How would history and society be different if women were the physically larger and stronger sex?
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Probably similar except with an even stronger emphasis on male disposability - being objectively inferior, men would never grow to have value beyond "can deal with stuff while women are pregnant" placeholder status, so you'd have a similar gender divide as you've had in real history except without the idea that the lesser sex is still a valuable resource.
But I think an important difference is that humans have in "natural" conditions a very high infant mortality rate and rate of miscarriage. They also have very long pregnancies and difficult births. Most of this (I'm told) is due to our over sized brains. Babies are also totally dependent on outside aid for a very long time compared to most other species. I think that all of these factors contribute to a difficulty with accumulating power that is not present in other (otherwise comparable) species.Lieju said:
Spotted hyenas for example have very difficult births due to what their genitalia is like. It tears their pseudo-penis open and it takes weeks to heal. Also about a quarter of hyena cubs are killed by their siblings during the first month.Haukur Isleifsson said:
Is miscarriage exceptionally common in humans?
But even if that was the case, and the fact that human babies are helpless, why would that translate into women being unable to accumulate power? Humans live in groups anyway, and don't usually take care of their offspring alone. Usually in hunter-gatherer societies the whole tribe takes care of all the children communally.
Testosterone is a hell of a drug.
In addition to making you stronger and larger, testosterone makes you more dominating and aggressive just in terms of personality, and I don't necessarily mean that in a violent way.
So I don't know, maybe if women had more testosterone than men, the roles would be switched. Hormones are powerful, after all.
In addition to making you stronger and larger, testosterone makes you more dominating and aggressive just in terms of personality, and I don't necessarily mean that in a violent way.
So I don't know, maybe if women had more testosterone than men, the roles would be switched. Hormones are powerful, after all.
A bit like it is now, with women becoming more or less self-sufficient and the role of men getting steadily smaller.
Men have basically lost every advantage that made them a key part of society. Women rights and opportunities have become very dominant (naturally in many cases a very good thing), that there is very little benefit for men to working hard or getting married. This is a trend already seen in some countries like Japan where a lot of young men don't bother with getting a career and a family because it's more in their interest to have spare time and to do whatever they want (the Japanese government is having nightmares over that, as that means the economy getting hit badly).
Women being completely self-sufficient is a nice idea, but in the end it's making men rather superfluous.
I doubt that marriage as we know it would exist anymore. Marriage of old was basically an arrangement of the man bringing in work/food/money and women tending to the children (very much like prostitution, if you think about it). If women can do that all themselves, why bother?
Men have basically lost every advantage that made them a key part of society. Women rights and opportunities have become very dominant (naturally in many cases a very good thing), that there is very little benefit for men to working hard or getting married. This is a trend already seen in some countries like Japan where a lot of young men don't bother with getting a career and a family because it's more in their interest to have spare time and to do whatever they want (the Japanese government is having nightmares over that, as that means the economy getting hit badly).
Women being completely self-sufficient is a nice idea, but in the end it's making men rather superfluous.
I doubt that marriage as we know it would exist anymore. Marriage of old was basically an arrangement of the man bringing in work/food/money and women tending to the children (very much like prostitution, if you think about it). If women can do that all themselves, why bother?
Granted I can't seem to find the numbers. So I might me mightily wrong about them. But even if we think many of these factors could be mitigated by societal structure I still think they are at least as important as physical strength.Lieju said:
I think you're idolizing a bit here. No gender is weaker mentally, but I don't think that either gender is stronger mentally either.Caramel Frappe said:
This is kinda wrong. Females in lion prides do the hunting because they're smaller and more nimble than the larger, furrier males. They also do the raising because the alpha males in a lion pride have a tendency to not want competition to get old enough to challenge them. But the males do the defending, and they certainly don't get bossed around by the lionesses. Insects and arachnids are really the only areas of the animal kingdom where females dominate. Mammals, fish, birds, and reptiles all have trends of males being the dominant gender.
I'm not sure why you specified Japan particularly. I've been learning Japanese for 2 years and my first Japanese teacher was always telling me about gender expectations she faced and the stigma she received for not abiding by them. I hope you're right of course and the stories my old Japanese teacher told me were just her experiences. I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I'm just curious why you brought up Japan in particular.
Edit: Also I only know this because I helped a friend of mine do her essay on it, but Japan has a really shit childcare system. It's basically like: have a career or have a child. Company loyalty is really important in earning promotions in Japan. So when a woman leaves for maternity leave she's quite liable to getting replaced whilst she's away. Then if she wants a job when she gets back she has to settle for a lower end job because it takes a long, long time to prove the loyalty required for a promotion.
Wow so all women have become Helga...no thanks....
Yeah...there have been accounts OP about Viking women and others when the British decided to get rid of the highlanders and while they didn't exactly specify the tribes these women where from they said they feared fighting the women more then the men. But on a what if scenario the only difference I'd see is if a woman was as strong physically but still had the children is we'd have both men and women then looking at each other in terms of larger threat vs minor threat and whatever men do now the women would be expected to do but also tac on all the duties of being a woman so she'd just have the same amount of work she would now (considering this woman was also a mother) she'd just not get an eye batted at her for walking into a construction job ready to put up drywall and she wouldn't be able to sweet talk a man into doing something because she'd be seen as weak and bad for the tribe.
