Malanath said:
Thanks again everyone, especially you Fusangite as you seem to have articulated what I was trying to get across.
Thanks. Sometimes the longer stuff I write is too far out of context. I'm glad this worked for you.
Given that my last set of observations was so welcome, maybe I can give you some helpful advice on what you have written below.
My world is based around a single Empire in decline. This empire has existed for nearly 2,000 years and as such has developed a rather interesting culture. In this culture honor and family are paramount. Many people would rather die than to have their honor or integrity impugned. Shame plays a huge role in society.
This sounds an awful lot like 3rd century imperial Rome. The idea that the basic unity of society is family rather than the individual is very Roman. Indeed, one of the biggest Roman criticisms of Christianity was that it undermined family values by placing the individual apart from the family.
For other societies similarly obsessed with honour, I recommend you also take a look at the Cherokees and Early Modern (15th-18th century) Hispanic societies. There may also be some valuable parallels with Imperial Chinese society but I don't know as much as I should in this area.
Family also plays a central role in the culture of the Empire. In commoner families, for example, young children may be educated with very basic reading, writing, and math skills before learning a craft around the age of ten or eleven. For children born in rural areas this is typically the craft of their same-sex parent, for more urban areas children may apply for apprenticeship at a guild.
The roles of male and female in my society are very well defined. The roles of females typically evolve around the home, child raising, and the like but can also include such jobs as Midwife, Herbalist, or village wise woman.
Are you using the separate spheres model? If not, I recommend you make use of it. Here's a brief summary from of it that I recently posted to another board on another matter:
me somewhere else said:
Western society (along with many non-Western ones) has traditionally dealt with issues of power between men and women through a "separate spheres" model. Women controlled the domestic sphere and men controlled the public sphere. The relative sizes of these spheres have fluctuated over time. At many times, the domestic sphere has included primary economic activity (medieval artistans, for instance engaged in production in the home) and family alliance/formation (many medieval queens were seen as having primary control over dynastic marriages). When the domestic sphere is large and the public sphere small, there is a roughly equal distribution of power.
However, at times when the domestic sphere is small and the public large, less power has been concentrated in women's hands. What happened in the 19th century is that the domestic sphere became so small and the public so all-encompassing that the system broke and women emerged into the public sphere.
What is interesting is that since this development is that many novel and recent aspects of the public sphere have quickly become female-dominated. Just look at what portion of celebrity news men comprise.
These are interesting and unprecedented times for the role of women in our civilization. However, women moving towards partity in power is not one of the unprecedented things about it.
At around the ages of 14-16 children will typically find themselves being prepared to enter an arranged marriage. All children are expected to get married, and polygamy is quite common among commoners and sometimes among the high nobility.[/QUOTE]I would like to stop you here. Your society is seeming a little too flat. In other words, your aristocrats and your commoners are perilously culturally similar. Generally, adolescent marriage and arranged marriage, like early literacy (above) have tended to be common aristocratic customs that have rarely filtered-down to lower levels of society.
Non-aristocrats, even if they have strong views on whom their children should marry lacked the resources, financial motivation and social support necessary to compel marriage. Similarly, because commoners have rarely gained any tangible benefit from early marriage, have also eschewed this practice.
On another matter, do you mean polygamy or polygyny? In other words, are there situations where women have multiple husbands?
Also, I think it is important for you to sort out whether family is patrilocal or matrilocal. In Mormon polygamy, for instance, family was matrilocal in the extreme. Each wife had her own separate household and which she administered on behalf of her husband. On the other hand, in Hindu polygamy, family was patrilocal but matrifocal -- the mother or first wife of the husband was in charge of the family unit and new wives were required to basically sever previous family attachments.
Now, here is where same-sex relationships come into play. It would not be uncommon for women who are married to the same man to also have a sexual relationship with other women in the marriage.
Why would this be the case? Do they have a role in choosing wives? This seems really weird; in most polygynous systems, women are competing to be wife #1 and tend to direct most of their anger and competitive energy against their husband's other wives. I don't understand why these women would have such harmonious relationships. Sociologically, this just doesn't ring true for me.
The only example I can think of historically for such harmonious relations are medieval Lithuanian polygamy. But this domestic harmony was achieved by men marrying all the sisters in a particular family at the same time. Needless to say, the incest taboo pretty much took care of any questions of same-sex relations in these marriages.
When a woman is added to the marriage all of them are considered married to each other.
In what sense? I'm assuming it's the husband who does the courting and the choosing. Even if this is true on paper or in public rhetoric, I don't see how this would shake down as the actual case.
Also, I just don't buy a society with this many people into same-sex relations.
For men, even though they are expected to marry women, also typically form a relationship with another man called a silksokai - meaning "chosen brother" - in which sexual acts are typically involved, although this may not always be the case. Forming a silksokai is a very special relationship between two men, and is one that is held in high honor and esteem - it is literally a marriage of two families.
Members of a silksokai also typically arrange to have their children marry one another. Although it is not very common, women who are married to one husband in a silksokai may also have a sexual relationship with the women of the other. However, the two men never sleep with each others wives - it would be akin to sleeping with your sister-in-law. (Not to mention the problems of your child marrying back into your family, thus creating an incestuous relationship.)
This seems a neat idea -- like taking Platonic love to its logical conclusions and implicating families in it. This rings much truer for me than the lesbian aspect of your story.
You could solve the exogamy problem by overlaying a clan system onto this. There is ample evidence that into the classical period, Athens had an exogamous clan system.
If someone wishes to escape marriage then the only real way to do that would be to join one of the religious orders. There are three of them, two exclusively male and one exclusively female. There is sometimes same-sex relationships within the orders.
The sexual part of this element rings true but I have to wonder what society's view of these orders is. Basically, they bust families -- if families are the most sacred institution in society, why are these orders not roundly despised? How are the orders sufficiently protected from people wanting their wives back for this to work?
This is more or less the extent that same sex relations will affect my world. Sex between people of the opposite sex is generally either viewed as a procreative act or an act of high love and affection. Sex between people of the same sex is generally viewed as a very intimate and loving friendship. In general the society is much more open about sexuality than ours, sex is something done in private, but general displays of affection are quite common. A general greeting among acquaintances is a kiss on the cheek, where as a greeting among good friends is a kiss on the lips. Hugging and other such displays of affection are also common.
This sounds consistent with an honour-focused society. But again, I recommend that you think a little more about making the society a little more pyramidal and less flat. A lot of these expressions of affection in honour-driven societies also connote relationships of dominance, submission, patronage, clientage, equality, etc.