Why Are Violent Cultures More Gender Egalitarian? (Spartans, Vikings, Scythians, Appalachian, etc.)

In this script, the discussion centers on the relationship between gender egalitarianism and violent societies throughout history. The hosts challenge the stereotype that violence and gender equality cannot coexist by examining cultures like the Vikings, Spartans, Iroquois Confederacy, Scythians, and historical Islam. Each society highlighted had unique roles for women, often more egalitarian than their contemporaries, which challenges modern perceptions. The hosts provide examples of empowered female figures, address misconceptions about the treatment of women in Muslim history, and reflect on how historical gender dynamics have influenced modern views. The discussion is peppered with humor and personal anecdotes, engaging the audience in a thought-provoking exploration of gender roles.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] HEllo, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about, despite the public perception to the contrary, where people are like, Oh, well, women are the peaceful gender.

Speaker 6: This will be the first instance of capital punishment in our society due to our awesomeness. So we are forced to improvise. We placed a boulder on that ledge.

Speaker 4: Y y you're gonna crush us with a boulder?!

Speaker 6: No! Stop interrupting. The boulder falls onto a lever that will launch knives.

Fine! You were right the first time, okay? The boulder crushes you. Happy? No, just ignore them. Ignore them.

Malcolm Collins: And therefore societies that are peaceful. Would be more pro women. And yet Historically speaking, we find the exact opposite trend. The more, and I will add a little note here, Successfully violent

Simone Collins: Yeah, casting shade already.

Malcolm Collins: The [00:01:00] more gender egalitarian that culture is likely to be in a historic context.

Speaker 3: You're a young lady now. You gotta start wearing dresses.

How? Folks would call me a sissy.

Malcolm Collins: And I had never realized this until today. I was listening to some people talk and I just started thinking, I was like, Okay. You know, what they were talking about Spartans versus us. And they were like, well, Spartans was actually generally gender more, more equal by a significant degree. And I was sort of thinking like, wait, Oh my gosh, every super violent culture.

I can think of from history was more gender equal than its neighbors. And people are going to be thinking, Oh, what about Islam? We'll get to that. We'll get to that because you are not considering the context at which it rose nor its neighboring cultural groups within that context. But, let's start here with Viking culture, right? North Viking culture. Love the

Simone Collins: Vikings. All about the Vikings.

Speaker 8: You Should be really proud of your wife, at least.

I mean, [00:02:00] Freyja dove into that pillaging 100%. Even took part in quite a lot of the

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-10: Gripping.

Speaker 9: .

Huh? Freyja forced all kinds of monks to let her write and stuff. I didn't really expect that. I was totally blown away when I suddenly saw her on top of this monk, moaning and groaning. Seriously, !

Speaker 10: Of course, I mean, that's what you do when you pillage.

Malcolm Collins: The women were primarily responsible for managing the household and farm.

This involved running the farm while men were away on raids or trading expeditions. They managed finances and household resources. Women's domestic authority was highly respected as evidenced by archaeological findings like the Hasmari tradition praising a woman's skill for running the farm. So the farm of the day would have been the business, right?

Like it

Simone Collins: almost sounds like women were like Listen, just go off and play. Don't come back home until the sun is down. I'll just handle everything. And then you go do [00:03:00] you do you and maybe you get some treasure. Whatever you

Malcolm Collins: treat me. You're like, you do your little podcast. Let's just manage all our finances and businesses.

And you can say you run it. Sweethearts.

Simone Collins: Is it not a traditional relationship? Sword and shield, Malcolm. Sword and shield. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: we talk about this as a traditional relationship model. In which 1 partner does something that is safe and meant to bring in a reliable income and the other partner makes big bets.

They had the ability to own land and property. They had the right to initiate divorce proceedings. They had the freedom to run a business, and they had the opportunity to serve as clergy. Like, this is very gender egalitarian. Oh gosh, I thought you

Simone Collins: said service clergy, as in, you know, do them some favors.

No, no, no. Service

Malcolm Collins: as clergy. They could not vote or speak at assemblies. I mean, these people weren't animals. They were prohibited from being chieftains or judges. They could offer witness in legal proceedings, [00:04:00] and they were considered subject to their husbands after marriage. Generally speaking, this seems fairly sane as a societal.

Well, I mean, I think

Simone Collins: I think one of these situations is you have to actually look at how things worked functionally. So you may be subject to a partner technically, but if you handle the farm and the finances and the household, you can get divorced at will. I mean, like, it's a little clear, like there's.

Some balance here. I mean, you have to give the men something cause otherwise there's like apparently nothing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I will say that they, uh, by the way, great game. If you want to experience this, I should probably promote more games, but Vikings , I want to say

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-11: The game's name is Viking expeditions, and it's a good historical reenactment of what it would have been like to. Manage a Viking rating group.

Malcolm Collins: It's actually one of my favorite games I've ever played. And I played it through like three [00:05:00] times.

Simone Collins: Wait,

Malcolm Collins: You can marry people at the end of the game. You can, yeah. There's this

Simone Collins: one game that you were playing where you were like marrying off various generations and getting really strategic about it. And I can't remember what.

Oh, no, that

Malcolm Collins: wasn't Vikings. You're thinking of oh, gosh, what game is that? A Crusader Kings. That's it. But Vikings is an isometric turn based game. And they do a great job of depicting Viking culture, because I think a lot of people don't understand that these people who were going out and absolutely murder lesting the, the people of Britain, the people of France, the people of Germany, they did a very good job at spreading very quickly.

Like the Muslims did, which we'll get to in a second, but they were like a, almost like a invasive species where they could just own the local species. And the local species was dramatically less gender egalitarian.

Simone Collins: Yeah, the way I look at it is. The Vikings were Sea Peoples, but successful because they actually just called them the [00:06:00] Vikings instead of Sea Peoples who never really got a name, you know, cause they didn't do anything.

The Vikings got s**t done.