How could we make a fictional civilazation ruled by a Matriarchy without it being the Drow nightmare or the sjw...

t. n. alderman

Not lethal, but manipulative, weakening, strengthening, draining. etc

Like that green star trek race maybe.

Use the same logic of ancient Egypt. All of the Pharaohs inherited the throne through their mother, not their father. Why? Because back then it was impossible to know who the father was. But it was blatantly obvious who the mother was.

And then take it one step further and make it the first born child of the mother is the heir. Regardless of sex. So the high ranking women end up taking on consorts instead of flat out marrying if they are the first born, thus keeping all of the political power for themselves. And if the first born is a male, then his own children are his personal heirs. So they inherit all of his personal belongings, his property, etc. But they are not the heirs to the throne. Only his oldest immediate female relative (sister, niece, cousin, etc.) inherits the throne, and or her oldest born child.

This does give women a LOT of political as well as day to day power. But because individual men can and do inherit there is some leeway to prevent SJW, Drow nightmare, or Magical Realm influence.

>And if the first born is a male
It was a stillbirth stop asking so many questions.

Most cultural things have pretty simple or retarded reasonings for why they happened.
>There was a really shitty king that fucked up everything for everyone.
>Queen puts everything back together, people love queen, she has her daughter be her heir, nobody complains.
>Female line rules country.
described it more eloquently.

Lol, no. It was a common practice during Europe for female nobility to have an audience watch them give birth specifically to prevent shit like this.

Not only that, but OP specifically stated that he wants to avoid Drow Nightmare Mode.

You'd be surprised how many people will believe you have birth to dead rabbits if you pay the right people enough (look it up), if anything that practise allows for greater abuse by powerful people.

I fail to see how this immediately devolves into drow spider whippings.

>What would be the factors that lead females to a position of power
Tradition. All you need is women to be in charge for long enough that "it's the way we've always done things," and any attempt to change the situation will be nearly impossible because of human risk aversion.

Also see
> Porphyrogenitus children in Byzantium

The ratio would need to be more skewed than that, yes, but the idea itself is a good one.

Have the founder of the civilization back when it was ooga boogas or villages be united by a woman.

The royal family always produces deviner daughters for whatever blue blooded reason. Turns out that's a super useful power to have to rule a country, at some point one of the daughters wasn't a good little girl and decided to stop being used and start ruling.

Limit your divination to control the power of said monarch and or kingdom, giving monarchs personality explains why most/some/none accept lines of succession/wait until it is their turn, as opposed to backstabbing their way up the ladder. Maybe it is broad strokes, perfect for a country not so much for an assassination, maybe it matures with them, etc, etc.

Alternatively she has a dick and the concept itself was a trap.

Well the few societies we know to be matrilinear got either of those two:

- Women in charge of raising, harvesting and preparing the culture's main forms of sustenance
- an upperclass that forces matriliniarity on the lower classes in order to prevent them from amassing transgenerational riches

makes a good point. So much in real-life medieval society was purely because of obsession with lineage and the fear of bastards. It's actually not that much of a stretch to have a single successful woman rise to rulership (as happened a couple times... just do it earlier,) and say "hey, I don't have to deal with any of that shit, and neither would my daughter if she were monarch." At that point, all you need is a couple of generations of this line NOT being fucked up and what said begins to take hold.

Not only that, but because the Queen/Empress/whatever can legally choose whoever she wants as a consort, without suffering from public shame or accusations of being a whore, this can prevent a lot of health problems that arise due to inbreeding. Because she will choose some random attractive shmuck off the streets, before she winds up politically elevating a rival by taking them to bed.

Women are the power on the throne, so they sure as hell aren't going to allow someone to assassinate them as soon as they give birth in order to become the power behind the throne until the heir comes of age.

As a result, the over all health of the nobility in this realm is a sharp contrast to the non matriarchal nations. This leads to the myth that the matriarchal nation is divinely blessed. So it becomes a self fulfilling loop. The more power women have, the more often they choose random shmucks as their consorts instead of marrying a fellow noble who will take half of their political and legal power. The healthier the gene pool of the noble class, the better the elite perform in pretty much anything from ruling to warfare to finding new ways to make crops and livestock grow. The stronger the myth that they are divinely blessed because in comparison to the other nations, everything they do is better.

Or hell, why not go all out and simply have the deities in the setting flat out bless the matriarchy.

Gender differences, political views, sociological views and basically a lot of serious modern topics are more of a hassle in ttrpg in my opinion. It rustles jimmies, pulls strong minded people into arguments, encourages ooc discussions, etc.
Imagining situations like this is fine, but playing in it is going to be a mess.
There are some tribal matriarcal systems out there, women abuse men physically (beatings with sticks) and won't let them have the same rights, like we did for a long time.

So no way to give it a balance, the fact that you call it *atriarchy implies imbalance, therefore a source of arguments around the table.

Stop making these,threads already you dumb cunt

Are filters too hard for you?

In the case of Queen Elisabeth, there were no suitable male heirs and she could never take a male husband from among her lords due to lowering of the status of the crown. Taking a foreign husband could also raise some issues of national interest.

Maybe hand wave it so that, the local lords are extremely jealous pricks over any of theirs getting rulership but also of any foreigner from landing.

The best agreement everyone could be somewhat content with is that a female becomes a symbolic queen that theoretically is above their petty squabbles.

