What would a fantasy society be like if there was only 1 male for every 500 females...

That's true. But it's been repeated in every human civilization after agriculture and before industrialization. So at some point generalizations become fair game. Of course it isn't the whole picture, though. When you describe cultural values there is no whole picture, short of describing the values of each individual living in that culture.

The solution is to go deeper into the magical realm.
Most females born are identical twins.

>Not very good examples.
I agree with this user.
It would be more like what says.

>incest would probably be rampant
You would have the same genetic drawbacks to incest as we do now. So incest would still probably be frowned upon,maybe accepted a bit more than than it is today (in a "well that is kind of gross, but what else are you going to do" type fashion), but not rampant. More likely you'd have a system of arraigned matings between friendly families or for business relationships.

Depends how big the society is. If there's 20,000+ people it wouldn't be TOO much of a problem. Even 5,000 could be enough if breeding were carefully tracked and controlled.

I don't know much about incest or genetics, but isn't the reason incest is so bad for humans because our genetic pool is super small due to a bottleneck that caused our speciation? Like I remember Reading that within a single troupe of monkeys there's more genetic variation than within human's generally.

Litters maybe? Most animals produce multiple offspring per mating.

The more fun question, to me, is: how did selection pressure a population to so overwhelmingly favor female offspring? If a population has a dirth of males, it is because that was a reproductively-successful strategy.

So why would it have been?

My vote would be ridiculous sexual dimorphism. Maybe males are just ungodly huge, and were necessary to protect the females, but a population that produced too many of them ate itself out of its environment too quickly. So selection kept pressuring for fewer and fewer males until it reach the right balance of 1:500. Maybe there are giant monsters that the females were too small to fight. So why didn't everyone just get bigger, then?

I suppose "wizards: no sense of right and wrong" is prolly a better explanation.

Also worth noting is that they really aren't matriarchal; they're hive minds. We call the egg factories "queens" because it is remotely relatable to us but the queen is really just another cog in the machine. What's more a single organism that does mass reproduction is far more efficient than a single mass-fertilizer.

Males of the species could just cost the mother much more in resources, maybe to convert a child to the male sex just is much harder or longer process.

Or perhaps the females and the males of the species are both approximately equal in capability, but the females are unusually fecund, so that having too many males collapsed in Malthusian crisis but having less of them meant success?

Or maybe some genetic quirk made females much less likely to survive to breeding age, even if they were born in nearly equal number?

Since it's fantasy and we know so little of the specifics anything could really be used to justify it in world, even as you pointed out "magic I don't have ta explain shit"

you are thinking about it from a human perspective

what if sex for them lasts seconds and fertilization is almost guaranteed? they wouldn't need to spend two years

they would need to spend the better part of a week
like a sexstravaganza or a holiday or some kind

as for how the society would organize it depends on a few different things. One is what is the sexual dimorphism like in the species?

in the case of ants and bees and other arthropods that was brought up earlier the males are often smaller and physically inferior to the females so they are treated as tools for reproduction rather than as a member of the hive

in the case of lions the males are physically imposing and stronger than their female counterpart, they are pampered and taken care of because they are not easily disposed of.

so if your society has a situation where the males are larger and stronger than the females they would probably be like nobles or pampered elite depending on how advanced the society is they would probably be held to the most ideal physical standards possible like male models and displayed in magazines or billboards, advertised like the studs they are.

in a society where they are less physically imposing than the females they would probably be kept like breeding stock. not educated, only minimally taken care of and only really brought out when it is time to breed. Don't take this the wrong way though they woulndn't be tortured and just killed on a whim since they are a valuable resource but they most likely would be treated more like important or valuable objects than sentient beings

No, gene pool size species wide doesn't affect incest because you've limited the gene pool to the family through incest already.

Well I was meaning from the standpoint of deadly/debilitating mutations, with a larger genetic pool wouldn't the chance of such things occurring in small number of incestral generations be much reduced? Or am I just totally wrong here?

Well, It would depend on the starting population size before the rampant incest started. Basically the larger the starting population before you start creating succesive generations of inbreds, the more species wide genetic variance affects your ability to get away with succesive generations of inbreds.

