writing, gender, and stuff

[anotheranon]

She doesn't post often, but posts well: just found another thought provoking article over at Brutal Women about the disappointment when fictional female-dominated societies turn out not to be, so much. I've not read the book in question, but she makes some interesting points - the society described reads as "female-dominant" only by virtue of there being more women than men, and the men are given great freedom to use and abuse due to their "rare" status:

Great! A female-dominated society, and girl babies are still greeted as gutter trash. One royal husband also abuses his wives and brutally rapes one of them. And guess what? Because he's a guy, he goes unpunished.

How does this fulfill the "things can be really different?" school of spec. fic.?

Disclaimer: I'm not a professional writer or gender studies student. However, I dabble in both and got to thinking - how would one create a fictional women-dominated society? I wrote a storyline once that involved a female-dominated society of evolved ants, but it wasn't that challenging - ant colonies ARE mostly female; in most species males only live long enough to mate. How to write it with people? Could women really be dominant without being a numeric majority? What would be different, and what would stay the same?

Maybe I've just not read a really good story on this theme - I am new to reading sci fi. Readers, writers - any suggestions beyond what's in the Brutal Women comments?

Comments

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how reworking of historical events could be plausible without furious explanation/rationalization. Think of most of Western history - there were very definite sex roles for specific (if incorrect) reasons and simply reversing everything wouldn't be "enough", I think. You'd almost have to re-create "feminine" and "masculine" stereotypes from scratch, and then make them believable to a reader who is the product of 2000 years of cultural indoctrination of what men and women "should" be.

I'd love to read it, but I'm not sure what I'd expect.