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Christians like to......be a monolith?
Most of your post was reasonable and fair (regardless of whether anyone might agree or disagree with the actual points you made), but here you've slipped into the exact same type of "Here's what this whole group is like" talk that I've so often seen you caution others not to do in regard to women. (And to be clear, I agree that we mustn't talk about "women" as though they were a homogeneous whole; I'm just saying that applies to all large groups, including those of a religious nature.)
I oppose mistreatment of people based on their religion.
That said, it is absolutely not the same to criticize a group of people who are defined as a group because they believe the same thing, which is their choice, as it is to lump together a group of people based on something as arbitrary and involuntary as a chromosome.
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That said, it is absolutely not the same to criticize a group of people who are defined as a group because they believe the same thing, which is their choice, as it is to lump together a group of people based on something as arbitrary and involuntary as a chromosome.
Christians like to throw Judaism under the bus to position Christianity as an improvement to women's status
Funny, I don't remember seeing this doctrine in the Nicene creed...
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to criticize a group of people who are defined as a group because they believe the same thing
The group you criticized is not defined as a group by the thing you ascribed to them.
The group you cited ("Christians") is defined as a group by all believing in the "Christ-ness" of the Jesus in the Bible. Very little else is part of the definition of being a "Christian".
The thing you ascribed to the entire group was "they like to throw Judaism under the bus". That is not part of their definition as a group.
If you wanted to critique the belief that Jesus was the Christ, then it would be valid to refer to "Christians"; just like if you wanted to critique the belief that there is no god at all, it would be valid to refer to "Atheists". But as soon as you want to critique an activity/position that is not part of what it means to belong to group X, then it is no longer okay to refer to the group as categorically embracing that activity/position.
I agree with you that there is a big difference between being in a group due to a choice of beliefs and being in a group because of genetic chance. I just disagree that acceptability of condemning the entire group for the actions of a subset of its members is part of that difference. How a person got into a group—inborn genetics, cosmic perspective, voting history, romantic decisions, whatever—has no bearing on whether or not it's okay to condemn them for the actions of others.
Now can we please get back to a productive discussion on sexism, without having to kick anyone on our way past?
EDIT: Wait, hang on, this is "misandrists in the setting;" what should we be getting back to? Dang, this thread has really wandered.
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You can't separate Paul from Christianity--at least not from organized Christianity, any more than you can separate Islam from Mohammed or Hinduism from the authors of the Vedas. Paul's the one who invented Christianity as a separate religion, rather than as a Jewish sect. I mean, sure, if you leave out Paul and everyone that followed him, Christianity wasn't particularly sexist. But then you don't have Christianity. You have a short-lived Jewish sect in the 2nd temple period.Sociologically and historically? Sure. Agreed completely. Religiously? That's a somewhat different matter, and varies by the believer. I've met a few different Christians who were...ambivalent at best regarding Paul (mostly based on some of his ideas not lining up with stuff Jesus was quoted as saying combined with his not having actually interacted with Jesus), while still believing in the rest, more or less.
His evangelism having caused Christianity to be as big a thing as it is, is pretty indisputable...but that has little to do with whether individual Christians abide by his words.
I mean, most certainly do and I'm not disputing that, but saying removing him from the religion (or just ignoring some of the stuff he says) is impossible in a religious context is simply untrue. People can and do stuff exactly like that all the time.
Sure, people can do anything they want religiously. But if you remove Paul from Christianity, you're not talking about organized Christianity anymore. I have zero interest in trying to define who's a Christian from a spiritual perspective, as I'm not Christian and am uninterested in its spirituality. Setting up shibboleths for who is and isn't a "true" member of the faith is the province of believers and irrelevant to the rest of us.
However, from a demographic/sociological perspective, Christians who reject Paul's authority (which is different from having unease about it but following your denomination's teachings) are anomalous and rare enough not to matter when you're talking about Christianity. They're like Christadelphians--they're out there, but there's no mainstream denomination which holds those views.
Jesus personally seems to have been a bit more inclined to egalitarianism in general than either Judaism or later Christianity.
Jesus was 100% a moderate for his time and place--pretty much smack dab in the middle between schools of thought like Hillel's (what we'd define as more liberal/permissive, though of course these things don't track nicely to modern conceptions of liberalism/conservatism) and Shammai (strict).
