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teamwork worldbuilding babble
*nerd, nerd, i'm a nerd~*
Trying to work out stuff I wrote in that sidefic I just posted two days ago. (are you getting tired of my worldbuilding posts yet? ff7 and genjutsu and now that... XD)
(note, this is all Teamworkverse-based extrapolation. AFAIK canon isn't shown to have concubines in the first place, and we know about less than zero things about Earth Country's social order anyway. Maybe they do! but, srsly, it's a case of "well, they don't NOT have them either." Like the fox area summoning.)
Plz not to be bringing the current "Kishimoto is sexist!!/no he isn't!!" wank in this post thank you. I'm working with in-universe sexism, not authorial intent.
So Earth Country might allow men to have male concubines, therefore legitimizing male/male relationships somewhat, but even though Fire has zero male/male laws it's still more socially advanced.
This is how:
If we only judge from the male/female ratio in ninja teams, most if not all countries seem to be somewhat sexist to start with, or at least have some gender-based role distribution. Considering 1/3rd of the fighting force is female and a woman is Hokage and old woman Koharu is a hokage's advisor, there is probably less of a glass ceiling in the ninja world at least, but no widespread equality anywhere! But.
Fire Country believes mostly what Japan / Western countries believes about marriage -- that the man might be intended to be the head of the family (and you take it seriously or not seriously as you wish), and it'd be nice if they had and raised children which is more the mom's job than not, but the wife still has a lot of rights, and, say, wife beating is not alright. Perfect equality between men and women is probably a laudable goal but they're still not there yet and there's still something of a "men and women are inherently different" mindset. But in a way... A husband doesn't have the right to prevent his wife from working a job she wants to work, and he doesn't have a right to keep her barefoot and pregnant, and you don't have a passel of male relatives making sure a woman gets married to a suitable guy of their choice -- see Tsunade for example, who really doesn't seem to come from such a mindset, or Inuzuka Tsume, who leads her own ninja clan thank you very much. (Or Anko. I'd like to see Anko being a good little wifey.)
They did evolve from a "marriage is a way to ally two clans or to give a man heirs" mindset, but from what we see today in the behavior of the female ninjas, nowadays unless they have some kind of old tradition to preserve most people marry for love first.
The right to have a concubine in Fire Country was even almost abolished at some point, and the only reason it still exists -- albeit in a very regulated way -- is that they have to strike a balance between their changing views on social justice and what marriage means, and the traditions the old clans who immigrated to Konoha to flee persecution demanded they keep.
In that optic, Fire Country concubine laws are severely restricted. You have to *apply* for them; it's not an automatic right, it's a special dispensation. You have to present your case -- "why I need several women/several heirs, what would be lost if I didn't get them". (Sasuke's excuse, if he did, would be "I need to maximize genetic diversity" by the way. That's the angle people are going with to try to convince him, since he showed zero interest in reaffirming or creating clan alliances.) Of course if you have influence or money you're more likely to get it approved, too. So... civilians probably never do get concubines and consider it a very outdated practice; only daimyos, yakuza and bloodline clans still bother with it, and even then not that often.
And after that, the concubine and children are afforded a solid legal status and a certain amount of money to assure their financial safety. Divorcing a concubine is probably even harder than divorcing a wife, since in the "love=marriage" optic if you took a concubine there had to have been a reason totally unrelated to whether you get along really well with her. Either she would have to be sterile or you'd need to have been betrayed by her clan and therefore you feel that you must officially sever your ties of blood with them.
(in other words it's probably easier to just agree with your wife that having an open marriage is a-okay. ... or just go and cheat on her and get sued for alimony. >__>;)
Also, it's less common, but entirely possible for a man to marry into a clan, or for a woman to lead a clan. Example: Inuzuka Tsume, head of clan, had a husband/lover who gave her two children and then left her, and it doesn't change a thing to her status. Her older child is a woman as well, and it hasn't been stated how the clan head position is passed down (the Inuzuka clan is probably rather relaxed like that) but Hana doesn't seem to be disqualified from the start just for being a girl. Hyuuga Hinata and Hyuuga Hanabi are seen as perfectly valid choices for clan head, so long as they aren't disqualified for unsuitable personality reasons. Teamwork OCs example: the Kagami clan, which at the moment is led by the husband of the deceased female clan leader until her heir (eldest child, a girl) comes of age.
