WI: A More Aggressive/Me-First Female Culture

The basic issue I see with your post is that you seem to assume that patriarchal, high-birthrate society is "the norm" and default that everyone reverts to, and I just see zero evidence for that.

Yeah... there isn't any evidence aside from the ENTIRE COURSE OF HUMAN HISTORY... :rolleyes:
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Yeah... there isn't any evidence aside from the ENTIRE COURSE OF HUMAN HISTORY... :rolleyes:

Hunter gatherer societies are low birthrate societies (not just high infant mortality, in fact birthrate is very very low and infant mortality is not terribly high in many of them). As are industrialized ones.
 
Given the demographic rates in countries that already have this attitude, I think any older culture/nation/civilization would face a population crash.
 
Given the demographic rates in countries that already have this attitude, I think any older culture/nation/civilization would face a population crash.
That was a given, discussed at length in the OP. There would be massive elder-care/Social Security crises.

OTOH lifespans would be better and most people healthier, too, and we might get some anti-aging and anti-chronic-disease innovations that presently do not exist.
 
Such as...?

The Sumerians, the Egyptians, The Greeks, The Chinese, The Romans, Post Rome Europe, Persia, the Turkic Empires, India, the Incas, the Mayans, The Aztecs, The Japanese, and with the exception of the past 30-40 years nearly the whole of the industrialized world, with a few exceptions really beginning to stand out in the area of birth rates which at the very least were at replacement level.... and every single one of them paternalistic...

Compare to your society, which has basically cut its own throat. Without the birth rates and absent the technology of the last half of a century you now have a society that absolutely implodes once there is no longer enough labor to grow crops or conduct industry to sustain itself. Without some form of societal contract... aka marriage... for the rearing of children you have something like what is happening in the African American community today a broken model where the guy doesn't give a crap and the girl is left alone to raise the kids. Granted you could have some government type communal system but now you've moved into Brave New World or even 1984 level Dystopia here...

the problem with universal reproductive determinism is that it cuts out half of the equation, which leads again to African American style failed familial structure or the end of the society and some nasty counterrevolution that makes Saudi Arabia look like Amsterdam from both genders (Which now that I picture it would be hilarious, think Phyllis Schlafly crossed with Ayatollah Khomeini).

At worst you have Vlad Tepes... At best you have this:
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The Sumerians, the Egyptians, The Greeks, The Chinese, The Romans, Post Rome Europe, Persia, the Turkic Empires, India, the Incas, the Mayans, The Aztecs, The Japanese, and with the exception of the past 30-40 years nearly the whole of the industrialized world, with a few exceptions really beginning to stand out in the area of birth rates which at the very least were at replacement level.... and every single one of them paternalistic...

Compare to your society, which has basically cut its own throat. Without the birth rates and absent the technology of the last half of a century you now have a society that absolutely implodes once there is no longer enough labor to grow crops or conduct industry to sustain itself. Without some form of societal contract... aka marriage... for the rearing of children you have something like what is happening in the African American community today a broken model where the guy doesn't give a crap and the girl is left alone to raise the kids. Granted you could have some government type communal system but now you've moved into Brave New World or even 1984 level Dystopia here...

the problem with universal reproductive determinism is that it cuts out half of the equation, which leads again to African American style failed familial structure or the end of the society and some nasty counterrevolution that makes Saudi Arabia look like Amsterdam from both genders (Which now that I picture it would be hilarious, think Phyllis Schlafly crossed with Ayatollah Khomeini).
Really not sure where to start with any of those scenarios. There are a number of strawmen and question-begs here. If we are talking ancient times, then well duh, contraceptive technologies didn't exist or were very crude at best. Also look at what child/infant mortality was like. For most of human history, regardless of actual birthrate, the actual number of children per woman has hung around two. It is only in super-modern times that really big surviving families have been possible on a large scale. Nonetheless, I'm far from convinced that all the cultures you named were explicitly pronatalist so much as they just did things the way they've always been done.

I also think there is a big difference between patriarchal and paternalistic--the latter referring to societies with a strong-handed structure of caretaking, whereas the former implies a cruder, more macho culture. They aren't the same thing, merely, at best, related.