I don't care what happens to the men there, so long as I can find somebody who loves me

Hey that's pretty nice

even if that person who loves you is torn up inside having to sit around while you have sex with all these other girls for the good of the species?

user I know it's fantasy, but even then you have to realize no one could ever love you.

Ooku: The Inner Chambers is a story about exactly this. Males become prized breeding stock in a feudal Japanese society.

They'd probably be coddled and kept safe, to be honest. Losing the local male would be pretty devastating.

She'll have to learn to live with getting exclusive access to cuddles

either
>men are effectively worshipped. they're placed in positions of power, and considered paragons of society. young boys are considered a gift from heaven, and every woman wants to have the privilege of pregnancy.
or
>men are slaves, kept closely guarded to keep them from being lost. young boys are taken at birth to be raised as a breeding machine. pregnancy is more or less a duty, and having a boy is generally disappointment.
so basically
>men are high in society
>men are low in society

sex might not be seen as a display of affection in their society since it is something that has to occur for the good of the species

maybe they show love in some other way
maybe the males are allowed to love multiple females and they are ok with it?

maybe love doesn't even really exist in their society

The male is less important than the female for inbreeding, due to mitochondrial DNA.

Having a low male population ratio isn't usually a problem, since with many females sexual splicing maintains diversity. There are actually creatures (ex certain rodents) with low male ratios.

it would probably be more normal to have loving relationships between women. it might be considered strange to love a man because "being with them" is so unfeasable

First reply best reply

Women would almost certainly have more relationship bonds. I mean, ants already operate like this, and ones like leafcutters have pretty complex societies.

There would definitively be less aggressive mate competition, since multiple females can be impregnated by the same male. There's less exclusivity desire.

so once again we are making the mistake of thinking about this from a human perspective, or at least I am

I am believing that love conotates some kind of sexual attraction but they could just love one another like father and son or a very strong friendship. Outside of homosexuality I would assume many females in the society would form strong lasting bonds that could be seen as love but might not have a sexual attraction to one another.

as for the males I would once again draw the differences back to if they are more or less physically imposing than the females
if they are larger and stronger I would guess they maintain some kind of harem and could "love" all the members of their group and consider them all his partners

if they are less imposing the females probably wouldn't even think about loving the males since they are more or less objects, not beings worthy of affection

In most fantasy towns, you'd have like, one male to share between multiple settlements.

If they even form romantic relationships like that, having so few males would likely either predispose them to not having the same coupling drive, or the coupling drive would be re-inerprated and refocused by society.

You best believe they're all going to lez it up.

You should see how bonobos operate. In this setting, lezzing is on the menu every day in every way. Your societal status may even be determined by how well you can lez.

You get a lot more curious results when it 3-4-5 to one.

Actually had a campaign that found a world that consisted of clones of the 6 survivors of a ship crash. All female.

so do all women in a community get to breed with the male? like they can't all just be pregnant all the time.

3-1 actually produces a very good society. Myopus schisticolor, the wood lemming, does quite well for itself. It's theorized that the gender imbalance occurred to balance out high mate competition.

With a 3-1 female-male ratio, men stop fighting eachother over mates almost completely, and may devote their time to assisting their children or pleasing their women.

Why not make the males giant mega-beasts that are so big cities can be built on them.
The females lay eggs in the male's back, a bit like those frogs that put their spawn in their own flesh (I'll let you google them, they are a touch freaky).
For the child to be male it needs to be inserted/laid/whatever in a specific area, probably near organs that produce androgens.

Good taste user

There never is any noteworthy society because hunter/gatherer groups or small tribes are too small to reliably get male.

The few that manage to get population high enough to always have a guy around will be crippled by incest.

If we just have a instant medieval society because LOL, MAGIC, then males would be completely stripped of personal rights and kept in a sort of temple or fortress. The family that has a boy gets lots of prestige or maybe other reward and the child is taken and trained for his duties.

Sex with a man would be ritualised and only used for reproduction, young women would probably get more chances. Having lots of children would be respected, failing would be dishonorable.
Some would opt out of procreation, probably younger siblings. Those women would be predisposed to military or other dangerous jobs.

