It hardly matters if the labels exist: the truth is, we're almost bound to conduct the discussion in RW terms, as it's for RW-related reasons that the matter arises in the first place. (Unless we take the Mugabe-esque route of defining different sexual orientations out of existence, which is principle an option, but would raise the odd eyebrow...) The topic isn't "What's the Sartarite term for homosexuality", after all...
As for genderisation of roles and attributes: we have pretty good data on this, and it's tells us that: yes, they genderise roles and attributes; their genderisations are not the same as RW 'Western' values, certainly not in all cases; they're fairly open-minded about people who do not conform to their gender stereotype, and perhaps most pertinently they often rationalise such differences, as well as much else in their lives, with reference to divine and/or heroic precedent.
> 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.
_You've_ added the equation between 'powerful' and 'masculine', John, not José. The Orlanthi, however, do make a correspondence between 'masculine' and 'warrior-like', so José's original point was hardly baseless. (You may validly ask, do they (and if so, how strongly) make the further association between 'masculine' and 'loves women'.)
> The Orlanthi don't think much about sex.
In the sense of Zen Mind and sports psychology, perhaps this is so. ;-) But in the sense of not being interested in gossiping about who's doing it with whom? I doubt it... (For 'Orlanthi clan' read 'small town' (just without the town).)
> 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.
Absolutely.
> Orlanthi are not generally given to abstraction or to unnecessary
> labelling.
Labelling, perhaps not; identification, most certainly.
> Women rule the domestic realm. This is only slightly undervalued in
> comparison to the (largely but not entirely male) public sphere.
This is true in the sense that formally, the hearth is sacred to Ernalda and the clan to Orlanth, but it's by no means a rigid division. "Woman, mind your house!" is a well-known Orlanthi non-saying. I dunno about undervalued at all, never mind 'only slightly. (OK, I may be biased on such matters in my Official Position a head scene-shifter and bottlewasher for an Ernalda-clan...)
> 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).
That is, essentially the same as, or analogues of what, 'controls or intervenes with' an Orlanthi man. "No one can make you do anything", but "Orlanth made the first clan, and boy did he make them nosey, intervening b&st%rds..."
[status of women]
> 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.
I think this is overstated: few clans IMO are strictly exogamous (exceptions being clans with formalised customs like triaties). It's invariably strict at the 'bloodline' level, but then again, your definition of 'bloodline' may, as they say, vary...
[after divorce]
> Remarriage would normally occur subject to negotiation with the woman's
> brothers and father.
No more or less so subject than any other marriage, though.
A very messy area is 'child custody'. Patrilineage is More-Than- Orlanthi-Universal, but 'patrilocality' is much less certain. I doubt there are much in the way of firm laws on this, rather, something or other gets stitched up on the basis of precedent, practicality, and politics. ('Custody battles' may not be just a tabloid figure of speech...)
> 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.
You touch briefly on the nub of the issue: I suspect most of what you say about 'sexual conduct' is broadly true, but you say very little about the 'Marriage is Hard' flip-side, despite quoting said saying. If someone is happy (or at least, willing) to conform to all their _social_ gender roles, then their sexual ones are as proverbially "Easy" as you suggest to do what they like with. Human nature being what it is, I doubt it's so simple. ("No mother, I am _not_ about to settle down and marry a nice Barlamani farmer, this or any other year!")
> 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".
"How do the Varndings find their sheep in the long grass?"
Cheers,
Alex.
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