What Does an Egalitarian Society Look Like?
Creating an equitable utopian fantasy world
When I first started outlining Garden of Prosperity, before I had committed to writing a utopian fantasy novel, I stuck to the usual quasi-medieval class system. But I quickly found that that system was at best useless and at worst an actual distraction from the story I wanted to tell. I didn’t want things like class to be factors in my characters’ conflicts, because I wanted to get at something far more essential than that.
Obviously, you can still write a character-driven drama about fundamental human issues and misunderstandings within a class system. Jane Austen did it flawlessly over 200 years ago.
But that issue got me thinking about why I had a class system in my fantasy world at all, and what the alternative would look like. And the utopian world I started imagining was so much more interesting and useful than the generic fantasy world I had been creating, that I stuck with it. But it’s been a lot more challenging.
What Does “Egalitarian” Really Mean?
Building a functional fictional utopian society takes a bit of thought when you’re someone who has grown up in a capitalist society. I’m accustomed to seeing things like “equality” as patches to be applied to a flawed program. So now I have to write a whole new program without accidentally copying the flaws in the one I’m used to.
For instance, when we use the word “egalitarian,” we usually use it in the context of equality between male and female. If someone says, “It was an egalitarian society,” that usually means men and women weren’t very segregated in terms of work. Literally, the word means, “asserting, resulting from, or characterized by belief in the equality of all people, especially in political, economic, or social life.”1 It encompasses much more than just equal wages for equal work.
So, instead of putting a “no misogyny” patch on the society I’m familiar with, I’ve got to really rethink it from the ground up.
Examples of Fictional Egalitarian Societies
To clarify what I’m talking about, I want to look at a couple of fictional societies that stand out to me as being non-misogynistic, but still very defined by class. They’re “egalitarian” in the usual sense, but not in the real sense. Then I want to compare them to a utopian society.
In both the Chiss Ascendancy (seen in Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn: Ascendancy series) and in the Fire Nation (seen in Avatar: The Last Airbender), we see societies where there is no overt sexism. Men and women can become heads of state, and male and female soldiers (in the Ascendancy especially), seem to be treated equally. These are both relatively militaristic societies with comparatively small populations, which may have contributed to this.
However, both of these societies are still highly stratified in terms of class. The Fire Nation is a monarchy, and the Chiss Ascendancy is ruled by an aristocracy. Poverty and piracy exist within the Ascendancy, so while misogyny isn’t an integral part of society, it’s not a truly egalitarian society, either.
Aldous Huxley’s Island, on the other hand, depicts far more traditional gender roles and heteronormativity (we know homosexuality is not illegal, but don’t see any gay people with the possible exception of the villain). And yet, in spite of that lack, it’s a far more egalitarian society overall. Everyone has all they need, whether they’re highly intelligent philosophers or mere laborers, and no one has obscene wealth. Children are free to live with other parents if their birth parents aren’t meeting their emotional needs. Teenagers are free to have safe, responsible sex with one another.
It’s not an entirely perfect society, but it does show that true egalitarianism goes beyond just eliminating institutional misogyny.
So What Does a Real Egalitarian Society Look Like?
One of the reasons sci-fi and fantasy become dated so quickly is because limited ideas about egalitarianism become very clear in hindsight. You’ve got a futuristic world, but all of the scientists are men? You’ve created a utopian island, but everyone there is content with ‘traditional’ gender roles? No matter how progressive an author believes themself to be, they’re always going to have blind spots. The more privileged a writer is, the more diligently they’re going to have to work to find them all.
That’s why it helps to have some tools. You can review the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights2 as a starting point. The following are what I’m keeping in mind specifically as I write my own utopia.
To be truly egalitarian, a society must have:
Universally accessible healthcare: Access to healthcare cannot be limited based on class or wealth.
Total disability accessibility: Disabled people must not live in a world created for able-bodied/neurotypical people, by able-bodied/neurotypical people. The society must be made for all, by all.
Freedom from discrimination: There can be no preferential treatment or discrimination, legally or socially, for different sexes, abilities, genders, sexual orientations, etc.
Rights for children: All people, regardless of age and mental development, must have full human rights and must not be considered property.
Age of consent: The age of consent must exist and be protected, as the power imbalance inherent in adult-child relationships goes against the egalitarian ethos.
At the end of the day, remember what Mica at Ponderful says: “Any kind of exclusionary or divisive mentality will always be antithetical to collective liberation.”3
Excluding anyone, in any part of society, from the rights that others have, means you don’t have an egalitarian society. If you find something that seems absurd (women in positions of authority, gay politicians, trans athletes, child senators, etc.) ask yourself why it seems absurd. It could be a blind spot that will become glaringly obvious in hindsight.
What to Expect Next:
At some point, I’ll discuss prisons and population control, but I’m not sure what order I’ll post those in.
Image Credit: https://pixabay.com/users/stark8-1158589/
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/egalitarian
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
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