Whereas Earth Country's concubine laws are so "boy concubine or girl concubine, it's all okay" because they're mostly centered on what the husband/master wants and needs, and they only have the rights he chooses to afford them. Concubines are still even now for alliances and/or pleasure and/or social status and/or spare heirs. A man still cannot marry another man, because marriage is about creating his main heir and they don't have Mpreg figured out. (:p) So there's no "Husband & Husband of Equal Status and Influence", it's always "V.Important Husband & Love Toy Concubine."
[So they're not as "a man who sleeps with men is automatically eww" since they have the "keeping teenage pretty boys on the side even though you have three wives" precedent, and so as a whole they lean a little more on "almost everyone is a little bi" (though it's also seen by some to be a high-born perversion/pastime, and the working classes have to be more responsible), but someone who's seen as a boy-whore (as in, someone who really looks/behaves uke) is guaranteed to catch some flak. And a big macho he-man who likes to be dominated and take it up the ass will keep that secret like a real world married minister would hide his many hustler friends.]
Also it's not possible even there to have a woman be the master/husband figure. Wife is a better status than concubine but still not one where you can have concubines of your own. It's the personal choice of the husband to allow his wife to have access to his concubines, but that's a private matter, not a legal one.
... Now I have to figure out a Narutoverse civilization that would naturally have evolved to allow women to have several husbands. It'll probably have to be a rather isolated place, because it would be very divergent from the rest of the narutoverse/teamworkverse and i'm not sure how to avoid social contamination that would pressure that custom into disappearing, but I'd love to write a ficlet for about ten years down the road where Sakura discovers documents talking about that tiny country/island/valley and is immediately LET'S GO ON VACATION about it. It would probably be more of a joke than actual teamwork canon (bit too much of a coincidence and "didn't you already write that one? >__>" otherwise) but it would crack me up. XD
But, what kind of logic would lead them to it? Hrrm. Halp plz?
Trying to work out stuff I wrote in that sidefic I just posted two days ago. (are you getting tired of my worldbuilding posts yet? ff7 and genjutsu and now that... XD)
(note, this is all Teamworkverse-based extrapolation. AFAIK canon isn't shown to have concubines in the first place, and we know about less than zero things about Earth Country's social order anyway. Maybe they do! but, srsly, it's a case of "well, they don't NOT have them either." Like the fox area summoning.)
Plz not to be bringing the current "Kishimoto is sexist!!/no he isn't!!" wank in this post thank you. I'm working with in-universe sexism, not authorial intent.
So Earth Country might allow men to have male concubines, therefore legitimizing male/male relationships somewhat, but even though Fire has zero male/male laws it's still more socially advanced.
This is how:
If we only judge from the male/female ratio in ninja teams, most if not all countries seem to be somewhat sexist to start with, or at least have some gender-based role distribution. Considering 1/3rd of the fighting force is female and a woman is Hokage and old woman Koharu is a hokage's advisor, there is probably less of a glass ceiling in the ninja world at least, but no widespread equality anywhere! But.
Fire Country believes mostly what Japan / Western countries believes about marriage -- that the man might be intended to be the head of the family (and you take it seriously or not seriously as you wish), and it'd be nice if they had and raised children which is more the mom's job than not, but the wife still has a lot of rights, and, say, wife beating is not alright. Perfect equality between men and women is probably a laudable goal but they're still not there yet and there's still something of a "men and women are inherently different" mindset. But in a way... A husband doesn't have the right to prevent his wife from working a job she wants to work, and he doesn't have a right to keep her barefoot and pregnant, and you don't have a passel of male relatives making sure a woman gets married to a suitable guy of their choice -- see Tsunade for example, who really doesn't seem to come from such a mindset, or Inuzuka Tsume, who leads her own ninja clan thank you very much. (Or Anko. I'd like to see Anko being a good little wifey.)
