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Notes -
I forget exactly where I read it, but I believe it was in Ed Dutton’s book on the conservative demographic revolution where he pointed out in Islamic medieval society (this was back when the Mongols were rampaging throughout the continent), women had an increasingly considerable influence in political society. You had female imam’s, elites and you even had them influencing military affairs; but his point was that on some level, all of these ended up getting turned in pet projects of sorts and ceased to serve the original function for which they were intended. That was one of the reasons they became so internally weak and were later pushed over by Genghis Khan so easily. There definitely are consequences to an overly feminized or masculinized society.
The stakes for female status games is who seizes the pie and distributes it thusly, the stakes for male status games is getting more pies or defending pies from raiders, or failing which destroying the pies so no one gets to eat. The reign of Ottoman Sultanas consolidated and preserved Suleimans expansions for nearly a century, an unheard of territorial expansion when succession crises were the literal order of the day. Women have a role in societies, and can perform them better than men precisely because they are not men. Unsurprisingly societies that had long term continual civic stability without women in charge had un-men running the show: eunuchs and celibate clergy. The value in having the authoritatively incapable administer the machine prevents claimants from fearing what is effectively management buyouts and what keeps the machine going in lull or transition periods.
The tradeoff is when the administration thinks it is the authority and parasites itself into power. The trappings of authority are not the muscle inside the fist, and when push comes to shove the kinetic authority must assert itself. Ironically the women who know the game therefore are incentivized to accumulate and wield authority rather than administrative alliances because their authority is more likely to be directly challenged. Theres a point here somewhere about Merkels weakness being indulged by the German public lead to the wif schiffen das death knell, but I can't be bothered to spell it out.
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