#endogamy maybe

[niobefurens]

Wēn Family Tree 👀

Diagram below the cut.

“Wēn Qíng was renowned both within and without the Wēn Clan of Qíshān. She wasn’t a daughter of the head of the Wēn family, Wēn Ruòhán, but rather the descendant of one of his elder cousins on the maternal side (表兄 = BiǎoXiōng). Although they were distant relatives, Wēn Ruòhán had had a good relationship with his cousin since they were children.” MDZS/GMDC 7Seas ; Vol. 3; p. 148.

表兄 Biǎoxiōng = cousin, usually means: mother's sibling's son, or father's sister's son, older than oneself. In MDZS it appears to be used for a greater degree of separation (as it is specified they are distant relatives  – third cousins, for example).

Me: If I assume the normal rules regulating marriage in ancient China to apply in MDZS, as they seem to (if we look at the other shì), I must take into account the following:

“Confucius described marriage as "the union of two surnames, in friendship and in love";

[in China] “traditionally incest has been defined as marriage between people with the same surname." One of the earliest marriage prohibitions, and one surviving to this day, was that forbidding persons of the same surname to marry. An imperial decree of 484 A.D. states that this rule was promulgated far back in the Zhou dynasty; 1122 to 255 B.C."

From the Confucian perspective, marriage brings together families of different surnames and continues the family line of the paternal clan.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_marriage

According to R. H. Van Gulik, as early as the feudal period (1500-222 BCE), “marriages among the members of the ruling class were strictly exogamic. The marrying with a woman of the same surname, be it principal wife, secondary wife, or concubine, was completely taboo.” Sexual Life in Ancient China: a Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from ca. 1500 B.C. till 1644 A.D.; Leiden, Brill, (1974); p. 19.

Thus, Wēn Ruòhán’s cousin cannot be the son of a brother of Wēn Ruòhán’s mother (or, his surname; and his children’s surname could not have been Wēn). For the same reason, he cannot be the son of Wen Ruòhán’s father’s sister, as she would marry out of the Wēn-shì.

Wēn Qíng’s father must be the son of one of Wēn Ruòhán’s mother’s older relations (or even ancestors: aunt, great-aunt, etc.); who, obviously, also married a Wēn (or again, the surname would not be Wēn).

ME: Huh what?

🙄

More reaserch unearths:

“In ancient China, some evidence indicates cases where two clans had a longstanding arrangement wherein they would only marry members of the other clan. Some men also practiced sororate marriage, that is, a marriage to a former wife's sister, or a polygynous marriage to both sisters. This would have the effect of eliminating parallel-cousin marriage as an option because they would have the same surname, but would leave cross-cousin marriage acceptable.

In the ancient system of the Erya dating from around the third century BC, the words for the two types of cross cousins (甥 shēng), were identical with father's brother's children (甥 shēng); with mother's sister's children both being distinct (從母晜弟 cóngmǔ kūndì for boys and 從母姊妹 cóngmǔ zǐmèi for girls).

However, whereas it may not have been permissible at that time, marriage with the mother's sister's children also became possible by the third century AD. Eventually, the mother's sister's children and cross cousins shared one set of terms, with only the father's brother's children retaining a separate set. This usage remains today, with biǎo (表) cousins considered "outside" and paternal táng (堂) cousins being of the same house.”

See China, in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage

Anthropologist Francis Hsu described a mother's brother's daughter (MBD) as being “the most preferred type of Chinese cousin marriage.” Hsu, Francis L. K. (January–March 1945). "Observations on Cross-Cousin Marriage in China"; American Anthropologist 47 (1): pp. 83–103.

Me: Fine, let’s draw this up…

🥱 and, I did … 🥱 but ...

Look what happens when I get to Wēn Yuàn … 🥱

😳

I give MXTX enough credit that, if this is so, she put it there for a reason. In canon, incest is a very real social problem (JGY/QS).

Friend (who reads Chinese, and  who has kindly supplied the original terms): The Wen-shì do not adhere to the the exogamic rule. They are so big they can intermarry among Wēn without consanguinity issues.

Me: So the whole thing could ... just be RED ... !!!

Friend: Yes...

Huh? What?

So: not technically incest; but certainly galling to everyone else who adheres to the rules (think of the Làn...)

Is this one of the reasons everyone hates the Wēn??!!

Do they think they are so cool, and so hot, everyone else is beneath them?

In ancient republican Rome interrmarriage of this type would be considered a "regal insurgence" (attempt to make oneself king - illegal known as crimen regni).

Which is what Wēn Ruòhán seems to want do?

Make himself king? And the Wēn-shì the ruling family = dynasty ?

🙃

Suppposing someone got this far, any insights, comments, and takes are very welcome. ❤️

[katheriensapple]

Some Thoughts on HP's Blood Purity

I always thought that the Blood Purity Bigotry© had to be more complex than the "Mudblood hahaha" shown in canon. In real life, for example, we see racists and xenophobes who hate people just for existing, and we think that's all. But we usually forget that these despicable people tend to write whole books trying to justify their malicious and just plain stupid "arguments".

So, where are the supremacist writers in the HP universe?

While I was writing the second chapter of my fic 'Eisoptrophobia' I made this exact question.

The only example of a presumed blood supremacist writer is Cantankerus Nott, who wrote the 'Pureblood Dictionary' and basically invented the 'The Sacred Twenty-Eight' list (which unironically includes the Weasly family), and an example of a race thesis is the idea that muggleborns 'stole' magic from pureblood wizards.

And, as everyone knows, this kind of racism revolves around the concept of 'magical blood'.

