Heh, I'm sure some of you are liking this already. But Has this been done before? The setting I've got so far is the not-too-distant future (Creative, I know) where nearly all men have died off. There's only a few hundred left, so they're kept in the care of the government (now run by women). Most children that are born are girls, so when a boy is born, they're thrust right into the hands of the higher ups to groom and take care of. Men's only purpose is to reproduce. Heh, how many guys would love that job? The thing is, men have virtually no will of their own. Everything they eat, wear, do is controlled. They're modeled after what the women desire at the time, so some guys are clean shaven, baby-faced with washboard abs. while others are tattooed and pierced, etc. The point I'm getting at: Has this been done? And where could I get some good material on studying how women lol. Because lets just face it, if women were running everything (and not just telling hteir husbands what to do) the world would be completely different. Also take out the nuclear family, and it'd be an interesting place... So....
I've not heard of a story involving this, but then that's not to say that there isn't one. And I'd suggest you do a search on google for "matriachal societies". I'd also suggest you take a look at the Amazons of ancient Greek legend.
Theres a comic book series by DC called "X The Last Man", I believe. All the men died out and large scale civilization collapsed due to losing 50% of the population. Then the last man on Earth pops up and tries to survive. "Sliders" a tv show dealing with alternate worlds had a very similar scenario for one episode in the first season. The one problem I have with your idea is what about invetro fertilization, and minor genetic engineering. We're almost at the point if not already there, of being able to safely make an embryo male or female. So why don't the scientists just start pumping out male embryo's by the wombful?
I had the same exact same thought. With an invetro, you'd only need one (maybe more, I'm not 100% on this) sperm and out of the millions one man can produce, it would be pretty easy. Then, of course, you've got half-sibs interbreeding ... Still, they'd be capable of breeding men like crazy. Oookay, that sounded a little odd.
The way to solve the inbreeding problem is to collect the sperm and move all over the place, keeping careful records of who the father is. If you have sperm moving across oceans, and continents the likelihood of two siblings meeting and having children decreases dramatically. Plus with all the research people would probably place in reproductive sciences, the risks of half siblings producing genetically damaged children would be basically removed. Also since they never grew up together, even the ick factor of half brothers and sisters marrying, would be reduced. Sir Cameron in the tv series I mentioned. The Professor, the smart guy in the group, went on a rant about how if the alternate world had even the most basic reproductive sciences they would be able to solve their problems within a generation. This is a big problem for you to overcome. The comic book series solved it by killing off all the men, so they didn't even have the chance to reproduce. At least not until the last man showed up.
I haven't heard of this being done before, but honestly, I don't particularly like the idea, it's not something that would interest or captivate me. However, that's just one individual opinion and I wish you the best of luck with it
A similar thing has been done before, there's an award winning novel called 'The Haidmaid's Tale' ... You may want to check it out- The Handmaid's Tale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
sorry, eoz, but atwood's benchmark novel has nothing to do with a matriarchal society, where women rule... on the contrary, males are in charge in that work and women totally subjugated... i'd started [but will most likely never finish] a fact-based novel about the actual places in our world where women once ran things, titled 'matera'... that's the name of the place in italy where, back in 12,500 bc, women actually invented community-based farming and many of the basic farm tools still used in many parts of the world [i've been there and seen the proof, for those male supremists and skeptics who're shaking their heads at that ;-) ]... it goes from there to sicily, and then to the islands of malta, where the matriarchical hierarchy was finally overthrown several thousand years later... about the same time a similar society in turkey was taken over by the parties of the other part...
I bet if S.C published his novel that critics would compare it to the Haidmaid's Tale. As far as ideas go, S.C has basically proposed something that mirror images the ideas in the Haidmaid's Tale ie: -Men rule the 'world' as women rule the 'world' -Women are used souly for reproductive purposes as men are used souly for reproductive purposes -Men subjugate the women as women subjugate the men -Men control women's identity as women control men's identity ect-ect Although so, I would find Sir Cameron's novel facinating..
