What are the true reasons why matriarchal societies are not realistic or possible in a realistic setting besides "women...

What are the true reasons why matriarchal societies are not realistic or possible in a realistic setting besides "women are dumb dumb"?

Would you be bothered by a matriarchal society in a fantasy setting where it's possible for magical reasons? (Like a bit like Esrolia in Glorantha they live in a land where earth/feminine magic is very powerful and dominant so female spellcasters are the dominant caste)

There are no "true" reasons. There are plenty of matriarchal societies throughout history, and intuitively women as the preservers of culture makes more sense. Who do you want holding all your knowledge: the person who's going to stay and maintain the village, or the guy who runs the risk of getting gored by a wild animal every day?

Nah, I think it could work. It just hasn't IRL so far, that doesn't mean it couldn't ever work. Magic and other races add way more variables than we could possibly predict for.

IRL, Monarchy isn't strictly possible.
Regardless of the monarch, the monarch needs a group below him, or at the least thats the way for all civilizations. So IRL, its truly never been a dictatorship, but a group dictatorship, maybe with a strong direction/figurehead.

So matriarchy is a form of soceity that keeps on happening. Just like family name or social class(gender neutral), and patriarchy.
My favorite failure of logic in Sociology, is to attribute Clan/Name/Class heritage, to be a form of Patriarchy, when its rarely that.

>There are plenty of matriarchal societies throughout history
Trying to learn, not arguing: there have? Which ones/when/where?

Not really, but humans tend to not because girls and boys' brains work differently to each other. Women nature faster and are naturally more social while men are naturally more competitive, which combined with the more powerful body mass means thing just naturally tend towards a certain way unless the men are emasculated one way or the other.

A fantasy race could easily have more dominant and competitive females, like some anglerfish or Mole Rat society.

The main requirement is that the society be somehow shielded from external threats or be in a very low competative envirnment. IRL, the world is chaotic and violent and resource scarcity has always meant external powers WILL subjegate weaker neighbors. Men are far more competative and aggressive than women, so in such a situation of course male-led societies will be all that remains.

Men are specialized for external force (ingroup vs outgroup). Women are specialized for internal force (cultivation of the ingroup). In a situation where a society doesnt need to fear an outgroup (or feels they dont need to) feminine power will start to rise to the top because women are better at playing the field of gratification and shame.

At the end of day, a man can just kick the shit out of a woman. Such a fundamental and natural level of power puts men in the front, purely by nature. But women can be competent enough and have proven that they can rule a successful kingdom.

There's no large scale matriarchal society (I.E. anything more complex than a single village or small town) that would act as a good template for a realistic game to use for that role. You could make up what it could look like, but then it wouldn't be as realistic now, would it?

I'm not that guy, but just google it, you'll find plenty of examples, but they're all small tribal societies.

>Would you be bothered by a matriarchal society in a fantasy setting where it's possible for magical reasons?
Give it a good backstory that explains how it works, maybe some history how it was founded in the first place, then I'm all for it. Make it an actual matriarchal society, one that was believably built with women in control, and not a patriarchal society where the rulers are just kings with tits.

I don't remember the exact name, but I remember some tibetian culture doing this thing.

I feel like that could be accomplished by Dwarves and Elves being some of the first long lived races on the block. Both are often depicted as rather defensive, holding up in their forests or mountains and,relying on magic or superior weaponry to handle any marauding monsters. That leads to situations where having a queen or a council of women might develop. Elves are obvious, though for dwarves they're often so gruff and blunt that a woman who could actually stand to be polite might be a breath of fresh air in comparison.

That in turn may help influencw human cultures that crop up later. If you hear about a dwarven queendom that has lasted a thousand years, that might make those humans think the dwarves and elves have it figured out. Meanwhile, the fact that monster tribes would no doubt be male-dominated might make such an approach seem unrighteous

There's also spiderfolk. Large and deadly females, small and meek males.