Cantankerous Nott excluded families like the Crabbs, the Goyles and the Potters from his list because he believed that they got some 'muggle blood'. And, therefore, no completely 'pure'. But that concept: 'purity' is extremely tricky. What makes a family 'pure'? no muggle ancestors for 5 generations? no muggle ancestors for 12 generations? No muggle ancestors at all? Seems that Cantankerous's definition is the last.

However, clearly this narrow definition wasn't widespread even in his time, since said families (Potters, Browns, Crabbes) were considered pureblood, (maybe no completly 'pure', but 'pure' enough). And we know from complementary canon that, for example, the Malfoys occasionally married half-bloods in order to avoid endogamy, which make things worse.

In fact, these little bits of information only let one thing clear: the concept of blood purity was more a political tool than a clear, unified racial thesis.

Pureblood families presumed their own purity, but keep the definition deliberately vague. An 'I know it when I see it' sort of thing. They probably also have double standards for judging the 'purity' of others, and argue over definitions frequently.

Which leads me to conclude that blood purity regards magical blood as something you can have at different levels 'more pure, lest pure' and not something you have or not. This is important, given that real-life racism tends to operate in absolutes, (you're white or you're black and your essence is fundamentally white or black, mixed race people being regarded as some in between being but most likely with a black 'essence').

This explain why blood purity is considerably more tolerant of halfbloods than real-life racism. The Death Eaters have half-blood members (Severus Snape), Voldemort himself is a halfblood and, in general, no halfblood is openly insulted for their mixed heritage. This draw an image of a complicated and unique kind of racisim, one that affect mainly muggleborns and is not especially directed to the halfbloods (which doesn't exclude them from suffering its consequences).

Half-bloods are probably a necessary evil and better than muggleborns from a purist viewpoint, because they got at least a 50% of magical blood (i'm talking of the pureblood-muggleborn children exclusively) and are, in some sense, useful for pureblood families. They keep the line stable and healthy with only a minimal 'sacrifice'

Therefore, half-bloods would be seen as 'non-ideal' but used by pure blood families anyway.

I would also like to suggest, as I did in the notes for said chapter, that not all half-bloods would be regarded equally and that half-bloods like Harry Potter would probably be treated better than half-bloods like Severus Snape, because the former is more likely to have a complete separation of the muggle world, while the second still has a muggle parent.

[randomnameless]

I don't know about the Engage wank but fan of pairing between Alear and the twins should just ignore the "it's incest complain" since the Fe fandom doesn't deserves to be trusted in that context seeing how much they twisted this word... ok actually this apply to all fandom

As someone who was hard wired "words have a meaning" in uni and professional life, you have no idea how fandom using "words they completely twisted and don't understand" irks me !

Maybe it's just about throwing big bad words to make anyone who disagree - or the persons you are dissing on - BaD, but I think the first post I made about this early in FE16's fandom's life was about some people (I don't even know if it's the same person we all know?) arguing about a "caste system" regarding the "Crust system" and it's just - no, you don't understand what you're saying, just shut up. Caste systems are defined by extreme endogamy - if Fodlan truly had a caste system, Ingrid's dad wouldn't even consider marrying her to a crestless dude, she would have been married to the available Faerghus bachelors with a crest, hell even Annette's cousin, or worse, Matthias himself (he is a widow?) before considering a crestless match.

Then we had the collective hysteria over "feudalism", "Pope in the Middle Ages", "Catholicism" and "Fodlan is totes 12th century trust me I have a degree".

And while I don't want to be the ass who says research your writing topic before writing it, imo, when you're writing meta or pieces that want to be meta, I'd suggest to at least, just, check wikipedia before writing something that doesn't make any sense.

Hell, I didn't know about that thing about snails being crushed to make purple dye before checking Wikipedia before writing a shitpost about Adrestia - but here I am.

But alas, it's commong on social medias nowadays, you use "big words" to make people who don't agree with you the BaD gUyS (bcs they're always guys!) and thus can avoid discussions or criticism.

[opossumprince]

I'm incredibly confused about your DNI list lumping t4t in with proship, MAPs and zoos. I'm not familiar with c4t, but a quick google search turns up wayyy too many confusing definitions, so I'll disregard that. The common definition (that i'm aware of) for t4t is Trans for Trans. as in a trans couple. is there another context that you've come by for this phrase?

Alright so first of all I get what you mean, my intention wasn't to lump in things that can stem from confusion with deeply viIe shit, maybe I should separate or move the latter category up (but also my dni Iist includes "those who think reaI art absolutely requires a lone genius physically painting or scuIpting figurative shit" so I obviously don't think all items on the Iist are comparable to "cartography enthusiasts" and such)

My problem with "t4t" and its spread in onIine communities is :

The belief that dating other trans people exclusively will keep you from or significantly reduce the risk of harm, transphobia, and other bigotry - which is obviously wrong since trans people aren't a monolith and incredibly different from one another to the point where we can't even call "t4t" endogamy (dating within one's specific social group), and internalised transphobia or transphobia towards other kinds of trans people is still very much a thing.

The idea that it also makes you a Better Activist since it will show how much you "resist assimiIation", etc. This is counterproductive, performative (not in the Butlerian sense), and actually rooted in r^dfem ideaIs such as "poIiticaI Iesbianism" and "Iesbian separatism", only applied to trans people instead of Iesbians. Weird, right ? Not like there's been a surge of regurgitated r^dfem ideas in trans onIine communities lately or anything.

The claim that "t4t" is a sexuaI orientation. "T4t fIags", "t4t" in bio, and such. Preference or choice isn't sexuaI orientation, duh - unless you think being trans is a gender in itself, which is quite frankly terrible. "C4t" and "t4c" are derivatives of "t4t" that mean exactly what you think, except now instead of calling them chasers we cheer them on for "Ioving trans peopIe". Why ?

