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Eunuchs in a matriarchy

JayF

JayF

The Idol Producer
For the nations that had them, eunuchs worked in the harem of their rulers. These men were a failsafe for their rulers that any child borne of the women within were his, since typically they're the only men allowed within.

But to flip things on it's head, would a matriarchy with Ottoman/ Chinese style harems where the lineage that counts is the woman's side need eunuchs? Unlike men, a women's child is obviously hers unless a surrogate mother is used. Or would women be banned from the harem so the Empress' male concubines do not father children outside of the harem?

Would the scandal of the Empress' fave concubine siring bastards be enough for the harem to be forbidden to women?
 
JayF said:
For the nations that had them, eunuchs worked in the harem of their rulers. These men were a failsafe for their rulers that any child borne of the women within were his, since typically they're the only men allowed within.

But to flip things on it's head, would a matriarchy with Ottoman/ Chinese style harems where the lineage that counts is the woman's side need eunuchs? Unlike men, a women's child is obviously hers unless a surrogate mother is used. Or would women be banned from the harem so the Empress' male concubines do not father children outside of the harem?

Would the scandal of the Empress' fave concubine siring bastards be enough for the harem to be forbidden to women?
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No they wouldn't. Undisputed genetic lineage from the father is a masculine imperative.

If we look at a gynocentric society ( not necessarily matriarchal but gynocentric nonetheless) modern day France does not allow for private party genetic testing and redefines fatherhood to be determined sociologically rather than biologically.

Having said that a blatant disregard for the masculine imperative of securing genetic lineage would cause males to not invest in long term relationships over the long haul .

Such a society would fall sooner rather than later as males would not invest in such a society. This would be discovered within 60 to 120 years of a matriarchal harem based polyamorus society.
 
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First of all I think we should acknowledge that the traditional Harem was a private area of the house where men were forbidden to go. That is exciting in a forbidden fruit kind of way. It is also where Great Aunt Maude's bedroom is. She probably doesn't want strangers wondering in and frankly most strangers probably have little desire to visit it. There is a lot of stuff wrapped up in this but we aren't talking about a palace crammed with nubile women here.

I don't necessarily see a matriarchy as being any more welcoming to ideas like 'free love' than a patriarchy. Ultimately a ruler will have to worry about legitimacy, inheritance and alliances, in addition to all the normal parent of a teenaged daughter issues. Letting some Alladin type street rat into the family home is not something I see many mothers being excited about, especially in the face of social embarrassment.

Speaking of the Ottomans it might be quite enlightening to look at how succession was handled among the men there. For a long time as a potential male heir hit puberty he left his mothers care in the Harem and went straight to a room called the Kafes (itself still within the Harem) to live out his life until need or death. Interaction would be curtailed to avoid accumulation of political power - to the point that mental health was often bad - and he would not be allowed out of the room.
 
JayF said:
But to flip things on it's head, would a matriarchy with Ottoman/ Chinese style harems where the lineage that counts is the woman's side need eunuchs? Unlike men, a women's child is obviously hers unless a surrogate mother is used. Or would women be banned from the harem so the Empress' male concubines do not father children outside of the harem?
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I'm...not entirely sure what you're asking.

Are you asking would a female ruler have a eunuch look after...male concubines? That...just...gah. To quote Bender B. Rodriguez in turn quoting an old robot saying, that does not compute. I mean, the whole issue with having eunuchs looking after concubines doesn't really exist here.

Are you asking would a female ruler take a woman, soulessly rip out her uterus/fallopian tubes/vagina/whatever, and have female eunuchs look after male concubines? Not only does it effectively have the same problem about but quite frankly the thought of it is so ghastly, crime against humanity-y and warcrime-y in which case I just flat out fucking refuse to participate further in this thread, on principal. So I'd appreciate some clarification here, and maybe think carefully about what you're asking.

...but you'd also perhaps find it most interesting to see how Catherine the Great did it. Based on my limited knowledge of her...well...I think she pretty much proved that female rules don't really need concubines or harems.

I mean...if the whole "I think ripping a woman's vagina out to make her a female eunuch sound very warcrime-y" doesn't tip you off to the fact that I'm a major SJW with very much a pro-female bias then...well then I'm telling you that upfront explicitly. But at the same time there are situations where women and men have different contexts. And while that can be a very dicey topic in general...in here, I think it's safe to say (again based on my limited knowledge) that a lot of the practical issues for male rulers keeping concubines and harems don't exist for female rulers.

