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

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

I agree that the stereotypical roles are often female-hostile, which, to me, means that simply reversing the situation just isn't very original ... it's merely the fiction equivalent of "getting even". I'm more likely to be intrigued by a writer who moves beyond that and tries to create something whose origins are plausible and that is sustainable.

Read what you said to Katie ... seems to me that to make an alternate history really work, what one would have to do is make some adjustments to human evolution; that's easiest done by studying our relatives. Bonobos and olive baboons* both have female-dominant hierarchies ... transfer the mechanics of one of those to our own ancestors, stir well, and then move forward in time and start scribbling. :-)

P.S. Regarding piloting drugs/coffee ... see, ya shoulda been a space shuttle pilot. ;-)

*For you writer-types that are feeling adventurous: I haven't had much luck tracking down a decent single tome on bonobos (I'll own it the minute I find one) ... what's out there tends to be long on pictures and short on text, so your best bet is scientific articles; there's a few reasonably informative Websites out there as well. For olive baboons, the best source is Shirley Strum's Almost human.