The fact that there's a semantic drift where a trans person dating another automatically gets called "t4t", that even trans characters dating get called "t4t", and so on. This is visible in your ask : "trans for trans, as in a trans coupIe". Not all members of trans couples excIusively date other trans people. This is as absurd as calling each Iesbian pairing "Iesbian separatists".

[cor-ardens-archive]

your recent austen posting reminded me of this essay by terry castle on austen's somewhat unorthodox(?) relationship to her sister. maybe you've already read it but if not; it's not exactly something that directly maps on to what you're talking abt wrt exogamy + endogamy or the inevitable creeping up of social constraints in otherwise cheerful endings but i thought you'd be interested since it explores an unusually close sibling dynamic and its influence on austen's life and writing. the essay is called sister sister btw and can be found online on the london review of books website iirc!

i've never read it or heard of it, thank you!!!

[star-stell]

My asoiaf OCs:

Lucía Bolton on her mother's side, Dothraki on her father's. She's cunning, cruel and driven. Lucía is kind and truly loves her people, but has sociopathic tendencies that make it hard for others to understand her love. She is a good warrior and politician but sometimes goes too fast and loses focus. Always heavily armed.

Alex Tyrrel, perhaps with some Lannister ancestry sprinkled on to his' family tree. He does not seek power, but its closeness; the type of person most given to pulling strings from afar. A smartass and an asshole, but also caring in his own way. Has the most impresive people skills for an introvert.

Matt Martell. He's charismatic, strategic and intelligent, but he also has a heart of gold and a soft interior. He values family above all else and has a "friends are family" mentality. He is a social butterfly, which makes him appear sweet and ditzzy. He can go unnoticed by others and that is what makes him dangerous. A good liar.

Eliza Bolton. Eliza is the kind of person that makes you double check, profesional gaslighter and the future weird aunt. She's an endogamy baby, btw. She's an evil little wet cat of a woman. Now, in all seriusness, Eliza is smart, she just doesn't care that much about politics, which makes her an easey pawn to use, or at least that's what it seems like, this lady has her own agenda.

Sandy Tully. Familiar and caring but with a cutting edge, this girl won't start a fight but she will finish one. Sandy may not have the intimidating presence of Lucia or the friendliness of Matt but she does have the hability to listen and wait for the perfect moment, never going too fast. Even if she almost never uses it she does have a vengative side. She's a lesbian bcs we need more fucked up queers.

Silena Storms (Baratheon bastard). She's impulsive and fast, but not necesarily given to politics, more of a fighter than anything else. She would trade the world for living with her girlfriend in some cottage. She's a sword? Yes. She's just chilling? Also yes.

Maeele Lannister. Mama's perfect little sociopath, he's absolutly bonkers, full on crazy. He's a complete asshole, and not even a competent one at that. Tywin's heir, to everyone's demise. Still, surprisingly cunning and smart for all of his ego. He's my little especial boy, but he's going down.

Jessant Yronwood. Legitimized bastard, deaf and with a nick for forge. Is he my escuse to write a relentless trans character? Maybe. He's also fucking insane and I love him for It. Matt and Jess have something going on (because, again, we deserve more fucked up queers)

Sammuel Snow (Bolton bastard) son to Lucía's and Eliza's mother. Her oldest, but not legitimized, still he hangs around at Dreadfort as a musician. Honestly, he's the least traumatized of the three. He is illegally married to the aprentize of Dreadfort's medic and no one knows.

[davomw]

Group 16

1. Our first 2 questions came to mind the quickest. We were also aware that the first 2 questions were very polarizing and that most people are not on the fence about them and have a definitive answer.

2. People almost find polygamy laughable. The idea seemed so far fetched to the people that answered. Which isn’t surprising because in the western world it’s not popular at all to the point that the government wouldn’t even recognize it

3. Not at all. The answers seemed pretty standard to me. Most people aren’t fans of polygamy. Exogamy vs endogamy is case by case for the most part. Many people are open to it and other strictly refuse and you can’t really tell before asking a person. And our generation views marriage very differently then our parents and those before them so people thinking it’s transactional doesn’t surprise me.

4. Maybe ask people their ideas on the topic generally and not personally. More like “How do you feel about polygamy?” as apposed to “Would you participate?”. It’s a different mindset because now they look at the question from the view of everyone and not just themselves.

@deliahat10

[textbeak]

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[olderthannetfic]

People need to be understand that the "ew" part of incest it's more of a (cultural) consequence of a social norm being enforced by reasons that are not just emotional, but economical or political or wathever else. Did a certain community/culture have more to gain from endogamy or esogamy? The "ew" part it's a valid feeling by the way, culture being different does not make them invalid. But it's not universal and it changes vastly trough time and class.

And it most defenitely has nothing to do with genetics. Prohibition of incest existed way before people figured out genes. Often it includes people that have not a single gene in commons (in laws).

Plenty of genetic transmitted diseases can be common in groups that are maybe isolated but where incest norms are respected. And as much as we like to talk about the royal dinasties that got extinct because of genetic diseases, there are plenty that as far as we know never had any problem.

And it's very awful to say, but back in the old time if people got genetic diseases because of inbreeding natural selection might have just taken care of it.

Also, people need to be reminded that all in all western countries are actually rather open as far as allowing incest. Most of them allow cousin marriage. There are places where you have to get back seven generation before you are allowed to get married.

--

[welldonebeca]

Science side of Tumblr!

I can't sleep cause this is hammering in my mind.

This is the Abrahamic family tree, right?

Endogamy 101.

(Don't come after me, I do believe them too. I'm just confused over the genetics.)

