Gender equality

[Wendigo]

feminazis

Using this word is like making yourself a big "I'm a moron" sign in Comic Sans. Careful, man.

You would be a male feminazi mangina if you think "using the term is like making yourself a big "I'm a moron" sign".

FTFY.

[Synthesis]

[Medena]

Thanks Synthesis.  I was about to post something pithy like "JEEZ..." but Picard captured my feelings about this thread so much more eloquently.

Edit:  What?? I thanked you for Picard not the other pic that is there now.

[Synthesis]

Hmm...this is the first time I've noticed it, but why is Ben Stiller wielding an M16A4, when it's supposed to be set in Vietnam?  Flash suppressor and hand guards are all wrong.  And that ruck has plastic buckles instead of metal snaps.

*shrug*

For Medena:

[jhunter]

And stop picking on Jhunter. We like him. Come play with me, you big dookiehead! It's been 7 years. You're due!

Working on getting something going actually. 

[Drayab]

Okay, back on topic...

Gender equality in Zalanthas would realistically bring up all kinds of social issues in reality.

Here's one to think about. How would the cities maintain such a large population unless every woman of age was producing children? Free and equal women arn't usually too keen on having more than one or two, just like in our own society. So unless they are shackled down via the institution of marriage, they wouldn't be the baby factories they have been for several hundreads of years. So therefore, I don't see how non-modern, militirized state society could have equality of the sexes anyways.

The current setup isn't realistic at all. But I'm fine with throwing that out the window for what we got going here.

I think you make a good point, but I disagree that it necessarily implies something unrealistic. Actually, scratch that, it is unrealistic, i.e. - not like real life. However, it doesn't mean that Zalanthas can't still be believable. See, I think that this is an opportunity to make some speculations about how Zalanthan society works. What I'd argue is that we want to come up with a working model of how Zalanthans perpetuate themselves starting with the assumption that the genders are equal (but not the same) and, of course, everything else the docs tell us about how the world works, and also including biological realities such as women still have babies and men plant the seeds.

Clearly, the main cities are teeming with people, despite the difficulties of survival on Zalanthas. Untimely death is commonplace, so a good many children probably never have children of their own. Therefore, I conclude that there must be some segment of the population that is producing plenty of babies to make up for the rest in a kind of ultimate survival of the fittest. Why would they do that? There must be a reason, so here's one I made up: maybe on Zalanthas, it can be a sign of wealth to have lots of babies, so that when a pair of people have the resources to do it, they have lots of babies to flaunt their wealth. A real life analogue might be how obesity can be considered beautiful in a society with food scarcity, or pale skin might be beautiful because in an agricultural society everybody has to work in the hot sun. On Zalanthas, perhaps babies are trophies for the relatively wealthy commoners because for a poor, socially isolated woman it could be a death sentence.

[valeria]

... I conclude that there must be some segment of the population that is producing plenty of babies to make up for the rest in a kind of ultimate survival of the fittest. Why would they do that? ...

While we're back on topic, some thoughts -
Children are cheap labor.
If a lot of your kids are likely to die before they reproduce, obviously you need to have more kids.  If half of 2 kids dies, you've only got 1 kid to take care of you in your old age.  If half of 10 kids die, you've got 5.

Also, to respond to the previous quote, plenty of free and equal women choose to have more than one or two kids.  I know a pretty free and equal woman that has 9, because that's how many babies she wanted, that's how many she could support financially, and that's how many she chose to have.  Finally, women in Zalanthas have access to mul mix and have more control over how many babies they have and when.

As for gender equality, it's not about saying everyone is completely equal at everything, it's about being able to play what you want to play, when you want to play it, instead of getting told (for instance) that the state militia doesn't take females.  The point of gender equality is that you aren't pigeonholed into a specific role because of your sex or gender.  So if you want to play a pretty woman who wants to have a lot of babies, fine.  If you want to play a warrior woman that collects gith heads, fine.  If you want to play a pretty man who wants to buy/steal a lot of babies, fine.  If you want to play a buff man who collects gith heads, fine.

[Preacher]

"Fantastic quote from valeria about gender equality that I fucked up the quote for, but it is a really good quote.  I'm kind of pissed that I messed it up.  It would have looked pretty good...back to back like that.  Shit."

+1

Beautifully put.  Thank you.