The server was definitely down. Interrogating the major-domo got nil results till about thirty minutes before the Digests started flowing again.
Loren, your 'Broo Slayer' was awesome. Terrifying. It helped me see broo with new eyes after too damned long of undervaluing them except as minor campaign player-irritants.
Mike Cule, Thom McVey, thank you both for Argan Argar.
LESBIAN VINGA Jose Ramos:
>And tying it up, Vinga is the refuge of lesbian women among the
>orlanthi, I suppose, and I suppose there are some rituals to assume more
>or less masculine roles, as she has both a feminine and masculine side.
I'm not sure that I understand why this would be, even assuming that Orlanthi *did* label people by their sexual orientation, or accepted the same genderisation of roles and attributes as sections of our society do. Is there some pervasive equivalence we should accept between powerful ('masculine') women and dykedom? I don't want to misread or misrepresent your views, but I'd like to hear why you think this is so.
WHAT MY FATHER DIDN'T TELL ME - ORLANTHI SEXUALITY Theo Posselt:
Before getting down to the topic, I think Theo's approach of asking a series of basic questions about a whole range of behaviours is a very fruitful way of exploring the Lozenge. When we've done sex to death (which I suspect won't be for a couple of weeks) maybe someone can come up with another list of worship questions, or farming questions, or whatever.
>Hot topic #1 of the week for me is gender. Basically, I wondering
> about the attitudes towards this in the following cultures:
> * 'Orlanthi all'
PING!
> Hot topic #2 is sexuality.
When the Lord and Lady are dancing
Then the Lord of the Wind rises high
When the Lord and the Lady are dancing
The Lady of Earth rides high.
AN OPENING ASIDE: SEX AND THE SINGLE SARTARITE Orlanthi sexuality is a fascinating though still mysterious topic. Scores of Lhankor Mhy scholars have spent long and arduous hours single-handedly researching the topic in the steads, meadows and temples of Sartar and neighbouring regions, often at great personal risk. Yet for some mysterious reason, most of their reports seem to quickly disappear off the library shelves (contributing no doubt to those irresponsible tales about the cause of Lhankor Mhy short-sightedness).
Only a few tantalising interview fragments remain:
LM: "Far Point is cold: the days are wet and the nights are long. Being Orlanthi means sometimes having to throw off your kilt to run naked through a hailstorm. That's normal and everyday and accepted but what about the ... you ... know.... saucy stuff?"
OB: "Saucy stuff? You mean like cattle raiding? Feuding? Cuk fighting? Wind tossing?"
LM: "Well...you know.... the under-the hide-stuff... the two-backed cow... making the sun come up..."
OB: "Oh! Sex... I thought you were talking about something *exciting*..."
No wonder this fragment remained on the shelves so long. It seems a little... disappointing. But that's my basic thesis: that Orlanthi sex is valued as fun, necessary, a worthy end to the serious business of courting and seduction, often sacred, sometimes irresistible, but hardly ever considered taboo or in any way shameful or forbidden.
FUNDAMENTALS OF GLORANTHAN SEXUALITY Stepping back to basics:
Greg Stafford has stated that there is no venereal disease on Glorantha. While that's not to be taken absolutely literally (at least since the Unholy Trio) it does point to something fundamental in Greg's vision. Magic means that contraception is readily available in most circumstances, and the prevalence of Earth religions allow most women control of their reproductivity and hence of their sexuality. Dark Goddesses such as Gorgorma mean that sexual crimes such as rape are rare, and generally (though it varies enormously from society to society) human sexuality is much less exploitative than in our own. (Except, of course, when it is).
Elder races such as the Aldryami (sexless in human terms) and particularly the Uz present a reflection of vastly different sexualities and gender identities.
Sex is usually sacred, taboo, or both. This is a reflection of Gloranthan spirituality, which is generally healthier (this-worldly, experiential, connected, communal) than our own. (Except of course, when it isn't).
Cultural models?
For Lunars, sex is both sacred and profane. What Pelorian noble would journey without a fellatrix in his personal retinue?
Solars construct sex as both sacred and taboo, polluting and therefore extremely dangerous. (A major exception: the Lodrilites: Sex is fun so lets get down and get dirty!)
