So I'm ready to start doing some worldbuilding stuff again, and at @pinkgothic's suggestion, I'm going to try to tackle the topic of sex and gender roles and relations for the takmar and the xtauh; the two species remain similar enough that most statements on this topic apply to both, and those differences that crop up can be mentioned at the appropriate time. (By contrast, it should be assumed, unless stated otherwise, that most of this does not apply to the orghysh, who have very different dynamics.) This is going to take a number of schlaughs, since it's a complicated subject and there are a number of separate subtopics that are worth exploring.
Before I begin, though, I would like to insert a brief disclaimer here, since this is a topic that, in one aspect or another, many people have strong feelings about:
I am, generally speaking, socially liberal, and in particular I believe firmly that so long as they're not going out of their way to bother anyone else in the process, People Should Get To Decide, Not Be Told, Who And What They Are, How To Be Happy, And Who They Sleep With. Therefore, it should not be taken as any reflection of my personal philosophy that Avishraa is a world that contains many prejudices - including around sex and orientation and gender identity - and all the generally unpleasant behaviors that can follow from such prejudices.
I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Avishraa, as a whole, is not meant to be an ideal of anything, but a realistic, or at least believable, world. Certainly examples of tolerance exist, but it would not be credible, given everything else that's been established about the inhabitants, that they'd all be inclined to live and let live, and therefore there is no also shortage of examples in which they behave toward each other in fashions that range from “unfair” to “really damn horrible”.
That having been spelled out…
…it may be best to start with some sociobiology.
The proto-takmar - the common ancestors of the takmar and the xtauh - first entered what is now called the Brightness approximately 74 thousand cycles ago. In what might loosely be called their “natural” state - though it seems likely that they had acquired at least some aspects of sophonce by this point - individual proto-takmar each had a defined territory which they sought to defend from others of the same sex, though there was often leeway given to one's own siblings. Female territories tended to be smaller and more strictly defined, limited by the requirement to remain near a nesting site; male territories were much larger and more nebulous, and without any particular center, with the male inclined to wander around in it as his path took him.
Male territories almost always overlapped with those of a number of females, but were poorly defined enough that they also often overlapped with each other, so that female territories might, in turn, be visited by a number of different males. It was usual for a male to bring the female a present of food or goods during a visit, to gain - or maintain - her favor by helping provide for her and for those children she was caring for. From an evolutionary standpoint, this served as a signal to the female that the male could provide for offspring (despite not being greatly involved in their early childhood otherwise) and served as a possible inducement for her to choose to bear his young rather than others'.
At the time, much of the region consisted of savannas and xeric shrublands: more hospitable than the current desert, but at the same time more marginal than the grasslands they had left behind. The need to remain near their nests kept female territories within a certain area, but male territories compensated by expanding and overlapping even further, and, over time, the concept of individual male territories began to break down. What eventually emerged was a paradigm in which males, though inclined to roam within defined areas, did so with little instinctive friction between each other, though battles over resource usage remained a possibility.
The tendency of males to provide gifts for females, meanwhile, aside from becoming ever more vital to the maintenance of mothers and their offspring, began to take on a social role. Those who found themselves to be particularly frequent recipients of presents from prospective suitors could, on occasion, accumulate surplus food. Since there were few known methods of preservation, and spoiled food was good to nobody, those who had food to spare often found it more advantageous to gain the gratitude and allegiance of other females, who in turn found such benefactors to be desirable neighbors.
Those females who accumulated surplus food, of course, became the targets of those who they felt no need to help, or who were still desperate, or simply the greedy, and the ability to defend one's territory became increasingly important. Females, who had up until this time been slightly smaller than the males, began to become larger, and size itself became an attractive trait to males; larger females could bear more young and could defend them and their food supply. At the same time, however, larger females required more food to stay healthy - and to feed their daughters - and also found it harder to balance their time between dealing with their neighbors and raising their young.
Up until now, males had not been much involved in family life. Providing for a female and her children increased a male's chances of having offspring by her, but did not guarantee it; nor was it likely that all of her children were his, even if some were. Therefore, although males might make frequent stops at a female's nest to deposit food and keep her attention, they did not participate in raising young; instead, when one of a male's mates had a son approaching an age at which he should leave the nest, he might take him along as an assistant or companion (since there was at least a chance that the younger male might be his son). As females began to engage more in social interaction, so too did the males, and what began as father-son teams began to morph into packs held together by bonds which were defined, if not by literal blood relationships, then at least a kind of perception of kinship.
