Seriously, isn’t it about time women ruled the planet? I remember as a child wistfully thinking if women were in charge of everything, everything would be better. We’d be more compassionate, more globally responsible, more peaceful. Rainbows and kittens would proliferate in abundance and all would be well, right?
Now that I’m grown, one of the things I love about Science Fiction Romance is the open canvas it gives me to explore some of the crazy ideas I had as a child, including the question, “What if women were in charge?”
Would it be the rainbows and kittens of my dreams? The more I thought about it, the more it disturbed me that most of the portrayals of women dominant cultures in popular fiction in both print and visual media went one of two ways.
Either, the culture was completely pacifist. It was a culture of art and healers, and sunshine and roses. Everything was in lovely harmony, but they were weak. Inevitably this sort of alien culture needed saving or protecting from some “evil” invasion. And they had no means to protect themselves.
The more I saw this type of female dominance appear, the more it disturbed me. In a way it was a little like the old idea of the “noble savage.” I felt as if this look at the nature of women flattened us out. It took our best giving natures, but undermined the complexity of woman-kind by making us all good, kind, and giving.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t get together with a group of ten women without having a wide spectrum of female complexity, to the point that it gets difficult to get things done with a large enough group of women. We are not all docile doormats, nor should we be.
Some of the most powerful and infamous global leaders this world has known were women, and they were not fluffy little kittens. From Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, Nefertiti, Cleopatra, Catherine the Great, heck even the bloody pirate captains Charlotte de Berry and Mary Reed, women have had some teeth, great tenacity, and certainly the ability to protect themselves and their interests through force and diplomacy.
Which brings us to the other female dominant culture that tends to pop up, the Dom dominant culture. If we do show women with some teeth, we tend to see them as either sexually aggressive or leather-clad dominatrix types.
Maybe we should shoot for something in between. When creating a female dominant culture, or any alien culture, remember that no great civilization in history has ever been all good, all bad, devoid of corruption, or unable to protect itself and its interests. Dynamics between women can be every bit as cutthroat and mercenary as male dynamics, but they can also have deep ties of loyalty and friendship. There’s strength in the female species. Look at a mother grizzly bear if you ever doubt it.
Let’s see more female dominant worlds as complex and interesting as we are.
Then it will really be a woman’s world.
Jess Granger is the national bestselling author of the Realms Beyond Series from Berkley. To learn more about Jess Granger and her books, visit her Web site at www.jessgranger.com. You can also follow her on Twitter ("jessgranger").
8 comments:
Oh, you are so right! Anyone who sees women all living happily together in peace and harmony never spent time in a girls' locker room. Or just watch the teasers for one of the "Housewives of_____" if you think we get better when we grow up. LOL
And eventually those gals will have to give up the leather. Hot flashes and leather just don't work well together. lol
I do think that women combine efforts, they can rock the house/country/world, but when we go after each other? Oh my.
I like the Amazonian culture protrayed in the Wonder Woman comics -- they're peace, love and beauty people, but they're trained for war and kick butt better than the boys when it's called for.
I'm with you -- the fun of being a SF author (which includes SFR) is that you can make the world/s you want to see, play around with the different political structures, and so on. (Which you do really well, I must say.)
One thing an author should consider when creating a female-dominated society is why woman are dominant and why the men aren't.
We would hope that women would be smarter than men in creating a society, but if the reason they are dominant is negative, then the society would be poisoned as any current or historical society has been when women or another race is subservient.
When I created the planet Arden in STAR-CROSSED where men have become little more than sex slaves, I really wanted to create positive aspects of that world where sisterhood was all powerful, but I realized the cancer of slavery would corrode that sisterhood and only a very few would fight a system so totally engrained.
I have one female-dominant culture in a space opera created in my head, but not yet written down. In it, women were oppressed for thousands of years, but the male population went down due to incessant warfare. Women were needed in jobs and we're typically put in passive ones, like, um, genetics. A group got together and worked out how to sterilize the aggressive males. The females took over in a generation after the aggressive males all died out. But, Marilynn is right. It did have a very negative result.
People may be interested in their own freedom, but once they conquer they tend to get power-hungry and strip away the freedoms of those under them. In fact, I think only George Washington managed to resist being proclaimed king.
So, don't overlook the general human experience for inspiration too. Effecting real and lasting change requires a lot more than simple butt-kicking.
Consider cousins Mary, Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I. Both were female rulers. Queen Elizabeth was able to *think outside the box* of her culture and religion and *not marry* because she knew she would lose power when she did. She ruled over sixty years, I think it was. And Mary got the axe.
Nothing prepared me better for world-building the anthropology class I took in college.
;)
"And Mary got the axe."
Not because she was married, though. Trying to usurp and murder the reigning monarch is going to get you killed no matter what gender you are.
I have no great faith that a woman run society would be better or different than what we have now. I'd like a society where gender didn't matter - now that's a really revolutionary idea.
Um, you missed my point, but, alas, the burden was on me to make it clear.
The point was Elizabeth I thought outside the box of the culture and prevalent religion of the time.
The result of Elizabeth thinking outside that box was a long and glorious reign.
The result of Mary's inability to think outside the box led ultimately to her beheading.
History has taught me that it's only leaders who are able to think outside the box who make lasting change.
Indeed, it would be great if gender didn't matter at all.
I don't think I want to live in a society where gender doesn't matter at all, just one where it doesn't count against you. That would be nice.
I like that... A society where gender doesn't count against you. I would love to live in that kind of society.
I loved Beyond the Rain and Beyond the Shadows.
As for female dominant worlds... not sure I would like them any more than I like male dominant worlds. I want a true world where balance exists and its just controlled by the one who is smarter ---hmmm in that case it would be a female dominant world right?
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