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I oppose mistreatment of people based on their religion.
That said, it is absolutely not the same to criticize a group of people who are defined as a group because they believe the same thing, which is their choice, as it is to lump together a group of people based on something as arbitrary and involuntary as a chromosome.
The same? Not strictly, no.
It is kinda bad policy, though, when the particular belief in question (which is pretty much solely the divinity of one Jesus Christ and the existence of an omnipotent God, almost everything else can vary) has very little to do with the behavior you're imputing on them. You're making a statement about all Christians that has nothing to do with the defining beliefs that make them Christian.
For an equivalent example, I could say all people who believe in aliens are inclined to blame them for global warming.
Except that given that those are two different beliefs and the second in no way follows logically from the first, that would be profoundly inaccurate statement. And insulting to those who believe in aliens but (quite reasonably) think humans are primarily responsible for global climate change.
And that's sorta what you did there.
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I just disagree that acceptability of condemning the entire group for the actions of a subset of its members is part of that difference. How a person got into a group—inborn genetics, cosmic perspective, voting history, romantic decisions, whatever—has no bearing on whether or not it's okay to condemn them for the actions of others.
Which very nicely avoids being able to hold any group accountable for anything. No, no group is 100% responsible for the actions of individual members. However, when they don't condemn those actions, and benefit from them, yes, they bear responsibility.
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I just disagree that acceptability of condemning the entire group for the actions of a subset of its members is part of that difference. How a person got into a group—inborn genetics, cosmic perspective, voting history, romantic decisions, whatever—has no bearing on whether or not it's okay to condemn them for the actions of others.Which very nicely avoids being able to hold any group accountable for anything. No, no group is 100% responsible for the actions of individual members. However, when they don't condemn those actions, and benefit from them, yes, they bear responsibility.
Well, who's the "they" that failed to condemn the actions? I'm pretty sure an awful lot of members of the group in question would absolutely condemn the actions you described. How would you ever find out? I mean sure, if the group's leadership or public-facing representatives fail to condemn fellow group members' actions, then the group's leadership absolutely bears responsibility, just as you say.
Of course, that's assuming that the leadership even knows about it. Meanwhile, there's the other umpteen million members of the group who may or may not even know the actions in question were ever performed, and if they do, may well condemn those actions quite thoroughly, even if the group's leadership does not.
So once again, you're generalizing about a massive group based only on what you personally have or have not heard about its handful of public figures doing. That's massively unfair.
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I oppose mistreatment of people based on their religion.
That said, it is absolutely not the same to criticize a group of people who are defined as a group because they believe the same thing, which is their choice, as it is to lump together a group of people based on something as arbitrary and involuntary as a chromosome.
The same? Not strictly, no.
It is kinda bad policy, though, when the particular belief in question (which is pretty much solely the divinity of one Jesus Christ and the existence of an omnipotent God, almost everything else can vary) has very little to do with the behavior you're imputing on them. You're making a statement about all Christians that has nothing to do with the defining beliefs that make them Christian.
For an equivalent example, I could say all people who believe in aliens are inclined to blame them for global warming.
Except that given that those are two different beliefs and the second in no way follows logically from the first, that would be profoundly inaccurate statement. And insulting to those who believe in aliens but (quite reasonably) think humans are primarily responsible for global climate change.
And that's sorta what you did there.
No, it's not. I didn't say "all Christians like to..."
Like, look, dude, you can #notallchristians all you want. Doesn't change anything. Christianity, historically, has benefitted from using Judaism as a scapegoat--both socially and doctrinally. Which means that Christians have benefitted from it--even the ones that haven't engaged directly in it themselves.
That's what privilege is.
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Sure, people can do anything they want religiously. But if you remove Paul from Christianity, you're not talking about organized Christianity anymore. I have zero interest in trying to define who's a Christian from a spiritual perspective, as I'm not Christian and am uninterested in its spirituality. Setting up shibboleths for who is and isn't a "true" member of the faith is the province of believers and irrelevant to the rest of us.
However, from a demographic/sociological perspective, Christians who reject Paul's authority (which is different from having unease about it but following your denomination's teachings) are anomalous and rare enough not to matter when you're talking about Christianity. They're like Christadelphians--they're out there, but there's no mainstream denomination which holds those views.