>they're all small tribal societies
Oh, bummer.

>My favorite failure of logic in Sociology, is to attribute Clan/Name/Class heritage, to be a form of Patriarchy, when its rarely that.
It also seems to have the exact opposite of that in pre-Roman Britain. Women wielded an INSANE level of social power in those societies.

That's what I just said. And given the quasi-medieval bent most realistic games seem to prefer with their settings, a tribal society would likely be at a disadvantage compared to its neighbors barring something to make up for the lack of complexity, like an abundance of natural resources or powerful allies willing to intervene on its behalf.

One time when the "equal stats" thing popped up I just said that chicks in that plane were commonly built like Serena Williams.

I'd rather have people who are actually engaged in the riskiest work be in charge of administrating those

Thats a pretty Germanic thing too.
It just turns out that as Feudal strongholds become vassal pieces, Kings become Chess players, and a trade route embraces its neighbors into a grand Kingdom.
And so, society was changed, forever more.
Also Christianity was a literal dick to inheritance, but the same is true of the Romans.

The one where it is actually so patriarcal it looks matriarcal ? That is generally what happens in those society, women do everything and manage everything. And when I say everything it means EVERYTHING. The men just hang around and get drunk between friends and to preserve social peace and avoid one guy killing another guy because his mother/sister went with the wrong dude he, in turn, can also fuck the guy's mother/sister. The society is patriarcal because its foundations merely are the men accepting to not fuck everyone shit up and letting women having the false impression they are in command in exchange for infinite autismbux and a perfect NEETlife.

Are you just describing r9k right now

As Bertrand de Jouvenel put it, the reason is that matriarchal societies (except the highly isolated ones) are always taken over by patriarchal ones. Patriarchies simply have a superior capacity in breeding warriors, matriarchies do not. If you want a thriving warrior class you do not subjugate them, you reward them for their prowess. Whether it's in the form of a nobility or citizen-soldiers does not matter.

Even if women are somehow as strong as men, you need to address male disposability due to reproductive factors. I'm sorry if it hurts your feefees but that's the most politically correct answer you'll get.

See this is the sort of thing I can't get behind. It takes an existing thing and just swaps the men with women in the ruling class.

I'd prefer a matriarchal society be built from the ground up.
>As shown in kid games, on average boys will compete with each other playing by the rules until one wins, while girls will change the rules until everybody wins
So a matriarchy will probably not have a single rule, or at least a figurehead who shares power with a collection of other rulers/advisors/nobles who each contribute some factor to running their civilization

>Men are naturally more aggressive and stronger hence why they tend to be the hunters and warriors in primitive societies
So after generations of men serving the military caste, this cemented a need for women to serve in the social caste to keep everything running. Men are generally rendered unfit to lead for periods of time due to injury or because they are sent off to hunt/raid/fight, or otherwise killed, creating a power vacuum where civility breaks down as others compete to fill this void. To ensure such things don't happen, or to lessen the blow of such a disaster, women take up the mantle of leading and guiding the population.

>While a woman can still be as ambitious as a man, they are less likely to take it with aggression
A diplomatic corp may have more focus in dealing with foreign powers, with emphasis on finding agreements to share territory, only using force to take what they want when words fail.

This is the sort of thing I'd like to see when creating any society: start with their history, and build outwards to explain why the current society exists in its current state

>"Chicks in my world are built like Serena Williams."
>if players accuse you of being a fetishist explain that it's because you prefer not to cock around with -4 STR bullshit
>if players accuse you of being an SJW explain that it's your fetish
checkmate

>user uses bait to insert his fetishes into his setting

That's one way to make gender differences work for you

Mary Tudor 1530ish ruled england and its empire.

That's not a matirarchal society though. It's a society where men ruling are the norm, and a woman managed to take control by being more of a man than her fellow men.