So... Isaac is his own half-Cousin. Rebekah is her own 2nd cousin once removed or... First cousin twice removed? It's getting confusing.

Alright. Does anyone know how much the coefficient of relationship is at the end of all this? Maybe between Rebecca and Isaac, then Jacob and Esau or Leah/Rachel.

Oooh, and between maybe two of his kids. Cause at this point they descend from basically the same 3 or 4 people but just through different paths.

I've been thinking of this for months already but I'm horrible with math and I can't even figure the cousin thing.

[overthemoonwithme]

Hi!!! 15, 4, 26 and 30 <3

ooh thank you for asking :)

(I talk about states a lot so just for clarity for the most part states are divided according to language, though a lot of languages have been erased in this process. I come from Kerala and speak Malayalam)

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

Kerala Porota. It’s a type of flatbread native to my state, and particularly the northern “Malabar” region where the city that I grew up in is located, Kozhikode. It’s delicious. Particularly good with beef fry or fish or egg curry. Not to be confused with the north indian ‘paratha’, which is made from wholemeal wheat flour and has stuffing inside. It’s also interestingly popular in Singapore (maybe because there’s a lot of Tamil migration?) so when I was there in the 6th & 7th grade I’d have it every day for lunch in my canteen so it’s very special to me.

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

https://twitter.com/SrishtyRanjan/status/1352594770015744001

does this count 🙃

Um...okay so I was very proud of this english pun when I made it in 2019 but I’m going to leave it as is for any hindi speakers on here:

“She said I shouldn’t mutter but it’s I love world peace!”

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?

Until recently the portrayal of Indians was obviously very stereotypical, racist and gross, but honestly I’m more scared of the way in which Hindutva (right wing Hindu/Brahmin supremacist conservatism) has entered American media, but is being portrayed as positive representation. Why don’t we see many muslim Indians, Bahujan Indian families in American media? Because NRIs are a powerful group who have been working towards creating a homogenous view of Indians that is upper caste, beef hating, usually north Indian but if not then Brahmin/non-dravidian, BJP/modi supporting and so on. Shit like Never Have I Ever is, to me, so much more dangerous than stereotypical characters like Raj because it does stereotype Indians while appearing progressive, but it does it in a way that is useful to oppressor groups. 

https://wearyourvoicemag.com/never-have-i-ever-seen-a-show-so-casteist-and-racist/

https://feminisminindia.com/2020/05/15/netflixs-never-have-i-ever-savarna-storytelling-irresponsible-ignorant/

This has been happening over the course of many years, and I’d say begins with the mainstreaming/appropriation of Brahmanical Hindu symbols into everyday American life. Something like Karma for instance which is so normalised, actually originates in the caste system. Privileged people are and oppressed groups are in those positions because of deeds in the past life..it’s gross. There’s also a lot of literature on Yoga nationalism. 

Like...woke Indian hindu kids with no idea about history call Blackpink using Ganesh imagery “appropriation”, but they don’t realise how that was actually exported by supremacists in India to make their ideology more palatable to westerners.

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family?

No i don’t think so? Endogamy has too much of a strong hold..my generation is literally the first where people are marrying outside of the state on my dad’s side and second on my mom’s. There are probably people in the extended family but idk about them.

Sorry idk how much of this is easy to follow if you’re not Indian but I’m procrastinating on an assignment so this was just word vomit 😭😭

[wileds]

so does he have a lower opinion of faunus since a lot of his houses help were faunus

wakes up early, sees this in my email notifs, hewwo ??

i can’t emphasize enough that love grew up a bit sheltered especially in the years immediately after he came into his semblance. his power is activated by shedding blood and being exposed to it. it was not a pleasant experience and it had real legal ramifications between the victim and love (a minor at the time of course) which brought on a surge of protectiveness from his parents as well as them using their political/social clout to win a favorable solution for love, basically sweeping the event under the rug, while also keeping love ignorant about what exactly happened to the person. which is why i still say that he has no criminal record. quite a bad idea in hindsight - love feels certain that he killed them and he was not given the chance to personally apologize to the family for it, if they would even have him at this point, and all of this began his feelings of shame around his semblance alongside its celebration from his tribe as a mark of charisma / a good warrior / what have you, which is why i’m always inches away from saying that love has a bit of a complex around his affinity which is … pretty unfortunately janus-faced when you really think about the contrary natures of his supposed fate: greatness or madness, or greatness even in madness - greatness is the central destiny here, the contrariness bolstered by stories of previous inheritors of their hereditary semblance who always fell into one of the two categories. the inheritor immediately before him was for sure bloodmad. which doesn’t help matters. love has a feeling that he would become so too if he fully indulged his semblance. maybe that’s paranoia or the aforementioned shame talking, but whatever, it’s genuinely how he feels.

why am i talking about semblance again.

back to the point, he was sheltered more after this event. a lot of the house help and hires were faunus so he did spend a lot of time with them when his parents were busy. yes seeing faunus in certain roles affected him, i know how iffy it can sound to say ‘i have a __ friend so i understand ___!’ or ‘i know many __, so __!’ his curiosity about some faunus traits will come across as ignorant or even affronting if done in the wrong way. and a question like ‘can i touch it?’ always vacillates between ok and wtf no. but in actuality he typically doesn’t bring attention to faunus traits at all because then he knows he won’t make a social faux pas and he’s taken way too many etiquette classes to blunder too badly at this point idk how he was as a kid, he was a fucking handful. but today he is a naturally sensitive person. has more tact than you might expect from his abundance. he’s not afraid to apologize or be corrected, at any rate. tends to notice/comment on someone’s overall attractiveness rather than specifics (he takes note of people’s attractiveness like people do the weather. it’s just a part of how he meets someone and it doesn’t need to mean anything). there’s no intentional othering going on when he thinks of faunus or meets one. also like … i’m sure historical figures such as the faunus queen of vacuo who led during the great war + the apparent egalitarianism of the society (but is it tho) has introduced some levity into vacuoan society and into love’s mind even if through history books or lessons or moments of exposure. going too far into the i don’t see species i see people direction is also an issue (kind of like the i don’t see color argument which negates imp history, current social/criminal/etc injustices, prejudice & racism, etc). but. i answered this ask a year ago and it’s still faithful to his attitude.

