were not as powerless as you might think.

Female characters can be strong and interesting without challenging the laws of their society. A wife can be a strong presence in her husband's estate. (In fact, she was expected to be a strong presence.) She can be wise, learned, astute, have a political and a strategic understanding. A lover can have a strong influence on her patron, quietly giving advice. A mother can shape and counsel her son, and worry about him when he goes to battle. A woman can find herself in charge of her own estate if her husband is absent, or if she is widowed and has no adult son. For literary examples, consider the roles of Galadriel and Éowyn in male-dominant Lord of the Rings.

Female characters might suffer under the rules of society, and express the unfairness of the situation. Jane Austen's heroines speak out against the unfairness of the inheritance laws in England. Fantine in Les Miserables suffers because of the way society treats single mothers.

A woman might come into conflict with societal rules, and suffer the consequences, either prevailing or not. Jeanne d'Arc is one example, Ada Lovelace is another (her work wasn't taken seriously because she was a woman). Medieval romance is chock-full of women cross-dressing a men for various reasons. Alexander Durov is one real-life example from the Napoleonic Wars (although perhaps we should think of Alexander Durov as transgender instead - hard to say, understanding of gender having been different then).

All those are viable options. Another viable option, if you are writing fantasy rather than historic fiction, is to just have women in strong "male" roles. If we can accept dragons, no reason why we shouldn't accept women riding them.

What is not acceptable is having women only as tropes - the princess who must be rescues from the villain, the princess whose death is the hero's motivation, etc. If your women have no agency, if they could easily be replaced by a golden chalice for all the role they play in your plot, that's bad.

There are, however aspects you should consider, whatever choice (or combination thereof) you make: there are reasons for women's position being as it was throughout a long period of history. First, a woman is physically weaker than a man. I am talking here both "on average", and of the peak that we can reach: the strongest and fastest woman would necessarily be slower and weaker than the strongest and fastest man - that's just our anatomy. (A particular woman can be stronger and faster than a particular man, even than most men around her.) Thus, as long as being able to provide for a family (both food and safety) relies mainly on physical strength, men would hold more power. (In a fantasy novel, magic can act as an equaliser, shifting the power from physical strength to something both genders have equal access to. In real-life Viking society, there is evidence that power came with strength and military prowess, not with gender, allowing some women to become military leaders.)
Second, until effective contraception, a woman spent long periods of time pregnant or breastfeeding - aspects that reduced her ability to take part in other activities. This is an issue even today - a woman who has children would by necessity give less of her time to career-building. (Today it is a consideration for having children later in life, for example. Back then, it could be a consideration for a woman not to marry, provided she had that choice in the first place.)
There was also the Christian doctrine regarding a woman's place, but I'm not sure which is the chicken and which the egg here - whether doctrine supported existing custom, or the custom was shaped by the doctrine, or both.
Those aspects don't disappear just because we want them to. Those are things you'd have to address, one way or another, if you want your story to be logical.

posted over 6 years ago

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Galastel‭

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Implicit support

how can I write a male-dominated culture without implicitly supporting it?

This is tricky, but here are two simple things you can do that will help

• Include fully developed female characters that are important to the plot.
• Meet the Bechdel test.

If you think you can't do this while writing within the setting of a male dominated society, than you're not going to meet your objective.

The crux of implicit support of cultures of oppression in fiction is the absence of personhood and humanity in the representation of the oppressed, or the use of the oppressed exclusively as a narrative tool for exposition or character development of characters that are members of some other group.

Explicit support

The answer to this question is different:

How can I write a culture that oppresses some group without explicitly supporting it

Don't glorify oppression, control, and violence against members of that group. @Jay's example, "The Birth of A Nation", explicitly supports oppression.

Does this mean my story has to be about the oppression?

If it's part of the world, it's one of the things your story is about. The only way for it not to be is to have it not be part of the world your describing. But it doesn't have to be the main thing your story is about.

A story that includes fully developed characters that are members of an oppressed group (whether they are slaves, women, individuals with a disability, or anything else) is no more about that oppression than a story that doesn't fully develop those characters.

posted over 6 years ago

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De Novo supports GoFundMonica‭

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how can I write a male-dominated culture without implicitly supporting it?

