I always find it kind of weird that matriarchal cultures in fiction are always âwomen fight and hunt, men stay home and care for the babiesâ because world-building-wise, it makes no sense
think about it. like, assuming that gender even works the same in this fantasy culture as it does in ours, with gender conflated with sex (because letâs be real, all of these stories assume that), men wouldnât be the ones to make the babies, so why would they be the ones to care for the babies? why is fighting and hunting necessary for leadership?
writing a matriarchy this way is just lazy, because youâre just taking the patriarchy and just swapping the people in it, rather than actually swapping the culture. especially when there are so many other cool things you could explore. like, what if itâs not a swap of roles but of what society deems important?
maybe a matriarchy would have hunting and fighting be part of the manâs job, but undervalued. like taking the trash out or cleaning toilets: necessary, but gross, and not noble or interesting. maybe farming is now the most important thing, and is given a lot of spiritual and cultural weight.
how would law work? what crimes would exist, and what things would be considered too trivial to make illegal? who gets what property? why?
how would religion work? how would you mark time or the passage into adulthood? what would marriage look like? if bloodlines are through the mother, bastardy wouldnât even be a concept - how does that work?
what qualities would be most important in a person? how would you define strength or leadership? what knowledge would be the most coveted and protected? what acts or roles are considered useless or degrading?
like, you canât just take our current society and say youâre turning it on its head when youâre just regurgitating it wholesale. you have to really think about why things are the way they are and change that.Â
I came up with a society once where women are the main warriors/providers, and if a man (or woman) wished to marry them, children were expected to occur. Therefore the person doing the woo had to prove that they could do the females job just as well and take her place on the battlefield/hunting grounds whilst she focused on preparing their children to do the same in their lives. Males largely took a merchant or farming role and were noted as being "home defenders". It's not very well fleshed out, but it was fun to think of.