… after going to shade academy he at least feels ok to ask mai and aris questions too lol, rip if he’s ever said anything awkward or offensive to them. i am sure he has been offensive due to some part of his upbringing.

that said, all of the faunus in love’s life were not in subservient roles while growing up. some of his most impactful tutors were/are faunus. including one of his primary weapons & combat trainers who i am currently trying to create. her name is leila and she’s one of the lakhdari’s (alt name for the akhdar clan which his tribe belongs to) most formidable warriors. even though she flitted in and out of love’s life because she needed to go and kick ass somewhere, she is like one of his most favorite people ever. not pictured: little love, an only child, precocious and celebrated and sometimes feared with very few friends his own age, telling his badass adult trainer that they’re friends now ok? can i visit? what’s your scroll number? then they actually became friends and leila is always like, well, alright i guess. leila is an arabian oryx whose faunus trait are those horns and she is also literally a golden-eyed warrior (they have their own lore for golden-eyed warriors) (it’s a wip from my end but i gesture vigorously at love’s own gold eyes. when i say he’s fated he’s fuckin fated) … leila’s profile post is forthcoming mostly because i don’t know how the hell to edit gifs in ps for her graphic.

AND NOW THE CONNECTION.

the point of his tribe’s endogamy (marriage within one’s own group) is to preserve their hereditary semblance. it already skips generations instead of being passed down faithfully from parent to offspring. there is an element of blood purity for a blood affinity going on here. in a difficult place like vacuo you can understand why one might want to keep a semblance like that close and alive. the clarkia semblance plus their role as prominent dust merchants contributed to their wealth and influence today. in addition, the clarkias are a human tribe. so that reinforces things. the akhdar clan they belong to have both humans and faunus though, hence folks like leila. this dynamic even goes into his and ksenija’s relationship, who are second cousins i think … there was reluctance from some people in love’s life about letting them meet a lot, although their parents got along fine because love’s parents went the exogamous route. exogamy is when one marries someone outside one’s own group. isa married amina who is way outside the kin group although still of an equal (or higher tbh) socioeconomic status than isa, when the general tradition of the clarkia tribe is to marry within one’s own group. basically they all married for love and so they didn’t really give a fuck about faunus heritage when love like, cried and begged to skip out of lessons in order to see ksenija when he was little. family is so important to them.

the clarkias are a failing house because they’re in the dust industry, and that hasn’t been doing too hot in vacuo for a long while. love is trying to help save his family from obscurity. part of this means him keeping traditions and expectations like the above going. part of his decision in choosing to become a huntsman is because of this desire to keep them from obscurity, when the clarkias really have no reason or tradition of buying into the idea of a huntsman when they’ve been warring and fighting against grimm generations before shade academy ever popped up as the ““““only real source of order.””””” so love fully expects to marry a human too. it doesn’t stop who he associates with, befriends, flirts with, or sleeps with. but he’s gonna marry a human. he is currently engaged to one even if they kinda want to break it off, but even then love is gonna marry a human. if anyone thinks that’s problematic please call him out on it but he never talks about his betrothed or marriage expectations unless he has to, not because he’s ashamed (they’re actually very compatible! they just don’t want to marry each other) (also i have not ‘created’ his betrothed yet because this is going to be all disney aladdin / 1,001 nights mythos which i haven’t had the time to watch/read for the past. year … lol.) 

he is a member of vacuoan elite and marriage prospects or who his family has hired / continue to hire seriously does not mean that he personally thinks lesser of faunus, only that he grew up in an environment that has informed his life and expects certain things from him.

[starsailorstories]

Family ideals - noble classes

If you’re a member of the nobility, your first duty is to your title lineage/house. 

You’ll have an arranged marriage, and although monogamy isn’t the norm for astraeas in general, that marriage must be monogamous in order to prevent any questions about the loyalty of the alliance it represents. These alliances of intermarriage can last for generations when families have multiple children--with all reproduction being asexual, the normal concerns with blue-blood endogamy aren’t there to stop them, so if you’re a Mandolina everybody on the orbiter knows you’ll marry a Sinaura, and if you’re a Revoni you’ll marry a Vega, and so on and so forth until somebody fails to get an heiress (which will only happen if there’s a feud between a house and their colony’s Mother or one of the daughters refuses to marry and the Mother has a thing against single-parent households which, to be fair, looks a little different from the perspective of a society where children are traditionally literally raised by the village). 

If your parents are religious, they’ll probably hire a vestal astrolager to help them pick the most compatible wife for you out of the pool. You want someone born under the opposite sun from you in the binary, first off, and preferably under complimentary proximal suns, planets, and foreground stars (constellations aren’t really visible from the dome because the stars are packed too densely). Your astrology also might come with some Expectations--they won’t be as rigid or entrenched as the expectations surrounding, say, your planetary culture or your place in the hierarchy, but which of courtship roles you take (more on that in a bit...maybe in another post?) will be affected if you let it.

