Skadadel

The Skewed World

Version 1.7, completed on 25 August 2015

The Skewed World is an alternate history setting of my creation that serves as the setting for my fantasies and stories. The nature of the Skewed World provides some level of verisimilitude for the story elements that I find interesting and useful. The relative absence of women and girls, the ubiquity of slavery, and the sexual availability of boys are intended to be more plausible in this setting.

As I would try to write stories in imitation of the great writers who inspired me, I usually got stuck. I could write a sex scene, perhaps, but I was frustrated not knowing the world where the events could happen. I wanted to know what people's lives were like in order to understand and explain how they ended up where they were. I know this isn't true for all writers, but I found it was true for me.

My first challenge was how to have a world where boys are sexually available to men at a large scale. I wanted a fictional setting that involved more freedom than activities done in secret and at risk of imprisonment. Some amount of taboo is okay, and perhaps even necessary, but otherwise I wanted a world with more sexual access to boys.

The next difficulty had to do with slavery. Slavery is a major turnon for me, and it's an element that strongly appeals to me within fiction. But there are some difficulties in just adding slavery to a fictional setting while changing little else. Yes, societies with widespread slavery are found under certain economic conditions. Pre-industrial agricultural economies (Rome, much of the ancient world) and agricultural areas serving niche markets in more industrialized economies (the antebellum South in the US, Brazil, the Caribbean) both had widespread systems of slavery. But in industrialized economies, slavery typically doesn't make much sense.

Modern capitalism may often lead to brutalized employees, but employers do so while trying to avoid costs other than a paid wage. Employers, unlike slave-owners, don't have to actually directly pay the cost of raising infants to employee status. Employers avoid being 'stuck' with an employee who is troublesome or unproductive or even just a poor fit. A slave-owner can sell a problematic slave, but may do so at a substantial loss if fraud isn't possible. This is true whether the slave was owned from infancy or just purchased last week. An employer just fires an unwanted employee and hires another. Employers do provide some training, but most education and training is purchased by the future employee or their family. In technologically advanced economies, these costs are high and the end results are a long time coming. Being an employer just makes so much more sense than being a slave-owner under these conditions. (This is a very simplified discussion of why widespread slavery doesn't exist in the world today, but it'll do for now.)

Only in cases of sharp labor shortages does slave labor begin to become economically viable, and these have existed in the modern world only under extreme circumstances and for very limited times. Nazi Germany during WWII is probably the strongest example of this, and this is for fairly specific reasons. Especially compared to the US and the Soviet Union, the Nazis were less willing to move women into the workforce during the war. Having most adult men (and later, even boys in their mid-teens) in the military left a huge labor shortage that was filled by coercively importing foreign workers. These workers from conquered and 'allied' countries were not free to leave, and often worked under horrific conditions. (Of course, deciding to 'work' some of their workforce to death only contributed to the problem.) In addition, unlike a real slave society, the Nazis avoided the costs of actually raising and training slaves. They often avoided much of the cost of feeding them, as well. Outside of these extremes, slavery just doesn't make sense from an economic sense in an industrial or post-industrial economy.

Despite this, there are a few options available to make a fictional setting with slaves possible. I could just use an agricultural setting like ancient Rome. While great work has been written with this approach, I'm drawn to a certain level of sci-fi technology and modernity. So the historical setting was out. Another option would be to take our world but with sex-slavery being allowed. This is more appealing, but I'm especially drawn to stories where slavery is common. Becoming a slave means not only having 'icky' but thrilling stuff done to you against your will, but also a high risk of being condemned to a life of hard labor without respite. So how to square this circle? This was a puzzle for me for quite a long time.

Setting aside the sexual availability of boys and the presence of slavery for a moment, I had another, though less important, puzzle to figure out for my world. While I'm excited to read about boys and men (and especially both together), women and girls just don't do anything for me. I'll read stories with women and girls in them, but I pretty much read past them to get to the 'good stuff'. I know this isn't true of others, and I certainly don't intend to be critical of others – writers should write what works and makes sense for them. I'm speaking of my own wants here.

I'm unwilling to go so far as to have a fictional universe where women just don't exist. That stretches plausibility too far for me. But having men and boys interact in public spaces where 50% of the population remains invisible doesn't make sense either. I don't particularly want to write about women in sex-stories, but I can't bring myself to pretend they don't exist or aren't necessary to bring more boys into the world. One approach to this problem is to set stories in 'male-only' spaces. The downside is that even spaces limited to men and boys should still be impinged upon by the larger world, where women would necessarily be present. This particular problem also sat without a solution for a long time.

I don't really know what made me think of the solution to these self-imposed problems. I don't think that I read about an explicit setting like this in another author's story. (If I did, please let me know! I want to give credit where credit is due.)

What was my solution? A permanent, extremely skewed sex ratio. This means that men permanently outnumber women to a large degree. This one change allowed me to create a world that allows men sexual access to boys, encourages widespread slavery, and reduces the presence of women and girls without eliminating them. So I invented the Skewed World.

The next sections will describe this fictional setting as if it were an actual existing alternative universe. This description should help explain why I found the skewed sex ratio to be useful direction for my purposes. I hope that the description will be of interest to someone out there. Even if it isn't, writing it was useful to me. My intent to is not to straightjacket myself. If it makes sense to me to change some aspect of the Skewed World, I want to be free to do so and alter this document.

Finally, I freely admit that I've used one of the commonest (and least sensible) tropes in alternative universe creation. The Skewed World resulted from an incredibly important change that happened centuries ago. Despite this, social development and events in the Skewed World have mirrored our own universe to a great extent. Europe has countries like the UK and France, the New World was settled by the Old, drivers in North America stay to the right, etc.