The issue with this is that we were specifically discussing religious belief, and whether it inherently led to prejudice. We were, in fact, not discussing demographics or the various issues with mainstream Christianity (which I'd strongly argue are far more cultural than they are religious).
I was specifically responding to the point that 'religious belief leads directly to discrimination'...which makes responding to that point on a demographic rather than religious basis kinda weird.
Jesus was 100% a moderate for his time and place--pretty much smack dab in the middle between schools of thought like Hillel's (what we'd define as more liberal/permissive, though of course these things don't track nicely to modern conceptions of liberalism/conservatism) and Shammai (strict).
I must admit, while I've done some research on Jesus, I haven't done a lot of research on other sects active at the same time, so I can't comment here.
I just disagree that acceptability of condemning the entire group for the actions of a subset of its members is part of that difference. How a person got into a group—inborn genetics, cosmic perspective, voting history, romantic decisions, whatever—has no bearing on whether or not it's okay to condemn them for the actions of others.Which very nicely avoids being able to hold any group accountable for anything. No, no group is 100% responsible for the actions of individual members. However, when they don't condemn those actions, and benefit from them, yes, they bear responsibility.
I dunno, I think a 'Many' at the beginning of the sentence under discussion would have held sufficient people accountable without causing any of this argument to occur. 'Many Christians' rather than 'Christians'.
And I'm not sure at all that everyone who's ever believed X is responsible for the actions of all those who've believed the same thing. Or that trying to hold them responsible in that manner is useful.
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Well, who's the "they" that failed to condemn the actions? I'm pretty sure an awful lot of members of the group in question would absolutely condemn the actions you described. How would you ever find out? I mean sure, if the group's leadership or public-facing representatives fail to condemn fellow group members' actions, then the group's leadership absolutely bears responsibility, just as you say.I just disagree that acceptability of condemning the entire group for the actions of a subset of its members is part of that difference. How a person got into a group—inborn genetics, cosmic perspective, voting history, romantic decisions, whatever—has no bearing on whether or not it's okay to condemn them for the actions of others.Which very nicely avoids being able to hold any group accountable for anything. No, no group is 100% responsible for the actions of individual members. However, when they don't condemn those actions, and benefit from them, yes, they bear responsibility.
Er, to take the most obvious example, it took the Catholic Church until 1965 to stop officially declaring that Jews were responsible for killing Jesus and should be punished for it?
And no, when you're voluntarily a member of a group, it's not just the leadership that bears responsibility for their teachings. It's everyone in the group who remains part of it and doesn't attempt to replace those leaders.
I dunno, I think a 'Many' at the beginning of the sentence under discussion would have held sufficient people accountable without causing any of this argument to occur. 'Many Christians' rather than 'Christians'.
And I'm not sure at all that everyone who's ever believed X is responsible for the actions of all those who've believed the same thing. Or that trying to hold them responsible in that manner is useful.
Please stop misrepresenting what I've said.
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I didn't say "all Christians like to..."
I have a hard time believing you would accept that same distinction if I were to talk about what "women" do and then pointed out I didn't say "all".
Look, I'm philosophically opposed to the entire notion of "acceptable targets", but apparently you're not, and it seems we've found (one of?) yours, so I guess there's not much more point in discussing this side topic with you. Maybe we can get back to the main topic now. Or if not, maybe I'll just hide the thread. :/
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Hey folks, let's steer this conversation back to the context of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting please. Thanks!
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Agreed there, a much beloved PC of mine and an NPC cleric or Erastil had some....serious philosophical issues (she was a LG marshal (3.5 convert class)/psychic warrior, did not like being told to hang up her sword and find a man) and she became queen (amazing Cha, quite good Int and Wis, no reason for her not to really), but after the re-write, tis all good in the River Lands (was playing King Maker, most fun kingdom building game we ever played!)
Now if only the RW was as easy to alter....
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I'm glad to hear it, GM_Beernorg. I started playing just about three years ago, and mainly PFS at that. In some ways, that meant I jumped in without a full understanding of the Pathfinder lore. I've since read as much as I can about it; I enjoy it greatly. The "Old" Erastil seems to have been an anomaly, and I'm not surprised he was rewritten. Different writers have different views; things change, attitudes change, people change. What came out of it is an eventual positive change, so that's not such a bad thing. In general I feel very much at home with Paizo's inclusive world and commitment to diverse heroes and greater representation. It brings me a lot of peace when I feel troubled about certain things in real life.
