Female Cats

Farbourne

Farbourne

Rear Admiral
Apologies if this thread has been raised before, but a question just occurred to me... What role did female Kilrathi play in their society? Were they a patriarchal or a matriarchal society? The only clues I can remember are that their clerics of Sivar are all female (priestesses, I think?), and that they don't seem to have any femal pilots. At all. At least, none of the aces named are female, and none of the pilot voices sound female (although I can't say that I know exactly what a femal Kilrathi voice sounds like). Also, we never see any female command staff on their starships.

Confed, obviously, is relatively equal when it comes to gender (although male pilots do seem to outnumber female pilots by about 3-1, which is odd because women tend to have better reflexes than men, and there's been plenty of time to work sexism out of the system). Yet the Kilrathi don't seem to think this particularly odd, even though they don't have female pilots themselves...

Is there any further light shed on Kilrathi gender roles in the novels?
 
Farbourne said:
Confed, obviously, is relatively equal when it comes to gender (although male pilots do seem to outnumber female pilots by about 3-1, which is odd because women tend to have better reflexes than men, and there's been plenty of time to work sexism out of the system).
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It's probably just that more men want to be fighter pilots... I don't think I've ever met a girl who wants to be one, anyway.
 
Confed, obviously, is relatively equal when it comes to gender (although male pilots do seem to outnumber female pilots by about 3-1, which is odd because women tend to have better reflexes than men, and there's been plenty of time to work sexism out of the system). Yet the Kilrathi don't seem to think this particularly odd, even though they don't have female pilots themselves...

Better reflexes? explain?
physical differences: Women tend to feel pain more easily then men, yet they can take more(giving birth tends to be a total b*tch on your nervous system. Even though a man is physically stronger in total, pound for pound women can outlast them.

Mental differences: women tend to be more aware of things in their enviroment(as rosie points out in the movie), however, they think in longer pathways in their thought paterns and do not make direct split-second decisions, this is a bad quality in a fighter pilot who would have to make decisions in split-seconds, also women tend to be poor strategists(men can read a map, and overlay it in his thoughts, while women "read" the map(stop at every intersection to read the signs indicating the road)

These are all stereotypes however, of the most simple sort, yet basics of life. Also, you can;t go without each other.
 
Well we DO see female Kilrathi fighter pilots. One at least in the animated series.
 
Apologies if this thread has been raised before, but a question just occurred to me... What role did female Kilrathi play in their society? Were they a patriarchal or a matriarchal society? The only clues I can remember are that their clerics of Sivar are all female (priestesses, I think?), and that they don't seem to have any femal pilots. At all. At least, none of the aces named are female, and none of the pilot voices sound female (although I can't say that I know exactly what a femal Kilrathi voice sounds like). Also, we never see any female command staff on their starships.
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In theory, Kilrathi females have a great deal of power over Kilrathi society. They run the Cult of Sivar, the religion which all Kilrathi warriors follow very zealously. Priestesses perform the various religious ceremonies which are said to decide success or failure in battle... and they also decide the location of the annual Sivar-Eshrad Ceremony, which can have vast political ramifications (since the Kilrathi fleets must converge there... and conquer the world if it is posessed by non-believers).

... but that's just the theory - how the checks and balances should work. In practice, the Imperial clan had a great deal of control over the priesthood (at least during the Terran-Kilrathi War). The Emperor's granddaughter was head priestess and Prince Thrakhath had no problem issuing orders directly to her - up to and including deciding the location of the sacred ceremony himself.

Confed, obviously, is relatively equal when it comes to gender (although male pilots do seem to outnumber female pilots by about 3-1, which is odd because women tend to have better reflexes than men, and there's been plenty of time to work sexism out of the system). Yet the Kilrathi don't seem to think this particularly odd, even though they don't have female pilots themselves...
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That's generally correct - although we do see that Thrakhath's head priestess sister likes hunting humans in her Grikath. Little is known about civilian Kilrathi females (the Confederation's psycho-anthropological profile even says as much), but they do occasional appeal. For example, we see that a Kilrathi female is being left to raise children after her lairmate has gone to war in the Voices of War manual.

(SPOILERS!) They're priestesses, as seen in SM2.
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No, that's a logical fallacy - just because all priestesses are female does not mean that all females are priestesses (similarly, until recently all human priests were male... but all men were not priests).

It's probably just that more men want to be fighter pilots... I don't think I've ever met a girl who wants to be one, anyway.
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Here's a lecture I went to a few months ago -- should disprove the idea that there aren't women who want to fly fighters: mms://media1.smithsonian.museum/nasm/2008/2008_03_27_General_Electric_Lecture.wmv

Well we DO see female Kilrathi fighter pilots. One at least in the animated series.
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That's only a half truth, without the context - since in seeing that *one* female fighter pilot we also see that they are not an ordinary occurance.
 
That's really interesting... Thanks LOAF.

On the appearance of female pilots in Confed:

My understanding is that, according to real Air Force studies I've heard about, women tend to have better reflexes and faster response times than men. Men, on the other hand, tend to be more aggressive and have better geometric and spatial awareness (along the same lines that one person mentioned about keeping a map in one's head versus constantly reading the map).

These results are, of course, on average--I'm sure you can find a significant percentage of women with better spatial skills than a significant percentage of men, and likewise men with better reflexes than women. But it seems to me that both sexes (at least as far as humans go) have strengths that would lend themselves to being fighter pilots, and one would expect similar numbers of each sex in a squadron...

There did seem to be a goodly percentage of minor, named-but-not-important female wingmen in Prophecy--more than the 3-1 ratio seen in the first four games. And it is interesting to note that in the first four games, most of the female pilots you encounter are above average pilots... (except Flint...never understood why she was considered good in the cockpit...)
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Here's a lecture I went to a few months ago -- should disprove the idea that there aren't women who want to fly fighters: mms://media1.smithsonian.museum/nasm/2008/2008_03_27_General_Electric_Lecture.wmv
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Hey, thanks for the link. I haven't seen all of it yet but it looks pretty interesting.

I didn't mean that there are no women who wants to be fighter pilots though, I know there are, I was just pointing out that if there's fewer of them than male pilots it's probably by choice rather than evil space sexists keeping them down.
 
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