Is Fantasy Writing a Gendered Experience?

[kingtycoon]

Man, so that Game of Thrones discussion is making me think of my own little patch of imagination land.  That and my, like, academic obligations.  I was smoking with the professor today and I apologized to him - we were analyzing a Cultural Revolution memoir and the assignment called on us to decide if the story was gendered or if there were any other class divisions in the author's disclosures.  I gave a few throw away sentences to the obvious gendered stuff (in order to be properly sexless in the Red Guard the author unintentionally starts posing as a boy for instance) but mainly settled into class divisions.  That's my whole thing lately/anymore and I stick by it.  We always have productive smoke-break conversations though and I was able to persuade him to give the Second Sex a look.  Meanwhile, I think about how I want to depict gender identity in Klial. 

First-  it's a fairly typical fantastic setting-  pre-industrial, mainly proto-urban.  Farmers see, and farmers break out into family patterns.  It's productive for me to think about the sort of idealized family structure - rather than the role of the individual in society - since if I'm imagining my own place - the answer is - there aren't individuals in society.  So I get to examine family structure and I'll try and compose an idealized family structure-  like the nuclear family of the late-capitalist west or the five generations under one roof of the Confucian tradition.

Second - I'll break these out according to ethnicity - and by ethnicity here (In Klial I have what amounts to human subspecies that compose the main form of ethnicity - they're linked to an obsolete role in the biome rather than language culture - so I get to divorce the two from one another thus...) and by ethnicity here I mean region/language inclusion.  If you're in an area and speak the commonest language there - then we'll constitute that as ethnicity - regardless if you've a wolf-muzzle or are 9 feet tall.  Anyhow the larger ethnic identities are Broad -in that there's probably hundreds of sub-linguistic or language isolate groups in an ethnicity that I don't have the time or the concentrated interest in spelling out.  So what I'm saying is - broad characteristics - but the name is going to the biggest regional group in a region.

Kliali - So I want them to have a 'clan' identity - similar to the latin Gens - but less in line with blood ties and more with regional dominion.  They're spread out and a Clan is a block of controlling interests in an area who have marriage alliances and band together as a unit.  Within that organization  there are politically derived hierarchies so that the highest ranking politicial figure becomes the defacto head of the Clan.  Since the Clan is a non-political, and in fact sub-rosa social entity there's a level of inbuilt corruption possible (which in turn gives me opportunities to provide CONFLICT - as well as rationales for larger political movements).  Within the Clan structure the Family is defined, ideally, as probably Paternal and Maternal Great-grandfathers as the localized heads of family organization - probably in formation similar to a Senate/Senex.  They're the local matchmakers and hearbreakers - deciding who will marry whom and to which family group their descendants/progeny - belong to.  Practically speaking the idea here will be that Given the circumstances - old men will be more common than old women - so it goes to them by tradition unrelated to a concept of male privilege.  Below them are the Grandparents - and these will be the Householders.  They run the households as are parcelled out by their fathers and can have say-  all of their children and children's families under their household/auspices.  Or they can have none of them.  Because the old are supported by the young it matters who you have under you in the family.  Next up is mothers and fathers - here I figure...  you've got a mishmash.  Probably during fecund years the mothers will be continuously pregnant with the children reared, after infancy by a collective of the elder householders - Granma and Grampa - meanwhile the parents, especially the father and older children will be workers tasked with providing for the whole unit (through agricultural practice - but sometimes through martial practice or civic responsibility).  But! So inheritance is insignificant, land can't be inherited in Klial (unless you're in the one family that owns everything but ignoring them now) the valuable inheritance then is Children - some progeny to support you into old age and provide a surplus of goods etc...  So!  Fecund offspring and good matches - genealogically (they breed like racehorses there, or goldfish) are desirable - and can be traded from clan to clan and sub-clan to subclan by the party with the most interest in the transactions - the Great-grandfathers. 

So?  Problems? 

I only have a minute so one or two more...

The Dasc - These people live mainly around the big inland sea and their region is calorically... uh-  Vital.  That is, they get a lot of food resource out of very small landholdings - so they're more urban than the mainstream, and they're more concentrated on the rich coastal regions.  Because they've got a mostly urban settlement/identity they're really outside the mainstream -but they're also numerically significant - being the fourth or fifth largest ethnic group.  The Dasc are the least likely to be agriculturalists and the most likely to be clergy and, AND artisans/tradespeople (in their culture the Trade Union = The Religion).  Anyhow - they're more about mobility for the purpose of pursuing work, and they're more about smaller family organizations because they're less needful of offspring to provide.  In fact they're the most casual about establishing continuity of generations of all the people.  Family structure, where it exists, is based around a nuclear family - usually to establish a method of transmitting wealth (mainly currency, contracts, contacts and licenses).  Marriages are more likely to be materially based (that is, the Love Match is the thing) - arrangements are, if ever invoked then probably sanctioned by the church/state/trade organization.  Because there's always a scarcity for workers and because trades and churches are the SAME there's an inbuilt apprenticeship program for orphans - as such there is not a lot of pressure to marry the parent of your kid or even recognize to recognize a kid as your own - just take them to the trade-school - they need them there.  I might toy with the idea of having churchmen come to kidnap surplus children - but probably they'd just buy them.  The Dasc will be all about being Transactional.  Because they again, can't inherit or own property - they are working for rents/licenses and the like - leases - which can be inherited - but can also be sold, and in fact are more likely to so be.

So?  Problems?

Later I have to the Yoyue - mountain folk.  They're pretty weird, and probably have two paradigms to work from.

Comments

[aslant.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in the "old men will be more common than old women" part, from the perspective of birthing practices. Is the risk of death by farm injury for men (scythe through the artery, fall from a hay loft, horse kick to the temple) actually less than death by childbirth for women? I think about whether different clans guarded midwifery secrets that ensured greater longevity among the women. Also, in the clan structure you describe, I'd bet that rearing young children would also be the task of pods of women able to wet nurse for longer periods of time, as opposed to exclusively the elders, as after all the baby (up to age 2 or even beyond) must stay by the mother. Otherwise you've got a lot of sickly or dead babies. I've had this idea of writing a story in which the union of wet nurses is the most powerful underground power structure determining a society's continued success and any one family's longterm economic success. Although historically wet nurses were an underclass, akin to a kitchen maid, if the serfs can rise up...

[mimerki.livejournal.com]

Would you mind sharing the title of the Cultural Revolution memoir? I'm interested.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

The fact that "pretend to be a man" = "sexless" is...I'll just leave that alone, & keep reading.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in you writing up something like this for your breakdown of kingroups.