Emotional shift
Jun. 15th, 2015 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm reading a multi book series that keeps baffling me in its basic assumptions about human nature. Granted, some of the beings think they're not human, but since they can have kids with humans I'd say close enough.
Part of the problem is how all the main characters are of the same generation and vaguely matching inclinations, old enough to have sex but not having children yet. And they rule their people. They don't have elders to answer to or be advised by, they don't have children around to actually actively look after, they just have the plot (mostly shagging, some politics. I've got a shelf full.)
But a lot is that the author doesn't seem to buy their own premise. They've said that this society is matrifocal, that the men go visiting other clans to have sex and make babies, but then come home and help raise their female relatives kids. But they haven't really followed through on it. Every single thing they write is about how these guys are rubbish fathers who abandon their children. There's nothing at all about female relatives or their descendants. They've not made the emotional shift in their own heads.
So okay, set sex aside. This is difficult in our society and in this subgenre of writing, but seriously, stop thinking about sex.
In our society men are expected to make their wife their primary emotional attachment, to live with her, build a life with her, and raise children with her. They are expected to be very invested in their wife's children. They will be there physically as much as possible, help with their economic needs, be their emotional support, help with education, pass on their values and some skills. Their focus is on their life with their wife and children.
Uncles? Uncles are fun. They turn up, they give a few presents, they leave. Some of them help with babysitting, sure, especially if sports are involved, but they're not expected to be invested.
In an actual emotionally healthy functional society where the men raise their sister's kids? Flip all of that. All of it.
So sure, fathers are fun. They turn up, give a few presents, leave. Some of them visit, some of them don't, but they're not expected to be very invested.
They're spending all their time with their sisters, making them their primary emotional attachment, living with them, building a life with her, raising children with her. They are very invested in their sister's children. They will be there as much as possible, help with the economics, be emotional support, help with the kids education, pass on their values and skills. The focus of their life is on their sisters and children.
And why not?
Sure there'll be unlucky guys who have no sisters, or unlucky women with no brothers, but in a pre contraceptive society it's a bit less likely. And they'll probably have cousins to get just as invested in and supported by. There will be grandparents and parents and a whole family network. If they're living in clans then clan means something much more intense than village. They aren't just neighbours, they're family. They'll have someone around.
And it would make sense to fuss less about monogamy, because the emotional and economic bonds they'll be relying on to raise children have all existed their whole lives.
Which has failure conditions that are pretty obvious.
The big deal difference is choice. You're stuck with your siblings, but you can in theory choose better for a partner.
But it's not like building lives with this weird nuclear family where all the economic pressure goes on the two married people is lacking in failure conditions. All the fail. Lots and lots and lots of fail.
So these books... they're very nearly almost interesting. This matrifocal society exists alongside a standard patriarchal society with inheritance along the male line etc. Where the two interface the clashing assumptions leave some women in the lurch. That would be interesting.
But the book just paints the men who visit and leave again as, well, wicked. It only pays lip service to the idea that there's a whole different fully functional society on the other side of the border. Instead it spends ages explaining how giving potential mothers trinkets and then leaving them is vastly inferior to real love, which involves nice qualities like respect and honesty and kindness. But I don't see how respect honesty kindness has to be monogamous. And I think the writer can't imagine it without monogamy.
They haven't followed through on their own premise. Especially they've divided up 'giving money' and 'giving time' so only giving time is worth any respect. Even though money is presumably earned at some point and is, like, portable time you can leave somewhere? It's very disparaging of the matrifocal society's custom of gifting to women the men visit to maybe get pregnant. It mentions in one line once that selling the gold and jewels they leave will support the women for quite some time, but it considers that cheap tawdry abandonment. Rather than a guy assuming the woman will have some set of relatives doing the emotional connection parts, and contributing in his own way.
I know it's only meant to be the standard romance trope of the exciting one vs the reliable one, but they've given the 'exciting' one an entire society with different customs and then just ignored those. They've got their own customs but they're not any good at them?
And I wouldn't mind so much but they've got a third society that's meant to integrate the two and it has done so by being patriarchal/patrilineal but nice, and with two houses the kids live in sometimes.
There's still a book left to go, maybe somebody somewhere is doing the thing where brothers help raise nephews in the society that is said to consider that standard.
But at the moment it just seems like the writer failed their imagination save and couldn't do that first thing, separate out the sex and love, and shift their emotional perspective so other forms of love are just as important.
... it's a romance and shagging series, of course they can't.
*sigh*
Part of the problem is how all the main characters are of the same generation and vaguely matching inclinations, old enough to have sex but not having children yet. And they rule their people. They don't have elders to answer to or be advised by, they don't have children around to actually actively look after, they just have the plot (mostly shagging, some politics. I've got a shelf full.)
But a lot is that the author doesn't seem to buy their own premise. They've said that this society is matrifocal, that the men go visiting other clans to have sex and make babies, but then come home and help raise their female relatives kids. But they haven't really followed through on it. Every single thing they write is about how these guys are rubbish fathers who abandon their children. There's nothing at all about female relatives or their descendants. They've not made the emotional shift in their own heads.
So okay, set sex aside. This is difficult in our society and in this subgenre of writing, but seriously, stop thinking about sex.