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(she was a LG marshal (3.5 convert class)/psychic warrior, did not like being told to hang up her sword and find a man)
Who told your character to do this? Even in the write up in which Erastil is a bit of a male chauvinist, this isn't a necessary outcome. If this is the outcome presented to you, someone was reading way more hostility into it.
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(she was a LG marshal (3.5 convert class)/psychic warrior, did not like being told to hang up her sword and find a man)Who told your character to do this? Even in the write up in which Erastil is a bit of a male chauvinist, this isn't a necessary outcome. If this is the outcome presented to you, someone was reading way more hostility into it.
I dunno, it sounds like Beernorg saw a character idea/hook in the setting flavor and ran with it. Yeah, all of players & GMs have access to the official published canon lore on Erastil, but the PCs don't. For a PC without any ranks in Knowledge (religion) or any compelling reason to research into the whole of Erastil's lore, why would that PC question a cleric of Erastil if he espoused patriarchal or sexist views on women's roles, especially if he or his parish was that PCs only exposure to Erastil? I'm sure that in other less cosmopolitan communities, other PCs could grow up with particularly strident cleric/priest filling their community's heads with skewed/wrong-headed ideas about that faith and deity that aren't wrong or heretical enough to warrant the deity taking corrective measures against the cleric/priest.
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Diplomacy skill max ranks and 20 Cha, 20 minutes of IC discussion, and we worked out an understanding like civilized folk :).
Now back to your regularly scheduled thread....
(actually I think you hit the bullseye Ambrosia, due to those facts, it pretty much ran that way until the direct discussion put it to bed for good)
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All that we can conclude about the Lashunta is that the females are the political manipulators and the men aren't a part of the game.
It's far cry from Drow clerics regularly using males as sacrifice to the Spider Goddess. Keep in mind that it doesn't take too much for a drow cleric to sacrifice a female drow if the result leverages right.
For all the misandry of Drow culture, it's not one of female solidarity.
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Mostly sure that Drow don't have a word for solidarity ;)
But 100 words for betrayal (very nuanced of course)
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As an aside, the discussion on drow may be partially based on editions of D&D (all the mentions of the spider-goddess, for instance). I'm drawing some text from two passages of the Advanced Race Guide, as I don't have time to dig through all the others at present.
Society: Drow society is traditionally class-oriented and matriarchal. Male drow usually fulfill martial roles, defending the species from external threats, while female drow assume positions of leadership and authority. Reinforcing these gender roles, one in 20 drow are born with exceptional abilities and thus considered to be nobility, and the majority of these special drow are female. Noble houses define drow politics, with each house governed by a noble matriarch and composed of lesser families, business enterprises, and military companies. Each house is also associated with a demon lord patron. Drow are strongly driven by individual self-interest and advancement, which shapes their culture with seething intrigue and politics, as common drow jockey for favor of the nobility, and the nobility rise in power through a combination of assassination, seduction, and treachery.Adventurers: Conquerors and slavers, drow are driven to expand their territory, and many seek to settle ancient grudges upon elven and dwarven nations in ruinous and dreary sites of contested power on the surface. Male drow favor martial or stealth classes that put them close to their enemies and their homes, as either soldiers or spies. Female drow typically assume classes that lend themselves to leadership, such as bards and especially clerics. Both genders have an innate talent for the arcane arts, and may be wizards or summoners. Drow make natural antipaladins, but males are often discouraged from this path, as the feminine nobility feel discomforted by the idea of strong-willed males with autonomous instincts and a direct relationship with a demon lord.
Now, this isn't Golarion-specific, but in general Golarion seems to shape what's in the generic rulebooks.
Looking at the text, it shows parts of why the drow turned out as a matriarchy, with the greater number of female 'noble drow'. This doesn't make it any less of misandry, but you also note it doesn't say males can't be clerics, and antipaladins are discouraged from the path. It changes things a little, in my opinion, because I didn't see any mention of sacrifice in the first two pages of the ARG text. I'm sure it happens, but I just wanted to add a possible bit of info to the conversation.
Edit: Corrected misinformation due to misremembering.
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Yeah..using the Lashunta race write-up (which isn't even IC) as evidence for misandry is reaching at best. Those descriptions are also literally correct given the racial stat-mods, which makes treating them like you would subjective or prejudiced commentary both odd and inappropriate.