It sounds a lot like bonobo society to me. That's actually a good example of feminine control over society then. Actually putting the tendencies of women into control is exactly what we're talking about. It doesn't matter who you think gets the better deal out of the exchange, it's just whose tendencies dominate.

Matriarchal doesn't mean men are incapable of fucking shit up. Patriarchal society certainly doesn't stop women from fucking things up. I know plenty of women who'd find the comparison of a housewife to a comfy NEET life apt.

>Women nature faster and are naturally more social
That seems like some pretty exceptional benefits in any species sufficiently advanced beyond hunter-gatherer culture.

It wouldn't work. Assuming a medieval setting again, that lack of a single leader figure will do more harm than good by slowing down responses to emergent crises.

And you also forget that military power and political power have tended to be inseparable throughout most of history. Is this hypothetical society somehow immune to a military coup, or does the average soldier just have a lifespan as short as an average member of the Imperial Guard?

Gnolls would be matriarchal

The trick it seems would be to establish a matriarch whose primary job is to create a facade of a patriarchy. Something similar to Cersei and Joffrey's relationship but legalized.

I did say a Queen or a Council of women, so I mentioned the possibilitt of shared rule. On top of that though, this was in response to the fact tjat they are different races and therefore mat not have identical psychology to humans.

I was simply giving an example of why such a setup may work out, as such cultures would be stable,and isolated enough for such a thing to develop

Only until you factor in the fact that there's only so many resources to go around and that in many cases other societies won't let you have them just because you ask nicely.

In those circumstances a more cooperatively inclined society would be more likely to be greatly weakened or even outright wiped out by its more competitive neighbors. After all, diplomacy only works when both sides are open to it.

Anthropologists trace a lot of the super patriarchal stuff to the aryan invaders. the further you get from their influence the more ambiguous the roles of the sexes (at least on the top levels) become. It happened prehistorically so it's still a head-scratcher.

Plus you have shit like this which can be hard to record in history as anything other than "army of men that was led by a penis wielder fought us today." That doesn't say dick about the inner workings of that society and is often assumed to be just a pure patriarchy because those guys must have been lords or whatever.

Elizabeth I might be the better example, given her ~40 year reign and actual dominance of political propaganda of the era compared to Mary Tudor's ~5 years. I barely know anything about this period but she was more successful than just about any of the other Marys of that time period. I'm currently using her as inspiration for a country in my own setting, that, to be fair, is mostly just an excuse for me to dump a whole bunch of Elizabethan England into the world somewhere
>Elizabeth I invented and used a persona of a "virgin queen," associating itself with tropes attached to the Virgin Mary, motherhood, etc., claimed to be "married to the country," etc., compared by Spenser to a "Faerie Queen"
So the ruler of this country, in my mind, can claim to be using similar methods to be literally descended of the fae or similar, a mother and a sorceress of great power, with sort of a "protecting mother/grandmother" angle to it, and in order to keep up this kind of social pressure, she commissions leaders of the arts in order to prop up these same tropes.

Elizabeth's "matriarchy" didn't persist as one because 1. the society around her was still patriarchal and 2. she didn't have any heirs anyway, but I can't help but think that a similar, sustained Queenhood similar to Elizabeth's could totally work in a fantasy setting, and well.

I feel like the tech level of the entire species matters enormously in this regard. In a feudal era you can absolutely get away with that kind of imperialism. In a more modern era you're gonna get stomped into dust if you try to pull that shit on other nations.

>Assuming a medieval setting again, that lack of a single leader figure-
That's why I said a single figurehead ruler. In reality, power is shared between many others, but the average citizen will see only the Suzerain. Anytime there's a good harvest, it's the Suzerain not her advisor who recommended a new crop rotation. If the army suffers grievous casualties, it wasn't because her appointed general was a total nonce, it's the Suzerain's fault.