This what if woman would have to show everyday that she is good for the tribe weaker men and women over time would be cast out and have to form their own weak clan and hope they could do something worth wild or would become slaves to the alpha personas. If the tribe got to be in the modern era I can't see how it would work out though because all dominate alpha personalities can't work well with one another for long so getting to a modern scenario is actually not very plausible they'd just remain in their smaller tribal forums you need the counter balance so I'd imagine there would also be lots of single parents. The closest model I've seen to this whatif scenario would be the Spartan culture and that didn't last long.
Yeah...there have been accounts OP about Viking women and others when the British decided to get rid of the highlanders and while they didn't exactly specify the tribes these women where from they said they feared fighting the women more then the men. But on a what if scenario the only difference I'd see is if a woman was as strong physically but still had the children is we'd have both men and women then looking at each other in terms of larger threat vs minor threat and whatever men do now the women would be expected to do but also tac on all the duties of being a woman so she'd just have the same amount of work she would now (considering this woman was also a mother) she'd just not get an eye batted at her for walking into a construction job ready to put up drywall and she wouldn't be able to sweet talk a man into doing something because she'd be seen as weak and bad for the tribe.
This what if woman would have to show everyday that she is good for the tribe weaker men and women over time would be cast out and have to form their own weak clan and hope they could do something worth wild or would become slaves to the alpha personas. If the tribe got to be in the modern era I can't see how it would work out though because all dominate alpha personalities can't work well with one another for long so getting to a modern scenario is actually not very plausible they'd just remain in their smaller tribal forums you need the counter balance so I'd imagine there would also be lots of single parents. The closest model I've seen to this whatif scenario would be the Spartan culture and that didn't last long.
I'd say no change.
The reason why men became the dominant gender in much of human history was due less to their physical size and more to their roles as the protectors and hunters.
As many have said, even if women were larger they would not be the soldiers sent to drive off invaders nor would they be the bowmen shooting dinner.
Male dominance arose out of a drive to protect women, who are more important to a settlement's long-term survival than the men. (If you have one cow and thirty bulls, you will get one calf. If you have one bull and thirty cows, you will get thirty calves).
Women are also the gender responsible for nursing, and therefore they are required to stay with the babies. This is why they became the caretakers of the home and why doing chores around the house for the husband was their burden (he was out hunting/fighting, she was at home).
Finally, the extreme jealousy that leads to practices like making women wear concealing clothing and proving chastity arise because of a simple scenario: if a woman gives birth to a baby, she knows it is hers. If a man's wife gives birth to a baby, he doesn't know its his unless he has suitable assurances that she hasn't been sleeping around.
All of this leads to women being more highly prized in a society and more aggressively protected, to a degree that limits their own freedoms. Size, and our evolution towards this particular sexual dimorphism, arose out of these and did not cause them.
The reason why men became the dominant gender in much of human history was due less to their physical size and more to their roles as the protectors and hunters.
As many have said, even if women were larger they would not be the soldiers sent to drive off invaders nor would they be the bowmen shooting dinner.
Male dominance arose out of a drive to protect women, who are more important to a settlement's long-term survival than the men. (If you have one cow and thirty bulls, you will get one calf. If you have one bull and thirty cows, you will get thirty calves).
Women are also the gender responsible for nursing, and therefore they are required to stay with the babies. This is why they became the caretakers of the home and why doing chores around the house for the husband was their burden (he was out hunting/fighting, she was at home).
Finally, the extreme jealousy that leads to practices like making women wear concealing clothing and proving chastity arise because of a simple scenario: if a woman gives birth to a baby, she knows it is hers. If a man's wife gives birth to a baby, he doesn't know its his unless he has suitable assurances that she hasn't been sleeping around.
All of this leads to women being more highly prized in a society and more aggressively protected, to a degree that limits their own freedoms. Size, and our evolution towards this particular sexual dimorphism, arose out of these and did not cause them.
Er...do you have any evidence for that, or is that just an assumption?Adamantium93 said:
Secondly, even if that was true, how could that not affect gender roles later on?
Yeah this whole idea is really over-exaggerated with the whole "are men necessary?" type of thought.GundamSentinel said:
Fact is, men still make of the vast majority of construction workers, miners, sanitation workers, Technicians, Soldiers, Firefighters, Police, and pretty much any job in which physical strength is a necessary component of the job.
"But many of those jobs will be replaced by Machines/Robots/Cyborgs/Skynet!!!"
Possibly true (many years down the road), but who do you think is inventing, maintaining, and upgrading those systems? Men still make up the vast majority of Engineers, Computer Programmers, and Technicians.
Now before anyone decides to go all troll-tacular, women are completely capable of fulfilling any of the aforementioned jobs, but this notion that men could disappear tomorrow and the world wouldn't miss a beat is ridiculous.
"I doubt that marriage as we know it would exist anymore. Marriage of old was basically an arrangement of the man bringing in work/food/money and women tending to the children (very much like prostitution, if you think about it)."