The Orlanthi don't think much about sex. (Humakti even less so). It's sacred in the same way that breathing is sacred. Just do it.
There are other possible models of Gloranthan sexuality of course, including Androgyny, the Multiple Sex Model and the Changing Sex Model.
LUNAR SEXUALITY The internal relationship between male and female elements within the self is mirrored in the relationship with your partner. The relationship may be one of equality or inequality depending on how well balanced the individual is.
The relationship between partners is mirrored in politics. Sexuality has far reaching political implications. Only a person who has balance is truly healthy. Androgyny is encouraged.
Lunar culture also recognises need for certain roles where one side or another is emphasised. This emphasis on extremes has spiritual and magical power.
Sex is a way of learning how to balance the polarities within and without.
SOLAR SEXUALITY Sex is fundamentally impure and polluting, something to be transcended.
Most Solars are "a Yelmite by Day and a Lodrilite by Night". The cultural schizophrenia runs deep through every institution. Suppression of sexuality leads to deviancy and sexual hypocrisy.
Solar women have their own strategies for coping with the dominant patriarchy, but are also vulnerable to sex-based cults such as Gorgorma or Lodril.
WHAT THE HEARTHSPIRIT SAW: SCATTERED REFLECTIONS ON SARTARITE SEXUALITY Our prime reference is 'Report on the Orlanthi' in 'King Of Sartar'.
Orlanthi sexuality is at base, Ernaldan sexuality. The Ernaldans recognise this. Many others don't. As usual, while seemingly complimentary and subservient to the dominant (male) ideology, the Ernaldan women are running things exactly the way they want them run. Sex is an integral aspect of earth and fertility magics. And despite the strong earth religion (in fact because of it) Orlanthi thinking is mercifully free of the imagined connection between women::nature and men::culture that so degrades and muddies our own thinking.
So what of this fire in the belly?
Orlanthi are not generally given to abstraction or to unnecessary labelling. As noted above, sex is sacred, fun, respectful, but above all natural and necessary.
Primarily, sexuality is something to be enjoyed, but not to get distracted by. Monogamy and dedication are high virtues, whether in marriage or out of it. ('anonymous' sexual temple ceremonies and ceremonial orgies such as Ernaldan nights and Fertility Festivals do not count as infidelity). Competition between the sexes is open and encouraged in good faith and humour.
Sex is a very natural component of stead life. Birth, death and sex are all laid out (so to speak) right there by the hearth. Children watch as women give birth, watch as animals mate or are butchered, watch as the dead are prepared for burial or funeral pyre, watch as couples beside them embrace in the night.
Also, Orlanthi life is (by our own standards) overwhelmingly communal. The degree of communality varies, from entire clans living in fortified steads in the Far Place to the small spread-out bloodline steads of Southern Sartar and the sub-bloodline houses of the ring cities. Except in isolated urban circumstances, there no such thing as a 'nuclear family' in the domestic sense. Those (fondly remembered) Apple Lane cottages all in a row are essentially DnDisms.
Private bedrooms are unheard of, though couples may draw a curtain to isolate their booth from the bloodline sleeping areas when they embrace "under the sacred oxhide". There are no nudity taboos, so it is therefore difficult to embarrass an Orlanthi on matters sexual. Rural Orlanthi are very familiar with animals and animal sexuality from an early age. And in Dark Season, the nights are long and it is unwise to leave the stead.
Sartarite Orlanthi sexuality is also influenced by two competing traditions: relatively puritanical Solar influences out of Tarsh, and matriarchal influences out of Esrolia, which are both orgiastic and severely censorious in turn.
Pause for breath. :) Now, Theo's questions....
SARTARITE AND FAR PLACE ORLANTHI (IMG)
>1. how are women expected to behave in public in each of these
> cultures? for example do they need to be veiled, are they expected to
> be accompanied by chaperones at all times, etc?
Women rule the domestic realm. This is only slightly undervalued in comparison to the (largely but not entirely male) public sphere. Publicly, women can get away with anything a man would, subject to the control and possible intervention of the women's circle, their brothers, their bloodline relatives and their husbands (often in that order of importance).
