TheCosmicKid
Hero
Let's assume for the sake of argument you're right. We're not just talking about any matriarchy, we're talking about "the most matriarchal society in D&D". Of the spectrum of matriarchies, these people are at the extreme end. Even if not all matriarchies consider women superior to men, this presumably is the one that does.I think you may be confusing definitions a small bit.
A Matriarchy is not (definitionally) a society where women are considered superior to men. It is a society where women are the ones holding the reigns of power. The rulers are women, the major merchants are women, ect. You never once have to say "women are superior to men", you never once have to have a woman treat a man badly.
You just need a society run by women.
I think you're mistaking me for somebody else. I don't recall making this claim here before, and I'm certainly not "pretending that, just because people aren't naming patriarchies, patriarchies, they're not patriarchies". So maybe dial back on the "you know perfectly well" and the "pfff disingenuous at best" rhetoric, please? A dwarf society with solely male leadership is definitely a patriarchy. And although, as you say, D&D has presented it without naming it consistently for decades, I get the distinct impression that you don't think it should continue to do so. I certainly don't. I'm not against depicting imperfect societies in D&D, but if the dwarves in your setting believe only sons can inherit or whatever, spell that out. Those sorts of tendencies may or may not constitute outright evil, but they tug in that direction, and -- to return to the point I made above -- "the most patriarchal society in D&D", the one at the extreme end of the spectrum, is I hope labeled as evil.I don't agree. You've made this claim before, but it's wholly unconvincing to me, because D&D literally only ever specifies when something is a matriarchy, never when it's a patriarchy, even when it is obviously a patriarchy. If you have a society, and every leader we hear about is male, and they have only male combatants, and so on, it's pretty obvious, I would argue, that that's a patriarchy.
So if going forward we want to revise this "patriarchy by default" assumption of past editions, does this affect how we think about the drow matriarchy?