>Is this hypothetical society somehow immune to a military coup
No of course not, which is why power is shared with the military. Because men make up the military, it is expected the general that sits at the Suzerain's table be a man. Just no one besides officers would even know him. Again, the figurehead comes to mind. It wouldn't be impossible for a man to be a leader, but it would be impossible for them to be the de facto ruler everyone knows. At best, they are on the council that advises her.

but I like black chicks not muscle girls

But warriors are a slave class user
Glorious foreign soliders, raised for sacrifice
T. Turk

>What are the true reasons why matriarchal societies are not realistic or possible in a realistic setting besides "women are dumb dumb"?
It's literally because they're dumb as shit and emotional and cannot cooperate with eachother.

If you remove all female traits that cause them to be unable to properly govern a nation, then you just have men with tits.

Ancient Japan is theorized to have been matriarchal.

>In reality, power is shared between many others, but the average citizen will see only the Suzerain. Anytime there's a good harvest, it's the Suzerain not her advisor who recommended a new crop rotation. If the army suffers grievous casualties, it wasn't because her appointed general was a total nonce, it's the Suzerain's fault.
Alternatively, if you have a Suzerain with an effective cult of personality or propaganda wing, it looks more like
>If there's a good harvest, it's the Suzerain, not her advisor, who recommended a new crop rotation
>If there's a bad harvest, it was the advisor who did a shitty job implementing the new crop rotation
Only problem there is answering how that propaganda system would work, and why anybody would want to be an advisor anyway. They'd basically be middle management. I'm not sure about that last one.

>besides "women are dumb"
they're also physically weaker
>Would you be bothered by a matriarchal society in a fantasy setting where it's possible for magical reasons?
nope. magic is really the only way this could happen

I would be a bit bothered unless there are some system changes to support it.

Generally, the people who produce and or the people who take the risk are the ones that end up in charge. Throughout human history with rare exceptions that has been men for obvious reasons. But that does not mean that a fantasy world has to work that way.

The obvious fantasy example would be an amazon nation where the women are presented as more physically capable than men. Thus naturally filling military roles over males.

I think my favorite fantasy idea though is the female dominated magical society. Females having perhaps a high rate of sorcerers perhaps. Add in a bit of high magic assisted economy to go along with it. Men filling infantry roles that are seen as secondary to sorcerer officers etc.

I'm good with that.

>slowing down responses to emergent crises

"My lady Queen! We rode many leagues to bring word! Cadwal rides against us, skirmishing along the northern border! At least, that's what was happening when we left last week to get here."

Yeah, in a medieval setting, political consulting is the big time sink in crisis management.

>9 different biomes of forests
>More than 47 segregated livable areas
So which one faggot?

>Alternatively, if you have a Suzerain with an effective cult of personality or propaganda wing, it looks more like
I was thinking more because the average citizen is a semi-literate brick who only sees the Suzerain. The same way many people point to the President as the solution and source of the countries problems despite the fact that many issues come from Congress and the Supreme court as well. There may be some cult of personality with popular rulers, but most are seen as the central figure because people are too dumb/lazy to learn the rest.
>why anybody would want to be an advisor anyway
It takes all kinds. Some people want to lead, some prefer to keep their head down and collect a hefty paycheck for doing a lot of bureaucratic bullshit.

>What are the true reasons why matriarchal societies are not realistic or possible in a realistic setting besides "women are dumb dumb"?

Do you guys actually not get that "figurehead empowered by advisors" describes literally every head of state for the last 2000 years at least?

That still requires multiple impossible conditions just to get a society to that point, including but not limited to a complete lack of hostile neighbors and otherwise perfect conditions to ensure that its innate slowness to react could never harm it. There's no time to mess around with advisors and councils when a hostile tribe is attacking RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

But those older days influenced modern society to the point you just can't turn back the clock. The very circumstances that would allow a society to become matriarchal IRL now would have squashed any possibility of a matriarchal society surviving to reach that point.

It can't possibly be realistic if you need to completely change how society came to be in the first place just to make the society work.