The Skewed World was the same as our world until some point in the 1300s. At the time Europe was being ravaged by contagious diseases like the plague, smallpox, and typhoid fever, another kind of contagion developed that quickly spread throughout the world. This contagion, the skewing factor, spread quickly and easily among humans. The initial symptoms (fever and fatigue) were mild compared to many of the illnesses of the time but left subtle, long-term effects. The skewing factor actually permanently changed important reproductive processes in human beings. These new biological processes were inheritable. All of humanity had been altered within two centuries.

In our world, and in the Skewed World before the contagion, the sex ratio at birth for humans is close to 1:1. After infection, the sex ratio at birth became 4 boys for every 1 girl. This profoundly changed human society. In fact, it initially threatened the survival of homo sapiens.

The nature of the skewing factor is still not understood. The contagion itself is long gone, and the scientists of the Skewed World have no samples to study. Only the permanent effect of the skewing factor remains.

The skewing factor affects important processes in the human reproductive system. The ratio of X and Y chromosomes in sperm remains 1:1. But now Y chromosome sperm are much more likely to fertilize a woman's egg. A substantial majority of fertilized eggs are male. An additional change is that XY (male) zygotes are much more likely to successfully implant on the uterine wall and develop than XX (female) zygotes. This further reduces the number of XX fetuses. The likelihood of implantation is actually affected by the gender of previous pregnancies and whether those pregnancies are full term.

Attempts to bypass the skewed ratio by abortion have been tried recently, but a reducing the number of male fetuses a woman births reduces the viability of XX zygotes for that woman. This appears to be a self-correcting process – the fewer boys a woman gives birth to, the less likely that she will become pregnant with a girl. It's as if the reproductive process demands the skew.

There has been some research to change the skewing factor. This has not been especially promising. Human societies have adapted to the skew and a change in it now would be fundamentally disruptive. In a world with many priorities, little money or training is available for research with dubious benefit.

The skew itself was not initially recognized. We know the skew came from an infectious agent because historical records show that the skew appeared first in south Asia, then the Middle East and southern Europe before spreading to rest of the world over time. (The Americas were not affected by the skew until European contact in the 1500s.)

Because the skew only became apparent as fewer girls were born, it took years for people to understand that something had happened. People affected by the skew were otherwise normal. The skew was a time bomb waiting to explode.

Why was the skew so dangerous? The skew meant that human persistence depended on women having enough girls to survive to adulthood and have children to replace their parents. Here's a brief example. Let's use Molly as a precisely average woman in 1400 AD. If Molly is to do her part to continue the human species, she will need to have five children because only one of those children will be a daughter. (Remember, Molly is precisely average). But some daughters will be born and die in childhood or will reach adulthood and be infertile. So Molly will need to have additional children to cover those losses. Molly also has to cover her share of those women who have some children but not enough to replace themselves (those who have only sons). In times and places with high infant and child mortality, mothers like Molly will need to have significantly more than five children in order to produce enough daughters.

The skew hit at a time in history when life expectancy was short and infant and child mortality were especially high. Deaths due to complications from pregnancy or childbirth were quite common. Every pregnancy carried a significant risk of death or infertility for the mother. It was extremely difficult for every fertile woman to have enough children to insure enough girls for replacement.

So what happened? Chaos. Historians in the Skewed World don't have a complete picture of this time. There are few historical records remaining from the time the skew was initially identified and its implications understood.

In the larger picture, Europe entered what is now called 'the darkest age' and the rest of the Old World quickly followed. Populations shrank dramatically. States collapsed or were greatly weakened. Conflict and violence exploded.

What saved humanity? Powerful individuals acted in their own self-interest and incidentally created social structures that allowed humanity to survive. These social structures were authoritarianism and rigid social control. Those places where strongmen were able to take power and effectively protect women's health and reproductive success were the first to emerge from chaos and decline. Of course, this ‘protection' almost always meant near-complete control over women's lives.

This was half of the battle to save humanity. The other problem was that there were so many boys – boys who would grow into men with little or no chance to marry. Men who aren't 'settled down' by domesticity are more likely to be violent, to have low productivity due to being lost in escapism (such as alcohol abuse), and to make the world more unsettled and dangerous.

Infanticide of excess infant boys was one initial response to the skew. If a family kept fewer boys, then there would be more resources for each of the remaining children, leading to better survival rates. Unfortunately, societies that practiced high levels of infanticide found themselves at a productive and military disadvantage compared to neighbors who did not. Society probably broke down to a tribal level, and we know that raids and banditry were common. In fact, the point of raids was very often to steal women and girls.

Mothers could be protected from the burdens and dangers of work by keeping male children to help. Families were able to raise more healthy fertile girls when they were able to draw upon the effort of more sons. Mothers and daughters could be spared hard labor and the risk of violence. Keeping boys meant that mothers could be ‘saved' for reproduction and that daughters would be more likely to survive to adulthood.

As societies began to rebuild, militarization was the most common means of managing excess males. Excess males were used and expended in wars. Many of these wars also had to do with finding women.

(Despite my language here and later, leaders weren't saying to themselves: 'I can deal with all these excess males by creating a militaristic society.' These were dynamic sociological processes and 'solutions' weren't directly sought, but stumbled upon through trial and error. Successful societies evolved functional social structures and other societies mimicked them.)

War alone wasn't a viable long-term solution. War had devastating effects on agricultural productivity and strongmen wanted to insure continued stability. In addition, a large unmarried warrior caste is ultimately destabilizing. The Ottoman Empire's experience with janissaries demonstrated this in our world.

Exploration also served a role. Unlike in our world, global exploration was primarily a race to find and conquer places not yet affected by the skew so their women could be taken. This insured the skew spread worldwide.

The longer-term answer to the problem of excess males was slavery. Different regions had different historical paths to slavery. The resulting systems vary but all involve servitude for a large proportion of people. Today almost all societies have at least a third to one half of their males held in some unfree status.

