Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48093
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48093
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Subversion is not just a way to introduce literary variety. It is actually subversive. It overturns the established order. So you have to ask yourself, why does the established order exist, and what would be the motive for subverting it?

The stoic male is an established literary trope because it is an established societal phenomena. Through most of human existence, food has been scarce, threats many, lives short, and infant (and maternal) mortality high. Women would spend most of their adult lives either pregnant of caring for small children (more than half of whom would die). Getting enough to eat was a full time job that required hunting, gathering, and other strenuous activities that are hard to do when pregnant or nursing. And women and children were vulnerable to predators and raiders from other tribes.

Women needed the protection of men, and society, up until the 19th century, was conceived of as consisting of families (rather than individuals as it is today) and the role of the male was to provide and protect the female and their offspring. Women and children were literally described as being "under the protection" of a father or husband or perhaps some other family member or tribal leader. When a father gives away his daughter at her wedding, the meaning of the gesture is that she is passing from his protection to that of her husband. When a ship sank, women and children got into the lifeboats first because it was the job of the men to protect them.

Evolution says that those traits that favor reproduction are passed on. The men who were the best protectors and providers got to have more babies, and so their traits were passed on to their sons. Showing that you are a good protector and provider is obviously important for attracting a mate, and a stoic demeanor is useful both for showing this, and for actually doing it.

But, starting in the 19th century and going on till today, we invented the police, office jobs, antibiotics, and Uber eats. Soon women were living to their 80s, almost all their children were surviving, and they could provide for them themselves and enjoy the protection of the police. They did not need an individual male to provide and protect.

Before these inventions, managing a family and a household was a complex full-time lifetime job, involving just as many skilled crafts as those of the men who worked the fields. After them, it was not, and women naturally sought a very different role in society. And here we are, trying to figure out how the characteristics developed by thousands of years of evolution are going to work in a world where the forces that shaped them have been almost entirely removed by our inventions.

So, our inventions have subverted the old male/female dynamic, but our emotions and our psychology have not caught up. Our current literature reflects that subversion and explores its implications, sometimes honestly and dispassionately, and sometimes with an agenda. This often includes projecting currently evolving gender roles backwards and forwards in time.

How does that affect a post-apocalyptic story? Well, an apocalypse is likely to deprive us of police, antibiotics, office jobs, and Uber eats, so it would put us back to a pre-19th century state of affairs in which logic would suggest that gender roles would return to those of that era.

But whether that is what readers of today will want to read is not so certain. It seems entirely possible that you reversed traditional male and female roles because that subversion of the old order is so prevalent in literature today that it is closer to being a default than a subversion anymore.

So there is an argument for going either way.

But beneath this, there is a deeper issue, on which you may or may not have, or want to express an opinion. That is the argument about whether societies, and people's roles within them, are shaped by the environment (presence or absence of police, office jobs, antibiotics, and Uber eats) or are purely social constructs made up by the dominant group to suit themselves. By taking one position or the other on male/female roles in a post apocalyptic society, you would implicitly be taking a position on this highly contentious question.

If you have a position, go for it. If not, at least be aware of the pitfalls that surround whichever choice you make.

Original score: 39