Their actual in-world description in People of the Stars very much emphasizes that both sexes go out and become warriors and adventurers...or pursue scholarly pursuits (which the culture values highly). The only difference mentioned in terms of roles is that the women are usually leaders and the word 'matriarchal' is used. So...only female politicians. Other roles open to anyone.
And even there, the Lashunta are stated as matriarchal only in the sense of mostly having female leaders...but given that, as compared to male Lashunta females have +2 Wis and +2 Cha, that'd be true even in a completely meritocratic society.
Now, my suspicion is that the Lashunta aren't completely meritocratic and a male with higher Wis than most females would still not wind up in charge...but calling them misandrist is pretty clearly way harsher than they deserve. Especially since it's explicitly a Good aligned culture, and bad traits in Good aligned cultures tend not to be to severe or they aren't Good.
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Yeah..using the Lashunta race write-up (which isn't even IC) as evidence for misandry is reaching at best. Those descriptions are also literally correct given the racial stat-mods, which makes treating them like you would subjective or prejudiced commentary is both odd and inappropriate.
Their actual in-world description in People of the Stars very much emphasizes that both sexes go out and become warriors and adventurers...or pursue scholarly pursuits (which the culture values highly). The only difference mentioned in terms of roles is that the women are usually leaders and the word 'matriarchal' is used. So...only female politicians. Other roles open to anyone.
And even there, the Lashunta are stated as matriarchal only in the sense of mostly having female leaders...but given that, as compared to male Lashunta females have +2 Wis and +2 Cha, that'd be true even in a completely meritocratic society.
Now, my suspicion is that the Lashunta aren't completely meritocratic and a male with higher Wis than most females would still not wind up in charge...but calling them misandrist is pretty clearly way harsher than they deserve. Especially since it's explicitly a Good aligned culture, and bad traits in Good aligned cultures tend not to be to severe or the aren't Good.
You do have to understand that from some viewpoints any society where man aren't dominant is going to be perceived as misandric. Again the bipoloar viewpoint which only allows for a dominant/submissive viewpoint.
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You do have to understand that from some viewpoints any society where man aren't dominant is going to be perceived as misandric. Again the bipoloar viewpoint which only allows for a dominant/submissive viewpoint.
Sure, but that viewpoint is rather clearly and demonstrably wrong. So I'm pretty inclined to argue against it whenever it comes up.
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LOL BigNorseWolf!
(no fair BNW has four legs, Beernorg only has two...sad orc now..not as fast as I thought)
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Mostly sure that Drow don't have a word for solidarity ;)
Running now
Can't see it or is that intended?
You do have to understand that from some viewpoints any society where man aren't dominant is going to be perceived as misandric. Again the bipoloar viewpoint which only allows for a dominant/submissive viewpoint.Sure, but that viewpoint is rather clearly and demonstrably wrong. So I'm pretty inclined to argue against it whenever it comes up.
So is the Flat Earth, but you'll still find YouTube videos arguing for it.
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One of my favorite science fiction works exploring the possibility of a genderless human society is Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. The viewpoint character is a male from Earth. The world he visits is inhabited by people who live most of their lives without a biological gender. Each individual can temporarily grow either male or female organs in order to reproduce, then return to the non-gendered state. It's a fascinating novel, and has held up quite well since its publication in 1969.
Another examination of a society with very different genders is Isaac Asimov's The Gods, Themselves. In this novel, an alien race in an alternate universe with really odd laws of physics has three gender-equivalent divisions. Some are mostly solid, some are quasi-liquid, and some are basically gaseous. I qualify all of those physical states because unlike in our universe, two pieces of "solid" matter in that universe could interpenetrate each other and then re-separate without damage. While this novel did present an alternative to binary genders, I consider it less useful to this discussion because Asimov really didn't explore the differences that would produce in society as thoroughly as Le Guin did.
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Two more novels that explore different gender roles/relations: David Brin's Glory Season (parthenogenesis and cloning) and Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price (a society where women give birth to girls 10 times more often than boys).
(Note: Yes, I'm aware of real world cultures where the gender ratios are skewed by cultural factors. Spencer's novel specifically states that the "10 girls per boy" ratio in her fictional world is natural, not the result of preferential care, neglect, and/or infanticide.)