And that's under what we traditionally think of as a harem. As @Optimist Prone pointed out harems weren't just some sort of sex slave dungeon because all male rulers are perverts who enjoy keeping women under sexual slavery - not denying that there isn't (a lot of) truth to that, but there were other functions too which might put a damper on harems for people who think a literal sex slave dungeon and keeping women as sexual pets is fun.

And final aside, I think the whole concept of eunuchs is kinda warcrime-y in itself.

Poor, poor Varys.
 
ussnimitz1968 said:
I'm...not entirely sure what you're asking.


Are you asking would a female ruler take a woman, soulessly rip out her uterus/fallopian tubes/vagina/whatever, and have female eunuchs look after male concubines? Not only does it effectively have the same problem about but quite frankly the thought of it is so ghastly, crime against humanity-y and warcrime-y in which case I just flat out fucking refuse to participate further in this thread, on principal. So I'd appreciate some clarification here, and maybe think carefully about what you're asking.

...but you'd also perhaps find it most interesting to see how Catherine the Great did it. Based on my limited knowledge of her...well...I think she pretty much proved that female rules don't really need concubines or harems.

I mean...if the whole "I think ripping a woman's vagina out to make her a female eunuch sound very warcrime-y" doesn't tip you off to the fact that I'm a major SJW with very much a pro-female bias then...well then I'm telling you that upfront explicitly. But at the same time there are situations where women and men have different contexts. And while that can be a very dicey topic in general...in here, I think it's safe to say (again based on my limited knowledge) that a lot of the practical issues for male rulers keeping concubines and harems don't exist for female rulers.


Poor, poor Varys.
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Firstly, it did cross my mind. What you described in lurid detail. But unless a ruler is needlessly sadistic or the civilisation she presides over is, there's a simply solution for the problem of female eunuchs.

Get those post menopausal. For more physical work, there's always younger men who can be drafted as palace servants. And so I dropped that line of thought, since there's little practical reason for needing female eunuchs, not to mention that the mortality rate might be even higher compared to male castration.

But this is only for the issue of the concubines. The harem is also the place where the ruler's (non same sex, non adult) family lives, as others here have stated. And it comes to the second issue I failed to elaborate in the OP.

One reason why I specified a female-centric society was because while there were some powerful female rulers, the societies they led were still very male centric. Catherine the Great would not have inherited a whole host of male lovers and family designed to produce a heir for her.

Women in a female centred society presumably would want to work in the palace, and a female ruler who grew up in such a society would have close companions. In our examples like the Ottomans or the Chinese, the underaged male members of the royal family would be close to certain siblings, palace maids and of course the eunuchs. While their education and such is left to professionals, the actual child raising would be done by maids and eunuchs.

Having young men seeing to the daily needs of the ruler is acceptable if kept on the down low. Having a young man, virile and fit, attending to any princesses is scandalous if only because of lowborn, undeniable bastards. But palace maids would mean other women in close proximity to the concubines.

Hmm, seems like eunuchs- in the traditional male sense might fufill a function even in this society I described.
 
Okay, screeds and the magical realm aspects of this aside there's a couple points I want to make here:
ussnimitz1968 said:
Are you asking would a female ruler take a woman, soulessly rip out her uterus/fallopian tubes/vagina/whatever, and have female eunuchs
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That's not even remotely survivable until the 20th century.

Since unlike castration it's massively invasive and I shouldn't have to mention anything else really.

JayF said:
Having young men seeing to the daily needs of the ruler is acceptable if kept on the down low. Having a young man, virile and fit, attending to any princesses is scandalous if only because of lowborn, undeniable bastards. But palace maids would mean other women in close proximity to the concubines.

Hmm, seems like eunuchs- in the traditional male sense might fufill a function even in this society I described.
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So don't pick fucking peasants to do the work around the harem.
Before blood testing is a thing it's not like anyone can give two fucks about legitimacy outside the kid falling out of the right crotch and being the right color anyway (despite some people in here's insane screeds.) So if you surround them with nobility and basically just take the mother's word for it, (like everyone has always done anyway,) you're absolutely fucking fine.
Or alternatively, you just use the fuck out of whatever contraceptives exist and keep as many spare heirs around as possible because you're going to loose a lot in childbirth as is.
 