Once you’re married and ready to raise children--and you will, because of duty to the title lineage, again--you likely have the time and money to travel to see your colony’s Mother often and contribute handsomely to her day to day needs in the period leading up to the births of your babies. Those will also be the births of everybody else’s babies of course but what I’m getting at here is like, this is going to feel like having a paid surrogate, not like adopting from a pool of hundreds. This is ultimately up to the Mother because they’re still her children in a more personal way than they are the colony’s, but you might be allowed to have several daughters all the same age at once simply because you have the resources to house and clothe and school them all at once. You’ll have servants--many of whom, if you live on the old ancestral stomping grounds, will be your genetic sisters--who help raise your children until they’re old enough to go to a private boarding school (”public” education still comes from the commons of the colony) where they’ll hopefully build a network of other noble and wealthy family’s daughters. 

Depending on your astrological temperament and the role you took in the courtship, you’ll take a certain role in the household as well, either that of being the public face and defender of the family (stereotype: the pretty one who can talk fast and fight, born under Sol Jenya) or the commanding head of the estate and keeper of the family finances (stereotype: the quiet smart one with Higher Common Sense, born under Sol Atya). These are limiting archetypes--it’s hard to fit either to ideal and you may not fit the one you’re supposed to. Still, the expectation is Duty Above All, and Loyalty Above Passion. Love -is- part of the ideal, but maybe not the way we’d think of it.

[I should note that commonly--though not among every single people on every single world--only Mothers may be ruling monarchs. This means that there’s a pecking order of colonies as well as families within those colonies, but you don’t necessarily have to be from a royal or noble colony to be titled by the Ultra Queen Mum. They live a long time. They have THOUSANDS of social connections.]

[keshetchai]

I love your blog and enjoy your insights. Maybe you could help me understand something - how did the Spanish 'purity of blood' laws and anti-Judaizing opinions, fit in with their beliefs and actions with mixed children in the New World.

Woof, this one is complicated, and I’m afraid I had to go poking around. The Casta system in general is really complex because while on paper it could be very rigid, the reality was slippery and that only fed into making more and more rigid rules to try to “keep order” more or less.

So the purity of blood laws are called Limpieza de sangre. In general I know they would have been different between Portugal and Spain (and different again when Spain was in control of Portugal), and their history varies from latin countries.

Limpieza de sangre meant that lots of conversos bought forged documentation to prove they did not have Muslim or Jewish heritage (as people who had this heritage were, strictly speaking, banned from migrating to the Americas). So these people were considered Spanish or Portugese insofar as their paperwork held up – and their children probably fell into the casta system accordingly.

However, people could be accused and tried, of being Jewish/a converso descendent. (Similarly you could be accused of being a Mulatto or Mestizo).

I’m going to copy text from this book review I found, because I think it gives some interesting context:

Beginning in late fifteenth-century Spain, anxiety about Muslim and Jewish ancestry led the Inquisition to begin investigating practitioners of those religions and making distinctions between old and new Christians despite the fact that the Iberian cultural and religious climate was unclear and unstable. Martı´nez declares that the exact origins of the statues of purity of blood remain ‘a mystery’, but they were the foundations of canons on exclusion and inclusion that pervaded throughout the eighteenth century. Included in what is otherwise a review of well-known practices is the claim that as the Holy Office focused on women and the families of conversas and moriscas, women were identified as the main source of impurity, thus gendering the concept of cleanliness.

The biological and cultural reproduction of limpieza was to have an extraordinary weight in the transfer of the concepts of purity to the New World resulting from the sexual meeting of three racial groups. Colonisation gave a new twist to limpieza. While in Spain ‘fictional’ genealogies were tied to nobility, religion and honour, race was injected into the ideological apparatus when the indigenous peoples and the Africans merged into the picture. As the Spaniards transferred their religious, social and political world to New Spain, the concept of limpieza gained new purchase. The increasing association of Africans with biblical damnation, servility and the Muslim religion nailed their position as impure and undesirable. As an example of their exclusion, Martı´nez uses the Franciscan Order’s prohibition against accepting anyone with African blood into its ranks. Not just the Franciscans but also other religious orders and the secular church adopted this practice.

The indigenous elites (caciques and principales), on the other hand, assimilated blood cleanliness to preserve power in their own community (repu´blica de indios) and to differentiate themselves from the insuperable obstacles faced by the Africans. In the seventeenth century, American-born whites linked their ancestry to Spain and blood purity to buttress themselves against the growing number of mixed-blood people. Altogether, endogamy and the control of women as reproductive venues were vital to maintaining race as a tool of power. While mestizaje was blooming in the seventeenth century, the Inquisition and several jurists and theologians turned to examine the concept of limpieza and revived the discussion over the religious aspect of bloodlines. The Holy Office assumed that the indigenous had accepted Catholicism and that caciques could claim purity of blood, but other, lesser-known (albeit in-fluential) writers were of the contrary opinion and compared the Indians to the Jews – to the former’s disadvantage.

– J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 41 (2009). doi:10.1017/S0022216X09990617Marı´a Elena Martı´nez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion andGender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2008),pp. ix+407, $65.00, hb. Review by ASUNCIO´ N LAVRIN.

a ton of relevant texts about the colonial new world are in Spanish or Portuguese and I’m afraid I don’t read either fluently.

For my part, I am almost entirely familiar with how the Casta system affected Mexico and not in as much detail elsewhere.