>The obvious fantasy example would be an amazon nation where the women are presented as more physically capable than men. Thus naturally filling military roles over males.
A. That's oxymoronic. Women by definition carry and birth children. That problem is not solved by them being stronger than men.

B. We're talking about what sex primarily shapes the society, not who fights the wars. Slaves provided a huge amount of labor to Greek society, but they had minuscule influence.

This is /th, where people with zero facts argue with people who have 1 fact

Take he goes on the board for playing pretend and refuses to yield to any fictitious (or factual for that matter) supposition other than his own.

Because debates on how to react to such an invasion would last less than a minute, right?

No, those things need immediate action. Advisors and councils are just a burden in those cases. Either the response is immediate or it doesn't come at all.

Can we stop applying a modern mindset to what's supposed to be a medieval society here?

>also
women are typically more intelligent than men

Actually, I think it's because we recognize that that we can say "Hey, this could totally work with a reasonably competent woman figurehead." And it's true, because there are historical examples. We're really just kind of hashing out how it would work in practice to apply to a fantasy society, I thought. The surface-level of things and so on.
>impossible conditions
>complete lack of hostile neighbors
Well, to take one historical example: England is a FUCKING ISLAND. I think I could maybe hypothetically speaking come up with one possible way to have a society develop without hostile neighbors.
I guess it's pretty improbable to have something as crazy as an area of land surrounded by natural hazards like the ocean, though. Or mountains, or steep valleys, or deserts. Those probably never happen. Sorry boss.

Please stop posting

...

>hat are the true reasons why matriarchal societies are not realistic or possible in a realistic setting besides "women are dumb dumb"?
But.. they are?

>a hostile tribe is attacking RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
...then you're dead. If you don't have an information network outside of your most important zone(s) of control then you're caught with your pants down (what sex organ they cover doesn't matter) and pretty much guaranteed to die. Why do you think settlements built walls and shit? Why do you think they tried to form alliances with their neighbors or just expand their territory whenever possible?

>A. That's oxymoronic. Women by definition carry and birth children. That problem is not solved by them being stronger than men.
That's how spotted hyenas work though. The females are all stronger than the males, so males are at the bottom of society. Males submit to females, daughters are slightly less aggressive towards their fathers, and even the highest ranking male is lower than the lowest ranking female.

You do know that being a Jannisarry was a step up for most slaves in the Ottoman Empire, allowing them to live something to a middle class lifestyle, right?

The Turks are no counterargument to the thesis that patriarchies, by virtue of being patriarchies, can raise more warriors, better warriors and crush matriarchies.

I guess it must be equally improbable that within such an evnironment, resource limitations would make it WORSE? Is this island fucking Eden?

The only way that could work is if the society was a single giant family, and even then competition would begin when it grows large enough to fragment. You simply cannot avoid competition, and it only takes one competitive society to halt any cooperative tendencies in the rest.

So I just looked up Matriarchy on Wikipedia, and it has some lists of historical examples (by region and by chronology, handily enough).

Somewhere in there it mentions an interesting point made by Engels: paternity is disputable, but maternity is not; i.e. it is easier to prove who is whose mother, which makes matrilineal inheritance easier to manage. Which would of course be a problem for those who would want to usurp the chiefdom/throne/family leadership.

As far as "magical reasons" for matriarchy, the one historical example I can think of of something that was 100% a matriarchy, undeniably, and not tremendously vulnerable to the typical argument of "If men wanted to they could just sock women in the jaw" was the Yamatai "Kingdom". It was ruled by a Sorceress Queen.

People genuinely believed that she could use magic to scorch the flesh from their bones in an instant if they angered her, or curse them to slow sickness and decay if they plotted against her. She effectively wagered that force of arms was worthless in the face of her unfathomable arcane power, and thus seized political supremacy. And this is pretty reasonable.