NothingNow said:
Okay, screeds and the magical realm aspects of this aside there's a couple points I want to make here:

That's not even remotely survivable until the 20th century.

Since unlike castration it's massively invasive and I shouldn't have to mention anything else really.


So don't pick fucking peasants to do the work around the harem.
Before blood testing is a thing it's not like anyone can give two fucks about legitimacy outside the kid falling out of the right crotch and being the right color anyway (despite some people in here's insane screeds.) So if you surround them with nobility and basically just take the mother's word for it, (like everyone has always done anyway,) you're absolutely fucking fine.
Or alternatively, you just use the fuck out of whatever contraceptives exist and keep as many spare heirs around as possible because you're going to loose a lot in childbirth as is.
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Let's gets this out of the way .It should not have to be stated but in real life who you have children with in terms of ethnicities is between two consenting adults and should be supported.

Before blood test or genetic test there were other ways for an alleged father to be the biological father that were predicated on societal and religious indoctrination.

None of these methods would be as effective as modern mandatory paternity testing . However even if merely cosmetic the kept societies functional.

The masculine imperative is to pass on his genetic lineage.Thats why Eunocs where a thing. Any society multicultural or not if it wants to survive will take steps to reassure the alleged father is the father or it won't survive more than 60 to 120 years.

Monogamous Marriage was a crude form of making sure the male could pass on his genetic linkage .Any Abrahamic religion supported a male passing on his lineage. I am no comparative religious expert but would guess most if not all major religions traditionally practised had forms of indoctrination that supported passing a fathers lineage down the line.

. A matriarchal society would gravitate towards a very few men impregnating her for the best seed. It would not matter whether that seed came from her official husband or her guards or her harem. In fact her harem could be her guards.

A society such as this would last 60 to 120 years tops though. The men needed to fulfill the queens desires would be crushed or would end the matriarchy in coupe within 60 to 120 years due to the fact that genetic lineage could not be secured.
 
Also, thinking about it, OP is asking for details about what's pretty much the Rule 63 version of one of the most common erotic fantasies in the western canon. I'm like just not sure where it stands in comparison to like lusty natives, less than chaste nuns, and the much more recent Catholic School Girls.

Fernandel said:
Somehow, I sincerely doubt you've ever researched any matriarchal society that have existed in real life at all.
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Yeah, the vast majority of matriarchal societies are matrilineal, and have female ownership of land, but aren't exactly non-monogamous. Fuck, IIRC the Mosou are actually about as if not more monogamous than the average American (because serial monogamy is a thing pretty much everywhere that doesn't kill people for having a divorce.)
 
NothingNow said:
Fuck, IIRC the Mosou are actually about as if not more monogamous than the average American (because serial monogamy is a thing pretty much everywhere that doesn't kill people for having a divorce.)
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You're talking about the Mósuō in China, right?

If you are, that gels with what I remember of my superficial studies of them. Just because a society in matriarchal or matrilineal, that doesn't mean they're not monogamous or would encourage "harem" structures, which are generally associated with a lack of freedom to choose. Because Ottoman and Chinese concubine systems were all politics all the time and pretty damn ruthlessly cutthroat, too.

Hell, if you want to look at matriarchal societies, in my honest opinion that you could fairly easily make a case that in many societies considered "patriarchal", the women wield such a degree of influence over the men that they end up getting quite a say in society's affairs. But it's probably a difficult case to make, and I don't have the expertise for it. Not to mention that argument has its own quite substantial problems.
 
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Fernandel said:
You're talking about the Mósuō in China, right?
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Yeah. Diacritics are just shit on US keyboards, so mine isn't even marked even though I've been able to set it to US-International.

Fernandel said:
If you are, that gels with what I remember of my superficial studies of them. Just because a society in matriarchal or matrilineal, that doesn't mean they're not monogamous or would encourage "harem" structures, which are generally associated with a lack of freedom to choose. Because Ottoman and Chinese concubine systems was all politics all the time and pretty damn ruthless, too.


