Females + Pronunciation

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From: Mystic Musk Ox (MAB@SAVAX750.RUTHERFORD.AC.UK)
Date: Wed 24 Nov 1993 - 10:14:00 EET

>I feel that Glorantha is probably the most accepting of females
>of any roleplaying world made. Look at the various pantheons
>and arrays in GoG.

>> Chaos: Females are equal or superior to males in every cult except
>> for Thed, since broos are almost all male.

>> Lunar: as with Elf, females are not only wholly accepted, but most of
>> the Lunar religions worship female gods. Annilla, Arachne Solara,

>> Orlanth: These guys have tons of outlets for females. Not only is
>> there an entire earth pantheon effectively barred to men, but none of

>The most interesting area for these women would probably be down in the
>Holy Country, which, like the Lunar Empire, is sadly underrepresented in
>background materials.

Hm. I can't help feeling that the fact that there are many female deities has not much to do with the way women are treated in the world. There are many examples of female goddesses from Earth, and cults that only women were allowed to join, but that doesn't mean that those women had power. Usually they were of the 'female mystery' type i.e. 'women are strange and different and therefore dangerous' or of the 'women on pedestals' type where they were venerated for abilities e.g. childbirth or work in the home. However the fact that you can venerate a stereotypical idea strangely seems to have little effect on the way you treat the real object - thus women still had no real powers - Greece for example had very powerful female deities Hera, Aphrodite, Athena, Demeter, et cetera, but in reality women had no power at all to decide their fate, and were regarded as property.

As far as I know there have been NO examples of matriarchies on Earth. On Glorantha of course, it might be different, but I suspect that the changes this would bring about to the structure of the societies would be much greater that the 'stick in some weird gods and a few spells' approach. there have been some cultures that traced matrilinear descent (best example I can think of at the moment being the Picts and the Irish), but that is purely a way of ensuring that the children have at least half the family blood in their veins, and the males still held the power in those societies.

'Shite' : Is pronounced to rhyme with 'height' or 'light'

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