Worldbuilding 205: Matriarchy or Patriarchy
Greetings and shiv! … I am glad I don’t need any of those anymore! Hi and welcome! Wow, the year has moved fast! Not fast enough, if you ask me. But today's topic is… a bait and switch! Well, not quite, but kind of. I will talk about matriarchy and patriarchy as promised, but also the broader genusarchy. Note that we will not talk about the patriarchy as the broad social system in effect in the real world today.
Definition
As anyone knows, we love us some good definitions here on the Stellima blog.
Genusarchy is a social system where there exists in society a hierarchical structure based on gender.
Being in a hierarchy means one gender will be higher than any other. But then… what is a gender?
A gender is a sociocultural division of people that is strongly influenced by the sex of the person.
Of course, as always, these definitions are not perfect and are not intended to capture the nature of humans but to be broad enough to cover the possibility of aliens and fantasy situations as well.
But this means that gender is a whole load of things–how the culture and social interactions treat them, clothes, mannerisms, etc,–and I say strongly influenced by sex because while gender might strongly correlate with it, yours truly can confirm that sex is not the end-all, be-all for one's gender. That would be bioessentialism, and we do not support such nonsense here! Be aware that we will talk about biology and sexes alongside gender because they are closely connected, but as said, we do not subscribe to bioessentialism or in any way think gender and sex are the same, even if in this blogpost occasionally they might be discussed as the same for simplicity.
So, to go back to where we started, genusarchy is a system where the number of genders in a society is placed in a hierarchy, with one at the top and one at the bottom. Matriarchy is thus when a woman is at the top; patriarchy is when you place a man at the top.
Culture over biology
One important thing to remember is this: power comes from people giving it. What this means is that you can be the biggest, baddest baddie around, but if people are completely unwilling to give you power, they will find a way to knock you down a few pegs so that you will stop pretending you are someone they must listen to.
Power structures are always inherently culture- and people-driven, not based on raw strength. Raw strength can definitely contribute to the acquisition of power, but it is not what being powerful is about. This is why I say culture over biology when it comes to genusarchy. We will, however, go into what biological factors do contribute to one being more favoured over another.
It is the culture’s view that dictates the existence of a hierarchy of genders, and it is through the culture and its normalized views that the genusarchy is maintained and considered proper. I have, in earlier posts, talked about the big lie, and the genusarchy at play is, in fact, part of the big cultural lie because there is no objective manner to say what genus should be in charge.
Influences shape genusarchy
Again, before I continue, biology does not dictate gender nor genusarch. But biology does influence! And we will go into both the biological components and the cultural components that shape the genusarchy.
Reproduction
Life is more than reproduction, no doubt about it. But when you live in ancient times and 95% of your life is farming, and you need more horsepower to run the farm, and no way to stop more babies coming, reproduction does become a whole issue to deal with.
But we can go on to that part right away. The fact that afabs (assigned female at birth)–I’ll just say women henceforth–have to carry the child for 9 months and are the primary nutrient source for the babies for humans does have a huge effect on how the genusarchy would evolve. When it comes to population growth, women have always been and remain to this day the bottleneck. That is why we count population sustainability by how many babies per woman. Nobody cares how many children a man has because he can have as many as he wants.
What all of this means is that for a large portion of their lives, women cannot do hard physical labour as they carry the child internally and then externally have to take care of them. The external part can somewhat be mitigated and has historically been done so through various means, some by sharing with other women, and a rare few shoving all child-rearing onto men, except for providing milk. Again, culture over biology.
This is further amplified by the fact that contraception in the old days essentially ranged from functionally useless to actively deadly. People want sex and not too many children, so we biological entities tried everything between heaven and earth, including alligator poop inside the vagina… which is as disgusting as it sounds.
So the big parts here are, how much does reproduction incapacitate the individual of the gender, how much must they invest in the child, and can they control reproduction? Think about these questions when you decide on an alien species and how reproduction influences gender.
Dimorphism
Another fascinating biological aspect when looking at genusarchies is sexual dimorphism, or trimorphism if you have 3 sexes, and so on, which is when a species looks visibly different on the outside due to the sex that they belong to. It can be as minute as just a slight size difference to be so extreme that scientists think for several decades that they have found 3 different species families, one family where they only find females, one family where they only find males, and one family where they only find juvenile… only for it to turn out they all belong to the same family and they look so different it is nigh incomprehensible to the scientists. These would be the Cetomimidae, of course!
Humans are, despite what some less-than-educated people would like to think, rather low on the sexual dimorphism spectrum. You have slight size differences, some redistribution of fat (🩷 🏳️⚧️), voice differences, and muscle differences, but overall, it is not that much. Which can be proven by the fact that it doesn’t take a whole lot for a transgender person to be considered the other gender or somewhere in between.
If you have a species where the sexual dimorphism is more on the extreme end, like some spider people where the women are twice the size of the men and more muscular, you can bet that the odds of a matriarchy are considerably higher than a patriarchy. Probably because any man advocating a patriarchy becomes the next meal. It’s only cannibalism if it isn’t the norm! Dark humour.
The best way to think here is that the greater the sexual dimorphism, the greater an influence it will have as the raw physical power becomes more and more substantial. But it is equally important to remember that the culture is still the dominant force.
War
As long as there have been groups, there have been fights. As long as there have been states, there have been wars. Wars are part of civilisation and inevitable. And in every war, people are the ones fighting. But who gets to be in a war decides a lot. Having access to the military means you can use physical power to enforce your will on others against their will.