They did evolve from a "marriage is a way to ally two clans or to give a man heirs" mindset, but from what we see today in the behavior of the female ninjas, nowadays unless they have some kind of old tradition to preserve most people marry for love first.
The right to have a concubine in Fire Country was even almost abolished at some point, and the only reason it still exists -- albeit in a very regulated way -- is that they have to strike a balance between their changing views on social justice and what marriage means, and the traditions the old clans who immigrated to Konoha to flee persecution demanded they keep.
In that optic, Fire Country concubine laws are severely restricted. You have to *apply* for them; it's not an automatic right, it's a special dispensation. You have to present your case -- "why I need several women/several heirs, what would be lost if I didn't get them". (Sasuke's excuse, if he did, would be "I need to maximize genetic diversity" by the way. That's the angle people are going with to try to convince him, since he showed zero interest in reaffirming or creating clan alliances.) Of course if you have influence or money you're more likely to get it approved, too. So... civilians probably never do get concubines and consider it a very outdated practice; only daimyos, yakuza and bloodline clans still bother with it, and even then not that often.
And after that, the concubine and children are afforded a solid legal status and a certain amount of money to assure their financial safety. Divorcing a concubine is probably even harder than divorcing a wife, since in the "love=marriage" optic if you took a concubine there had to have been a reason totally unrelated to whether you get along really well with her. Either she would have to be sterile or you'd need to have been betrayed by her clan and therefore you feel that you must officially sever your ties of blood with them.
(in other words it's probably easier to just agree with your wife that having an open marriage is a-okay. ... or just go and cheat on her and get sued for alimony. >__>;)
Also, it's less common, but entirely possible for a man to marry into a clan, or for a woman to lead a clan. Example: Inuzuka Tsume, head of clan, had a husband/lover who gave her two children and then left her, and it doesn't change a thing to her status. Her older child is a woman as well, and it hasn't been stated how the clan head position is passed down (the Inuzuka clan is probably rather relaxed like that) but Hana doesn't seem to be disqualified from the start just for being a girl. Hyuuga Hinata and Hyuuga Hanabi are seen as perfectly valid choices for clan head, so long as they aren't disqualified for unsuitable personality reasons. Teamwork OCs example: the Kagami clan, which at the moment is led by the husband of the deceased female clan leader until her heir (eldest child, a girl) comes of age.
Whereas Earth Country's concubine laws are so "boy concubine or girl concubine, it's all okay" because they're mostly centered on what the husband/master wants and needs, and they only have the rights he chooses to afford them. Concubines are still even now for alliances and/or pleasure and/or social status and/or spare heirs. A man still cannot marry another man, because marriage is about creating his main heir and they don't have Mpreg figured out. (:p) So there's no "Husband & Husband of Equal Status and Influence", it's always "V.Important Husband & Love Toy Concubine."
[So they're not as "a man who sleeps with men is automatically eww" since they have the "keeping teenage pretty boys on the side even though you have three wives" precedent, and so as a whole they lean a little more on "almost everyone is a little bi" (though it's also seen by some to be a high-born perversion/pastime, and the working classes have to be more responsible), but someone who's seen as a boy-whore (as in, someone who really looks/behaves uke) is guaranteed to catch some flak. And a big macho he-man who likes to be dominated and take it up the ass will keep that secret like a real world married minister would hide his many hustler friends.]
Also it's not possible even there to have a woman be the master/husband figure. Wife is a better status than concubine but still not one where you can have concubines of your own. It's the personal choice of the husband to allow his wife to have access to his concubines, but that's a private matter, not a legal one.
... Now I have to figure out a Narutoverse civilization that would naturally have evolved to allow women to have several husbands. It'll probably have to be a rather isolated place, because it would be very divergent from the rest of the narutoverse/teamworkverse and i'm not sure how to avoid social contamination that would pressure that custom into disappearing, but I'd love to write a ficlet for about ten years down the road where Sakura discovers documents talking about that tiny country/island/valley and is immediately LET'S GO ON VACATION about it. It would probably be more of a joke than actual teamwork canon (bit too much of a coincidence and "didn't you already write that one? >__>" otherwise) but it would crack me up. XD
But, what kind of logic would lead them to it? Hrrm. Halp plz?