As for this society being unable to grow crops, I'd like to see some evidence for this contention. Do remember that this PoD took place around, or just before the beginning of, the Industrial Revolution when agriculture was very rapidly modernizing. The only thing I can see it ending is old-style serfdom where peasants were required to send 90% of their produce to their lords.

Your examples invoking African American culture are completely extraneous to this discussion. For the trillionth time, this movement takes place in BRITAIN and FRANCE which at this time are upwards of 99% white and where education is rapidly increasing. Since women will be in much more control in this culture, men will be much less able to screw women and leave, and such behavior will be severely condemned and ostracized, probably more so than being a child-support deadbeat is IOTL.
 
That was a given, discussed at length in the OP. There would be massive elder-care/Social Security crises.

OTOH lifespans would be better and most people healthier, too, and we might get some anti-aging and anti-chronic-disease innovations that presently do not exist.

Despite the rebellion in all generations, a lot of culture is passed on through family. Seems to me, those of this thread's persuasion should be replaced by those who care more about family. Might be drifting off topic a little, but natural selection is going to favor the have-children crowd far more than the me-first crowd, so me-first is an evolutionary dead end. Kind of a sad ending if our species dies out because of a self-inflicted population crash, instead of marching on towards inevitable godhood.
 
Really not sure where to start with any of those scenarios. There are a number of strawmen and question-begs here. If we are talking ancient times, then well duh, contraceptive technologies didn't exist or were very crude at best. Also look at what child/infant mortality was like. For most of human history, regardless of actual birthrate, the actual number of children per woman has hung around two. It is only in super-modern times that really big surviving families have been possible on a large scale. Nonetheless, I'm far from convinced that all the cultures you named were explicitly pronatalist so much as they just did things the way they've always been done.

But here's the thing... your laundry list is ASB unless you have a massive POD far before the Enlightenment. An Enlightenment POD would require a revolution an a bloody one at that which would be completely cross purposes with the goal of that revolution... Pretty much the only thing I can think of would be some horrible incredibly high fatality rate disease that only targeted men and was carried by women. Kinda like a human Genophage if you've ever played Mass Effect... But that wouldn't work because then all you'd have is a matriarchal society, not an egalitarian one, and one that would certainly view abortion and contraception as crimes equivalent to murder.

As for pronatalism... there's a good reason for that, it's a field of science called biology... :rolleyes: Societies that ignore a basic tenent of biology especially when they don't have modern tech aren't long to exist...

I also think there is a big difference between patriarchal and paternalistic--the latter referring to societies with a strong-handed structure of caretaking, whereas the former implies a cruder, more macho culture. They aren't the same thing, merely, at best, related.

With the exception of the west, due to technology, I would say with only a few outliers society in general throughout history is both patriarchal and paternalistic and the west is still paternalistic (or maybe maternalistic in the case of the western Europe 'nanny states' :p)

As for this society being unable to grow crops, I'd like to see some evidence for this contention. Do remember that this PoD took place around, or just before the beginning of, the Industrial Revolution when agriculture was very rapidly modernizing. The only thing I can see it ending is old-style serfdom where peasants were required to send 90% of their produce to their lords.

Agriculture rapidly modernized... but not rapidly enough by far to offset the lower birth rate this society will have AND keep industrializing either industrialization falters as people have to return to the farms to grow crops or agriculture falters and then industrialization falters as factory workers starve...

Your examples invoking African American culture are completely extraneous to this discussion. For the trillionth time, this movement takes place in BRITAIN and FRANCE which at this time are upwards of 99% white and where education is rapidly increasing. Since women will be in much more control in this culture, men will be much less able to screw women and leave, and such behavior will be severely condemned and ostracized, probably more so than being a child-support deadbeat is IOTL.

How can women keep men in a relationship without the social contract structures that promote families? You talk of ostracism for men... but in such a society it would be hard to ostracize the man in a situation where he thought the woman was serious in having a family and then the woman did something like getting sterilized, never going of contraception, or in the worst case aborting a child the father would have wanted to have. You can't have both sexual liberation and then at the same time condemn sexual promiscuity and in the case of your society since female sexual equality/liberation is the whole point...

And if the POD is just that "We've abolished marriage! But you'd better not break your relationship with my daughter or I'll break your fingers!" kinda conservative society where a relationship = marriage in all but name all that's really happened is you've somehow been able to create a Supermutant baby of Libertarianism and Totalitarianism
 
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