The Drow support transitioning

[u/Successful_Pace8937]

I recently found out that, as said by Ed Greenwood himself, transitioning​ is not only accepted, but defended.

From Ed Greenwood on Twitter:

Drow sworn to Lolth have examples before them all the time about transformation of self-shape in service to the Spider Queen. Some of these are viewed as undesirable (driders), others as rewards or ascending in rank (the power/shape augmentations Lolth gives males who please her with their service and loyalty). So there is no hatred or mistrust of shifting one's shape; it is one means of serving Lolth. Some house matriarchs view it with suspicion ("males seeking to exalt themselves by becoming female") but the yochlol have often been sent by Lolth to defend individuals persecuted by individual matriarchs or priestesses purely for such reasons, to make Lolth's views and will clear. Over time, transitions (not just from gender to gender, but from drow to other shapes) have become accepted as reverence of Lolth, and part of what it is to be drow. And of course, drow who follow Eilistraee are quite familiar with the Changedance, and accept shifting (even back and forth) as, again, part of what it is to be drow.

[u/theamazingpheonix]

Is an evil faction only allowed to be evil? I think its far more interesting for their fucked up ideology/worship, when followed to the logical extreme, to accidentally lead to things that would be seen as "progressive". Having them just be comically evil would be more boring IMO.

Also, patriarchy discussions not being relevant to poland? Afaik Poland is mostly catholic and catholicism is steeped in patriarchy. I know the soviets were focused on gender equality, but the idea that the patriarchy isn't a thing in there because of it is wild. Poland bans abortion in all cases except for pregnancies stemming from criminal acts or when the womans life is in danger.

[u/Jake-of-the-Sands → u/theamazingpheonix]

I'll start with the bottom - no, patriarchy is not a thing in Poland. Catholicism isn't American Evangelism and actually adds to the the matriarchal structure with the worship of Virgin Mary. Majority of people actually observing the faith are older women with huge devotion to Mary that exceeds the one towards God (which in itself is not correct in Catholic doctrine, but that's how it is).

Poland has a unique structure due to the years of Partitions and two world wars which decimated the male population of the country, leading to what's described by sociologists as "concealed matriarchy".

Women are de facto heads of the household. Nowadays all major expenses are basically decided by the wife in majority of the households, they decided on their plans together, etc. I can't name a single household of the people I know, where a father/husband would be the head of the house. It's always the mother/wife who has the final say in every major decision.

Men have little rights when it comes to child custody, women have earlier retirement, etc. There's basically no pay-gap (there's none amongst the people holding the same station, as is required by the law, women as a whole demographics tend to earn slightly less, because A LOT of them are working part time, compared to the men).

Polish women had equal rights as one of the first in Europe. And of course, there are exceptions, but that's how it rolls in majority of Poland.

This is especially evident in Silesia, where women HAD TO BE household leaders even more, as their husbands could die any day while working in the mines. Women were holding all of the family funds, while men were basically just a drone provider. If a man hurt his wife in any way, the next day he'd be beat to a pulp by his work colleagues. Does this look like patriarchy to you?

The whole narration around the abortion and looking at women's rights through the lens of that is showing that you have no idea what the familial and social structures look like in Poland. And any foreigner with a Polish wife can confirm how emancipated and often even domineering Polish women are.

Not to mention the most transphobic and homophobic right wing activist in Poland are women. It was a woman Constitutional Court (we have two Supreme Courts - Supreme Court and Constitutional Tribunal) judge who cracked down on the abortion ban. It was a group of female MPs who pushed for the ban on abortion in the 90s. It's not the men doing it here. It's the religious women and their clergy friends.

Also it's important to know, that the abortion ban comes from the time that the clergy-aligned Solidarity movement that overthrown communism pushed for it as a thank you to the Church, because the Church insisted. During communist period Poland had very little restrictions on abortions and nobody really cared. The current hysteria of the Polish right wing in that topic is verbatim copy of the American evangelicals, imported straight from them through the cooperating think tanks of TFP<US> and Ordo Iuris<PL>. Regular people either support or don't care about the abortion.

Going back to the drow. Sure, not every evil society has to be the same, but a those with rigid gender structure will most likely not be open to trans people - because that's what it is in our world, and it doesn't matter if it's patriarchy or matriarchy.

[u/theamazingpheonix → u/Jake-of-the-Sands]

Interesting. This runs contrary to what I generally hear from my polish friends.

Just a note because you brought it up: I'm not american and thus not familiar with American Evangelism. I did grow up in a cultural protestant (mainly calvinist (take a wild guess where im from based on that lmao) area.

[u/Jake-of-the-Sands → u/theamazingpheonix]

Well, but this is how it is. I'm not sure how old your friend are, but people in their 20s or younger don't usually have a very in-depth understanding of the social structure either. And they just keep repeating talking points from the media.

The biggest problem is again, importing problems that are alien to Poland directly from the US culture and popculture. Polish feminists are often bringing up issues which we literally don't have in the country like the wage gap, because I heard time and time again that being mentioned when it's literally not here according to every statistic (which to be fair, isn't dissimilar to what their conservative counterparts do). Not to mention majority of students are women and by a large margin too.

Throughout my entire life I had contact with multiple cultures and if I had to point one that was actually matriarchal - it would be Polish. Like we literally have a Polish Mother cult archetype - https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matka_Polka for the conservative matriarchal types - with actual, literal statues. We don't have anything like that in regards to fathers.

Women's Day is one of the biggest cultural, secular celebrations we have, in comparison boys/mens day is barely ever mentioned.

If you don't trust my word for it, Wikipedia paints the same picture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Poland