So all in all, less freedom and pretty shitty place to live in. Very awkward for male adventurers to travel through.

500-1? 500-to-fucking-1? I don't think you comprehend how insane this society would seem to us.

To put this in perspective, my old high school graduating class has a little over 3,000 kids in it. So out of those 3,000 people, only seven or eight would be men, maybe even less.

And the cultural differences, Jesus Christ. If you're a 1/500 person, good luck ever going anywhere alone. Your family/tribe/group/pod/-whatever the fuck wouldn't leave you out of their sights for an instant.

Personal freedoms? Tough shit, boy. I hope you didn't have plans of running for political office, because the organs between your legs are far more valuable than anything your pretty little mouth has to say.

Oh, and let's talk about safety too. Even in a more civilized setting, your ass is in danger 24/7. If you went anywhere alone, there's a very real chance that you will be kidnapped, either by slavers, gangs, or a sick individual. This is the part where you say: "Oh hell yeah, time to drown in pussy!" Wrong. You will be used and abused constantly in a darkly realistic manner, because you are a precious commodity. STDs, rape with foreign objects, being pimped out to murderers, yeah, enjoy your new life as an object. Also, say goodbye to everyone you knew from childhood, because you probably won't be seeing them ever again.

It's very hard to imagine this sort of setting, since we live in an almost strictly 50:50 ratio world. But if these women are anything like the humans on Earth, I don't think it will end too well for the men.

That's not to say that there wouldn't be a possibility for having a good life, but most men will not have a peaceful life.

>There never is any noteworthy society because hunter/gatherer groups or small tribes are too small to reliably get male.

>The few that manage to get population high enough to always have a guy around will be crippled by incest.

I dunno user, what if one of the tribes realizes attacking others and stealing their males would be a good thing, and eventually grows in size to become a stable (if barbaric) horde of em.

this is very dependent on the timer period and history of the society

if the species evolved from a harem or male dominant society like gorillas or baboons the males might be more like kings or even gods who not only hold political office but act as the determining factor for almost all major decisions the society makes

female rights and ability to lead may be a hot button issue in their political climate

keep in mid this is assuming that they are at a classical fantasy level of technology where the physically weak do not possess the power of a firearm or some other device that would allow them to compete with the physically strong. If the males are strong enough to fight off a substantial number of females then they probably rule (substantial in this case being anywhere from 10-50 at once). They wouldn't need to be able to fend off all 500 because the sense of personal safety in a sentient being would outweigh their drive to unify unless put in the most extreme circumstances.

if they males are not able to fend off the females with physical strength then yes they would probably be reduced to tools or objects

Only males you'd ever meet are escaping gays.

Now hang on a sec. I would agree with the first half of your post but starting from

>Oh, and let's talk about safety too.

Makes no sense. If you are valuable and assuming the civilization is past its most basic primitive stage to form a functioning society of sort, the men will absolutely not suffer from STDs, rape etc due to the absolute importance of their safety.

Anyone who would jeapordize their safety would likely, alongside with their family, destroyed.

Men would likely live in a mix of prisoner/slave and pampered. Your only source of reproduction needs food and lots of it as well as lack of exposure to the elements so as not get sick.

It would be strange but I can see like previous posters, a ritualized breeding session. Women would do hard labour and 99% of the tasks, but at such a catastrophic gender imbalance, that small male population would be protected, even if at the cost of comfort and freedom for the men.

I can see though women treating the men somewhat less aggresively than if in the reverse situation. Women and men fundamentally are the same in a lot of ways but temperment and reaction to stress/danger and stimulus does differ somewhat.

Maltreatment sure but not to the brutal and more physical as men would.

Well, tribes would hide their men really well so raids always carry the risk of being completly pointless. And with men being constantly fought over, quite a few will get hurt/killed in the fighting or imprisonment or just because one tribe says if we can't have him, nobody can.

The resulting horde would be strongly set on expansionism. Even once they have enough males, your people's entire way of life isn't changed easily. The horde would collapse at some point because you can't conquer forever and depending on the social structure, you'd have some small groups or one central tribe with a working population.