The increasing need for assistance in rearing children caused females to begin preferring males who were willing not merely to devote material assistance to her children, but also to spend time with them - to join the female in feeding and defending them. This arrangement had some benefits for a male willing to remain in place as well, since, if he had low reproductive success by wandering - whether because he was not sufficiently handsome or because he could not provide enough food to impress any females - he had a chance at higher reproductive success with a particular female who valued his willingness to devote himself to her children. Since the more males there were, the more assistance the female would have - and since there was no recent evolutionary history of monogamy - the females had an incentive to maintain multiple mates.
By 35 thousand cycles ago, this kind of polyandry had become the norm. It was aided and abetted by two subsequent evolutionary developments; the first was that male children became more common than female children, since daughters represented a higher parental investment. The second was that one of the remaining clues that males might have had to distinguish their own offspring from others' - and to prefer caring for them over a female's other children - was removed when the proto-takmar, shortly before their divergence into takmar and xtauh, gained the ability to delay conception. This appeared as an adaptive response to the desertification of the Brightness, which made it advantageous to be able to time the production of offspring to periods when resources were plentiful. Combined with the ability of females to choose the sperm used to conceive with - which they had already had for a very long time - this prevented males from deducing the paternity of children from timing.
By twelve thousand cycles ago, the state of the sexes had achieved approximately its modern form:
- Females are generally larger and have overall more muscle mass than males. Partly for this reason, males are generally better fliers; other reasons are that males have more powerful flight muscles in particular, and proportionally larger wings.
- Females have a lower center of gravity than males do, and are therefore more stable when standing and moving bipedally. This makes it easier for them to use their forepaws while moving.
- Females are almost universally more territorial than males are; this does not (necessarily) mean they covet what belongs to others, but they desire clarity over what is theirs and what is not, and are watchful for unsanctioned intrusions. This applies most literally to land, but extends also to any other things a female might have possessive feelings toward: moveable property, family, even insubstantial things such as job duties, rights, beliefs, and so on.
- Females are almost universally status-conscious. A female who is ranked higher in status by her fellows will be able to exert her will more effectively over them, especially if they are directly affiliated with her (i.e., if she is “theirs” as opposed to some other group's), and they will tend to defer to her. (Among the xtauh, this is usually limited to a kind of first-among-equals deference; among takmar it extends to obeying orders and formal allegiance.) The determinants of status vary between cultures, but physical appearance, wealth, effect on males, number of children, achievements, or prowess are all common candidates.
- Females also have a sense of their own status - closely related, though not the same as, self-esteem - and this has a physical representation in how dark their facial and spinal markings are; the darker the markings, the higher the status a female feels she has. A female whose opinion of herself is too much higher than the public perception of her status is likely to be viewed negatively.
- Females are generally polyandrous by inclination. While this does not mean that a female might not purposely stick to a single mate for reasons of her own, most who find it feasible to have more than one will do so.
- Females can store sperm for some time after coitus; they have considerable influence, though not absolute control, over whether and when they conceive with it. They can also, if more than one male's sperm is present, choose which one she wishes to use (or which ones; a clutch of eggs may not all be fathered by the same individual). The chance and timing of conception is also affected by environmental factors, which are also largely responsible for the size of the clutch produced.
- Females who have put down roots in a home are generally reluctant to travel far from it, and usually do so only for important reasons. (In most societies, the occasion of a female moving to a new home, or of a daughter leaving her mother's home, is of extreme importance.) An adult female without a home, or at least what she considers a likelihood of finding one, often begins to experience distress and feelings of being lost, exposed, or vulnerable.
- Males are generally less status-conscious than females. On an individual level, females compete at least as much for each other as they do to attract mates; males, however, compete almost solely over mates, and in a polyandrous species do not have to compete as hard to be successful.
- Males tend to be gregarious, and to associate themselves with groups of males with whom they share strong, family-like bonds, though it is not at all unusual for these to include actual family members such as fathers, sons, or brothers. Whereas individual males are limited in their competition, inter-group relations usually make up a convoluted web of alliances, affinities, rivalries, and economic relationships.
- Males tend to come in one of two loose types. The first is migratory; the male travels around without a permanent home but usually in the company of other males, and trysts with females found along the way, though he may have favored partners that he returns to periodically. The second is sedentary: the male settles down in a particular place and is more likely to have long-term, or even formalized, relations, and to participate in family life. Most males are of the first type when younger, after leaving home, and then become the second when more mature, or when they find females willing to take them into their household; but some males remain of the first type for their whole lives, while others jump straight into the second type, with a brief or no time spent in the first.
- Though the specifics vary from culture to culture, in almost all of them, it remains a cornerstone of any type of sexual or romantic relationship that a suitor should give something to a prospective lover to stoke interest.