"there's gender equality and prostitution is holy! But people are somehow surprised if someone in a position of power turns out to be a woman, and "whore" is a common insult"
To be fair, the noticeable thing is what people aren't writing rather than what they are.
Sumerians, Babylonians and Akkadians all considered prostitution holy and had a society where queerness was ubiquitous and being trans was not vilified in any known way. But they didn't have anything that could be called gender equality.
Prior to 1650 BC (the arrival of the Hittite Empire, controlled by an elite of PIEs, an elite which imposed its patriarchal values on neighbouring states) Assyria, Egypt and their buffer states in the Levant all had (legal) gender equality. Egypt for reasons I don't understand always had a patriarchal administrative apparatus (not just the pharaoh, but anyone among government top brass) but nonetheless the law codes explicitly give women "equality". In Assyria its even more egalitarian, with women occupying all positions in society except the military -- but the nasty side effect that the Assyrians thought this made them more civilized than their neighbours, thus using the egalitarian laws (among many other things) to justify imperialist wars.
"theres no homophobia or sexism! but the governments are still patriarchal monarchies and everyone still adheres to the standard nuclear family, two things that have absolutely no relation to homophobia and sexism whatsoever"
The PIEs (Proto-Indo-Europeans) and many of their descendant cultures (Ancient Greeks, Romans) considered gay sex to be normal (the Romans had some problems with "bottoming" and class factored into relationships as well, but the practice itself wasn't vilified until Christian influence), but they are the big exporters of patriarchy. Why are the Vikings, the Celts, Greeks, the Romans, the Hittites, the later Assyrians and people in Persia and India patriarchal? Because PIEs or their descendants went there and entrenched these values violently.
A world with no homophobia can still be a world with monarchies. In fact, there is a weird gap in our understanding of medieval history, because we don't know that much about pre-Christian Europe. What did pagan Europeans in Poland, Hungary or Estonia believe prior to Christianization? We have fragmentary evidence at best, but in some cases these seem to have been monarchies but with vastly different social norms to anything you would find in a textbook about medieval times. When the Polish king was accused of gay orgies...it might be helpful context that the country had become Christianized in his lifetime.
The kind of fantasy I want to see is not the fantasy where I never see an Aztec do human sacrifice, it's a fantasy that draws on the very real resistance movements against human sacrifices.
Like Assyrians for example are such a fascinating culture: they are polytheists, but they make a bunch of mistakes that monotheists typically make, like elevating a single god into incredible social importance and then killing for him. And merging the idea of the state with that god. Ashur was (1) the name of their most important god (2) the name of their empire and (3) the name of their capital city. It's only modern historians that distinguish Assur and Ashur and Assyria, because to the Assyrians, this was all the same. These people had total queer acceptance and gender equality that rivaled 20th century Western ideas...but they also deported conquered people (INTO their country, not out). They invented free trade...and then chattel slavery, but it was thankfully extremely rare despite its legality (but still completely horrific, obviously-- child slaves whose parents became slaves because they fell into debt).
And the Assyrians traded with "meluhha", likely the Indus Valley civilization, which archaeologists aren't sure had any idea of gender being socially meaningful and with the Minoans, a society that may have been ruled by women (though unfortunately a 19th century archaeologist with severe biases has strongly warped our understanding of who the Minoans may have been).
I understand that OP and prev are mostly just annoyed at the consistency with which oppressive social structures sneak into fantasy worlds that are advertised as liberated, but we should be clear that worldbuilding doesn't have to involve squeaky clean societies. As connected as the struggle for queer rights and feminism is (as any two struggles for human rights are), there have been societies like the Sumerians who gave one group relief from persecution and exhibited social control against another. And keep in mind that Sumerians actually had progressive rulers who started implementing language around "freedom" in their legislation. There were Sumerian feminists, there were people who fought for equality like they have up north in Assyria. And Assyrians also had need of feminism, because military was seen as men's stuff and arts&crafts as women's stuff.
But I think it's important that people understand that our intuitions about how oppression works, our sense that the past either moved from good to bad or from bad to good or back and forth is not complex enough. Whether it's the Quechua ("Inca") using a money-less economy based on shared responsibilities...but also forced labour or whether its early Christians abolishing animal sacrifices and fighting for more women's rights...and also heavily promoting homophobia, the world is a complicated place and people with good ideas also have bad ideas. That will also be true in fantasy worlds and it makes the society be in motion, be alive, when people don't just act like "the orcs from Patriarchia and the elves from Egalitaria".
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