In much the same way that currency is backed by goods, political power is backed by capacity to use force. If women are for some reason able to access an alternate means of force to "better upper body strength" that men cannot simply co-opt trivially, then they will almost certainly rise to power.

What exactly does physical prowess have to do with being a sovereign? I assume little to nothing, but women being physically weaker is somehow relevant?

And why do you think the first governments were varying forms of dictatorship? He/she who hesitated was lost.

Okay first off user was bringing up a developed, medieval level society where advisors wpuld be plausible. If your are going to talk about a single tribe of course it will be different. There won't be any advisors because there is no need for advisors at that stage. It will just be the Warchief who is the man and a chieftain(ess?) that guides the tribe. Only as the tribe expands and people become more specialized will there be a need for advisers. That's when you start seeing advisors for farming advisors for trading advisors for pretty much everything a society that's developing would need

>In a feudal era you can absolutely get away with that kind of imperialism. In a more modern era you're gonna get stomped into dust if you try to pull that shit on other nations.

In the current world, yes, because of how globally interconnected modern nations are, but that's not really a product of the technology alone. If every military alliance collapsed and the UN was disbanded, you sure as fucking shit can get away with whatever you want as long as you have the force to back it up.

The Pax Romana lasted two hundred years and eventually the Roman Empire fell apart. We've only had a similar sort of period between western societies for about seventy years, assuming that a fall couldn't happen again is naive.

>paternity is disputable, but maternity is not;
That always struck me as the strongest point, women can have bigger harems as they always know they child they carrying is theirs (duh) and whoever touches her harem aren't actually doing much of a problem in the long term.
>Get pregnant from one of the males of the Queen means admitting you fuck her fuckboys
>Getting an harem girl pregnant, she arranges a night with his sire "But my lord, this child is yours!?"

It's not just the reaction time of divided power that's iffy.

The middle section makes no sense. Men in upper leadership positions aren't always at the front: most of the time they'll be in command positions to the rear, giving orders and reacting to the enemy. Even if they are, the interruption of pregnancy is more damning that injury, in which you either recover or die most of the time. In settings with magic healing this is further compounded. Finally you're taking leadership roles that would otherwise be filled by those military men, and then avoiding wars explicitly if you can make agreements that anyone with a rightful claim would find ridiculous: that's shitting all over your warriors faces. Those moments are their only chance to demonstrate their skills.

Nobody is going to like sharing if they think it's actually theirs. You're basically making a leader that acts like the fake mother who pleaded to Solomon and was okay with splitting the baby in two: you're destroying your claims and everyone paying attention will know that. Your nation is fucking doomed to more threats from within and without.

Most of the time if the head of state was a figurehead, it was for a single powerful individual not a group of advisers who actually controlled things together. That's not going to work well in a medieval society. It's not damning but it's sub optimal.

They're typically more average than men, which is to say there are both more retard tier and genius tier men.

Why are you illiterate faggot?

Who said anything about resource limitations? I only suggested natural boundaries.
>The only way that could work is if the society was a single giant family...
Important: "family" is a social construct. Sure, you need dad + mom = kids, but the rest is just fluff and conventions. You can make this happen.
>competition would begin when it grows large enough to fragment
And you have nothing to definitively claim that a woman-led faction MUST be destroyed inevitably by a male-led one.

To add onto this, said peace was largely backed up by the threat of mutually assured destruction.

Also because some smartass won't get what I mean by a "similar sort of period," there has not been open war between western nations since ww2, nor has there been invasions upon the soil of western nations. When you're kicking in other people's doors and they can't even shit on your lawn, you're in a nice and solid position.