> 2. what spaces are all-male? all-female?
The women's circle will have its own lodge, often a weaving shed (married women are from other clans, and so isolated from much of bloodline politics). In mixed solar/orlanthi clans, there may be birthing or even menstrual huts. Bloodline and cult lodges are often divided by sex: this is where men and women go to gossip and relax.
>3. what is the legal status of women? are they allowed to own
property on their own? divorce their husbands? be educated?
High, though politically they are often isolated because they live with their husband's clan at marriage. See 'Report on the Orlanthi' for details. The kinship system being what it is, Orlanthi women are still pawns in male alliance building, despite their high status in other areas.
Whats *Education*? ANYONE can learn to throw a spear. :)
> 4. if divorce occurs, what is the legal status of the woman
afterwards? can she remarry? does she receive alimony?
Remarriage would normally occur subject to negotiation with the woman's brothers and father. There are several distinct types of marriage. Unusually, Orlanthi often marry for love, though arranged marriage of some degree is very common. Most 'get used to' the match their parents suggest or prefer. No alimony, but a woman regains her dowry. Divorce property settlements however, can be as messy and ugly as in our own world. See 'Report on the Orlanthi'.
> 5. how are female children treated? is there infanticide? are they
educated? all the time or only for upper classes?
Infant mortality is high. Infanticide is a necessity in a land where even fertile and prosperous steads can go hungry for parts of the year. Once weaned, children become 'communal property' until they reach the age of four or five, whereupon their fathers especially take renewed interest in them. (at this age they are deemed to have survived the worst dangers and diseases of infancy).
Orlanthi tradition teaches that everyone should know their father. Adoption traditions of various formalities are common, even when the father is alive and whole. Its an honour thing, and an investment for the future, part of the heortling gifting culture.
>1. how public is personal sexuality? are married couple allowed to touch in public? kiss?
See above. Communal feasting is usually divided by sex, the men at one table, the women either serving or at their own. Same sex bonding is very important for males, who are much more emotional and sentimental than hard-thinking and calculating women. For men, kissing and similar displays of affection are very common. (Toward their bloodline male companions of course. To their wives: less frequently).
> 2. how public is representational sexuality? are there nude statues? sexual art in public?
Naturalistic statues of any sort are rare, carvings less so. Sex is part of fertility, and therefore commonly depicted. However, since the realities of sex are all around them, Orlanthi do not share the image fetishism so common in our own culture.
>3. what is the view towards pre-marital and extramarital sexual
relationships? if discouraged/forbidden, what is the effect of
getting caught, on the man and the woman?
Old King Heort himself said that sex is easy, though marriage is hard. Premarital sex is universal, and hardly commented on. In marriage, fidelity is both an applauded virtue and (in most cases) a legal necessity. Adultery by either sex is a cause for divorce, and divorce can be messy. See 'Report on the Orlanthi'.
>4. what is the view of bisexuality? of adult male homosexuality? of
paedophilia?
'Some like crimpy, others wine.' Being a phenomenological culture, I dont believe Orlanthi use abstract terms such as bisexual, heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian etc. Men and women are characterised and valued for more worthy things than who/what they rub their genitals against. There are no 'homosexuals', but there are men who (occasionally or regularly) sport with men, women who succour women etc. Sexual concepts and labelling are on the whole much more fluid, and much less tied to arbitrary 'masculine' or 'feminine' ideational systems than our own society. Men 'married to the army' (lovers in arms) are recognised with only minor discrimination, and this discrimination is related to the fact they have no children.
Change is the essence of all things Orlanthi, so everyone can be surprised by what attracts them. :)
Crimes against children are reviled. Sex with animals is the subject of much (guilty?) humour, but only ever involves the clan "on the other side of the hill".
Nuff for now
Cheers
John
nysalor_at_primus.com.au John Hughesnysalor_at_yahoo.com
I will make incursions / throught the fertile land of Ireland
my battalions all in arms / my amazons beside me
(not just to steal a bull / not over beasts this battle -
but for an honour price / a thousand times more precious -
my dignity!)
I will make fierce incursions.
"Medb Speaks", Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill.
Powered by hypermail