The other groups would fade into irrelevancy and be forced to start the raiding again. If they're lucky they can beat the remnants of the old horde and the cycle starts over.

This race probably wouldn't progress into a medieval civilization and one fire or epidemic on the male hub and everyone is fucked.

Could work for geniric roaming beastfolk 1st lvl enemies I guess.

They'd get gilded caged most likely. But I doubt they'd be raised to even want to do dangerous things, so they probably wouldn't mind.

Ants already do this entire societal concept.

I came here just to mention Ooku.

They wouldn't just be pampered though. Their entire lives would be set out to be as virile for as long as possible. Various types of sport, special diet, few alcohol, no drugs, that stuff.

Chinese birth control

>What would a fantasy society be like if there was only 1 male for every 500 females, and they still needed male/female intercourse to reproduce?
It would be shit that was reiterated and reiterated over and over in various fantasy/sci-fi.

I have a better idea.
What would a fantasy society be like if there was only 1 male for every 500 females, HOWEVER, the act of sexual intercourse wouldn't be needed to reproduce?
Instead, the mere presence of a male in the vicinity would be enough to "pollinate" a reproduction-ready female.

>I have a better idea.
What would a fantasy society be like if there was only 1 male for every 500 females, HOWEVER, the act of sexual intercourse wouldn't be needed to reproduce?
Instead, the mere presence of a male in the vicinity would be enough to "pollinate" a reproduction-ready female.
Well you would finally score for one.

>Instead, the mere presence of a male in the vicinity, when undecided about what girl he likes, would be enough to "pollinate" a reproduction-ready female.

Fix'd.

Now you have a race of people who literally MUST go through harem anime bullshit to breed.

>implying I'm not a 35-year old grognard with a wife and two kids
You would be surprised how many people like me You considered this being true for a moment, didn't you? Besides, I do have a fiancee.

Males would be locked away in sealed environments and only serviced by already budding/impregnated/whatever females.

Because unless they can control their pregnancies they would be right fucked when the only male took a stroll outsize and created a population boom.

It depends on their beliefs about 'virility'.

For example, the Spartans believed younger strong warriors made better children. Others believed that what was done in life would be passed down to children.

The smart girls would probably invent ways to maximize sperm division for pregnancy with tools, and work on keeping the boys producing lots.

Possibly the most fun part:
Amount of male sperm ejaculated before exhaustion is many times contingent on his sexual arousal.
There would literally be professional sex artists working on ways to keep him insanely aroused on command for the duration of his life.

In human societies, even a slight imbalance in the ratio of males to females (which tends to favor males slightly outnumbering females due to female infanticide in traditional societies) has strongly correlated with those societies which have been most oppressive of women.

In a society where females outnumbered males 500:1, males would have approximately zero social and political capital. They would be less than slaves or chattel; they would be regarded as sub-whateverthespeciesis, however necessary to reproduction, simply by virtue of being totally outnumbered.

>which have been most oppressive of women

There is a fundamental difference you are missing:
Excess males produce more of a desire to control women, since only one male can impregnate one female.

Excess females produces exactly the opposite effect over time, since males are not expected to care for or protect their children.

I think you are confusing cause and effect here.

implying as fuck

Actually human sex is skewed a bit from natural causes at around 107:100 males to females. But males have lower survival which eventual pushes the ratio to about equal and then to more than equal.

Isn't there also research that male sperm are fast but low stamina, while female sperm are slower but have more endurance. So then male on top positions are more likely to produce male offspring, with female on top more likely to produce female?

But then I saw that a while ago, so more recent research might have overturned it.

>Would the males try to be as masculine as possible, or try to be as feminine as they can to fit in with the rest of society?
What's the point of being hypermasculine if there's essentially no male/male competition for mates?

Fuck if I know mate.

>What's the point of being hypermasculine if there's essentially no male/male competition for mates?
Which is a good point as well.
Male evolution would probably trend toward extreme and continuous youth.
With such a small amount of them, they'd have heavy incentive to evolve out many aging mechanisms, though that make take a long time.

to project strength

if one guy needs to protect a harem of 500 from being stolen by another male he better be swole af

One cut and that male is dead from infection. At that point unless the male is a pseudo demigod of some kind, no, no male of humanoid proportions and strength would do that.

