HFQ Offical Snippet #4

Safehold was set up as a male-dominated society. The Church hierarchy is exclusively male. There is one ruling queen, and she is described as an extremely rare anomaly.

In a male-dominated society, a guy who has what we'd consider normal relationships with women - i.e. treats them like actual human beings - will have lots of female friends. A common response by society is to label that man either effeminate or a womanizer. Kohdy was a seijin, stronger than the average man, and battle-hardened. So that ancient society wouldn't have labeled him as effeminate, their other option was to label him a womanizer.

NinaKatarina wrote:Safehold was set up as a male-dominated society. The Church hierarchy is exclusively male. There is one ruling queen, and she is described as an extremely rare anomaly.

In a male-dominated society, a guy who has what we'd consider normal relationships with women - i.e. treats them like actual human beings - will have lots of female friends. A common response by society is to label that man either effeminate or a womanizer. Kohdy was a seijin, stronger than the average man, and battle-hardened. So that ancient society wouldn't have labeled him as effeminate, their other option was to label him a womanizer.

(Sigh) Not much has changed, has it?

Don

NinaKatarina wrote:Safehold was set up as a male-dominated society. The Church hierarchy is exclusively male. There is one ruling queen, and she is described as an extremely rare anomaly.

Good point about how a Patriarchy would react to Kohdy, but I'm not sure that Safehold was set up as a Patriarchy. It has certainly evolved into one, but that doesn't mean it was originally set up to be one.

IIRC Bedard was a woman as were several other ARchangels.

NinaKatarina wrote:Safehold was set up as a male-dominated society. The Church hierarchy is exclusively male. There is one ruling queen, and she is described as an extremely rare anomaly.

In a male-dominated society, a guy who has what we'd consider normal relationships with women - i.e. treats them like actual human beings - will have lots of female friends. A common response by society is to label that man either effeminate or a womanizer. Kohdy was a seijin, stronger than the average man, and battle-hardened. So that ancient society wouldn't have labeled him as effeminate, their other option was to label him a womanizer.

Most muscle driven societies will be male dominated because strength is a factor. But Safehold dont seem that much geared toward inequality between genders. In Charis, There is women which are scholars and in Siddamark Nynian position is the not classic salon holder one (one step removed from wielding any power) but that of a mover and shaker without striking anyone as weird.

Now the church may be, but I question most realms are.

One thing that people who focus on the idea of a "male-dominated society" forget (or don't know) is that women have always played a role in most "male-dominated societies".

Many past societies frowned on men marrying "less-than-respectable women" and it was the women who decided that a woman was respectable or not.

What's worse, in those societies, a man could more easily deal with men who decided his wife wasn't respectable than he could deal with the society's matrons who decided that his wife wasn't respectable.

One author I read put it like this "women knew their place but worked at making their place equal to the place of men".

alj_sf wrote:

NinaKatarina wrote:Safehold was set up as a male-dominated society. The Church hierarchy is exclusively male. There is one ruling queen, and she is described as an extremely rare anomaly.

In a male-dominated society, a guy who has what we'd consider normal relationships with women - i.e. treats them like actual human beings - will have lots of female friends. A common response by society is to label that man either effeminate or a womanizer. Kohdy was a seijin, stronger than the average man, and battle-hardened. So that ancient society wouldn't have labeled him as effeminate, their other option was to label him a womanizer.

Most muscle driven societies will be male dominated because strength is a factor. But Safehold dont seem that much geared toward inequality between genders. In Charis, There is women which are scholars and in Siddamark Nynian position is the not classic salon holder one (one step removed from wielding any power) but that of a mover and shaker without striking anyone as weird.

Now the church may be, but I question most realms are.

NinaKatarina wrote:Safehold was set up as a male-dominated society. The Church hierarchy is exclusively male. There is one ruling queen, and she is described as an extremely rare anomaly.

In a male-dominated society, a guy who has what we'd consider normal relationships with women - i.e. treats them like actual human beings - will have lots of female friends. A common response by society is to label that man either effeminate or a womanizer. Kohdy was a seijin, stronger than the average man, and battle-hardened. So that ancient society wouldn't have labeled him as effeminate, their other option was to label him a womanizer.

Safehold was organized by a high tech society. One that, if Nimue was any indication, progressed beyond knee-jerk patriarchy. Why on earth would the 50% or so of the command crew agree to create a patriarchy on Safehold? I believe alj_sf is correct. The loss of technology created the emphasis on muscle driven societies and the eventual rise of patriarchy. I am not sure if the Chruch heirarchy was ever more egalitarian than it is today. Women of Langehorn's coterie might have been less wise than those that supported Shan-wei and so self selected out of the CoG organizing group of Angels and Archangels.

Khody was prominent during the early and more egalitarian stages of Safehold's development. His relegation to obscurity was then likely driven by other factors. Simple lack of sobriety might have turned many devout Safeholdians away from his example. That might have been especially true shortly after the deaths of the last Angels. Personally, I believe there were political reasons involved that the snippets haven't revealed. One might guess the church politics RFC has shared in another post might have something to do with it.

If I recall correctly, didn't Merlin assume a male form in OAR specifically because Safehold had returned to a male dominated society during the intervening centuries?

That and the fact that Nimue would have been seen as a giant woman.

AncientMariner wrote:If I recall correctly, didn't Merlin assume a male form in OAR specifically because Safehold had returned to a male dominated society during the intervening centuries?

AncientMariner wrote:If I recall correctly, didn't Merlin assume a male form in OAR specifically because Safehold had returned to a male dominated society during the intervening centuries?

Mostly, it was because his/her height was greater than most males, and also that the warrior role he was to assume needed a male.

Note that Nimue PICA is smaller.

Minor follow-up, nobody here really disagrees with the idea that Safehold has, in many ways, a male dominated society.

Most are disagreeing with the idea that Safehold societies were designed by the Archangels to be male dominated societies.

DrakBibliophile wrote:That and the fact that Nimue would have been seen as a giant woman.

AncientMariner wrote:If I recall correctly, didn't Merlin assume a male form in OAR specifically because Safehold had returned to a male dominated society during the intervening centuries?