In our society men are expected to make their wife their primary emotional attachment, to live with her, build a life with her, and raise children with her. They are expected to be very invested in their wife's children. They will be there physically as much as possible, help with their economic needs, be their emotional support, help with education, pass on their values and some skills. Their focus is on their life with their wife and children.
Uncles? Uncles are fun. They turn up, they give a few presents, they leave. Some of them help with babysitting, sure, especially if sports are involved, but they're not expected to be invested.
In an actual emotionally healthy functional society where the men raise their sister's kids? Flip all of that. All of it.
So sure, fathers are fun. They turn up, give a few presents, leave. Some of them visit, some of them don't, but they're not expected to be very invested.
They're spending all their time with their sisters, making them their primary emotional attachment, living with them, building a life with her, raising children with her. They are very invested in their sister's children. They will be there as much as possible, help with the economics, be emotional support, help with the kids education, pass on their values and skills. The focus of their life is on their sisters and children.
And why not?
Sure there'll be unlucky guys who have no sisters, or unlucky women with no brothers, but in a pre contraceptive society it's a bit less likely. And they'll probably have cousins to get just as invested in and supported by. There will be grandparents and parents and a whole family network. If they're living in clans then clan means something much more intense than village. They aren't just neighbours, they're family. They'll have someone around.
And it would make sense to fuss less about monogamy, because the emotional and economic bonds they'll be relying on to raise children have all existed their whole lives.
Which has failure conditions that are pretty obvious.
The big deal difference is choice. You're stuck with your siblings, but you can in theory choose better for a partner.
But it's not like building lives with this weird nuclear family where all the economic pressure goes on the two married people is lacking in failure conditions. All the fail. Lots and lots and lots of fail.
So these books... they're very nearly almost interesting. This matrifocal society exists alongside a standard patriarchal society with inheritance along the male line etc. Where the two interface the clashing assumptions leave some women in the lurch. That would be interesting.
But the book just paints the men who visit and leave again as, well, wicked. It only pays lip service to the idea that there's a whole different fully functional society on the other side of the border. Instead it spends ages explaining how giving potential mothers trinkets and then leaving them is vastly inferior to real love, which involves nice qualities like respect and honesty and kindness. But I don't see how respect honesty kindness has to be monogamous. And I think the writer can't imagine it without monogamy.
They haven't followed through on their own premise. Especially they've divided up 'giving money' and 'giving time' so only giving time is worth any respect. Even though money is presumably earned at some point and is, like, portable time you can leave somewhere? It's very disparaging of the matrifocal society's custom of gifting to women the men visit to maybe get pregnant. It mentions in one line once that selling the gold and jewels they leave will support the women for quite some time, but it considers that cheap tawdry abandonment. Rather than a guy assuming the woman will have some set of relatives doing the emotional connection parts, and contributing in his own way.
I know it's only meant to be the standard romance trope of the exciting one vs the reliable one, but they've given the 'exciting' one an entire society with different customs and then just ignored those. They've got their own customs but they're not any good at them?
And I wouldn't mind so much but they've got a third society that's meant to integrate the two and it has done so by being patriarchal/patrilineal but nice, and with two houses the kids live in sometimes.
There's still a book left to go, maybe somebody somewhere is doing the thing where brothers help raise nephews in the society that is said to consider that standard.
But at the moment it just seems like the writer failed their imagination save and couldn't do that first thing, separate out the sex and love, and shift their emotional perspective so other forms of love are just as important.
... it's a romance and shagging series, of course they can't.
*sigh*
no subject
Date: 2015-06-16 12:05 am (UTC)Interesting how the books focus on the "abandoning" fathers, rather than the uncles who help raise their nephews and give emotional support to their sisters. Sounds like the author could posit such a system existing but not actually describe it, possibly because they can't actually believe it.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-19 09:33 pm (UTC)So sure, fathers are fun. They turn up, give a few presents, leave. Some of them visit, some of them don't, but they're not expected to be very invested.
They're spending all their time with their sisters, making them their primary emotional attachment, living with them, building a life with her, raising children with her. They are very invested in their sister's children. They will be there as much as possible, help with the economics, be emotional support, help with the kids education, pass on their values and skills. The focus of their life is on their sisters and children.
And this, right here, is the book I want to read. There's such potential in exploring emotional attachments that don't conform to our current societal expectations, and I would dearly love to read about a culture centered on nonromantic bonds rather than romantic ones.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-21 07:59 am (UTC)I find this very interesting! I can't remember where I came across the concept of the matrifocal society where uncles are the important men in a child's life, but it made its way into some of my perpetually-unfinished drawer-fic. Yeah, monogamy and sex necessarily meaning true-love-forever don't have to be part of a society like this and it's unimaginative to think they're "missing". Are the books set entirely within the patriarchal society, with the matriarchy over the border mentioned only in passing? What a missed opportunity!
It would be interesting to explore the edge cases as well: the women who have no brothers to support them in bringing up their children, the lonely men with no sisters who can never have children "of their own" to care for. Would a family with no girls adopt a daughter to carry on their line? And what happens when this system collides with the one that's standard in our world?
The story I've been writing had a woman from the matriarchy picking a man from the patriarchy as a lover (the opposite of the situation in your book?) and touched on their different expectations of how much he would be involved with the children, etc. Also in my interpretation, same-sex relationships were normal and important in the matriarchal society and who someone had kids with wasn't necessarily someone they'd pick as a romantic partner.