Wow. It's not often I'm speechless, but the fact that you just compared a woman who chooses to stay at home and take care of her children to a prostitute has left me without anything to say. I salute you (sort of).
CHmm... would things be any different? I dunno. It is funny to think about though, if everything was flipped 100%. I can only imagine...
Guy: "Look how skin-tight Superman's outfit is! this is clearly sexist!"
Girl: "Oh shut up, you Maculinazi!"
Also, we'd have games like The Legend of Link: Twilight Prince and Double Dragonesses.
First, its basic evolutionary theory. What is more likely: that women spontaneously grew breasts and wombs identical in function to every other mammal (besides echidnas and platypuses) because they were smaller, or that men grew larger because they were the hunters/warriors?thaluikhain said:
If you had a tribe of 50 men and 50 women of equal size, who do you send to fight? You send the men, because the women have to carry the unborn children and nurse them. Men cannot. Also, if 20 men die in battle, you can still have 50 births before the end of the year. If you sent the women and 20 women died, you could only have 30 births by the end of the year.
Hence, men became the fighters. And when you are the fighters, natural selection favors the larger and the stronger. Therefore, the larger and stronger men survived to reproduce and their wives gave birth to larger and stronger sons, and then the process would be repeated generation after generation. Additionally, when seeking a mate, a woman would choose a larger man because he would be a better defender/provider. Hence, humans evolved larger men and smaller women.
This would also lead to the stereotype of the housekeeping mother.
Your second question assumes that women were kept inferior in the patriarchy by physical force alone. This is untrue. More powerful than any physical brute force is social forces and tradition. Humans form life-long, monogamous relationships. In such a relationship, the man will go to great lengths to ensure that his wife remains faithful to him and carries on his lineage. In short, he wants to be certain that the children she births are actually his. Hence, we have the lengthy marriage rituals seen in most cultures where the woman is expected to remain virginal until the marriage. Other practices like covering a woman's face or preventing her from participating in public life were originally instituted to protect women.
I'm not saying that brute force is entirely ineffectual, but it is not the root cause.
If you want a good counterpoint, examine our closest extant relatives, the Bonobo Chimpanzee. Bonobos share as much as 99.4% of their DNA with us. They also have similar sexual dimorphism. However, they have a female dominant society. Most theories that explain this focus on the sexual behavior of the bonobo compared to humans. Bonobos are openly sexual regardless of gender and seldom mate for life. Compare to humans, where the opposite is true. In bonobo society, sexual jealousy is nonexistent. Because of this, bonobo males needn't go to great length to ensure the fidelity of their partners because it doesn't matter to the bonobo. Similarly, because the father's identity may often be questionable, a young bonobo's social status is determined by his mother. This leads to the female dominant hierarchy in bonobo culture, despite the fact that the men are larger and more physically powerful than the women.
Humans, meanwhile, developed in the opposite direction and it was this sexual jealousy that ultimately led to the development of a patriarchy. This sexual jealousy may be due to scarcer food in humans' natural habitat as well as more natural predators, hence the bread winners and fighters are more important and have a greater investment in the lineage of their children.
Fair enough, most other mammals do seem to work that way, true.Adamantium93 said:
Er, no, I meant that physical force is going to play a part. Not necessarily the only, or main part.Adamantium93 said:
Certainly, I agree that social forces and tradition are important...I disagree with your next sentence, however, though this varies due to social forces and tradition.Adamantium93 said:
We certainly would have fewer children. Not sure if we would have died out when competing against the neaderthals.
It is not a coincidence that men execute the dangerous tasks that rely on body strength like fighting enemies.
Say a village is under attack, they had 100 men and 100 women.
The men are fighting, a lot of them die, maybe 10 men survive. It is not that hard to repopulate the village in a comparably short amount of time, as one male can produce many kids at once, but every women only one at a time.
If instead the women went out to fight, the village would be left with 100 men and 10 women. Their population would grow back a lot slower.
That single fact alone would make us a weaker species if women were the stronger ones. It is hard to go into this deeper because let's face it. If women were physically stronger and taller, they would have adopted quite some other male traits, their brains wouldn't work like those of the women today. And neither would the men's brains tick the same as they do now.
It is not a coincidence that men execute the dangerous tasks that rely on body strength like fighting enemies.
Say a village is under attack, they had 100 men and 100 women.
The men are fighting, a lot of them die, maybe 10 men survive. It is not that hard to repopulate the village in a comparably short amount of time, as one male can produce many kids at once, but every women only one at a time.
If instead the women went out to fight, the village would be left with 100 men and 10 women. Their population would grow back a lot slower.
That single fact alone would make us a weaker species if women were the stronger ones. It is hard to go into this deeper because let's face it. If women were physically stronger and taller, they would have adopted quite some other male traits, their brains wouldn't work like those of the women today. And neither would the men's brains tick the same as they do now.
A nightmarish matriarchal dystopia straight out of the worst combined nightmares of extremist Men's Rights Activists and hardcore misogynists, a hellish tapestry of diabolical events where the world is ruled by an iron feminine fist.
Or not, I haven't put any real effort into considering this.
Or not, I haven't put any real effort into considering this.