This can be easily removed though - in nature we see many species where opposite it true and some even became races in fantasy - and let's not forget, mixed raced empires could exist and a woman could lead one
(From my personal setting, I got a band of highly organised magic item and spells seeking warriors and mages lead by a giant gnoll woman known as "Lich-Eater" for her tendency to hunt down liches and carry around there skulls, she enforced that women are to be respected, which most men didn't argue with, probably because there races were not all that different in terms of strength between genders, save for the gnolls of course)

In a fantasy setting gnolls would fit the bill nicely. spotted hyena clans are dominated by the females, who are both larger and more aggressive. Just make it clear to the players that they aren't 100%"anatomically correct", ie no pseudo penis. Couple gnolls propensity for lazyness with a subservient male cast and bam, you've got a decent basis for a tribal matriarchy. The males do most of the "work" mostly herding slaves and going on raids. The females mostly stay back, caring for their young when they have them. Otherwise they are free to join the raids or do whatever else they want. The clans hierarchy would be devided along gender lines, even the lowest ranking female would be above the highest ranking male. But within the genders status would be determined by strength, prowess in battle, and reputation. magical aptitude would give you a huge edge and learned magic would be guarded jealously by the females to preserve their status. Thus the religious cast would be dominated by females with the rare talented males beneath them.

A female dominated gnoll society we would see a lot less of the retarded "ehh the males will eat their own young rather than hunt cause they're lazy and always chaotic evil" bullshit that keeps their numbers down. If we insert a bit more hyena and take out a little fiendish influence we might actually see dominance struggles that aren't skaven style "take out the guy above you while he's wounding from another challenge" bloodbaths. But rather something more akin to what we see in nature, where a fight might be vicious but rarely lead to death or maiming. Status is important but clans that implode due to infighting don't last and just seemed like edgy tripe to drive home the "furry, savanna dwelling, bad nigger-stereotype race you can always kill without question because they're always evil" vibe they seemed to be going for.

And yes while i said nigger let's not get /pol/ in here. Just using it to conjure an image

I don't mind female societies as long as its tastefully done and not just done because "muh femminism"

Like amazonians who have been around since before the SJW age

>not posting the better version of that image

>amazonians are real
wew

>And why do you think the first governments were varying forms of dictatorship? He/she who hesitated was lost.
Acceptance/tolerance of those who are to be ruled has dick to do with hesitation.

Mass intraspecies conflict is different from a few hyenas fighting each other once in a while for scraps.

I like my female lead societies like they're from an old JRPG, like Troia from FF4, or Femiscyra from DQ4. Nobody questions it, that's just how it is.

>reading comprehension

Short story lack of modern medicine.

Long version: about half of children would die before age 5. Early death slowed down greatly but did not stop. Fertility rate, or the number of times that a women gives live birth, needs to be at about 4.3 for the society to be stable. However even that number does not tell the full story because about 8% of women in a pre modern setting would die after giving birth the first time. Deaths from follow births was rather low though. The end effect was that a children had to be born and that means a lot of time about to be invested in taking care of them.

For the first 18 months of a babies life, barring baby formula being invented in the late 19th century, they need breast breast milk. cow milk just does not really work well at that age. This means the mother needs to take care of those kids. This is not to say a matriarchal society can not work or that it was not a thing. Most of the Iroquois tribes were de facto matriarchal were the women could veto going to war, controlled the granary, and had full control over trade treaties & foreign aid. However there is a another issue that comes up as a issue: foreign relations could be very hard for matriarchal societies.

Why?

Because one most of the time they were dealing with non-matriarchal society and two military alliances issues. The first is easy to understand, the second is a bit more detailed. For a matriarchal society it makes a lot of sense for a war leader to be a male. Outside leaders will however see that war time leader as the full time leader in the same way they do things. The issue is that the male war leader is not. This can, and in the case of the Iroquois did happen a lot, were the outsiders would be very damn confused when the war leader personal likes the idea of joining a given coalition but the matriarchal society end up not not joining. This can lead to the matriarchal society being viewed as dishonest & its king/ chiefs being viewed as powerless

Honestly? I like this stuff myself.
I can come up with rationalizations myself, but I'm also capable of suspension of disbelief and shit like that. In the end, does it really matter if it's the King asking my friends and I to investigate the comet that fell in the mountains, or the Queen?