The females would take over labour, food production, military arms and everything to keep society stable. That one male, their lifeline and only source to continue life would if necessary be restrained and isolated to be as safe as possible. Very similar to a Termite or Ant queen, they do not project strength to others, they are kept well away out of danger to continue the reproductive cycle to keep the hive alive. The same would apply to this male.

>you will never be the termite queen to 500 females

Technically, all we have to do is breed more females.

Science CAN handle this.

In fact, solar system colonization would probably benefit from the tons-o-girls strategy.

people keep comparing the society to a hive
for sentient beings I believe this is incorrect

for procedural driven creatures it works quite well but for creatures capable of making their own decisions and intelligent thought things get hard. Eventually you would have a male that wouldn't stand for the circumstances he was being put in and would try to fight for rights or fight for a different life. Males would attempt to change this society and though it might not work in the vast majority of cases eventually one will succeed and that will change the way the society works.

there are multiple kinds of ways that a creature like the one described in the OP could have evolved and while there are some that are a hive like entity where the males are kept as resources and not as beings most of the other examples we have on earth for large creatures are the opposite

large males dominate females and keep them as resources
one male could control hundreds if not thousands of females depending on exactly how strong they are

in a population of millions the 1/500 ratio might not matter as much in fact you could see a position where females are being tossed out and left to die in order to being the society to a more stable level of gender ratio
females having hundreds of children but killing or abandoning the females until they have a male

get creative

Even if they were ruling nobility in name they'd still be pampered breeding studs on a practical level unless they want the population they rule to collapse.

Masculinity and feminity can be very socially relative and would probably be pretty irrelevant with so few males making every one a precious resource.

>How would they raise young boys in this society?
Probably a focus on safety and self-preservation along with prepping them for the cultural and practical elements of their social role. Much less focus on reckless daring and bravery when just one boy breaking his neck falling out of a tree could have a significant impact on a generation.

If we're assuming these people exist in the first place with the given attributes then it's not much more of a stretch to imagine that inbreeding might have a less significant impact than in a population more like normal humans.
Maybe they have a higher rate of spontaneous mutations or just suffer from few genetic disorders that would be magnified by inbreeding, or just handwave it as magic.

You could even have communities trade their males every season in a rotation to spread out diversity or other methods to help the issue.

>You will never be treated like royalty by hundreds of horny women who genuinely enjoy your presence

Neither of them is going to be stupid enough to risk death to get another 500 females to mate with when they already have 500.

Males only do violent dominance competitions for breeding that could kill them if the alternative is not getting to breed at all.

It's his dream. Let him dream, user.

After all, it's only a matter of time before he finds a lucid dream. A monster in his nightmares. A fiend with a thousand faces.

It would be exactly like your weird alcohol and sugar induced fever dreams about your deepest fetishes, you whore.

>Not waifuing the cosmic horrors lurking in the dream world
It's like you don't want to be happy for the rest of your life.

>A fiend with a thousand faces.
All of them hot girls! Imagine that?

Exactly. Cultivating yandere horrors is a pass-time.

>the rest of your life

All two-to-five seconds of it? I mean, you ought to cower before its true form, at the very least. Maybe if you bow down before the god of Death, then when madness consumes you (as it will), it will hurt as much as one murder, rather than as much as a thousand deaths,

You're doing it wrong man.

You gaze deeply into her true form and drink of its supple femininity amidst the swirling madness of distant nebulae.

So, dwarf fortress?

Another interesting point to consider is keeping domestic fowl. With birds that don't mate for life, like chickens and ducks, a 3:1 female to male ratio is considered the minimum while 5:1 is optimal.
The higher ratio not only prevents competition between males but reduces the abuse the females receive. Males don't have to work as hard to ensure that some of the offspring is their's, lowering their aggression and females aren't as stressed leaving a happy healthy flock and a lot less dead birds

Daydream, thank you very much. I'm not fucking around with conscious dreaming.

