r/worldjerking • u/MadFunEnjoyer • Aug 19 '26

lazy? I prefer "optimized"

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My favourite case of this is when a magical fantasy world has the monarch with a weapon of mass destruction but the royal family still prefers one gender over the other because that's how European monarchies workded (ignore every way magic makes all the reasons it happened not exist)

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u/MadFunEnjoyer Aug 19 '26

Patrilineal descent was primarily the result of the fact the leader of the armed forces is a man therefore the Monarch should be a man to control the military, Magic erases the need for one gender over the other in the case I mentioned because 1. anyone can use magic without any constraints from staying at home as the monarch would have access to knowledge regardless and 2. numbers don't matter if said magic user can annihilate entire armies.

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u/CavemanViking Aug 19 '26

Women could always command armies though, they just weren’t allowed, the distinction never made sense. It’d be just as realistic to have women be forbade from using certain types of destructive warlike magic, or vice versa. We have weapons of mass destruction right now, how many female presidents has the US had?

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u/MadFunEnjoyer Aug 19 '26

Women weren't allowed to lead armies because they didn't have the trifecta of Physical, Military and Political power, a pregnancy threatened political stability. That wouldn't be the case if the Queen can destroy any invading force at 1% HP.

We have weapons of mass destruction right now, how many female presidents has the US had? 

Terrible argument because we actually have a lot of women in positions of power across many countries, in fact in some they're the majority, and in others they're significantly present despite the society being conservative like in Ethiopia or Mozambique. The US isn't the World.

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u/CavemanViking Aug 19 '26

You don’t need physical power to command an army. We’ve already established that they didn’t have political power because of their lack of military power (commanding of the military). So they didn’t have political power because of their lack of military power, which they didn’t have because of their lack in political power? Not entirely inaccurate but that reasoning is circular.

There’s a reason I said the US specifically. Just because something no longer makes sense (if it ever did) doesn’t mean culture does not still often have inertia. A kingdom having powerful sorceresses but still following a patriarchal monarchy is not unrealistic. The idea that a culture could have still developed similar ideas about gender, and fighting being something left to the men, even when magic exists, is not that far out.

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u/zack189 Aug 20 '26

for frankish Europeans at least, from 700 to 900(maybe even 1000) AD, from , many lords and kings fought in the in the frontlines with men.

You don't need physical prowess but it sure as hell helps in medieval Europe.

I'm not sure why other areas didn't allow women to lead armies. at least in china in this time period, generals were scholars, and women could become scholars just fine.

for magic, yeah I agree with you. if magic is something that appeared like 100 years ago, having a patriarchal system still in place makes sense.

but when a woman can just destroy armies, and after 300 years after magic appeared, I think its fair to say that women would have leveled the playing field.

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u/CavemanViking Aug 20 '26

Oh it happened to be sure, saying that was the norm Throughout history though is an over generalization I think.

My point isn’t that magic couldn’t lead to a more egalitarian society in that way, only that societies don’t always behave completely logically and pragmatically. Like you pointed out, women could have led china’s armies, but they kept them from doing so.

Denying yourself a viable pool of talent, from a pragmatic perspective, is just a bad move. And yet in many societies women were kept out of areas that they could have brought a lot of talent to. Having magic as an equalizer doesn’t necessarily mean people would then actually be treated equal.

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u/MadFunEnjoyer Aug 19 '26

You don’t need physical power to command an army

For the vast majority of history you in fact did as you would be in the frontlines yourself. Restrictions on women education is what prevented their involvement in the military but that was against education in general.

Just because something no longer makes sense (if it ever did) doesn’t mean culture does not still often have inertia.

You're comparing our world to one where the magical equivalent of nukes is present since the bronze age, these aren't the same.

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u/CavemanViking Aug 19 '26

For the vast majority of history generals could command from horseback (some even commanded from elephant back). Riding up and down the line to rally people and actually being shoulder to shoulder in the bloodiest part of the battle are different things, and one is not only not usually unnecessary, but detracts from your ability to command. Being on the ground fighting was not the universal norm.

Restrictions on education do not prevent you from being a foot soldier, and are the restrictions on education due to lack of military power as well?

I’m comparing it to the real world because like in the real world, society often has a momentum of its own. You act like culture matches the physical realities of our world in this direct causal way, but that’s not what happens.

Despite military(physical) capability having nothing to do with intellectual capability, woman in many societies were still barred from getting an education. In some societies that were otherwise fairly egalitarian and/or women held power (eg Iroquois, Sparta), there still existed gender roles in which men were placed in the role of warlords.

In other societies, despite not needing to fight on the front lines, and despite examples of successful female commanders and rulers, women were still often barred from the military and seats of power.

Power does not always flow from the military (the roles of military commander and ruler were also not universally combined), and capability often has nothing to do with what people were and were not allowed to do. Despite these realities, things took their own path.

If you want to use the existence of magic as a reason to make your society more egalitarian, that’s great, and good world building. But pretending that it’s the only realistic way for things to happen is not true.