need help with a "males have no rights" story

[Arokthis (imported)]

I'm in the middle of a few stories and need som help. Essentially, what I need is a plausible reason why males, either in a certain area, or the whole world, have no rights. So far I've come up with a few, but I don't like them much.

a colony on another world where women have taken over

a world wide war leaving so few men that women rebelled

something makes males have nasty mutations

a disease (created or natural)

alien invasion (makes all humans into slaves)

Any help would be nice. Thanks.

[yankee masha (imported)]

I don't know if they have changed but there are tribes in New Guinea where the women are the dominant sex and the males are really subordinate with no rights. The males have to do everything to please their wives, and the wives are next to impossible to please. the men can do nothing right. they are charged with all the menial chores but also have to perform sexually, and participate in some survival tasks. The women rule everything and the males have no say and no rights, except to obey. When not on duty pleasing his wife (and the women have several husbands) the husband has to stay on call in a limited area with the other men, where they weave, cook, make pottery, etc. They are never allowed just to rest. that is for the women. This is not a fantasy, but real. Several female dominant tribes follow this cutural setup. The article I read did not go into some things I would ahve asked (even thought they had pictures) such as child rearing techniques and are boys raised to submit to girls. If anyone else has heard of this please post. I read it in a scientific kind of magazine years ago, not National Geographic although they may have covered it too.

I always wonder why this role reversal is so erotially exciting for men to give up the responsibilities and rights, when women want to get out of that very thing.

Is the grass always greener on the other side?

There is a SF trilogy by Piers Anthony called Chthon (I think) which has a society like that, except in the novel the men are all penectosized as soon as they marry. When tehir wives want their semen they shove a fignger up the ass of the husband and milk him. Othersie the males are kept hard at work and fear their wives.

Or were you talking about something else?

[Arokthis (imported)]

Yes, that's sort of in the vein of what I wanted, but I want more. I'm trying to write a "history" into the story so the reader knows more about where the characters are in their lives.

BTW: I don't know about Cthon, but in Var the Stick, book two in the Battle Circle trilogy, (set in a post-nuclear war Earth)Var finds a society where men are penectomized early in life. Var is hiding and overhears a woman talking to the man she's about to impregnate herself by. She mentions that since he's given her several daughter already, one more will set her high in the local pecking order. (It's been a while. I need to re-read it.) It's actually not a bad series.

[yankee masha (imported)]

You're right, it was Var The Stick. In Chthon women wanted to be beat up by their hsubands then recovered immediaely from their experience.

Remember in a story you can make anything happen if you get into it. There are many coujples in our society who live with the husband having no rights and being totally under his wife's control. it workd well for them especially if hte husband has had problems with drugs and his life was falling apart till shetook over and whipped him into patterns that she designates. He has no rightto do anything except obey unconditionally. He may have to work 7 days a week at a job and perform all the household chores as well (I know a couple like this) and never object even by a word or gesture. To talk to them you would not know teh situation unless they told you but he is polite and genial and never does anything but obey. Whether she finds it necessary to punish him physically any more I don't know.

[frb (imported)]

Since you mention history, perhaps the setting of Central New York state and the Iroquois Nation would be a good place. The orginal five tribes, were a hereditary matriarchial society. The men may have gone a raiding but the women ruled the long house. Ethnically they were different than most of the Eastern Tribes which were Delaware Speaking, they spoke a language akin to Sioux and preyed upon the less warlike Eastern Woodland Tribes.

After the coming of the Dutch they joined the Dutch Reformed Church, later they converted to the Anglican Church. For whatever reason they hated the French. Father Pierre LeMoyne built his fort in what is now Syracuse to avoid being invited to a barbacue where he would be the entree.

It was the women of the tribe that oversaw the torture and killing of captives. They also sat in judgement of tribe members that violated taboo's.

As to exact methods I do not know, suffice it to say in these politically correct days most information like this has a tendancy to be surpressed. Let me say in closing that as someone of French Canadian descent, I would not have vacationed in that area before 1790, the life expectancy of the French l'homme dubois and their priests was exactly zero.

frb

[yankee masha (imported)]

I do not know if the American originals had societies that were ruled by women. My impression was there was a separation of home and hunting chores. the women worked like dogs, but so did their husands. The Pennsylvania tribes were governed by the male chiefs. I think basically women were equal to men in the viewpoint of both sexes, but the division of areas of authority was distinct. We tend to think today as the household work as being inferior, but it was not seen that way by primitive tribes. If the men ruled politically it was just because they were stronger physically and were better able to fight and defend the whole tribe. The women, needed to have babies, had to be kept in a saer situation. When the men captured enemies the women tortured them, but so did the men. A captive was given as a slave to a women, as in A Man Called horse. And in verified accounts of early white captives who were released or escaped.

It is almsot impossible today for us to know really how the early pre-Columbian tribes thought. There is no basis in our European-Christian based society for understanding. We judge them based on curent mores and expectations tht did not apply then. For example the earliest inhabitants of this continent, north and south did not view the Americas as theirs. They welcomed the white men until it became clear they were hostile and on a mission of subjugating the people and possession of the hunting lands.

Also torture was considered an entertainment, a test of courage, a way to make enemies think twice about attacking. We see it as an outrage and an atrocity. The aboriginals did not. It was a part of their culture and a test of a man's or a woman's abiklity to survive. If they did handle it with courage they would be embraced as a valuable members of the tribe.

Today it is interesting that the Cherokee nation, for one, accepts females with any Cherokee blood as full Cherokees, but a mixed male is considered mixed.

Just some thoughts.

In an erotic fiction you can do wht you want since the point is to play with the truth for your artistic purposes.

[frb (imported)]

Interesting that you should mention Cherokee, as they were the favorite target of summer raids by the Iroquois. The reference of course to the 'dark and bloody' ground refers to the hunting area of the Kentucky constantly fought over.

Orginally I am from the area that was last settled by the Onondaga Tribe. My father found one of the most exquisite spear points while plowing. Not Clovis. Much better craftsmanship than the Delaware speaking tribes. Created well beyond that which was necessary.

Yes, fantasy is great you can travel at the speed of light and not need to be scraped off the wall during acceleration.

frb