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A novel that specifically explores different approaches to marriage is Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The version I remember most clearly is known as a line marriage. Under this system, every man in the line is married to every woman in the line. This type of marriage evolved in a penal colony, to avoid legal wrangles over inheritance. If the entire line owns property, then the death of the oldest members of the family doesn't open up the property to "reclamation" by the colonial government/wardens.
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That's sort of an aside though, I really wanted to suggest looking outside the well known larger cultures, particularly the Christian and Islamic ones. I know there were some tribal cultures that shocked Europeans at contact with how differently their women were treated. I believe most still had strong gender roles, but I'm not sure how much that translated into dominance of one over the other or into hate.
Incidentally, I'm reading right now about Caribbean cultures. Apparently, aside from the Kalinago people (dubbed the "Caribs" by the Europeans, a term which quickly became a catchall term for "natives who don't like us and I bet they eat people, Tim's brother's girlfriend said she heard from her launder that they do, it's probably true"), women and men were fairly equal in many of the societies. While male chiefs were more common, female chiefs were not an aberration. It sounds like they might have been about where we are now, really.
That's not an uncommon narrative when discussing non-European cultures, really: Things start out fairly egalitarian, Europeans get involved, warrior cultures get promoted and women/non-gender binary/non-heterosexual people get degraded. And apparently there used to be female samurai in Japan before a big wave of patriarchy broke on the island.
It sort of makes you worry, really. Equality isn't a new invention—it's an old concept that keeps getting stamped out where it surfaces. And now we have feminists constantly having to fight for basic advances, and every time being told "they've gone too far". Then they achieve the right to vote or the technical legal right to a hard-to-get abortion and we adopt that and say, "Okay, the feminists were right about that, but new feminists are going too far."
Adopt the message, abandon the messenger. It happens in the civil rights fight, too—just look at Ida B. Wells. Every advance we make seems to make the backlash against the movement stronger.
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But anchovies!!!...shrinking even faster than reasons to believe in a God.Whatever your own beliefs may be, taking pot-shots at people for their religion as part of your speech about discrimination and equality is pretty hypocritical.
Sex, gender, orientation, race, religion, ethnicity, political affiliation, abortion stance, marital status, economic class, pizza topping preferences... How about we don't weaponize any of it, okay?
I understand; I've been there too. It's not easy to embrace diversity; you can't just simply mentally acknowledge that it's good to treat others as equals and leave it at that. You've got to proactively alter yourself, because your actualized beliefs don't automatically align with your declared beliefs with the flip of a switch. It takes ongoing work. It's a process. And the moment you think you're done, you've failed. You must constantly work toward greater acceptance in practice, not just in declaration.
Even in regard to anchovy-lovers.
Actually, #notallanchovies are used on pizza. Many are incredibly valuable in cooking other dishes, and they play a major role in Italian cooking.
Finally, because I think this was dismissed too easily earlier in the discussion, I do believe that the stereotype of incompetent dads is a form of misandry. It might be limited in scope and softened with a sort of tolerant affection, but there's a dose of contempt here of the same sort as seen here. Of course, this doesn't disprove Ms. Price's overall point. The "dumb dad" is yet another example of a scornful attitude that developed in order to support a sexist system by assigning the duties of homemaking to women - because a man "can't" do them right. Predictably, this leads to career sacrifices for many women. As an added "bonus", hostility towards male parenting efforts combined with the general devaluing of feminine pursuits punishes men who try to fight the system and be equal partners with their wives.
I would agree, but I wouldn't call it misandry. It's contempt for a feminine role and contempt for a man who attempts to fulfill it. It's toxic masculinity.
There have been societies that implemented gender roles successfully, but that doesn't mean it was the right system—they just never ran into trouble because they were small civilizations (like the "isolated tribes" Drahlianna somewhat contemptuously cited) and gender roles hadn't yet begun to take on disproportionate weight. Having women in charge of nurturing and having them voice the "peaceful" mindset during wartime negotiations didn't cause a meaningful problem for the same reason a hippie commune works: It's small and there's less chance for things to get f@#+ed up. There were probably still tons of examples of unhappy Kalinago women who wanted to work on boats or fight in battles, though, as well as men who weren't interested in the roles they'd been assigned.
