Gender as a social thing and patriarchal

[Gael]

Had the idea, because the main race is similar to humans, but differs in some things. Like smaller sexual dimorphism.

Could you treat gender as a social thing and be conservative/patriarchal at the same time? Or would such a thing automatically lead to more equal societies? (Or the opposite.)

So a woman who is tall and has a male personality is considered a man. A small feminine man is considered a woman. The man-woman would stand in society above the women-man.

[David Johnston2]

Probably no. Give people a lower level of sexual dimorphism and they'll just get more attuned to the remaining cues because sexual reproduction is kind of dependent on being able to identify the opposite sex. If you really wanted to make it socially defined then they'd pretty much have be capable of actually shifting sexes...and that idea goes into some very unpleasant territory.

[ericthered]

Its possible to distinguish economic roles based on size without regard for gender. But it won't look like a reskinned "Men vs. women", it will look like "Men vs. Boys" or "Jocks vs. Nerds".

[Flyndaran]

There are some cultures that at least in the past allowed bio-X to live and take on the social gender roles of the opposite sex, usually with certain rules like no marrying.
They could use the words male and female for gender roles, but without the literal rigid meaning most human cultures do. Like grammatical gender obviously not being literal. Tables are "female" in Spanish, for example.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Gael

So a woman who is tall and has a male personality is considered a man. A small feminine man is considered a woman. The man-woman would stand in society above the women-man.

It would not necessarily lead to more equal societies, but it would tend to produce inequalities along lines other than gender.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Gael

Had the idea, because the main race is similar to humans, but differs in some things. Like smaller sexual dimorphism.

The context of this comment is not clear to me. What main race? What setting is this in?

Could you treat gender as a social thing and be conservative/patriarchal at the same time? Or would such a thing automatically lead to more equal societies? (Or the opposite.)

So a woman who is tall and has a male personality is considered a man. A small feminine man is considered a woman. The man-woman would stand in society above the women-man.

I wrote up a setting once in which the gender roles of a human society were "tattooed and armed" and "not tattooed and unarmed", and in which the tattooed gender were distinctly privileged over the non-tattooed one. But neither gender was considered either masculine or feminine — the people of that world would have denied that gender had anything to do with sex, and that they really noticed what sex people were most of the time.

The planet was called "Nahal", and a version was published in Pyramid (27 March 2008), but it's not available any more.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Gael

Had the idea, because the main race is similar to humans, but differs in some things. Like smaller sexual dimorphism.

Could you treat gender as a social thing and be conservative/patriarchal at the same time? Or would such a thing automatically lead to more equal societies? (Or the opposite.)

So a woman who is tall and has a male personality is considered a man. A small feminine man is considered a woman. The man-woman would stand in society above the women-man.

It's probably worthwhile to look at what sexual dimorphism or its lack implies in real life and then try to answer your question. The only reference work I have on the subject is Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee, but it is informative.

In brief, he is looking at animal behaviours that are precursors, or at least parallel developments, to human behaviors. He spends a good part of an early chapter on sexual dimorphism. One striking observation is that size difference between genders, as a feature of sexual dimorphism, is an accurate predictor of mating behaviour across all "higher species": birds and mammals certainly; probably fish, amphibians, and reptiles as well. The greater the average size difference, the more likely the larger-sized gender keeps a "harem", eg. gorillas, walruses. If the two genders are equal in size, they are monogamous, eg. gibbons. Species where the genders are close in size but not equal, are mostly monogamous but "cheat" on their mate when they can get away with it, eg. humans, geese.

That being the case, there's no reason to suppose that a species with low sexual dimorphism couldn't be conservative. On the other hand, gibbons, as an example, don't form groups larger than "parents plus non-adult children", so patriarchal, and even patrilineal or patrilocal, is probably moot.

It's the female in one family group of gibbons at the Assiniboine Zoo that is aggressively territorial, but whether that's a direct outgrowth of the lack of sexual dimorphism is unknown. One thing that seems clear about a lack of sexual dimorphism is that you won't find much individual variation in height and even less variation, approaching zero, between a mated pair.

[Flyndaran]

It's more about unequal combative competition for mates that determines such size differences. If punching or throwing opponents won't get the girl/guy, then strength isn't needed. But those aren't the only ways to prove your worth to prospective mates.
Singing is very important to gibbons, for example.
Monogamy means that once you do "win", there's no constant need to re-acquire your mates like gorillas with their harems.

