Fanclub Dathomir Fan Club - from kwa to witches!

Because going that far is very much a Nightsister level of evil.

 

So enslaving your own children in and of itself isn't evil?

 

It is - and a point is made of how Allya repented this:


It was not until the birth of her granddaughters that Allya saw the error of her ways: she had turned her own sons into slaves and taught her daughters how to use the Force to achieve power. Using her strong influence over her offsprings, she spent the rest of her days instructing her daughters in the ways of the light side.[10]

 

And yet the witches still keep all males as slaves, that´s in courtship, that´s in YJK.

 

I thought only a minority of men were actually "held as property" by witches, with the majority being "free-ranging" so to speak.

 

This time I would like a quote on that.

 

It's a plot point in Fate of the Jedi that there are "all-male" tribes out there, regularly interacting with the Witch dominated tribes.

 

That development probably happened after Courtship and YJK, especially since Courtship and YJK were pre-Yuuzhan Vong War, and FOTJ was afterwards. Between the formation of the Galactic Alliance and Caedus, I wouldn't be surprised if the Dathomir witches were "encouraged" to allow men their freedom for the most part.

 

First didn´t that come through the Jedi influence?

"The Raining Leaves were a group of traditional witches who lived near Redgill Lake on the planet Dathomir. Espousing a traditional matriarchal society and government which had been discouraged among the tribes since reforms were struck in 8 ABY, the Raining Leaves continued to enslave their male members, much to the disfavor of the men. In 33.5 ABY the male slaves that tended the clan sisters staged an uprising, massacring the clan and leaving two-thirds of its members dead. Among the deceased were all males over the age of ten, as well as the clan's leaders. Following the loss, the Raining Leaves became isolated as they tried to rebuild, speaking to no other clan of the disaster"

This quote makes it look like the traditions continued until after Courtship, with some tribes even longer. Also this tribe committed a massacre on its male slaves, when they tried to rise up(how dare they wanting to be free).

 

The NIghtbrothers might also qualify as "not slaves until a Nightsister picks one out to enslave". Hard to tell.

 

Doesn´t Clone Wars just ignore pretty much anything established about Dathomir? I mean Filoni breaks the lore so often on so many things.

 

Doesn't Last of the Jedi combine TCW lore with previous lore- showing us a Zabrak female Witch of Dathomir in Augwynne's tribe?

 

Did you mean "The Last Jedi"? Last of the Jedi was that series with Ferus Olin made before TCW was a thing.
Here is a quote from that novel btw(page 314):

"His hand was hovering over the nav pannel when a third possibility occured to him; that by the "sisters" was meant other Force-users. The could think of only ine such group that could be considered "sisters" of the Jedi and the Gray Paladns: The Witches of Dathomir.
He shook himself. Dathomir was not a safe place for Jedi. Especially male Jedi. Though there were exceptions, most of the Dathomirian clans were extremly materlinela and matriacal. In many, if not most of them, men had been reduced to virtual slavery."

 

Notice "virtual slavery". The implication here is that, by default, the average man on Dathomir is not actually a slave - though they're very close to that status.

 

And that makes it better? I mean its still an oppressive society, even if they aren´t outright called slaves.

 

Agreed that it's oppressive. From Backlash, when Luke's defeated one of the Witches in a sparring match:

“Well fought, lowly man.“
“Well fought, traditionalist oppressor."

Just goes to show that Force-users can be oppressive without actually being darksiders.

 

Oh defenetly, I mean I like the Dathomirians and find them intresting, I just don´t like this notion of some people seeing them as good guys. The witches are pretty flawed and that makes them intresting in my opinion, sadly the EU rarely dealt with these issues.

 

going by CoPL only here in my arguments:
A) because even if Allya was an unusually sexistic woman (evidence toward this is that she supposedly only trained her daughters in 'magic' and "to hunt for their mates"*) so was she still a trained Jedi with all that means, and that means among other things that she knows that males have no control over what children their sperms produce.
B) people, even if they are slaves, are reassures and the pre-Allya people of Dathomir had been "nearly hunted to extinction"* and you would need all the hands available to survive.
C) as said in B so was the pre-Allya people of Dathomir near extinction so any child born alive, no matter the gender, would be a good thing.
D) the slavery we see on Dathomir is not the cattle slavery of the European colonies and USA but more akin to domestic slavery or even the RL situation of free women (and some men) in situations where they were bound (by marriage, blood or work agreement) to somebody who was socially above them. It feel to me that killing of them just because they impregnated you with a son wound not be socially acceptable.
E) something like that feels unfitting for somebody that the Jedi order believed could "turn away from the dark side"* given time to me.
F) combining A to D means that doing something like that is just something you have your bad guy doing to show how feared and Evil with a capital E s/he is.

* Chapter 15 - should be mentioned that this is told as oral history by Teneniel Djo with all that entails.

Possibly. As I remember CoPL are all males on Dathomir called slaves but the treatment of them feel more like the idea of free women was treated in sexistic historical societies.
Maybe it was the authors way of saying that that kind of treatment is in practise slavery.

 

I wonder given Allya had been a Jedi, where her matriarchal coda came from. Could it be that she was a Hapan Jedi? The Cluster might have been locked off at that time but imagine a father fled it with his daughter due to Forcesensitivity being frowned upon inside the cluster. She could have been trained as Jedi then and learned of her home somehow. Maybe even issues with her trying to return and free Hapes against Council wishes could factor into her dark stint and exile.

Or did this particular Jedi experience the male dominated world so bad that she turned predator on males entirely. But that does not compute, I mean, she'd rather shun males and live the lesbian life or single. Why would she try to build a society? Is she an idealist? Did she after her exile change profoundly by experiences on Dathomir?

Also how did Kwa/Kwi practices and matriarchal societies impact human dathomir society and their culture? Is there precedence in these reptilian ways that informed their human successor societies?



Also crossposted from the Hapan fanclub:

Another issue, the Hapan Protectorate that Dathomir became in later sources is sadly ignored until Allston revived it in FOTJ with male clans and many innovations on Dathomir alone. Tradestations and all included. But before that, when Vong invade Dathomir in a 6 month ground battle and loose, or even earlier with Empire returning to Dathomir post COPL (WOTC adventures and sourcebooks told about it!) and even YJK times, Dathomir seems rather un-Hapan and protected. I wish it to be explained how Hapans featured into all these conflicts and why or why not they were there. Teneniel and Tenel Ka both sure would not let Dathomir unprotected or fall to the Empire. All in all, the Empires return was merely a stint with not total domination of the planet I guess. Anyway, thoughts?

 

I'm wondering that to. Maybe she did not have any matriarchal coda and just trained girls because they were the Force-sensitive around and the matriarchal coda and sexism was something created later but attributed to her.

I say, not likely.

The kwa had evolved into the kwi by the time others came to Dathomir so I find it hard to believe that their ways in any way impacted on the later colonists.

Also, where is it mentioned that the kwa had a matriarchal society?

 

Isn´t it said that the men of Dathomir are force sensitive as the women but they don´t acknowledge that?

 

Yes, but I meant at that time when Allya lived so maybe she only got her hands on Force sensitive girls to train.

 

Unlikley but possible I guess, given the ledgend also says she died when her first daughter was just 16 maybe she couldn´t really train that many, all(or most) were girls and this whole gender thing came over time.

 

I can believe that Cracken's Threat Dossier is an in-universe source, and thus, subject to the in-universe biases of contributors to it.