The legal and social control over women's sexuality and the enslavement of large numbers of excess men were the most important means of saving humanity from destruction.

It is ironic that by making women rarer, the skew led to women being more oppressed. While there were a few cultures in the world where women actually increased in status and power, this was not true for most societies.

The states that developed after the skew in Europe and most of south and east Asia survived by taking steps to control women and men's access to women. As explorers searched the world for women, European colonization spread the skew and male dominance to the New World.

I will describe what the world looks like now. This description is based upon North America, but it is largely true of what we might think of as 'the Western world': Europe, the Americas, and other integrated industrial economies. Cultural differences exist, of course, but aren't explored here.

Today, women's lives are constrained and controlled in many ways. Women are defined by their status as daughters, wives, sisters, and mothers to men. These male relatives exercise great power over women both informally and through legal structures. 'Free' women have relatively little opportunity to control their own lives.

Fathers have full legal authority over their minor children, but daughters of any age remain under their fathers' legal authority until they marry. Fathers negotiate marriages for their daughters and daughters cannot marry without their fathers' permission. (Adult sons are free to marry regardless of their fathers' wishes, though often a potential groom's father will negotiate on his son's behalf.) If a girl or woman is orphaned, her brothers take on their father's legal authority and responsibilities. Once she is married, a woman's husband takes on the legal and social authority previously held by her father. If a woman is widowed, her adult sons are granted social and some legal authority over her. If she has no adult sons, her late husband's brothers will be given that authority.

Women legally pass into their husband's family from their father's, but there is often ongoing social contact with women's families even after marriage. It's generally considered important for children to know not only their paternal relatives, but their maternal relatives as well.

Women can own property and inherit. There is a distinction between property that is owned and property that is held. Women and minors can own property. That is, it belongs to them, and they are due income from the property's use or sale. Only adult men (or corporations or the state) can actually hold property, though. Only property holders can legally sell, rent, invest, or give away property. The ability to own is separable from the ability to hold for minors, women, indentured men, and men deemed incompetent. (Slaves can neither own nor hold property.)

For example, a man dies and his will divides his wealth evenly among his three adult sons, one minor son, and his wife. The three adult sons fully own and hold their inheritances. The minor son owns his inheritance, but it is held by another, usually one of his older brothers (who will probably be given guardianship over the minor brother as well), until the youngest reaches legal adulthood. The widow also owns her inheritance, but it is also held by another, usually one of her sons, until she is remarried. At the time of marriage, her property passes to her new husband.

Unlike wives or sons, minor daughters aren't typically heirs. When they marry, women pass out of their fathers' families into their husbands', so property passed to a daughter will leave the family. Dowries don't exist, but bride-price does. A father need not worry that a daughter will go unmarried, but will need to provide for his sons if he hopes for them to marry. Minor daughters will not need property to insure they can marry well.

The division of owned and held property is ripe with potential abuse, of course. A son may wish to prevent his mother from remarrying so he can continue to control her wealth. Or he may wish to sell her property to himself for far below market value. There is state oversight of held property to try to prevent these sorts of acts. Property holders are entitled to a percentage of the income from property use or sale. This is intended to create an incentive for good property management in the interest of property owners. There are also legal protections and financial incentives in place to encourage sons to allow their mothers to remarry.

Why do men designate their wives as heirs but not their daughters? After all, a wife's property will pass to a new husband just as a daughter's would. Tradition, affection, and perceived risk all play a role. Importantly, some widows, especially those past reproductive age, do not remarry. As with people everywhere, husbands typically love their wives and want the best for them. They don't love their daughters less, but minor daughters' life chances are greatly dependent on their almost-certain marriages.

It is only as widows that women find some measure of control over their own lives. Women typically have more say in marriage negotiations as widows than as daughters, in part because widows' marriage negotiations are often overseen by their sons. If past the age of fertility, widows with a source of financial support can often avoid marriage altogether if their sons are agreeable. Even non-fertile widows are sought-after as wives, however, and some women are able to play some role in choosing a new husband after being widowed.

The primary reason these legal structures exist is to control access to women's reproductive ability. Society has two overriding concerns with reproduction. First, women must birth enough children to insure (at the very least) replacement-level fertility. Second, genetic diversity must be maintained to insure a healthy people.

Paired with these concerns is that men's competition for the relatively few women is deeply destructive to the social order. Part of the reason for the state's rigid social control over women and women's sexuality is to prevent violence and disorder on the part of men. Competition for women is strictly constrained and other options for 'losers' in the marriage game are provided. What this means for family structure and men who cannot marry will be discussed in a later section.

Free women are sexually available only to their husbands. Premarital or extramarital sex is not only frowned upon, it is considered rape. Women cannot legally consent to sex outside of marriage. Laws against having sex with a free woman who is not one's wife are strictly enforced and result in the man's indenturement or enslavement.

Parallel to that, women cannot deny consent to sex within marriage. It is a wife's duty to be sexually available to her husband(s), and short of some extenuating circumstances, she cannot say 'no'.

Divorce can be initiated by husbands and is fairly rare – the competition for women means that divorced men without extraordinary resources are unlikely to easily remarry. Divorce can be initiated by wives only under exceptional circumstances, usually involving either severe physical abuse or a husband's infertility. If divorced, a woman will typically return to the authority of her father or brothers until she is remarried. If she has adult sons, she may be placed under their authority rather than that of her former family. While a divorcing woman can express her preference, the decision will be made by the court.

Because of the need for high levels of fecundity, birth control and most abortions are illegal. There is actually little effective demand for birth control or abortion as most families want as many children as they can have. Any pregnancy which endangers the life, health, or fertility of the mother can be (and usually is) aborted.

Free women typically live relatively cloistered lives within their homes surrounded by the men of their family. Chaperoning by a male relative is not a legal requirement for either unmarried or married women, but it is the norm when women go outside the home.