There is no rational explanation you could give that anyone would believe in a world where might makes right. So invoke magic or religion, but leave logic out of this.

Were you in that /trash/ thread too?

I'd say it's just cultural. The ruling class is so small and so privileged that gender differences don't matter all that much, as is evidence from real life female aristocracy still being more powerful than even the manliest peasant. Of course, in the sense that power is gendered, Western society never was a full blown patriarchy to begin with.

There are plenty of examples of Matriarchal tribes, through material on them is kind of scarce. Can't say I've ever looked into it seriously. But if you want to see weird social norms, tribes are your best bet. They can get pretty weird.

In one setting I will never run society is matriarchal because of that old chestnut "the boys only want to fight, while the women will talk everything out". Of course, because those are monster races who come from a highly tribal honour culture, they're kind of right. Except the matriarchal council is constantly trying to backstab each other through Byzantine politics. And the matriarchy breaks down in the lower ranks, which retain their original tribal structure for the most part.

That just means you have Romanticised ideals about things without contextual experience, and find the disruption of your ideals disturbing enough to retreat from the real.

tl;dr ur a bitch who can't deal

Read the Realm of the Elderlings books if you can.
There is a civilization of Matriarchy Island vikings but it's not as you think.
Men go out and do most of the fighting and raiding while the women tend to matters of clan and home thus become the rulers of the clan.
It was set to them by a story there two gods, one male and the other female, the male was given rule of the seas and the female was given rule of the land.
One of the reasons the men go out raiding is to impress the lady which they want to court with there hard earned wealth, battles scars and deeds of valor.

>sjw wetdream
Nice strawman. No such thing.

Funny how you're the only person in this thread who denies it

I got an idea, and I'm not a furry.

Make them into Hyenamorphs, but they're more akin to tribal societies than a city based civilizations. They're like Amazon's where the female is larger, stronger, and more vicious than the smaller, weaker, and more submissive males. The male to female birth ratio is about the same, but the rough life of a male shortens their population.

The stronger females attempt to fix this by raiding the more "civilized" races of their males. The captured males are forced into slavery where they work the most despicable jobs, but if they're of suitable breeding stock then they're forced into sex slavery as part of the chief matriachs harem.

This is totally not a fetish fantasy.

Take Sparta, then never allow it to be at Peace. Men are always on the front lines, or on leave, making babies. Women have to run the kingdom. Then add a great respect of veterans, so those who are injured and cannot fight (missing arms etc) are given a life of leisure. You avoid the drow whips and chains, because women have no way to oppress men, due to men being basically all peak condition warriors, or held sacred by dint of their military service. Also, men are not subservient, they are employed in a profession that means the society cannot risk them being politically or societally powerful since they might die in battle and then a new one is needed urgently. Girls are taught housekeeping, accounting, farming, boys are taught blacksmithing, leatherwork, hunting, tactics, then once they reach puberty, boys are trained for war.

Do whatever you want, and make up a reason afterward.

It's called Fantasy for a reason.

Imagine a world where women outnumber men by a factor of something like twenty to one. Women are the soldiers, the butchers, the bakers, and even the candlestick makers. Women do all the jobs that, in another world, might be considered “men’s work”. Because of their scarcity, men are heavily protected and valued for breeding (if a husband) or for building alliances in trade or sale (if a brother). The gender roles in this world are completely flipped.

The women ride about tending to the land and keeping the law and drinking beer straight from the bottle, while the few men in the book stand about wringing their hands and getting rescued by the women. The female characters are strong and independent, while the males either passively accept what the women say is best (and are thus marked as good), or are prone to tantrums and sulking, (and so we know they are bad).

As a warrior culture, Loroi society is heavily stratified, and its institutions and customs can be very rigid. Details of specific traditions and rituals can be diverse, having progressed in parallel on three separate splinter colonies, and having since spread to dozens of additional worlds. There are, for example, many diverging dialects of the Trade Language that the Loroi jointly inherited from their Soia predecessors. Most of the core features of Loroi society are, however, common to most of the sub-cultures, and in almost all cases, society revolves around the warrior class. Loroi society is sharply partitioned into three segments: the females of the warrior class, the civilian females, and the males. The warrior class, accounting for roughly half of the population, fill nearly all military and governmental functions, and are themselves subdivided into numerous specialized castes that are similar (in division of duty) to our armed services. The civilian population is considered to be inferior in rank and importance to the military, but they are organized by profession in a similar way into groups that resemble trade guilds. Civilian institutions exist almost solely to support the military. The males, roughly one tenth of the population, exist mostly outside the normal structure of class, family and caste. Excluded from many professions and under pressure from the practical demands of reproduction, males nevertheless form an important element of the Loroi social machine.

Don't change gender roles, just how they are seen. Man are still bread-winners, defenders, etc. Women are still mothers, weavers, etc.

But there's no warrior culture, in fact soldiers get very bad propaganda (like in the modern west) so soldiers won't be ruling. Working is seen as a vilifying thing, so being provided by your man is something good. Men themselves seek to not work, although only the rich can do that. Giving birth and raising a family is the most glorious acomplishment, and a requirement for high offices. Also there's a chinese-like bureaucracy and you need to study hard to get in. Men are allowed in low and medium ranks, but they're few in numbers due to boys being in disadvantage against girls who are not required (nor allowed) to work and therefore have more time for preparing themselves.

Men who openly talk against this system are considered unmanly weaklings and accused of not being able to handle women. Often by other men.