Hell, if you want to look at real matriarchal societies, in my honest opinion that you could fairly easily make a case that in many societies considered "patriarchal", the women wield such a degree of influence over the men that they end up getting quite a say in society's affairs. But it's probably a difficult case to make, and I don't have the expertise for it. Not to mention that argument has its own quite substantial problems.
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Moving on. Yeah, the level of freedom and general ruthlessness would obviously be highly correlated, but the difference between patrilineal/matrilineal descent in those societies isn't a really big influence. Outside of creating people who are way too concerned with the risk of infidelity. Which is probably a major portion of any difference in levels of domestic violence between the two categories.
 
NothingNow said:
Yeah. Diacritics are just shit on US keyboards, so mine isn't even marked even though I've been able to set it to US-International.


Moving on. Yeah, the level of freedom and general ruthlessness would obviously be highly correlated, but the difference between patrilineal/matrilineal descent in those societies isn't a really big influence. Outside of creating people who are way too concerned with the risk of infidelity. Which is probably a major portion of any difference in levels of domestic violence between the two categories.
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The insinuation is strong in your posts .
First you went for a bogus insinuated claim about race now your insinuated domestic violence aspects .

A father having a reasonable belief that he is passing his genetics is crucial for any large scale society to survive and flourish.

A matriarchal society with a reverse harem will collapse or it would need to be propped up by an external greater power.The matriarchal_harem society would always be smaller than a conventional society as it would be constantly draining resources.

Not guarding a fathers genetic lineage from being passed down from father to his offspring would result in societal collapse.

A real world example of this is France which is gynocentric in nature.

France will collapse between 2062 and 2122 due to not safe guarding a fathers genetic lineage being passed down.

Any matriarchal_harem based society would be forced to have a big brother nation protecting and or providing resources.
 
Louis Babycos said:
A matriarchal society with a reverse harem will collapse or it would need to be propped up by an external greater power.The matriarchal_harem society would always be smaller than a conventional society as it would be constantly draining resources.
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Again, an actual matriarchal society in real life:
Article:
Mosuo families tend to trace their lineage through the female side of the family. Occasionally, in fact, they may not know who the father of a child is, which does not carry stigma as in many other societies. Children belong to and reside within their mother's household and have access to its land and resources.[10]

The matriarch (Ah mi, or elder female, in Chinese) is the head of the house. The Ah mi has absolute power;[7] she decides the fate of all those living under her roof. In walking marriages, Mosuo women are responsible for much of the work done around the house and financial decisions. The matriarch also manages the money and jobs of each family member.[9] When the Ah mi wishes to pass her duties on to the next generation, she will give this female successor the keys to the household storage,[7] signifying the passing on of property rights and responsibility.

Also, the idea that a matriarchal society that would allow polyandry would "collapse unless backed up by a foreign power" is flat-out absurd.

It has no basis in political or cultural history or historical or current international relations theory. It just hasn't happened all that much because of a variety of other factors. When polyandry occurs in human societies, it's generally related to cultural factors encouraging several men marrying one women because of reasons related to land inheritance, religious reasons, and beliefs in partible paternity (i.e. the idea that a child can have more than one father).

The Ottoman and Chinese "harem" systems didn't collapse because they weren't supported by outside factions. They collapsed because they became politically, culturally, and religiously unsustainable. The same would presumably apply to a gender-mirrored version of a "harem" system.

...God, I hate how much people misuse and abuse the term "harem" to talk about polygamy and try to frame it in outdated and discredited functionalist terms, and nonsense like this is why.
 
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Louis Babycos said:
First you went for a bogus insinuated claim about race
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No I didn't.

You're making the assertion there, so prove there was any specific malicious intent there, and that it wasn't just a flippant remark about paternity.
Unless you think I'm making specific aspersions about your character in particular.

Louis Babycos said:
A father having a reasonable belief that he is passing his genetics is crucial for any large scale society to survive and flourish.
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No, it really isn't. Kinship systems aren't reliant on genetics at all. And do you have any evidence at all for any of your claims? Particularly of a peer-reviewed, reputable source?
 
Louis Babycos said:
The insinuation is strong in your posts .
First you went for a bogus insinuated claim about race now your insinuated domestic violence aspects .

A father having a reasonable belief that he is passing his genetics is crucial for any large scale society to survive and flourish.