It was an unsustainable system. Had those relentless bogeymen the Europeans not intervened and forced their transphobic, racist, mysoginist agendas on everyone else, I'm confident that most of these civilizations would have gone through their own cultural revolutions in time, coming around to have more enlightened views on gender and sexuality just as we are theoretically trying to do now. Many of them probably would have come by it much sooner than we have, really, and with much greater success, since they'd already developed a good chunk of the way there.
We can recognize that a culture implemented gender roles without incident without a) reducing that culture to some sort of "obscure isolated incident", and b) determining that this is proof institutionalized gender roles can work or are healthy.
Not every path to societal growth has to follow the European "industrialization" model, though. We also can't neglect the possibility that Europe (and Asia, I believe) simply had forces at play other countries wouldn't. Not all cultures are dominated by a religion revolving around a single patriarchal god where women are blamed for all sin, for instance.
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Not at all, as I said, I would attribute the EXACT same to a patriarchal society that was listed the same way.
Whenever you have a society where one sex are the only rulers and the other sex aren't then you are going to have, especially over years and years and years, a degree of misogyny/misandry and there is no way to help that.
You also don't have to be of evil alignment to be a misogynist/misandrist. If, for example, a male Lashunta can't be a lizard-rider that is, period, misandry because it is discrimination. If a common Lashunta mind-set is, "Women are politicans, men aren't suited for it." that IS misandry. That doesn't make someone evil necessarily.
Uh...it's debatably sexism, and discrimination, but misandry is a bit worse than sexism alone. Additionally, where are you getting your info?
Every Lashunta write-up I can find mentions both becoming warriors, and none seem to say the men don't contribute.
If I told you:
"Women are more emotional than men, and therefor aren't suited to positions of leadership."
That would be misogynist as all heck and it is the exact same as saying:
"Men tend to have a slightly lower Charisma and Wisdom score than women, and because of that they aren't suited to positions of leadership."
And here we come to the heart of the problem with complaining about the Lashunta in this context: The Lashunta are strongly sexually dimorphic.
Humans are not strongly sexually dimorphic (particularly, we're almost identical mentally) and thus your latter statement is both factually incorrect and a statement of prejudice. The Lashunta, however, are another matter. Their capabilities actually do vary in a statistically significant fashion. By quite a bit.
These are not equivalent situations and cannot be treated as such.
When we are talking about, on average, a +1 difference at most. Statistically speaking that means Lashunta society HAS TO BE largely discriminatory with no real justification for the matriarchy aside from a preconceived notion.
Uh...no. A +2 to a stat means quite a bit, especially at low levels. And the vast majority of characters are of low levels.
It also makes, statistically, high numbers way less common and low numbers way more common. Which makes quite a difference.
Assuming 3d6 rolls for stats (as you do for non-heroic NPCs), 10% of Lashunta men have Wis 4 or less, and 62.7% have a 9 or less. Only 1.9% of Lashunta women have a 4 or less in Wis, and only 37.7% have Wis 9 or less. On the other end of things, 4.7% of Lashunta men have a Wis of 14+, while 16.3% of Lashunta women have the same.
So...men are almost twice as likely as women to have a below average Wisdom, and only a third as likely to have a Wisdom most people would consider 'high'. That's not a small or insignificant difference.
The situation with Charisma is similar, though the numbers would all be two higher for that distribution.
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I also think we have to dispense with the notion that because a group hates everyone that means they aren't misogynists or misandrists. All that means is that they hate someone for their gender. That doesn't mean that they don't hate everyone else for some other reason.
So in Pathfinder, I'd have to say the following groups are likely misandrists:
Note:
I am denoting the ones most likely to be misandrists, one of the main criteria is any matriarchal society that doesn't explain, or mention, their male counterparts. The reason for this is simple, if they don't warrant a mention at all in their society then it is safe to assume, in my opinion, that there is discrimination going on. I would assume the same for any patriarchal society that doesn't mention women at all.1. Drow
This is a no-brainer. They berate men for being men and they classify men as second class citizens. They are the definition of misandrists.2. Lamia
There are no known instances of Lamia males. So we don't know, we can assume though since it is a purely matriarchal society with no mention of men what-so-ever that it is a high likelihood.3. Lashunta
Though not said to mistreat, or look down on, males again this is a matriarchal society with absolutely no mention what-so-ever about the males.
Hags.