How would sexism work across different types of species and society?
My ideas are as follows:
Sexism would be widespread amongst all societies with sexes. In gonochoristic species, this would either end up as matriarchy or patriarchy, depending on species. Single direction sequential hermaphrodites will likely favour the later sex, but I’m unsure about a two directional system. Hermaphrodite-including types, such as trioecious species, may have a tendency towards a third system in which hermaphrodites are in power. I can’t figure out how a fern type alternating generation system could fit into systems of sexism
Deathwake
(i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)
2
Why? I mean why? Mammals and birds are basically the only large group of beings where the sexes have major differences. In reptiles there’s cool exceptions and in fish there’s some standouts (clownfish anyone? Seahorses too, dam matriarchies are too easy as an underwater civ) and I guess arachnids/mantises (dommy mommy mantis stereotype came from somewhere, but it’s odd knowing Nigel is into dying/j) but many species are just not that dissimilar. And even when there is a dissimilarity, take lions. While the males look like leaders they barely hunt or do much other than posturing and keeping the territory safe, so I’d see a society evolve where the lionesses do everything, including rule, and domestic stuff, and the males just fight and posture. While males would be held in high regard and have tons of weird rights no one else has they wouldn’t control anything. I think sticking human notions of “well one of them is going to take over” is sorta shortsighted. I like the sequential hermaphrodites favoring the later sex though, that’s quite insightful. So yeah, while I think you have good ideas I think is you don’t have much dimorphism you shouldn’t have much sexism.
I think it would be best if we just had prejudice as a whole rather than specific indexes of prejudice like homophobia, sexism, transphobia, racism, etc.
The problem that comes with dealing with specific forms of prejudice within Thrive is that much of our bias is defined wholly in terms of our perspective. That is, our understanding of various identities is incredibly anthropocentric, and it would be rather difficult and perhaps flawed to apply said biases to alien species who might think differently.
For example; would sexism be consistent across an alien species with limited sexual dimorphism? Would gender be as significant of an identity in the mind of an alien as it is for us? Would entirely new identities incomprehensible to us be present, hence requiring different forms of prejudice? We don’t know because we humans have our own self-images and identities, so it would be best to just address prejudice as a whole.
One thing I can imagine is that because prejudice likely intertwines with a sense of individuality and group identity, different organism mentalities that you enter the society stage with can make an organism more or less inclined towards prejudice. For example, organisms with a less significant sense of self, like in hive minds, are likely to not have strong identities, decreasing prejudice but decreasing ingenuity as well, perhaps influencing the rate at which culture and technology advance.
A monomorphic species could likely tend towards patriarchy, as generally females will put more energy towards reproduction, in the form of yolks or viviparity
Deathwake
(i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)
6
Look into birds and clownfish. Sometimes what would logically push in one direction pushes entirely in the other. Yes, this is true, but it’s slight and often flipped on its head for no logical reason.
yes i agree with you. maybe there could be a thing that meant you could trade morality with efficeny for your nation. like slavery would boost production but lower morale
Slavery isn’t more efficient. Morale is connected to productivity, the things which slaves worked on didn’t contribute anything to themselves so they didn’t try to produce as much as possible. This is also why slaves don’t develop farming techniques like farmers do because they don’t really care about the crops they’re tending. Slavery is only cheaper to hire than free farmers but you also have to pay expenditures like housing, food, especially security while the dormers can be very minimalistic, the latter is exenstial if you don’t want to lose your property
I’m skeptical that human phenomena such as sexism are as universal and woven into biology as you think they are. Can you even make any real-life examples in other animals? Genuine questtion.
Slavery talk had its own thread, it turned bad very fast. So please don’t discuss slavery in this thread as well.
Deathwake
(i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)
16
In many bird societies the males compete for the females by making nests, having crests, ect. Cementing them as not having a meaningful choice of mates, having to uphold beauty standards, and maintain the home, while the females are the breadwinners with their bigger size and larger investment in the egg. Sorta a parody of mammals tbh. Also clownfish live in explicit matriarchies where the only fertile female is basically in charge, and one fertile male is her subservient stud, with all the other males basically being the kinda cucks incels think exist irl. Both of these are matriarchies cause you already know about the main patriarchal setup, mammals. I personally think most mammals and birds don’t have the stick-to-itedness to become highly sexist, why even humans have matriarchies from time to time and tend to trend towards equality when not in an exploitative system. So yeh, I very much agree there’s no universal bias towards anyone, or we could say sexism is logical, but there are plenty of highly dimorphic critters with interesting dynamics.
What could happen with other sets of sexes? There are far more systems than just ‘male and female’. To make a list, we have:
Hermaphrodite
Male and Female (What we’ve covered)
Male and Hermaphrodite
Female and Hermaphrodite
Male, Female, and Hermaphrodite
Perhaps there could also be an asexual ‘sex’ added into any of these figures, and if we consider alternation of generations any pair of the above could exist. All in all, there are over 100 sets of sexes that we might cover and consider
zenzonegaming
(Steve Buscemi Fish Clown Detective Cult Leader)
18
i think all of this stuff is really just too complicated to be realistic in thrive.
1: there are other forms of sexism than male > female, namely female > male but also (theoretically) first sex and second sex > third sex, and hermaphrodite > male and female, etc., and way too much stuff would need to be put into consideration for this to be viable, especially considering that it would just be a thing in the background at most.
2: the player can’t simply flip a “sexism” switch and suddenly have sexism, because that would take them out of the world and be unrealistic, and so since we can’t have it be controlled by someone for each unique player, the game itself would have to generate sexism based on the various traits between the sexes, which, if the devs go for more sexes than male/female and hermaphrodite, is just far too many variables for the system to even remember, much less compute or generate itself, even if its just male and female.
for example what if the males are killed once they mate with females, and thus wouldn’t be given basic human rights, or what if the mother always dies during childbirth, what kind of dynamics would that cause in a society (especially if they’re eaten by the young), what about egg bearing species, species where the males are two inches tall and fuse with the females (there are anglerfish that do this).
ultimately, its way too much to consider, and too many variables for anything shy of a super computer to handle.
How do you define sexism? I would describe it as a discrimination, by a group of individuals towards another group of individuals, based on sex. Those you mentioned seem (to me) to be moreso examples of gender roles, which I would define as different sets of behaviours, also based on sex/gender.
In lay terms, “I don’t want to be associated with you” vs “you are expected to do this”. Very different things imo.
1 Like
Deathwake
(i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)
20
Hmm, makes sense @SimoneNobili , I’d cite mammals exiling males from the herd and apes doing all sorts of ape stuff .
@zenzonegaming is generally right, but I think the player should be able to assign cultural categories kinda arbitrarily, some of which will be discriminated against. Discrimination isn’t that logical so it doesn’t have to be scientifically calculated.