As I pointed out in the part you snipped this has little to do with sexuality. Marriage among the Orlanthi is about relationships between clans and bringing up children. These are social issues, not physical or sexual ones - i.e. gender rather than sex. Vingans are socially men while Nandani are socially women. I'll agree the discrepancy between social role and sexual role is likely to cause problems which is why I think most don't get married. Part of the difficulty is that Vinga as written is a young woman's cult. There's nothing about how 30 or 40 year old Vingans act.
Every society has standard ways of handling important social matters. Societies then find ways of accomodating the exceptions in a way which minimises the damage to the society as a whole. Vingans and Nandani are exceptions who potentially damage the society by not reproducing. So they must have roles which compensate for that. An obvious one is where the gender balance in a clan is seriously out. Access to the other gender's magic can save the clan. This also explains why Vingans are far more common than Nandani - the commonest reason for a gender imbalance is a war when a lot of the men don't dome back.
>I disagreed with many other takes you had in the post as well, but
>mostly because you present these ideas in the style of "This Is How It
>Is", instead of "in my campaign".
That's because there isn't a clear boundary. I read something that's published about a society and consider how it fits with the rest. Then I develop the social explanation for why that society is as it is described. I could write up all the stages of every conclusion in a scientific format but I haven't the inclination and I doubt there's much interest in reading a thesis on "The position of Vinga and Nandan in Orlanthi culture".
I welcome different ideas and opinions but I'm not going to imply my conclusions are plucked out of the air when they are based on published material.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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