Why do you think you're implicitly supporting it, to begin with? Many fantasy stories (too many to list) include killing and pillaging. A lot of them include religious fanaticism, and it's not always presented as a bad thing. You can have not a single female character that ever achieves anything, and all of those that try to fail, with the story, seemingly validating inequality, and you would still not be supporting inequality.

The fact of the matter is that writing about a topic doesn't somehow mean you support or condone it. In fact, many books are set in settings or feature protagonists that epitomize what the author does not support so as to clearly show the problems. The Great Gatsby is one example. Animal Farm and Brave New World are others.

If you're saying that what I've said doesn't really apply to historical fiction - why, the only defence you need in the case of historical fiction is a history book. "This is what things were like back then - I'm not supporting it, just telling it like it was." Did the writers of HBO: Rome support slavery? No, but it was a fact of life back then, so showing military slaves and gladiators simply added to the atmosphere.

I understand that this last section is slightly tangential, but I thought you might be mixing up writing about a society as endorsing that society. You're not part of that society, you've never experienced that society, and you're fundamentally a writer using a fascinating setting as a basis for your work. Just because you think that Medieval France, Imperial Rome, or Ancient China are fascinating settings to work in doesn't mean you agree with their policies and social reality - but it does, more or less, give you a blank cheque to write about their social reality, because that is the setting you're working in. Saying that you can't use parts of the setting would be like saying you couldn't write a book in a hypothetical public-domain Star Wars setting that includes Darth Vader.

posted over 6 years ago

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Almadel‭

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How can I write a male-dominated culture without implicitly supporting it?

As I often say here in Writing, it is important for nearly all of what you write to have consequences, some effect on your characters, their attitude, humor, decisions, emotions, etc. (Some of what you say is to manage or orient the reader.)

In this case, if you believe (as I do) that a male-dominated culture is inherently unfair and creates hardships (or advantages) where there should be none, answer for yourself, What are these hardships? Where is the imbalance?

Sexual harassments and exploitations that men do not experience? Denial of financial opportunities, jobs, promotions and investments that go to men instead? Being forced to choose between children and career, when men are not? Being underpaid for doing the same jobs? Being automatically labeled homosexual for wanting to pursue a "man's" job? Being treated like stupid children that need male guidance, at work, by police or the courts? Losing credit for their professional accomplishments if they work with or for a man, in situations where if they were a man it would not happen? Being labeled a slut or a whore if they have casual sex, or a screaming bitch if they complain about something (including being treated unequally)?

Answer for yourself, I am sure I missed some. You don't have to figure out everything that is wrong, but pick some things you find egregious (or a woman you know finds egregious); and write it in, showing the consequences in a negative light; for a character we like, so we can see the pain this discrimination causes.

The people that see such discriminations approvingly are generally those doing the discriminating and enjoying their unfair advantages, they seldom bring up the hateful pains and hardships they are causing to reap those privileges, because it is a losing argument.

If you bring them up, and show the pain and hardship in a character we sympathize with; then nobody will think you approve of this discrimination. Your character may even prevail over the situation, find away around the discrimination, carve out her own niche, whatever.

I wouldn't hide it, or gloss over it. If you want to be a neutral observer:

Even a neutral observer can see a woman crying.

posted over 6 years ago

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Amadeus‭

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While there are injustices in every society, and the rich and strong oppress the poor and weak in every society (including our own), current ideas about what is biased or unfair treatment can't be projected back on past societies. Modern society is highly anomalous in its individualism and in the central, even defining, role that career plays in people's lives and how they understand their value.

• Most people in most societies until the very recent present were farmers and the whole family, men, women, children, would have work to do, all of which was essential to the survival of the family. It was a family enterprise. Everyone worked and everyone had a role suited to their physical capacities. The farm kitchen was a factory that produced all kinds of goods, and if the women worked largely in the factory rather than in the fields it was, before anything else, because she had to supervise the children in their tasks. But women and children did also work in the fields at times, weeding, harvesting, gleaning.