Women do not work outside the home. Even if there were jobs available for women, the ubiquity of pregnancy and raising large numbers of children would make it impossible for women to work. The lives of women typically are centered on their families and the families of their husbands' friends and relatives.

Women are typically heavily involved in childcare and managing their households. Many wives have domestic slaves to assist in running the household. Male slaves in households with women are generally rendered incapable of sexual intercourse through pre-pubertal age-cessation, castration, infibulation, or chastity devices.

It is not unusual for a man who is single or handfasted (described below) to wake up in the morning, go to work, have dinner with friends, go to a movie, have drinks afterward, and then go home to bed without having seen a single woman during his day. Often, the only significant relationships with women that a single or handfasted man will have are with his mother and sisters. Keep in mind that unmarried and handfasted men make up the majority of all free men.

Despite the lack of freedom and choice available for free women, they have grown up in societies that have never offered more to them. Just as in our world, it is the norm for husbands and wives to love one another and mothers and children to love one another. Just as in our world, these relationships are romanticized to an extent that is often unrealistic.

Even with slavery removing many men from competition over women, there are still too many men for the available women. Only a fraction of men can hope to marry a woman and have a family. Different societies have developed social structures to address this problem. These structures typically involve either some form of sharing women among men (polyandry and female slave prostitution) or encouraging male sexual energy away from women (homosexual relationships among free men and sexual use of male slaves).

Marriage between one man and one woman does still exist, and is the more common form of heterosexual family. These so-called simple marriages are primarily limited to middle-class and wealthier men, particularly those who can call upon family resources to pay bride-price.

Polyandry (more than one husband per wife) is one structure that gives more men access to wives. Polyandry is traditionally fraternal polyandry where two or more brothers share one wife, usually in a single household. Called bruderwed marriages, these relationships have a number of benefits. Brothers can pool resources to pay a bride-price and to support their wife and the resulting large family. (Remember, each woman has many children.) All of the children are at least somewhat related to each husband. Each child is genetically at least a niece or nephew if not a daughter or son to every father. The children of a traditional bruderwed family are at least cousins, though actually more closely related than cousins because they all share a mother and their fathers are brothers.

In North America and some other societies, bruderwed marriages have been expanded to include families where some or all of the husbands are not brothers. Even in non-brother bruderwed families, the children are all at least half-siblings because they share a mother. A simple marriage can become a bruderwed marriage if another husband is brought in later, which happens occasionally. Bruderwed marriages most often have two or three husbands, though 5% of bruderwed marriages include four or more husbands.

Bruderwed marriages are often stereotyped as marriages for those with less money or for younger sons. This is somewhat true, especially when the marriage begins. However, the pooled incomes of cohusbands and fewer children per father (women in both simple marriages and bruderwed marriages tend to have the same number of children; i.e., as many as biologically possible) allow many bruderwed families to economically outpace simple marriage families over time.

The prostitution of female slaves is also a means for men to have access to women, though the main reason is usually so non-married men can father children. While most women are not slaves (in a legal sense), some are. Free men can hire reproductive access to slave women in order to become fathers. This has become more popular recently with the invention of genetic testing. This is the way some non-heterosexually-married men can have their own genetic children. It remains an expensive option.

Other than for reproductive purposes, slave women are not typically sexually available to free men (other than their owners). Slave women are too economically important as producers of slave children to be prostituted for sex alone.

Another means to reduce conflict over women is to encourage homosexuality. Free male couples have social recognition and their own form of marriage known as handfasting. Handfasted couples can have children through slave surrogacy or adoption. Adoption typically involves purchasing an infant slave, freeing him, and raising the now-free child. Former slaves freed as infants face far less stigma than other freed slaves. Unlike bruderwed marriages, handfasting in North America is legal only between two men at one time. However, if no children are involved, divorce carries relatively little stigma for handfasted couples. In addition, men may live together without becoming handfasted without significant stigma, though there may be familial pressure to 'settle down' and formalize the relationship.

Male slaves also provide a means for men to express their sexuality, of course. Single men as well as men who are married, bruderwed, or handfasted have sex with their own slaves, the slaves of their friends, and slaves owned by brothels.

The state legitimizes some family forms, discourages others, conveys particular benefits to families, and records births, marriages, divorces, and deaths, just as in our world. The state in the Skewed World has a much larger role than that, however.

Before genetics were fully understood and DNA was mapped, the state kept detailed genealogical records on all individuals, free and slave. The recordkeeping continues, though the state relies more heavily on genetic testing today.

The state has a role in determining whether any given man (or men) and woman can marry, either in simple marriage or bruderwed marriage. There must be sufficient genetic distance between partners in order for a marriage to be approved by the state. No such approval is required for handfasting, of course, as no children directly descended from both partners can result from the relationship. Men are also expected to be fertile in order to be married to a woman. However, the means to determine fertility were only developed fairly recently, so this was more a theoretical requirement in the past. (A common theme in fiction is the infertile husband conspiring to get his wife pregnant by another man so he can have children.) With the development of premarital testing, infertile men are now excluded from marriage.

Beyond this, all breeding is monitored by the state. Slave breeders must keep diligent records of dam and sire in order to insure sufficient genetic distance. Even men who purchase the right to father a child with a slave woman must be pre-approved by the state. These legal processes are now fairly efficient.

North America, like most of the world, is strongly patriarchal. Similar to ancient Rome, fathers have great power over their families.

Children belong to their fathers (and not their mothers) to the extent that fathers can actually sell their minor children into slavery or indenturement. No legal pretext is needed. The majority of fathers both love their children and view them as their genetic patrimony. Selling a child into either indenturement or slavery is typically an act of desperation.