Ring tailed lemurs are kind of male dominated, but males that are too aggressive and abusive will eventually "disappear".
Primate socialization is very complex with numerous exceptions to many rules.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

One striking observation is that size difference between genders, as a feature of sexual dimorphism, is an accurate predictor of mating behaviour across all "higher species": birds and mammals certainly; probably fish, amphibians, and reptiles as well. The greater the average size difference, the more likely the larger-sized gender keeps a "harem", eg. gorillas, walruses. If the two genders are equal in size, they are monogamous, eg. gibbons. Species where the genders are close in size but not equal, are mostly monogamous but "cheat" on their mate when they can get away with it, eg. humans, geese.

Technically, nonhuman species don't have genders. Gender is a culturally determined category of personal identity; but nonhuman animals (perhaps with a few exceptions among primates and other big brained species) don't have culturally determined categories. The word for what they have is "sex," and that's the standard biological term; I've never seen a biologist talk, for example, about "gender chromosomes."

But more substantively, I've heard a slightly different version. Females of most (at least internally fertilized) species haven't much to gain from having harems; a male can mate with a large number of females and father many offspring, but a female can only have a limited number of offspring no matter how many mates she has. The account I've seen was that if females are larger, it's because they raise their offspring on their own, and need both to be able to nourish them and to be able to defend them; the males show up during breeding season and then go on their way.

At any rate, that was the model I relied on in creating the world of Tapestry:

Men and selkies are positively dimorphic, and tend to be polygynous.

Nixies are slightly positively dimorphic (less so than humans in our world) and are loosely monogamous.

Elves and dwarves are neutral. Elves are almost always monogamous; dwarves are a weird exception, because more males then females attain sexual maturity, and it takes two or three males to keep a fertile female secure.

Ghouls and trolls are negatively dimorphic. Ghouls have female dominance, sort of like hyenas. Trollwives live on their own, or in female kin groups, and occasionally are receptive to trolls who bring them presents, after which they raise the children on their own; trolls hang out in groups of around three. Trollwives were originally bigger, but over the course of their evolution they developed a different dimorphism: their bodies got smaller, but their brains didn't, and they're noticeably smarter and more magical.

And of course all of these have cultural variations within the various races. Because these are sapient beings and they have gender as well as sex.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Gael

Had the idea, because the main race is similar to humans, but differs in some things. Like smaller sexual dimorphism.

Could you treat gender as a social thing and be conservative/patriarchal at the same time? Or would such a thing automatically lead to more equal societies? (Or the opposite.)

So a woman who is tall and has a male personality is considered a man. A small feminine man is considered a woman. The man-woman would stand in society above the women-man.

Aslan in Traveller do.

However I doubt it would lead to a more equal society because the only equal societies are hunter-gatherers and not all of those. Of course when you talk of "equality" you have to distinguish between ascribed hierarchy and functional(Queen Elizabeth has ascribed hierarchy, the Prime Minister has functional). Be that as it may, hierarchy is a part of humanity, whether we like it or not and it may be a necessary function of specialization.

So the answer is no it wouldn't because most societies of reasonable size have some kind of hierarchy, there are many ways to calculate it, and whatever.

Also you can in fact treat gender as a primarily social thing and be patriarchal. The existence of aristocracy proves that. No one today, indeed no one for many a generation really believed that having someone that could successfully suck up to a king as one's ancestor really made one somehow better; there was even skepticism back when aristocracy was more then ceremonial. But it was accepted because it was part of life. Like language.

I don't know how it would be gender in any meaningful sense unless it started with a symbolism based on reproductive biology though. We could have a society that has ignored that aspect of the etymology for hundreds of years but I should think, by definition, if it is gender it originated in that way. To say otherwise is kind of fiddling with language, kind of like saying that there is a culture where ships are not vehicles for going on water. You can stretch a point and say they are funeral rites as they were for Viking chiefs. But Viking chiefs knew that they were modeled on vehicles for traversing the water and so do we. If we call them ships, it is either because they called them ships or they look like ships to us. In fact both Vikings and ourselves consider them ships because even though they were not used for the same purpose they were modeled on ships. Similarly you cannot have a society that had "mathematics" that was not etymologically descended from "a discipline involving numbers" or language that did not involve communication. Likewise if gender changed it's meaning it would not change it's etymology and if it did it would not be gender.

Also the biological difference between the two sexes will always be at a forefront until someone invents human cloning and makes it popular. Humans need it to reproduce.

So if a patriarchal society has some other meaning for gender then biological(most do actually in the sense that most give a sort of aura of implications to "manliness" and "femininity"), it probably at least is etymologically descended from the concept.