I'm sure that the men couldn't give a fuck about this, but what would the female cultural perception of lesbianism be?

>but what would the female cultural perception of lesbianism be?
I doubt the females would even consider it to be "lesbianism", as something distinct and apart from 'romantic love and sex'. There are literally only girls in their lives for the vast majority of it.

In order to defend borders of nations, the females will need to be large, strong, fast, and tough. Kind of like Hyenas, or Gnolls.

With no other males to model themselves off of (unless they're in a large enough society for there to be several males of the same age to grow up together) they'd likely be just like other females.

There also might be different types of females within the species, which create biological castes. Large powerful fighters; stocky, tireless workers; small, multicoloured socializers. Think about how different insects have different castes. There will also be the question of genetic diversity, some species are more resilient to the generational effects of incest with others, but there'll need to be enough males to ensure a healthy future for the next generation. I can image wars breaking out between similar societys where instead of there being full on assault or clashing armies, on team will likely just send a task force to assassinate or kidnap the males of another tribe, ensuring that said tribe will go extinct within a decade.

Therefore, the male of the species will likely spend his life being surrounded by a harem of bodyguards who double as breeding stock as selected by the nobility, maybe. For his own safety, the male will likely never be alone and will probably spend his entire life inside a fortified building where he is born, raised, educated, imprisioned, until the day he passes on.

Hey, he'll likely have other men to share his time with, they'll never leave the building either. This likely means that working class/caste will go through their entire lives never seeing another man.

Anyone have anything they could tack onto this? Anytime I hear of a fantasy society like this, it usually emphasizes how strong and independent women are and how they don't need no man. I'd be interesting to see this from another angle.

>You gaze deeply into her true form and drink of its supple femininity amidst the swirling madness of distant nebulae.
See this is why cosmic horrors and Lovecraftian eldritch abominations won't visit us.

>to hell with humans mang
>all they wanna do is fuck us
>or cuddle
>usully both

Well, it makes sense that male sperm would be faster. 23 of the chromosomes are identical, and the Y is way smaller than the X, so assuming the rest of the chassis is identical, a male sperm would be slightly faster than a female sperm.

So essentially the rape of the Sabine women but in reverse?

>Eventually you would have a male that wouldn't stand for the circumstances he was being put in and would try to fight for rights or fight for a different life.
Outnumbered 500 to 1? Not likely. Compare to how shittily homosexuals have been treated, and they make up for a 2-5% of the general populus. That's over ten times the gender ratio OP proposed.

This is literally the setting of the A Brother's Price book series, for those of you who are interested.

fucking kek

Book. Sorry. Just the one.

Ever see the Star Trek episode "Cogenitor"?

The Vissian race have three sexes, and the third sex of "cogenitor" is required for reproduction (though the details are not elaborated on). They only make up 3% of the population and are treated like property.

It'd probably be like that.

There would seem like there's a lot of implications
>Ultimately, there would be a queen, or at least nobility, that retains the privilege to reproduce
>This also seems to imply that the species reproduced in broods, because 500:1 is a huge number
>Either that, or they systematically kill off females akin to what China already does
>Males would otherwise be considered a commodity, if not harvested for their sperm
>And that's the thing--women go into heat, and/or ovulate, while males can otherwise produce on que
>No matter how careful you are, this will ultimate lead to incest, until the population is pretty much retarded and/or has glaring health issues

That being said, breeding--while otherwise taboo to talk about in public, always fascinates me, to the point where it's even a fetish. I've often come up with stupid sci-fi scenarios in regards to breeding
>Humans have finally developed space travel and has discovered a similar, but primitive race
>Comparatively, humans are meek but otherwise physiologically similar
>In exchange for getting 'ascended', humans artificially inseminate and breed with this new, hardier race
>Imagine having a knocked up, amazonian wife carrying your hybrid baby

At that point it wouldn't be culturally aberrant.

And sex would probably not be a pleasurable bonding experience, it'd just be a thing you do. Or like fish.
Like "Hey, here are my eggs, you mind jizzing on these?"
Oh, sure thing ma'am, have a nice day; *SPLORT*.