It is tempting to view a father who would sell a child as a monster. We have to keep in mind the social and legal structures that would drive a father to such extremity. If a father is indebted and unable to pay his debts, he and all his children could be indentured or sold in order to cover the debts. A man who arranges the sale of a child typically obtains better terms (slavery versus indenturement, length of indenture, choice of buyer, and price) than when done by a disinterested third party such as a court. Selling a child may save the rest of the family from debt enslavement or indenturement.

Fathers who sell their children are judged by others, and will be evaluated based on the circumstances. A lower-middle class father who sells one son so another can marry will be viewed more positively than a father who sells a child to feed a gambling problem, for example.

Family debt or financial stress, or a son's extreme out-of-control behavior are typical reasons that prompt indenturement or enslavement of children.

Debt doesn't have to be the motivating factor. A poor family may improve the whole family's prospects by using the funds from the sale of a child or two. Selling a child might help start a business, pay for college or the bride-price for other sons.

Bride-prices can be difficult for non-wealthy families to manage. While bride-prices are the responsibility of the husband-to-be, their youth often means that families must help out. The scarcity of girls means that bride-prices are often high. It's especially difficult if a family has no daughters to bring in their own bride-price to offset the expense. Families that are 'rich in daughters', with two or even three, are more able to do well by their sons.

Sons obtain legal freedom when they reach adulthood, though it is common for sons to remain financially and emotionally dependent on their families well into adulthood, just as in our world. Daughters aren't fully legally emancipated from their fathers until they marry, and then merely exchange their father's authority for their husband's.

These social norms and laws vary for bruderwed and handfasted families, of course, because there are multiple fathers involved. The children of bruderwed and handfasted families are under the collective authority of all legal husbands/fathers. If there is extreme duress, or during divorce, a court will determine a primary father for each child in question. If the children are genetically related to a particular father, that person is typically made the primary father. If a child is adopted, then other factors are taken into account.

This means that children of bruderwed and handfasted families usually are only sold with the permission of all legal fathers.

As mentioned above, there are harsh legal penalties in place to prevent men from having sexual access to women who are not their wives. Social order requires that sexual access to women be tightly controlled for two especially important reasons: Preventing unfettered competition for women and insuring crucial genetic diversity.

The sexual activities of boys and men must largely be diverted from women. One way is through the stick of punishment. Another is to reduce the risk of boys engaging in sexual play with girls. This is done partly through segregating the daily lives of boys and girls from one another. Girls are educated, but differently than and separately from boys.

Boys are also encouraged to look to other boys for companionship and, eventually, sexual release. Boyfriend relationships between similarly-aged free boys is considered age-appropriate and not unexpected even among boys who eventually marry women. A common coming-of-age theme in fiction is the youthful love affair between two boys who aren't meant for each other. One boy eventually marries and the other handfasts. Another theme explored in fiction, considered a bit risqué, involves two boys in love who eventually find a bruderwed wife to please traditional fathers who insist on grandchildren. This was the plot of the highly successful play and movie Two for Dad, Three for Me.

Sexual behavior among free boys is discouraged until the boys are at least of high school age (mid to late teens). While not illegal, there remains a level of social prudishness about free boys' sexual play among one another. Families might forbid sexually involved twelve-year-olds from seeing one another, while looking the other way if the boys were sixteen.

Incestuous behavior between brothers or cousins (or bruderwed brothers, who are between brothers and cousins) certainly happens, but is discouraged. The incest taboo between related boys is likely partly an artifact of the extremely powerful heterosexual incest taboo. It is also thought that boys need to be engaged in friendships and romantic involvement outside the family in order to have healthy social development.

If a boy engages in sexually problematic behavior toward girls or women (short of rape), families will attempt to curb such behaviors through therapy, up to intensive behavioral programs in group homes. Enslavement is often the eventual outcome if the behavior continues, either as the result of a frustrated father or the state via criminal proceedings.

As mentioned earlier, adult men may freely engage in sex with other free men, with their wives (for the married and bruderwed), with their own slaves of any age or gender, or with lent or rented slaves of any age or gender.

There are strong taboos and penalties against adult men engaging in sexual behavior with free boys. Transgenerational sexuality is considered appropriate for masters and slaves, not free males. Free men in couples where there is a large age difference (>10 years) are sometimes the butt of jokes and mildly stigmatized, but such relationships are not taboo. Age differences between husbands and wives are common and not considered important.

Historically, the social expectation was that married and bruderwed men did not have sex with free men outside their marriages. (Sex with slaves, of course, does not count.) These norms have been relaxed recently, though discretion is still expected. Cohusbands who are more interested in each other than their bruderwed wife is a common element of farce, and the teasing that bruderwed men endure about this theme is often very tiresome to them.

Recent surveys have found that only a small fraction of married or bruderwed men have sex with other free men, though approximately 10% of non-sibling cohusbands have engaged in sex with one other. The availability of male slaves for sexual use is not accounted for in these surveys, and probably helps explain the low incidence of reported homosexual behavior among these married men.

In North America, there are two non-free legal statuses: slavery and indenturement.

Slavery is lifetime servitude. While slaves can be manumitted (freed), this is not common. Most slaves die slaves. Slave women are intentionally bred to create more slaves. The children of slave women are automatically slaves and are called 'slaveborn'. A large portion of slaves were actually freeborn, however.

Indenturement is time-limited servitude. All of the indentured were free prior to losing their freedom and will be free at the end of their term. Terms of indenture can vary from a few months to thirty years and are set at the time of indenture.

The legal differences between the indentured and slaves are more than just the promise of eventual freedom. Slaves have fewer protections. Someone enslaved has become a non-person. Any contracts or debts held by someone enslaved no longer exist. A slave cannot legally own anything. An owner has extensive leeway in how he can treat a slave. Slaves can be maimed, mutilated, or otherwise permanently altered by their owners. There are some limitations. It is not legal to intentionally and directly kill a slave without justification, but this is not always scrupulously enforced.

