Not patriachal, not matriachal. What's in the middle?

It seems to me that all makers are drawn to the expertise that the piece of work in front of them shows, rather than the sex of the person who made it.
My own prejudice is to want a society which is neutral in that respect, but I can’t think of a word to describe it .
Can anyone suggest what word I might use to the ‘outside’ world to describe such a society ?
John :upside_down_face:

6 Likes

Neuterarchal. (Neutriarchal?)

7 Likes

I think you’re describing a meritocracy.

The tricky part about meritocracy is that it’s often not inclusive to anyone who isn’t in the current ruling class. As a pure theoretical thing, that’s a great idea, but in practice it’s generally not workable.

Take this forum for a simple example: it’s heavily biased toward people who have English as a first language, so it can’t really ever be a pure meritocracy just based on that.

I do think the forum is fairly gender neutral, but of course I do because I’m a dude, basically the “current ruling class”. It’s really easy to think things are fair when you’re on top. It’d be much more interesting to see what the women of the forum think in that regard.

11 Likes

Egalitarian- nobody gets privilege over others for any reason. Which is different than Eaglitatrian which is something making a diet of Eagles.

11 Likes

Grrrr. You beat me to it. I haven’t been around much the last few months and find something to comment on—and, I’m too slow.

4 Likes

Mmm, eagles. Delicious and nutritious.

2 Likes

The trouble with meritocracy is just who is defining that merit, And even then ability is so often just a matter of opportunity. It always struck me as odd that the giants of nearly everything were a bunch of friends standing in the same place when lightning struck no matter what the field. This was more true historically as for instance we are all in this group but also all over the world, On the other hand if you made a list of all the finest violin makers, they all were within blocks of each other in the same little town at the same time. which to me means that if not everyone in the world had as much talent certainly a high percentage has lacked only the information and opportunity passed about in that circle.

Just Imagine the results on the world if everyone was empowered with all information, opportunity in both tools and open market that would support such creativity because everyone would be putting that talent to the highest value possible.

3 Likes

It’s easy for a person to present a gender-neutral presence on here, which I think helps the whole thing feel neutral. Obviously some people pick handles or avatars that can give an indication (but even then how many newbies think Jules is a guy!). We end up with an important third group of people that aren’t readily assessed as male or female, and I think it helps keep even subconscious biases tempered across everything.

I like being able to look at a post and not even know the person’s demographics – it really facilitates the meritocratic aspect.

Certainly if we were all in a room together, it would be a different dynamic.

3 Likes

I’ve never been confused about @Jules but I have been wrong for months about other members and I do think that it helps to know that you are whatever you want to be on the intertubes and you are judged by your words alone.

3 Likes

I think the former infers government by individuals that had ‘the unkindest cut of all’, so I prefer the latter !
John :upside_down_face:

2 Likes

The latter invokes this though…

nutria

That’s a nutria. :wink::stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

5 Likes

I don’t feel smart enough right now to have an opinion on this, but I thought I would throw in this quote from a trans friend of mine: “Nobody would ever have seen the Mona Lisa if DaVinci had been born with a vagina.”

3 Likes

LoL

3 Likes

Imagine if they had that issue with Capybara instead of Nutria though I hear Nutria are Nutrisious

4 Likes

The only people that can verify that are some people from Louisiana, I believe.

5 Likes

Well yeah, because DaVinci would have been painting a dude :wink:

Seriously though, there were female Renassiance artists - although more in architecture and sculpture. There were a handful of Florentines in fact during the 13th & 14th centuries. My daughter stumbled across some of their work while she was in Florence for a study abroad semester. And those were the ones people knew were women - there are likely to have been many more who pretended to be male so they could get into some of the workshops that weren’t accepting of women.

Not common but not non-existent either.

Kind of like Wagner’s Valkyrie wouldn’t be performed if everyone had a penis :wink:

And because I can’t resist…

5 Likes

In Shakespeare’s day they did.

4 Likes

Which is probably still better than a Diet of Worms.

2 Likes

Unless of course you were an early bird…

2 Likes

You know why birds eat worms, right? Because the early bird ate all the damned bacon.

3 Likes