[ SECRET POST #3977 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3977 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[North & South]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 12 secrets from Secret Submission Post #569.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Late to the party, but honestly, I think the reason so many fantasies have gender roles is that gender roles are hard to escape no matter what time period your story is set in. Not to mention the problem of the biological differences between the sexes - pregnancy puts a woman largely of commission in the last couple of months and the first couple of the baby's life. The average women has 30% less muscle mass than a man. Men, because of testosterone, as a group are more driven for status than women are, who like a better work-life balance. Fantasy also lacks the technology to 'take women out of the home', so to speak. You can't underestimate how much technology has changed women's lives.

Of course you CAN change all those things. Men and women have the same strength. The culture is different and once the baby is weaned, the husband takes over baby-care, or hell, both sexes can get pregnant. Have a matriarchal society (though that would have sexism of it's own, if they eliminated males from positions of leadership for being male). But people don't necessarily read fantasy for reasons like that, so you simply don't see a lot of it. Fantasy is usually, well, about the fantastic.

I see a lot more of that, actually, in future-set scifi, where technology makes men and women equal in terms of biology (and culture).

It's like ... could you have a world where men and women were treated exactly the same, and biological differences didn't exist/didn't matter, and all of that? Sure. You could.

But while people like their fantasies fantastic, they like the core of it to be recognizable. That means our own experiences, taken to the fantastic, and that means (usually) gender roles exist. We know them. It provides a good base of understanding the society, which is similar to our own but not TOO similar.

Fiction writing is as influenced by the market/readership as anything else. Stories such as you describe have their audiences - obviously, you are one of them. But you're in the minority of people who care that much about it to deliberately seek it out.

Problem? Not a problem? I don't really have an opinion. I read what I like and rarely worry about the rest. If I can't find what I want, yeah, I do write it myself, or I dig a little harder to find it. Or I give up and read something else that's great and entertaining, even if it's not exactly to the tee what I most desire.