An indentured person has protections because he holds his status only temporarily. Contracts signed before indenturement are still valid in most cases, though 'paused' during the term. As with women and minors, indentured individuals can own property, but they do not hold it during their indenture. Anything owned by an indentured person is held in trust during their term, sometimes by a relative, sometimes by the state. This is the process by which someone could indenture himself and receive the money at the end of his term.

The indentured are not supposed to be permanently altered by those who own them. Punishments are not to have permanent physical effects on the indentured. Indentured children are to receive at least a basic education. Also, a portion of the price of the indentured is set aside in trust, to be given to them when freed. The goal of providing education and the money held in trust is to prevent the formerly indentured person from being a burden on society. While well-intentioned, the amount of money paid to the formerly indentured is rarely substantial.

The distinction between slaves and the indentured are blurred in the vernacular. While everyone knows the difference between slaves and the indentured, it is very common for both to be called 'slaves' in everyday language.

The simplest path to servitude is to be born a slave, of course. As described earlier, though, many slaves and all of the indentured were free at one time.

Historically, war captives became slaves. Criminals are usually enslaved or indentured as a form of punishment. As mentioned earlier, minor children can be directly indentured or sold into slavery by their fathers. Fathers can also use their children as collateral for loans. If the debt is not paid, the children will be indentured or enslaved per the terms of the contract. Some individuals sell themselves into slavery, though this is quite rare in developed economies. More commonly, free individuals indenture themselves in return for payment upon completing the term. Those wishing to immigrate can indenture themselves in return for legal immigration status upon completing their term.

Criminals are enslaved or indentured depending on the nature of their crime. More serious crimes result in longer terms of indenture or life-long enslavement, of course. Whether debtors are enslaved or indentured depends on their worth, as they are being sold to cover their debts. If the debtor is not worth very much on the market or if the debts are particularly high, enslavement or a longer term indenture is more likely.

It is rare for slaves to be freed, or manumitted, from slavery. Historically owners would free slaves who had become unproductive due to age or illness. These freed slaves would become a burden on society, so there are now manumission fees in place to discourage the practice and to cover the social costs.

Freed slaves have lower social status than individuals who have never been enslaved. They almost always have fewer opportunities as well. Slaves are rarely educated beyond the needs of their tasks, so employment is difficult to find in a world where unskilled work is usually done by slaves.

Unlike slaves, the indentured have the expectation of eventual freedom. Barring death during the term or subsequent enslavement (for criminal behavior during indenture), the indentured individual will be released from servitude at the end of their term. Legally, a formerly indentured person reassumes their free status. How society perceives the formally indentured depends on why they were indentured. A now-free adult indentured as a child would likely be pitied but viewed as a potential burden on society. Someone indentured to pay off debts would be seen as foolish, potentially irresponsible, but redeemed. Someone indentured for criminal activity would still be viewed as a criminal.

Given the additional state oversight and the need to educate indentured children, why would an owner want to buy an indentured person rather than a slave? The term limit can actually be a benefit for an owner. Aging slaves become less productive but still require upkeep. The indentured provide a less expensive alternative for those who cannot afford a slave. Most of the costs of state oversight for the indentured are paid by taxes, not fees paid only by owners. For many owners, the requirements for indentured care often fall within good slave management practices to encourage productivity and so are not a burden.

Slaves and the indentured can be of either sex. A large proportion of slaves were slaveborn and will remain slaves their entire lives. The slaveborn have a sex ratio similar to the general population, about 4:1.

The freeborn who are enslaved are much more likely to be male. Women are given few opportunities to act freely enough to become enslaved due to criminal activity. Though a daughter can be enslaved the same as any minor child, either by being sold by her father or enslaved as part of a bankruptcy against her family, this is relatively rare. Girls are generally too valuable as potential wives and are instead offered for adoption in exchange for payment. While a girl could be enslaved, purchased, freed, and adopted by a family who wished to have a daughter, there are expenses at each step of that process and there remains a stigma attached to non-infant manumitted slaves. Potential fathers would rather pay more for a clear adoption of a free girl.

While the law is very patriarchal and husbands have great control over their wives, free women cannot be indentured or enslaved by their husbands. If a man is unable to pay his debts, he and his children may be indentured or enslaved, but his wife does not lose her free status. Of course, a woman's freedom is not the same as a man's, as discussed earlier.

Women whose husbands are enslaved are essentially legally widows. When a man is indentured for a term, contracts are put on hold for the duration. Indenturement is grounds for divorce on the part of the wife, and is the norm when the term is long. Divorce is always granted if the indentured husband has left no provision for his wife's ongoing support. A husband's indenturement provides one of the few circumstances when women have the freedom to initiate divorce.

Historically, having a very large proportion of adults in slavery meant that free citizens had to maintain constant vigilance. Large slave insurrections were the nightmare of any slaveowning society, but more common were smaller acts of slave violence or intransigence.

The need to maintain social order is what led to authoritarian rule as societies emerged from the initial chaos of the skew. This was in part to insure effective control over reproduction but also to unite free citizens in oversight of large numbers of slaves. Free citizens were trained and armed so they could keep slaves in line. The indentured who had once been free men were a particular risk in these societies. If they made common cause with slaves, then they could pass on their knowledge to those slaves. A slaveowning society was a paranoid society.

Technology has led to great increases in the ability to monitor and control slaves and the indentured, however, and there has been a real flowering of free society as a result. These technological changes can be categorized as changes in identification, monitoring, control and punishment, and decreasing risk.

One risk in slaveowning societies is that slaves may escape and then pass as free citizens in another community. Identifying slaves as such has always been a focus of slaveowning societies, and many of the old methods remain in place. In North America, slaves are tattooed, permanently collared, and pierced through the septum. Slaves wear different (typically less) clothing than free people. While not directly visible to others, slaves also have chips inserted that can be read electronically. Chip-readers have become ubiquitous and immediately identify the person as a slave even if the visible signs of slavery are not apparent.