In more perspective, the development of Blood Purity in the Spanish Empire is a large part of the development of race, racial identity, and the casta system:

The sistema de castas comprises the ideas of ethnocentrism and racism that informed the ethno-racial hierarchy of colonial Spanish America. As the Spanish established themselves in the Americas and a population of mixed native- Spanish offspring began to develop, the Spanish took steps to protect their racial purity and keep themselves at the top of a racial hierarchy. Initially, this model drew upon the medieval Spanish tradition of limpieza de sangre (purity of bloodline), which signified that one’s ancestry was free from Jews, Moors, or heretics convicted by the Inquisition. In medieval Spain, limpieza provided “old Christians” access to restricted ecclesiastical and political posts and fed a growing Spanish obsession with purity.3 As notions of Spanish purity moved across the Atlantic, they adapted to the colonial world, where they contributed to the development of a system that favored “pure” Spanish ancestry in the way that limpieza had originally privileged untainted Christian ancestry. Racial categories such as mulato, español, mestizo, and pardo were conceived to identify the ancestral mixture of a given individual, thus supporting a system that privileged those of undiluted Spanish ancestry.

Without Impediment: Crossing Racial Boundaries in Colonial MexicoAuthor(s): Jake FrederickSource: The Americas, Vol. 67, No. 4 (April 2011), pp. 495-515Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41239107

Bonus: Because it was easier to avoid attention in the outskirts of the colonies, you’ll notice concentrations of conversos happen in Northern Mexico (Sonora, Arizona, New Mexico, for example.)

Another book review -

The New Christians’ strategies for resisting the persecution to which they were subjected included (among many other tactics) concealment of their family origins, direct appeals to the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies, and emigration to sparsely settled areas of America and Asia. Stanley M. Hordes’s excellent book analyzes New Christian emigration to and settlement in the far northern frontier of the viceroyalty of New Spain. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico, Europe, and the United States, Hordes documents both the lineages and the religious beliefs and practices of the New Christian settlers. Despite the limitations of the sources, Hordes is able to demonstrate that beliefs and practices that were of Jewish origin-however much they may have deviated from normative Judaism-were a persistent feature of the religious life of the northern frontier. The Inquisition, which systematically prosecuted New Christians in central Mexico, was not similarly active in the north. Not only the Jewish descent but also the crypto-Jewish practices of the northern settlers were widely known among contemporaries in New Mexico and in Spain.

Reviewed Work(s): To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexicoby Stanley M. HordesReview by: Thomas M. CohenSource: The Americas, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Oct., 2007), pp. 311-312Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30139120

[meem-didi]

Week 4

Capitalism

Capitalism is a socioeconomic structure focused on ownership and control of production means and its profitable operations. The core characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, a price system, private property,  competitive markets, wage labor, and voluntary exchange.

Below video explains the term capitalism and how it evolved through history giving different examples of countries and eras where this ideology profound  the most.

[Berend, I.T. (2015). Capitalism. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, [online] pp.94–98. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080970868620032 [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

McElvoy, A. (2019). Capitalism: Is it here to stay? | BBC Ideas. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53S5ShUFX0I [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

Caste system

Caste is a complicated and hierarchical social structure that incorporates elements of endogamy, inherited transmission of position, social status, social identity, dominance, exclusion, and authority.

Today, the term "caste" is often used globally to define stratified systems founded on hereditary classes, for example in South Asia.

annetbell (2013). The Caste System. [online] TalesAlongTheWay. Available at: https://talesalongtheway.com/2013/08/11/the-caste-system/ [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

Pandey, J. and Varkkey, B. (2017). Impact of Religion-Based Caste System on the Dynamics of Indian Trade Unions: Evidence From Two State-Owned Organizations in North India. Business & Society, [online] 59(5), pp.995–1034. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0007650317745867 [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

Prerna (2017). Caste system in india, origin and sociologist view. [online] Sociology Group: Your Guide to Global Knowledge. Available at: https://www.sociologygroup.com/caste-system-india-origin-sociologist-view/ [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

Changing roles theory

Role theory posits that the positions that individuals play establish contexts that form behavior. For example, the Stanford Prison Experiment revealed that typical college students had significantly different attitudes based on whether they were assigned to be guards or prisoners in a virtual prison setting.

The perception that there is a progressive movement towards equity of conjugal positions. Maybe the most prominent exponent of this theory is the analysis of Willmott and Young and their belief that positions are progressing toward symmetry.

Popova, M. (2011). The Stanford Prison Experiment: History’s Most Controversial Psychology Study Turns 40. [online] Brain Pickings. Available at: https://www.brainpickings.org/2011/08/17/stanford-prison-experiment-40/ [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

Turner, R.H. (1990). Role Change. Annual Review of Sociology, [online] 16, pp.87–110. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2083264?seq=1 [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

Van Der Horst, M. (2016). Role Theory. [online] obo. Available at: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756384/obo-9780199756384-0175.xml [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

Wright, B. (2007). Everyday Sociology Blog: Role Theory. [online] Everydaysociologyblog.com. Available at: https://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2007/08/role-theory.html [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

Class conflict

Conflict Theory emphasizes on the struggle over scarce resources between groups within society. Conflict theory identifies social and economic structures as instruments of conflict between classes or groups used to preserve inequalities and the dominance of the privileged class.

One of the most influential sociological theories of the social conflict is that of Karl Marx, who placed forth a class dispute between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat that is implicit in capitalist, industrial society. This concept is strong in being complex, intuitively convincing, and appears to match well throughout history.

Butler, C. (1997). Class Conflict For Beginners | Sidewalk Bubblegum Political Comic Cartoon Strip. [online] Sidewalkbubblegum.com. Available at: http://www.sidewalkbubblegum.com/class-conflict-for-beginners/ [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

Chappelow, J. (2019). Conflict Theory Definition. [online] Investopedia. Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conflict-theory.asp [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

Crossman, A. (2011). Class Conflict and Struggle. [online] ThoughtCo. Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/class-conflict-3026134 [Accessed 20 Apr. 2020].