However, being part of the group that can enforce this will is also a way to grant power to the people within. So a gender that gets access to the ability to wage war will start to gain power. And power always accumulates over time. And in a lot of human cultures, who has been the main gender to wage wars? That is right, men. Despite women's constant attempts to sneak in and be warriors and soldiers too, the men dominated.
And this does tie a bit into the dimorphism thing. If the dimorphism is more extreme, the one with the more obvious physical advantage will be the one dominating wars because it is strategically insane to have the weaker individuals be in your army doing wars when physical strength is literally 80% of the fighting. It is not all of the war, but it is a large fraction.
For low dimorphic species, like humans, it doesn’t really matter if it is women or men battling because both can fight on roughly equal terms if both are allowed to train, even if men’s testosterone makes it easier for them to gain muscle mass. But enough about gender and sex, let’s get more creative!
Aposex genders
Apo- means away from, apart from, so genders not directly related to sexes! The most modern term is non-binary, which serves as a collective term for all of them. Out of respect for cultures and to not insult them due to my enormous ignorance of their cultures, I will not actually state any specific aposex gender or culture by name.
But aposex genders are, as the name suggests, genders that are unrelated to the actual sexes of the species. Historically and culturally these tend to not be too numerous and the number of individuals within an aposex gender is proportionally very small compared to the dominant episex genders (epi- is onto, upon, on, connected with).
But do not mistake their numerical inferiority for being irrelevant! No no no, these genders can, in fact, wield a rather disproportionate amount of power. There have been historical cultures where an aposex gender is required for certain powerful positions within the culture. If you belong to an episex gender, sorry, you don’t get to join! Which helps prove my point of culture over biology.
So when you create your own culture and genders, do not think that just because you make an apogender that they cannot have power, they can! But there is usually a cultural reason for it, something they provide to the culture that is meaningful to the culture.
While aposex genders are fascinating, and I do have a species that uses them for power–you can read about them in my last blogpost!–I’ll instead go into a species I have and their genusarchy.
Mini-practicum: Raixhen Ultriarchy
Quick summary of the Raixher: they have 3 sexes and are stratocratic, meaning they are military-focused. But one of the things I wanted with them was in fact a matriarchy-like structure that made sense, as I was rather sick and tired of the “Just flip the patriarchy” kind of matriarchies that drive me up the wall. There are reasons for a matriarchy or patriarchy in a culture, even if it looks stupid to outside people.
So I started with the biological components; namely, they do not get pregnant for extended periods of time that incapacitate them. Month tops. I made the dimorphism noticeable but retained the human feel of it not being too extreme, though their size differences are slightly more pronounced than they are in humans. But the big thing I did was that I skewed their natural number of each sex.
In humans, it is extremely close to 1:1 between the sexes. For the Raixher, it is 1:2:3, so one sex takes 50% of the entire population, and the remaining 2 sexes share the rest. This will naturally make the epigenders related shift in a similar manner, and the more numerous are the ones most likely to get power. But what are these genders? Prophont, midphon, and ultiphont. I use -phont in my universe as a gender marker to signal that it is their sophonce that is more important, not their sex. Like how man and woman shows that the humanity is more important than the biology of the individual.
For every priphont there are two midphonts and three ultiphonts, which means that historically, their cultures have tended toward ultiarchy, where the ultiphonts are the preferred gender while priphonts have been the lower ranking ones, as they require protection because they are so few. While humans have screams of “Women and children first!” they have been screaming “Priphonts and children first!”. The priphonts are also shorter, by about a head and a quarter, along with being not as muscular.
Due to these reasons, the ultiphonts have also dominated wars, and with the fact that they are stratocratic–the military is what governs them–this has only amplified the power of the ultriarchy.
Have there been cultures in their world that have had a priarchy instead? Definitely! And actually, to this day in modern Raixhen culture, the singular most important person in their culture is in fact not an ultiphont, it is a priphont. The one that actually managed to unify them all. Read it on the Raixher blogpost!
But I have stated mostly biological reasons when I made it clear that culture decides, so what is the culture here? Well, like many things in culture, what starts out as a grain of truth in biology, environment, or nature spirals out of control with time. They have had the idea that priphonts require more protections, are important to reproduction, are inherently weaker, and such throughout their history, which has been used to justify, what would it be called, misprindy? Let’s call it that to match misandry and misogyny.
Though since their unification and the military taking over with a different attitude, the iron grip of the Ultriarchy has been reduced, but changing the culture is a long process, and they are still working on it. But some are not too keen on changing it, even a lot of priphonts are not doing a lot to change it as they see the current state of affairs as “good enough”. Which is a story that is heard on earth a lot, sadly…
Summa Summarum
Lots of gender talk today! I plan on doing a blogpost where I go into how to design a gender, maybe fairly soon, as I am itching for it. But today, the important thing to think about is the genusarchy and how it affects your culture. Keep in mind it is always culture that maintains and justifies the genusarchy structure that remains in effect, including by those at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Patriarchy arose on Earth a lot for both biological reasons and for cultural reasons. It became dominant in a lot of Europe due to Rome’s influence, which spread throughout the world due to colonization. Matriarchies, if I remember correctly, do exist to this day, but in much smaller communities.
For the Raixher, it was also a mix of biological reasons that turned into cultural and is then sustained by their culture. Despite their egalitarian attitude of all being equal in the military, with actual heavy utilization of it, their ultriarchy persists to this day, centuries into the future. And who knows, maybe it is really good enough as is… I am sure Anne and Mitrinla disagree…
Have a good Advent, everyone!
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Copyright ©️ 2025 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as Genusarchy, Aposex, and Episex are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific ideas such as Raixher and all language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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