The indentured receive the same markers as slaves. When the indenture ends, tattoo removal is done, the collar cut off, the septum ring cut, and the chip surgically removed.

Monitoring of slaves is where technology has probably had the greatest impact. Video cameras in the environment where slaves work and sometimes mounted on slaves themselves mean that any slave's activities can be viewed even if no one is physically with the slave. Tracking programs can be used to monitor a slave's movements at all times, and alarms triggered if a slave moves outside an allowed area.

Control and punishment of slaves historically meant direct physical oversight and punishment, typically through beating. Technology has led to great changes here as well. This is an appropriate place to talk about slave collars.

As mentioned earlier, slave collars have long visibly indicated slave status. Collars also provided an attachment point for fetters, of course. More recently, the development of the permanent integrated slave collar has been a driver of social change in the last 30 years.

Modern slave collars are specifically sized to fit individual slaves without damaging the skin or nerves beneath. When closed around a slave's neck and activated, the hinge and closure are permanently fused. The collar can then only be removed by cutting through the device itself. The collar contains tracking electronics allowing owners and the state to pinpoint a specific slave's location almost immediately. The collar has integrated monitors allowing biophysical tracking as well. A slave's heart rate, pulse, blood pressure, state of rest or distress, and so on can be monitored remotely.

Slave collars also allow for slave control. At the most basic level, collars still provide four D-rings for attachment. However, collars also can deliver a high-powered electrical charge to the slave. This shock is itself disabling, and can be set to provide temporary paralysis or even unconsciousness. The effect is similar to a taser device in our world, but calibrated to the specific biophysical response of the slave himself. Non-disabling shocks can be used as punishment.

Collars are monitored and programmed remotely, of course, and settings can be changed to address changing requirements or needs.

There has been an explosion in slave control and punishment technologies and devices in addition to the slave collar. These include temporary or permanent means of limiting a slave's mobility; limiting a slave's use of limbs, hands, or fingers; removing a slave's ability to communicate; or even controlling a slave's sense of sight or hearing. These things can be accomplished with devices or surgically. As always, there are limits on what can be done to the indentured.

Finally, there is the area of risk reduction. Risk reduction is a catch-all to describe technologies that reduce the risk of slave revolt, violence, or disobedience that do not directly involve identification, monitoring, or control and punishment. The most important technology in this area is that of developmental cessation, discussed in the next section.

Technology has also been adapted to permanently stop the physical growth and development of boys. Called cessation, this can be done at any age up to mid-adolescence and will leave the boy at that size and level of physical development for the rest of his life. This procedure is only done on slaves.

This means that slaves can be prevented from physically maturing at prepubescence, at any point in latency or adolescence up to mid-adolescence. This leaves slaves smaller, less strong, and less dangerous to others than they would be if allowed to fully mature.

There are several important limitations to cessation. First, the medications and biological agents used in cessation cause sterility. This is not typically important, but means the procedure is not appropriate for a slave being considered for breeding purposes.

Cessation requires an initial surgical procedure and then ongoing treatment with medication for the rest of the slave's life. It is not particularly expensive, but failure to receive the ongoing treatment will lead to cessation failure (organ failure and life function collapse) within a few weeks. Even with perfect care, a slave's body will undergo inevitable cessation failure 40 – 45 years after cessation was started. Cessation failure is fatal within two or three months after symptoms first appear. It is considered inhumane not to euthanize a slave who develops symptoms.

Except for limited amounts of developmental aging, cessation is permanent. Medical procedures can be done to allow an already-cessated slave to develop to mid adolescence but once cessation has occurred, a slave's body will no longer be physically capable of developing into full adulthood.

For example, a ten-year-old slave could be cessated. A few years later, the slave's owner could decide to restart physical growth and development, taking the slave into early adolescence and then stop development again. No matter what, however, this slave could not be taken beyond mid-adolescence. And if the slave were to stop receiving the necessary ongoing cessation treatment, he would shortly die.

Stopping physical development and growth is not ideal for slaves used for certain tasks, of course, especially physically onerous work. It also cannot be legally applied to the indentured due to the permanent biological effects from stopping physical development. Slaves that have already physically matured beyond mid-adolescence are beyond the reach of cessation, of course.

Cessation is commonly done in the Skewed World. It makes slaves less physically dangerous, while only making them less useful for some tasks. It makes slaves less of a sexually risk around women and girls. It is inexpensive, even with the need for lifelong treatment. Finally, it leaves slaves at a sexually appealing level of development (which can be adjusted) for owners.

The presence of powerful central state controls on human activity stemming from the need to limit sexual competition among men means that the Skewed World has different economic structures and incentives than we find our own universe.

While capitalism remains the general economic model of most nations, there are brakes on the dynamism of the economy. In particular, there are powerful constraints on capital generation due to the inherent riskiness of taking on debt. Enslavement or indenturement is the penalty for being unable to pay back debt, and even incorporation does not shield stockholders and corporate officeholders from this risk. People and corporations have to be conservative in order to manage this risk. People are not only cautious about borrowing money, but also in lending it. If borrowers default on their loans and the lender is caught with a cash-flow problem, enslavement is a potential risk for the lender as well. Collateral-free loans are rare and collateral can consist not only of owned property like real estate and slaves, but also the enslavement or indenture of the borrower and/or their minor children.

Because slaves are a very large part of the workforce, a proportionately smaller percentage of the free would be considered poor. The free poor disproportionately contribute to the population of freeborn enslaved and indentured. This is because the poor are simply likelier to face economic catastrophe that ends up with enslavement: vagrancy, default, and bankruptcy. This might mean that the poor adult is enslaved, that a father sells a child or children in order to prevent default or homelessness, or that an entire family is enslaved in order clear the debts owed.