>In the end, does it really matter if it's the King asking my friends and I to investigate the comet that fell in the mountains, or the Queen?
Hell the comet could be what causes the Queen to get to power somehow.

A COMET STRIKING A PLANET WOULD FUCKING ANNIHILATE IT YOU RETARD

> If you remove the physical prowess difference of a man or women. Golly gee, The ruling class is suddenly a toss up. Who would of figured.

sorry, had a brain fart. I was trying to reference expedition to the barrier peaks

The reasons there aren't any matriarchal societies is because patriarchal ones are also violent expansionist ones so they tended to kill them off. After that it is a simple matter of entrenchment. A matriarchal society in the modern era would work fine because the risk of warfare between developed nations is virtually nil. With no external threats to l exterminate them there's nothing really stopping them.

Really a society like that is largely meaningless. Women have been the political keys for as long as there had been politics. In truth, they usually wind up wielding most of the de facto power. While the males may have de hire authority it is often the ambitious wife maneuvering her husband into positions. It is women who provide the alliances and social stability to enable the sort of feudal politics many medieval and antiquity settings use. What you need is really just to acknowledge the Grey Emanence behind the throne and much of the time that was a talented and skilled wife.

Being dumb is a pretty good reason.

I know it's Dragon Quest and everything but...

Man, the nipple chafing. Is it worth the fashion statement of the asymmetrical top?

Unless you explain away physical strenght differences then no.

Matriarchal societies only existed in areas with scarser populations where there were less women so they got a priviledged position and were able to practice poliandry.

The only examples of this are the Tuareg nomads and certain cultures in Tibet.

Are you implying all or most kings are geniuses?

>this example doesn't count because it's fictional
>in my games of make believe
It's literally impossible to have this discussion because there's an army of retards who come to board for playing with plastic army men and argue that only what's "realistic" counts.

IIRC there are records from China (which is where most of our records of ancient Japan come from) which talk about a ruler who was equal parts Queen and high priestess, I believe that this is the same Yamatai ruler is talking about.
I'm not aware that there's much evidence that her level of political power was particularly widespread or persistent across multiple generations though.

It's not about women being dumb. Only bitter Internet redpill jackasses and uneducated third-world religious fanatics think that.

It's about them A) being necessary for reproduction -- one man can impregnate a hundred women with little investment, whereas one woman impregnated takes nine months to produce one, maybe like 3 at most, children, and B) being on average generally physically smaller and weaker than men. Just about every civilization was born out of violence, dominated by the fiercest warriors who could best use violence to protect their right to rule and force the servitude of the rest of their society (or a priestly caste who could make alliances with said warriors and use threats of supernatural punishment to force the rest of society to fall in line), and developed to serve the interests of those warriors (and possibly priests)).

There were exceptions, actually. That's something people don't realize. You had various peaceful, matriarchal or borderline matriarchal desert farming societies in the American Southwest like the Hopi and the Zuni, you had things like the Iroquois and their council of mothers, etc.. You had societies in which women controlled an aspect of society that was deemed at least as important, if not more so, than warfare and hunting.

The exceptions are rare though, as we are a naturally warlike species.

It's not necessarily what humans are naturally. It's what survives.

A war like society is going to consume or destroy a neighboring peaceful society.

Beastiality is illegal user.

As others have said, while successful matriarchs have existed, large scale civilizations tend to favor a more masculine mindset generally,and as such long running matriarchal lines aren't really a thing. Regardless, fantasy settings tend to have things that narrow the sex gap (mainly magic and divinity) which would make securing a true matriarchal line more feasible, especially when considering that many fantasy societies tend to be egalitarian to some extent, especially human societies.

But in the modern age, the very concepts of matriarchy and patriarchy are irrelevant simply because the same system exists no matter the sex of who's in charge. There's nothing left to change about it.