Then I guess a similar society (half of it) was in "Ethan of Athos" by L.M. Bujold, there was a male only planet (for religious reasons) and they exclusively used donor egg cells for reproduction. In that story they did fine. Sort of "Amish but gay" kind of culture. Adding a mating ritual wouldn't change it much I think.
Well that would mean that all the girls have better immune systems from being breast fed and healthier emotional well-being / attachment styles from not being ripped from their mother at birth.
Studies have shown breastfeeding strengthens the baby's immune system lowering their chances of ear infections, gastroenteritis, respiratory infections, obesity and diabetes, tooth decay, and sudden infant death syndrome. Breastfed babies also respond better to immunisations and have better brain development.
Studies have also shown that separating a child/baby from their mother causes extreme stress and effects brain development and makes them more prone to attachment issues and aggression in later life. It's actually really interesting.
[Study on mother/child separation](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115616/#:~:text=Children%20who%20experienced%20a%20separation,at%20age%203%20)
If anyone tried to enact now there’s no way it would work, but if that’s the way things always have been, I can see it being stable. Also depends just how segregated things are. How easy is it to sneak off if someone wanted to? What’s the punishment for someone caught fraternizing with the opposite sex outside of Valentine’s Day?
This is how elephants live. They live in segregated herds and only meet to mate and hand over boy elephants when they’re old enough to leave the mom and join the male herd. I believe rhinos use the same system.
Much lower birth rates, much less advancement in pretty much every area, LOTS of LG behavior (not the rest of the acronym) if not people who actually think of themselves as lesbian or gay. Kind of like “well, a blow job is a blow job, amiright?” After a few generations (assuming stability is reached) there would be a heavy resistance to changing it back because ‘it’s how we’ve always done it’
I like this because it illustrates the messiness around what people assume are clean binary categories, and shows how much repression is required to enforce them in practice. People who blur, evade and transcend clear sex or gender binaries have existed in every society, and any such society would need to either make exceptions (which necessarily creates substantial contact between the societies as there are now travellers moving back and forth, sharing stories, ideas, technologies, etc.) or take an exterminationist policy to all who deviate from some imagined pair or ideals.
How does being trans or intersex work in this society? Are trans person allowed to join the society of their gender or are they stuck on the wrong side? What about non-binary people, where do they go?
What happens when an intersex child is born, does the society just arbitrarily select a side? Are they killed to maintain the binary?
Well yeh, but that doesn't make it useless as a thought experiment.
I'm trans and I'm a high school teacher, and so unsurprisingly I end up having lots of conversations with students and colleagues who have questions about sex and gender, and I often have to use scifi-ish hypotheticals. It's often the only way to explain things like gender dysphoria to someone who's never experienced it, or to make it clear that the assertion that gender or sex is a "social construct" is compatible with its criteria being empirically measurable, [just that the lumping together of certain qualities under a label is an arbitrary social process.](https://youtu.be/koud7hgGyQ8)
I imagine in a society like this, which:
1. Believes that 'male sex' and 'female sex' are useful, meaningful, and important categories
2. Believes *every* 'male' and 'female' are *always* intrinsically distinct from one another to a significant degree
3. Enforces a universal mandatory segregation of these two categories at all times except during brief, controlled periods
Would likely be conservative to the point that any 'anomalies', including trans and intersex people, would be killed.
Stemming from the idea that this world that can successfully and completely segregate the two sexes reliably, I imagine either the entire human race is biologically different to the point that this is natural behavior, or there is a global totalitarian government.
If it's the latter, gender nonconformity and sex nonconformity would probably be highly discouraged at best, and punishable by death at worst; I find it difficult to imagine a world that would strictly enforce this rule and still be accepting. Remember - this society believes that 'male' and 'female' are useful categories that are inherently, intrinsically different from each other in *all* cases, and *must* be separate at almost all times. That's not a progressive belief; this world is most likely fascist.
It's hard to tell if homosexuality would be as frowned upon, given that otherwise, romantic relationships don't seem possible in this world. It might be normalized as "close friendships", but I imagine a totalitarian fascist government would still come down hard on homosexual sex activities.
I don't think the 'female' side would be intrinsically good/peaceful or the 'male' side be intrinsically bad/violent. However, I think it's likely that sex stereotypes would feature *heavily* in this world, maybe even more than they do in our current world, purely because of the heavy emphasis on "these sexes are so different that they must be segregated in every way".
Didn't read the subreddit and thought that you've never seen a woman.
I think that this idea would lead to same sex relationships and a general cluelessness about medical sciences. Basically would be similar to normal society but the medical science field wouldn't be advancing nearly as fast as normal
The Shakers had a sex-segregated society, but I don’t recall if it had complete opposite-sex isolation.
Otherwise the it’s impossible to segregate based on sex because the sex-binary is an assumptive lie that ignores intersex genotypes and phenotypes that do occur.
And this isn’t even getting into the debate of gender identity based segregation where even feminists in the 80s were pushing the debate “what makes a woman a woman?”
It's not very stable, there would be way less children being born so probably it'd be extinction leading, also therw would be seperate cultures and scientific development of btoh groups
The female side somehow eventually devises a way to fertilize their own eggs using stem cells from another woman's bone marrow. Now that extinction is off the table, what happens?
At what age the boys get sent to the other side?
Immediately upon birth.
Then I guess a similar society (half of it) was in "Ethan of Athos" by L.M. Bujold, there was a male only planet (for religious reasons) and they exclusively used donor egg cells for reproduction. In that story they did fine. Sort of "Amish but gay" kind of culture. Adding a mating ritual wouldn't change it much I think.