Many jobs that would otherwise be done by the poor are done by slaves or the indentured. Jobs that are typically done by unfree workers include janitorial jobs, road construction (involving physical labor, not machine operation), laborers in construction generally, low-skilled manufacturing jobs, agricultural labor, food service, warehouse and shipping work, and some retail.

Jobs restricted to free workers would include any job involving supervision of free employees, any job that would give someone access to dangerous materials or items, any job that requires a good education; skilled construction; security, overseers of slaves in menial jobs (mines, road construction).

For most of the world, the necessity of controlling vast numbers of slaves and regulating reproduction for genetic diversity meant that governments were centralized, authoritarian, and repressive. Free men had to maintain constant vigilance against slave revolt. Fathers and husbands relied on the state to help them protect their women. Citizens and governments were locked into a constraining embrace, which meant even free men had little real freedom of action or expression.

This is finally changing. The need for adequate controls on slaves has led to a real growth in effective slave management technologies, several of which were described earlier. This means slaves are now safer and more manageable for free society.

Because of this, the industrialized world is undergoing a social revolution which is similar to what the US experienced in the 1960s, though with significantly less violence. A combination of more effective slave control technologies and the development of mass media and the internet have allowed citizens more freedom. Societies no longer have to operate like police-states that organize all free men in militias to prevent mass slave violence. Information is no longer constrained by the fear that slaves might learn enough to revolt. Conformity is enforced less rigidly among the free, and there is a blossoming of sexual discussion, representation, and activity.

Historically, acceptable sex partners for free men were their wives, their slaves, and/or their handfasted partners. Sex was not to occur outside of marriage or ownership. There was a sexual underground of slave-brothels and cruising spaces for free men, but these were beyond the bounds of polite discussion. Men did not openly discuss their sexual attractions to others, particularly their attractions to boys. It was generally understood that a man might buy a boy primarily for sexual use, but there would always be a façade about the slave's primary purpose being something else.

Now, however, free men talk about their sex lives. Single men seek out other single men not just for handfasting, but for short-term relationships or one-night stands. Slave-brothels are fully legal and regulated. Slave markets have adapted by being quite open about selling slaves who are prepared for sexual use.

There has been an explosion in books, advice columns, and television shows about sexuality. One example is the show The Slave Whisperer, which helps owners learn to be happier and more comfortable with the sexual use of their slaves.

Taboos remain, of course. Sexual access to (and for) women is no freer than before. The state still oversees reproductive sexuality by rigidly enforcing genetic diversity rules for marriage and by outlawing sexual activity with free women outside of marriage. In some ways, the freer discussion of sexuality among men and with slaves means that free women have become even more hidden and apart from society. There is a growing pornography about slave women, but it is viewed as especially taboo and remains illegal in most places. Pornography involving free women is virtually unthinkable.

The sexual revolution is still in progress, and men often feel shame about their desires or remain ignorant about their options. But the world is opening for free men in ways that their fathers could not have predicted.

Despite the huge social changes that result from the point of departure I've created, many things are very similar to Our World. Most people living in North America speak English. Technology levels in 2015 in the Skewed World are very similar to those of our present day world (though there are some important differences). The names of places are mostly the same. There are some geopolitical differences, but most of these won't be extensively explored.

It is a common trope in fiction that parallel universes end up looking strangely like our own despite their differences. The similarity between the Skewed World and ours is for my convenience, of course. While it would make more sense for everything to be almost completely different, that level of world-building is more distracting to the reader and more labor-intensive than I want.

The End

Family structure:

Simple marriage. Legal familial relationship between one man and one woman. The ceremony is a wedding, the status is married, and the people are husband and wife.

Bruderwed marriage. Legal familial relationship between two or more men (cohusbands) and one woman. Traditionally, cohusbands were brothers, but today non-related men can be cohusbands. The ceremony is a wedding, the status is bruderwed, and the people are cohusbands and wife.

Handfasting - Legal familial relationship between two men. The ceremony is a handfasting, the status is handfasted, and the people are handfast.

Property ownership:

Owner. The person to whom property belongs. Owners have the legal right to the income earned from the use or sale of a property.

Holder. The person (free man) with the legal right to make decisions about the sale or use of a property. Holders have the right to a portion of revenue from use or sale of a property as a management fee.

Unfree status:

Slave. An individual who is permanently unfree. A slave is property and is legally incapable of making decisions. There are few legal limits on what owners can do to slaves short of intentionally killing them without justification. Many slaves are 'slaveborn' and have never been free, but a substantial portion were 'freeborn' and were enslaved, almost always unwillingly.

Indentured. An individual who is temporarily unfree. An indentured is property during his indenture and is legally incapable of making decisions during the indenture, but is legally capable of making decisions before and after the indenture. An indentured will be free again at a designated time, so there are limits on what can be done to an indentured. 'Indentured' is the term used for the person and to designate the class of people. 'Indenture' is the document indicating the time frame (and sometimes other conditions) of the unfree status. A free person may have entered indenturement willingly or unwillingly.

Appendix: Entertainment in the Skewed World (incomplete)

Music. market largely, but not entirely male. Performers all male. Some free, some slaves (owned by record companies?). Castrati/age-cessated males sing higher parts. Songs are romance (man/man, man/woman (woman part sung by boy), lust (man/man, man/slave, (man/woman considered inappropriate for lust)), more...

Stage & screen. (adult actors male, when female roles needed, men typically play women) (alternate option: female roles played by female slaves who continue to breed – pregnancies worked into storylines). Same stories about families, work, friends, etc. as our world.

Taboos. Questioning appropriateness of slavery in general (questioning an illegal enslavement is okay, so long as the whole system isn't indicted). Depicting actual heterosexual sex. Presenting out of wedlock heterosexual sex as 'okay' (though pre-marital 'love' is fine).