A matriarchal society with a reverse harem will collapse or it would need to be propped up by an external greater power.The matriarchal_harem society would always be smaller than a conventional society as it would be constantly draining resources.

Not guarding a fathers genetic lineage from being passed down from father to his offspring would result in societal collapse.

A real world example of this is France which is gynocentric in nature.

France will collapse between 2062 and 2122 due to not safe guarding a fathers genetic lineage being passed down.

Any matriarchal_harem based society would be forced to have a big brother nation protecting and or providing resources.
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I am French. I find your claim that France is "gynocentric in nature" to be laughable. I will wait for citations whenever you feel you can come up with them.
 
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NothingNow said:
Also, thinking about it, OP is asking for details about what's pretty much the Rule 63 version of one of the most common erotic fantasies in the western canon. I'm like just not sure where it stands in comparison to like lusty natives, less than chaste nuns, and the much more recent Catholic School Girls.
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Hey, I'm just glad someone else said it and not me.
 
ussnimitz1968 said:
Are you asking would a female ruler take a woman, soulessly rip out her uterus/fallopian tubes/vagina/whatever, and have female eunuchs look after male concubines? Not only does it effectively have the same problem about but quite frankly the thought of it is so ghastly, crime against humanity-y and warcrime-y in which case I just flat out fucking refuse to participate further in this thread, on principal. So I'd appreciate some clarification here, and maybe think carefully about what you're asking.

...but you'd also perhaps find it most interesting to see how Catherine the Great did it. Based on my limited knowledge of her...well...I think she pretty much proved that female rules don't really need concubines or harems.
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I've long been under the impression that powerful women who can have what relationships they please tend to go for "serial monogamy" rather than a "harem".

As for the female equivalent of eunuchs, that would be the the result of the more extreme versions of female genital mutilation; where the victim is left incapable of sexual pleasure.
 
Avernus said:
As for the female equivalent of eunuchs, that would be the the result of the more extreme versions of female genital mutilation; where the victim is left incapable of sexual pleasure.
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Now that might not have been considered all that criminal back in the day but I'd be willing to guess that that'd be considered pretty criminal now, or at the very least societies where that's allowed tend to be frowned upon by societies that follow the US or Western European model.

Then again I imagine the same is generally true of the creation of eunuchs in the first place.
 
ussnimitz1968 said:
Then again I imagine the same is generally true of the creation of eunuchs in the first place.
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Given that the creation of Eunuch's involve lopping off either the shaft, the balls, or both... yeah, that is be a pretty big "aw hell naw" in modern Euro-American culture. Although with modern technology one could probably humanely create Eunuchs, either male or female, via chemical or medical sterilization techniques...
 
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obssesednuker said:
Although with modern technology one could probably humanely create Eunuchs, either male or female, via chemical or medical sterilization techniques...
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I'm pretty sure the sterilization act itself is, as I like to put it, warcrime-y, just given moral and ethical grounds if not physical anatomy grounds. You're taking away someone's ability to enjoy sex without consent, and although people voluntarily surrendering their ability to have sex is not unheard of, it's still exceptionally quite rare.

I'd also like to note that I'm not discussing either chemical castration for convicted pedophiles (which is highly controversial on its own but has legitimate public safety and mental health arguments, but, again, is beyond a level of subject matter expertise I qualify for) or surgical modification or removal of sexual organs for people transitioning sex and gender which, I can most absolutely with certainty tell you, does not effect said person's sex drive (needless to say such surgeries are done extremely carefully with expertise).
 
ussnimitz1968 said:
I'm pretty sure the sterilization act itself is, as I like to put it, warcrime-y, just given moral and ethical grounds if not physical anatomy grounds. You're taking away someone's ability to enjoy sex without consent, and although people voluntarily surrendering their ability to have sex is not unheard of, it's still exceptionally quite rare.
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Okay, point. I should have said "relatively more humanely", as it is more "humane" then castration in the same sense that being tortured is more humane then being tortured then murdered...
 
...I'm not in a hurry to agree with the relative humanity of this, but I'm not exactly in a hurry to argue about it either given the exact nature of the topic. Especially since we're pretty much in general agreement anyway and for me to argue ultimately off-topic minutiae just threatens to jeopardize that agreement.
 
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