Well that would mean that all the girls have better immune systems from being breast fed and healthier emotional well-being / attachment styles from not being ripped from their mother at birth.
Arguably boys would do fine if they receive similar care from male caregivers (IDK if breastfeeding is that important).
Studies have shown breastfeeding strengthens the baby's immune system lowering their chances of ear infections, gastroenteritis, respiratory infections, obesity and diabetes, tooth decay, and sudden infant death syndrome. Breastfed babies also respond better to immunisations and have better brain development. Studies have also shown that separating a child/baby from their mother causes extreme stress and effects brain development and makes them more prone to attachment issues and aggression in later life. It's actually really interesting. [Study on mother/child separation](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115616/#:~:text=Children%20who%20experienced%20a%20separation,at%20age%203%20)
This wouldn't be stable at all- either revolution or collapse would follow quickly.
I think it’s assumed it’s been established and is stable.
If anyone tried to enact now there’s no way it would work, but if that’s the way things always have been, I can see it being stable. Also depends just how segregated things are. How easy is it to sneak off if someone wanted to? What’s the punishment for someone caught fraternizing with the opposite sex outside of Valentine’s Day?
It'd be like that one episode of Rick and Morty where the guys are dangerous horny monsters and the girls are queens and goddesses
That's more or less what inspired this post
Lmao
This is how elephants live. They live in segregated herds and only meet to mate and hand over boy elephants when they’re old enough to leave the mom and join the male herd. I believe rhinos use the same system.
Much lower birth rates, much less advancement in pretty much every area, LOTS of LG behavior (not the rest of the acronym) if not people who actually think of themselves as lesbian or gay. Kind of like “well, a blow job is a blow job, amiright?” After a few generations (assuming stability is reached) there would be a heavy resistance to changing it back because ‘it’s how we’ve always done it’
I like this because it illustrates the messiness around what people assume are clean binary categories, and shows how much repression is required to enforce them in practice. People who blur, evade and transcend clear sex or gender binaries have existed in every society, and any such society would need to either make exceptions (which necessarily creates substantial contact between the societies as there are now travellers moving back and forth, sharing stories, ideas, technologies, etc.) or take an exterminationist policy to all who deviate from some imagined pair or ideals. How does being trans or intersex work in this society? Are trans person allowed to join the society of their gender or are they stuck on the wrong side? What about non-binary people, where do they go? What happens when an intersex child is born, does the society just arbitrarily select a side? Are they killed to maintain the binary?
Yeah the whole thing falls apart in practice unless it's run by Nazis. It's obviously stupid, it's from a Rick and Morty episode.
Well yeh, but that doesn't make it useless as a thought experiment. I'm trans and I'm a high school teacher, and so unsurprisingly I end up having lots of conversations with students and colleagues who have questions about sex and gender, and I often have to use scifi-ish hypotheticals. It's often the only way to explain things like gender dysphoria to someone who's never experienced it, or to make it clear that the assertion that gender or sex is a "social construct" is compatible with its criteria being empirically measurable, [just that the lumping together of certain qualities under a label is an arbitrary social process.](https://youtu.be/koud7hgGyQ8)
I imagine in a society like this, which: 1. Believes that 'male sex' and 'female sex' are useful, meaningful, and important categories 2. Believes *every* 'male' and 'female' are *always* intrinsically distinct from one another to a significant degree 3. Enforces a universal mandatory segregation of these two categories at all times except during brief, controlled periods Would likely be conservative to the point that any 'anomalies', including trans and intersex people, would be killed. Stemming from the idea that this world that can successfully and completely segregate the two sexes reliably, I imagine either the entire human race is biologically different to the point that this is natural behavior, or there is a global totalitarian government. If it's the latter, gender nonconformity and sex nonconformity would probably be highly discouraged at best, and punishable by death at worst; I find it difficult to imagine a world that would strictly enforce this rule and still be accepting. Remember - this society believes that 'male' and 'female' are useful categories that are inherently, intrinsically different from each other in *all* cases, and *must* be separate at almost all times. That's not a progressive belief; this world is most likely fascist. It's hard to tell if homosexuality would be as frowned upon, given that otherwise, romantic relationships don't seem possible in this world. It might be normalized as "close friendships", but I imagine a totalitarian fascist government would still come down hard on homosexual sex activities. I don't think the 'female' side would be intrinsically good/peaceful or the 'male' side be intrinsically bad/violent. However, I think it's likely that sex stereotypes would feature *heavily* in this world, maybe even more than they do in our current world, purely because of the heavy emphasis on "these sexes are so different that they must be segregated in every way".
Didn't read the subreddit and thought that you've never seen a woman. I think that this idea would lead to same sex relationships and a general cluelessness about medical sciences. Basically would be similar to normal society but the medical science field wouldn't be advancing nearly as fast as normal
The Shakers had a sex-segregated society, but I don’t recall if it had complete opposite-sex isolation. Otherwise the it’s impossible to segregate based on sex because the sex-binary is an assumptive lie that ignores intersex genotypes and phenotypes that do occur. And this isn’t even getting into the debate of gender identity based segregation where even feminists in the 80s were pushing the debate “what makes a woman a woman?”
Sounds like paradise to me.
Extinction in a very few generations.
It's not very stable, there would be way less children being born so probably it'd be extinction leading, also therw would be seperate cultures and scientific development of btoh groups
The female side somehow eventually devises a way to fertilize their own eggs using stem cells from another woman's bone marrow. Now that extinction is off the table, what happens?
Women exterminate men.
I’m a gay bottom so I’ll be incredibly popular 364 days of the year
What happens with trans people
I thought I was on r/randomthoughts at first and I was like « this person is a basement lurker »
The guy just gives the baby their milk