Yeap, Sliders did an ep like that, actually, two I can think of. One in the first season has the group arrive where most countries (except Australia and a few others, if I remember it) in the world have been hit by a strange man made virus, which killed off the men, so all men were in reproduction camps, which Quinn and the Professor have to escape from. However in a later episode (season 2 I believe) the tradition roles of men and women were reversed, so basically, Parliament/the Senate was full of women, women ran the multinational companies and corporations. That episode focused more on the Professor and his fight for equality among the sexes. From memory Quinn was told to wear tampered jackets as he was eye candy for women visitng the campaign centre, while Wade, with no qualifications in the field, was given a managerial role in campaign advertising or something. Interesting yes, but you'd need to control the perspective very careful, the point of the second episode was that power corrupts, so the women virtually acted as the men do.
I remember the second one. For the first one, the killer virus had been released by Saddam during the first Desert Storm. A few Southern hemisphere countries were spared due to the atmospheric weather system not blowing as much of the virus over them. And the second one, had the Professor running for mayor which was virtually unheard of. Wade got the job because she was a woman and could act as a face for them, without telling anyone they were from another dimension. Both of those were pretty good.
I stopped liking it after they brought the cro-mags in as major enemies, lost Wade and made it into an Action Packed Adventure Show! Stopping the thread jacking now.
When both O'Connels left the series, it was clearly gasping its last breaths. Up until then, they still had some good stories. The Cromags were a bit over the top for as much as they used them, Nazis with brow ridges. I miss that series though. The premise held so much potential.
Heh thanks everyone for your input. But I've got another question How do you think it'd look if the world was run by women?
Not much different. Genetics don't dictate behaviour. This is an easy concept for most if given the example, "genetics don't determine your likelyhood to end up a religious person"; most people would say "duh". But if you give an example contrary to what society has been pounding into your head since before you could speak like "genetics that make a person male or female don't determine behaviour"; people seem to find that a harder pill to swallow. But it's true. Society makes the sexes. If your society only has one sex then the typical rules do not apply.
Can't seem to edit twice but I just wanted to throw in I'm not a fan of "women rule, boys drool" type stories so I'm not so sure how valid my advice is. Editing again, 'cause I realized my above statements may not be true. Here's one way things might be different. If everyone get's equal time with the man-whore then in day to day life there wil be no one for these women to impress. So since (I don't think, could be wrong) most women aren't masochists who pull their eyebrow hairs out by the roots for fun there probably won't be any eyebrow plucking, or armpit shaving, or leg shaving (it's time consuming and there's no one to complain about it). In fact, the man might be required to shave and wear make-up since no one wants to have sex with someone ugly (even if it's only for procreation). Also, in regards to this "men are rare and only for procreation" thing; that's going to severely cut down the amount of sex goin on in this world which I would imagine would make a number of people unhappy. They probably won't wear dresses either since dresses aren't practical for anything but sitting in all other forms of movement are better serviced by pants. Weird story you've got, hadn't really thought about a society like that before... I might even hesitate to call it matriarchal, since our society is patriarchal but women aren't locked away somewhere's for sex purposes. Also, what about their language? Would a soldier have matriatism instead of patriatism? Wow, this really got away from being "one way", oh well, I'm a conlanger/culture builder; what can I say?
Okay, let me just say that it doesn't matter if this idea has been done before - no matter - everyone has their own unique take and ideas on everything! So write away! I would love to read this book. It would be fascinating. My friend used to joke when we were younger that if she ruled the world, she would make 'Man-land' where they'd put all the men, and men would have to apply to leave man land and become part of the normal world. Applying would be a long and thorough process where the men would be subjected to all sorts of moral tests, etc. ANYWAYS this reminded me of that joke we used to talk about. (Just so everyone knows I do not actually want this to happen, just the musings of pre-teen girls frustrated by jerk-boyfriends) Good luck in your pursuit and don't worry about anyone else's ideas - yours will be different because you are different.