Davies, J.C. (1979). Conflict in Perspective. Understanding Conflict and War, Vol. 3. By R. J. Rummel. (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1977. Pp. 200. $12.95.). American Political Science Review, 73(2), pp.695–696.

[fineillsignup]

Different anon here! Since you’ve been discussing age of consent, I thought I might chime in a bit: Rurouni Kenshin (have you read it?), written in the 1990s, is set in the early years of the Meiji Restoration era in Japan, and the lead hero and heroine are respectively 28 and 17 years old, iirc. This does not mean that the author or the readers are supporters of paedophilia; it’s just that the work reflects cultural and societal norms prevalent at the time it is based on (1)

which are otherwise unacceptable today, thanks to a healthier collective understanding of childhood and physiological and psychological maturity and a stricter stance on crimes against minors. Age of adulthood in Narutoverse is much harder to pin down but I think there’s some tentative proof for it being 18. Remember Jiraiya’s statement to Konan? I hesitate to take it seriously - because holy hell Jiraiya, you’re perving on a lieral child, STOP – but it’s there.

That said, at what point does adulthood begin in a society that raises trains 5-year-olds for combat and espionage and whatnot and sends them out to war??? It *clenches fist* angers me that Kishi acknowledges this issue and so many others but never properly redresses them, and shinobi nations continue to practice child labour and child militarization, which paints the new leaders in such a terrible light.

Point is a) the continued employment of children and teenagers for hazardous purposes needs to fucking stop b) regardless of that, age of adulthood should be at a reasonably acceptable value, and c) fuck Kishi’s world-building and storytelling, and bless all the fanfic authors who try to fix these in-world problems in their works.

As far as shipping Sakura goes, though, I kinda prefer slow-burn Sakura-centric fics that take the time to have her grow as a person and shinobi and develop her as a character (because Kishi’s writing of women is just….well. Nope.) and they almost always have her at 19-20+.

(Above is a copy/paste of further asks from the same anon.)

This ask actually dates back to the previous time the KakaSaku community on Tumblr dealt with a wave of hate, or maybe two times ago, IDK, it’s kinda like the ocean on here, and just as salty.

I recently stumbled across a blog where a Shika//Tema shipper was semi-politely (how polite can you be dealing with batshit) trying to deal with a person who was insisting that Shika fucking Tema was a “predatory” ship because of the age difference (three years! three years!!!).

It’s this worldview where a ship’s potential to be abusive means not only that every possible iteration in all universes of this pairing is automatically abusive, but also that anyone who supports these ships has cooties and must be shunned, lest they curse you with the evil eye by looking at your fanart with their tainted gazes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Narutoverse is a fairly strange world since it’s a uncoordinated, anachronistic mix of a society that’s literally only just transitioned from a totally lawless, clan-centric, world of constant and total war (to the point where children are expected to join the battelfield as soon as they can grip a kunai), to some extremely messed up villages in a mercenary relationship to literal feudal lords. That’s well within 100 years of the beginning of Naruto.

Moreover, it’s difficult to at all determine the Narutoverse’s norms for sexual behaviour and marriage because Kishimoto breaks into hives at the idea of having to write anything in that realm. We’re left trying to connect the dots between things like clear clan endogamy among certain clans like the Uchiha and the Hyuuga; the unexplained male/female ratio imbalance among shinobi; the really inexplicable low birthrate among shinobi; the lack of civilian characters outside of Teuchi and Ayame; the lack of shinobi characters with true civilian background; the fact that Sunagakure apparently is ruled by some form of hereditary monarchy; the explicitly pro-natal, pro-children “Will of Fire”; almost no one in Kakashi’s generation has any romantic/sexual entanglements; etc etc etc. Are marriages arranged? Some combination of arranged and not arranged? Do people have sex outside of marriage, is it frowned upon, is there a different standard for men vs women, is there a different standard for shinobi vs civilians? Do shinobi and civilians ever intermarry? Why are so few shinobi married at all? Why do so many married shinobi have only one or two children when the death rate is so high?

It’s a confusing mess. The Narutoverse is pretty clearly sexist and within living memory of a time that seemed to have been even more sexist, but it’s not anything like as sexist as real world feudal and clan-based military societies. At the same time, it’s not anything like modern Japan (or Europe or other developed societies) either. Regarding child labour and child militarization, you see slow progress from pre-Konoha (routine, ubiquitous fighting five-year-olds getting killed) to Naruto’s era (only the most exceptionally talented preteens like Itachi see active duty, and most people don’t start taking dangerous missions until they are teens). Yet as of the Naruto ending and into Boruto, progress in this area has completely stagnated.

All of this fighting, fighting, fighting and the constant spectre of death throws another wrinkle into the concept of an age gap relationship. In the real, modern world, if a sixteen year old and a thirty year old want to have sex, even granting that they live in an area where the age of consent is 16 (which is the entirety of my country of Canada), I would still urge them both to wait until the teenager has been living an independent adult life for a few years, and it would be difficult to conjecture a motivation for the thirty year old that wasn’t predatory. But if you’re living in a society where every day has a good chance of being the day you take a jutsu to the jugular, if the sixteen-year-old is already functioning as an adult within the society, if the sixteen year old and the thirty year old really have a meeting of minds, if another sixteen-year-old in that society has literally been ruling a nation for four years? Suddenly it gets a lot more complex?

Plus of course there’s the idea that no one should be allowed to write about fucked up relationships. We only allow pure and completely unproblematic ships in this saga of a demon-infused boy raising himself and fighting other tweenagers in arena death matches. [/sarcasm]

God that got long. Have a more succinct KakaSaku response to the haters gif as a present for scrolling this far.