• The idea of a woman not working was a middle class conceit. In the aristocracy, no one worked (though the men fought, occasionally). With the rise of the middle class, it became a mark of status for a family to be rich enough for the woman not to work. But in poorer families, everyone worked, and the professions were closed to the entire class, not just to the women. When idleness ceased to be a status symbol, the demand for access to high-class jobs increased.

• Most prior societies were extremely social in orientation. Families and communities were the center of life and everyone had a role to play. The kind of individualism that is universal today would be unknown to most societies. Most people would know the names of everyone they met in the average day. Strangers would be rare. People by and large depended on particular people for the necessities of life: the baker, the miller, the smith. They did not get their goods from institutions, they got them from individuals that they had known all their lives. When we depend on individuals, we expect those individuals to play their role, because if they don't the entire village suffers. That kind of society can't afford modern individualism. We depend on institutions, not people. This means we have no real stake in the actions of individuals and so can become less concerned with their behavior and their conformance to social norms. If the baker gets drunk and falls off his roof, I will still have bread for my family in the morning.

• Up until the invention of the police force in the 19th century, there was no formal government protection for individuals. Husbands were responsible for the physical protection of their wives and children (individually and collectively), and they really did need protection. With rampant disease and population growth that was slow to non-existent, the survival of women and children was key to the survival of a clan. Raiding to steal wives and children was common in early societies, because it was often the only way to maintain or grow your tribe. Thus the relationship of husbands and wives was one of protector and protectee. The father giving the bride away to her husband at her wedding symbolizes this handing over of protective duty. This asymmetrical relationship between spouses may appear as simple inequality today, when the protective function is provided by the state, but it served an essential social function for most of human history and so it is unlikely that many people of either sex resented it as an institution, though they may have resented how it was practiced by particular spouses.

• The kinds of lives available to men and to women, nevertheless, differed considerably from one society to another. You would probably have been more likely to find women involved in medicine in medieval times than in the 19th century, for instance. Monasteries offered the opportunity for learning and for various kind of professional work to both women and men.

• Along with our individualism, our careers have become the center of our lives. Our workplaces are our communities. They are were we find the company and the esteem of our peers. To be denied a career opportunity, therefore, is to be denied a social role, to be denied access to the sources of social esteem. But in most previous societies, for the vast majority of people, family and community were the center of their lives. People would gain the company and esteem of their peers through the contributions they made to the life of the community. Certainly some crafts would have greater prestige and wealth associated with them, but one's careers was usually not so much at the center of one's psyche it way it is today.

• Finally, another way in which our current society is anomalous is that the cult of character, which had been paramount in the west for centuries has given way to the cult of personality. We no longer judge or value people for their character but for their personality. This has led, among other things, to the glorification of the extrovert, the celebrity, the star. Too feel valued, we often feel we need to stand out, to make a mark, to be noticed and celebrated. The means to gain such celebrity therefore become vital to our sense of self and our self esteem. Where people in the past would have gained the respect of others, and therefore their self esteem, for their character, for the way they did their duty diligently and without complaint, the way they served their neighbours, this is not enough for us now. Access to roles that allow for the exercise and display of personality is therefore a more pressing issue.

It is an old saw to say that you have to judge the people of the past in the context of their time, but to a large extent it misses the point. The world of the past was very different and people had different expectations for their lives. The essential things we all crave -- food, protection, love, the esteem of our peers -- came from very different sources.

People chafe at the injustice of the things that keep them from meeting these needs. But when those needs are met in very different ways, expect that people will chafe at very different things.

Part of writing realistically about the past is conveying this sense of things to your reader, and of situating your characters, their desires and their complaints, in that kind of society. Their notion of what were the greatest injustices of their day would be very different from the notions of injustice that many people have today.

People's sense of injustice is largely engaged with the thing that is preventing them from getting the thing that most occupies their thoughts. For most human for most of history, the thing that most occupies their thoughts was, is there going to be enough food to last the winter and are my children and animals safe from marauders. We have the luxury of feeling injustices because we mostly don't have to worry about those things.

Don't project the anxieties and resentments of today onto the past. They had their own anxieties and their own resentments. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

posted over 6 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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