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Male Alicorns?


Silverhoof

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Equestria is no matriarchy, nor is it a patriarchy. There's never been any real evidence for either of those claims. Everything in the show has pointed to it being gender-egalitarian. No gender has been portrayed as superior, nor is their society 'dominated' by one gender, and both genders have been portrayed as equally capable. We've seen ponies of both genders in all sorts of positions, no indication of discrimination, etc. The current alicorns are female, but given the apparent nature of alicorns and how they become alicorns (merit and capability of being a benevolent leader), gender is entirely irrelevant, and there's no reason whatsoever to believe that a candidate would be refused based on their gender. Starswirl very likely nearly became one, but he didn't properly understand friendship, as Celestia said.

 

Also, I think you're badly twisting the show's goals with regards to the portrayal of females there. The show is focused one female characters, screentime-wise, yes. And one of it's goals is definitely to have some great and well-made female characters. But you know what? In no way whatsoever is it portraying them as superior, nor is it portraying a fictional society where they are dominant. Female characters tend to get more screentime, for obvious reasons, but to suggest the show is portraying some sort of matriarchy is ludicrous. I'm very confident when I say that Equestria is being portrayed as a society with gender-equality. The focus may be on the female characters, but there are plenty of positive examples of both genders in the show, and one gender has never been portrayed as privileged/being advantaged.

 

Speaking of gender-equality, I'm afraid I take great concern with one of your lines in that post... That is, the questionable quote about a "well-rounded, positive matriarchy".

 

Put simply, a matriarchy is a very bad thing, just like a patriarchy is. They're really no different whatsoever, merely flipped. So, if you were truly one for gender equality, you'd find the idea of portraying a matriarchy as positive, especially in a show like MLP that's brimming with such positivity, as a silly and backwards idea. And not one that the show has any intentions of promoting either. As I've already repeated in this post, Equestria is not being portrayed as some sort of matriarchy or patriarchy, but rather a gender-egalitarian society. The screentime and character development leans towards the female characters, but in no way is this taking place in an environment of one gender being privileged, advantaged, or dominant.

 

Positive female representation is abundant in this show, just like Faust wanted, but at no point has that come at the expense of trying to push some ludicrous and harmful gender supremacy nonsense, to put it bluntly. Female characters may be the main focus here, and the show does a great job with them, but Equestria has absolutely been portrayed as egalitarian with gender, as no gender has been shown to be dominant or advantaged.

 

Anyway, that's enough wall of text for tonight, I suppose.

 

A matriarchy does not on it's own imply: females>males. It simply means the government that makes up Equestria so far been revealed to be mostly composed of female leaders. Equestria does not treat males as lesser. It's plausible for Equestria to equalize the ratio between males and females in leadership roles, but not so much to be revealed in the show in the future. There's no sign of gender oppression in Equestria nor does that equal what a matriarchy is.

 

Equestria, is in essence a Utopia. When I mean, a "positive matriarchy" I don't mean a matriarchy itself is in realistic terms positive. (Believe me, I do not think that way by any means) I'm just saying that Equestria lacks discrimination and yet it is still stably ruled by a high female ratio.

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A matriarchy does not on it's own imply: females>males. It simply means the government that makes up Equestria so far been revealed to be mostly composed of female leaders. Equestria does not treat males as lesser. It's plausible for Equestria to equalize the ratio between males and females in leadership roles, but not so much to be revealed in the show in the future. There's no sign of gender oppression in Equestria nor does that equal what a matriarchy is.

 

Equestria, is in essence a Utopia. When I mean, a "positive matriarchy" I don't mean a matriarchy itself is in realistic terms positive. (Believe me, I do not think that way by any means) I'm just saying that Equestria lacks discrimination and yet it is still stably ruled by a high female ratio.

 

So you're not talking about a matriarchal society, but rather a matriarchal government (at least in a perhaps pedantic level of technicality) using the "female head of state" definition of the word? Technically, you could refer to their government as matriarchal in a sense, since the current alicorns are female, though I don't put much stock into that particular definition of the words 'matriarchy' or 'patriarchy', as the gender of the head(s) of state doesn't really have any significance unless the position is one locked away by discrimination or something else of that nature, which wouldn't be the case with Equestria since the position is based on who is good at being a benevolent leader and such, something that gender plays no role in.

 

Under that particular definition, you could just as quickly call any country with a king a patriarchy, and any country with a queen a matriarchy, which doesn't feel like a very useful or meaningful definition unless there's discrimination involved. By itself, it wouldn't imply any discrimination or anything really, other than the genitals of the head(s) of state in question. I mean, you could call the UK a matriarchy by that metric, I suppose. Either way, I stick very strongly by my assertion that Equestria is gender-egalitarian, but I've already said enough about that for one night, and I'm tired at this point.

 

One thing I'd like to say is that the government of Equestria is something we've seen very little of. The princesses, princes, and a few others are just about it. We have seen politicians and such of both genders, though, and considering the environment, I'd say it's sure shot to assume there are government positions filled by both genders. That could include anything from mayors of other towns, to whatever bureaucracy we may not be seeing due to the limited scope of the show. Ultimately, there's a lot we're not seeing there. By government, you do mean all government positions, correct, or merely the heads of state?

Edited by Vixor
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So you're not talking about a matriarchal society, but rather a matriarchal government (at least in a perhaps pedantic level of technicality) using the "female head of state" definition of the word? Technically, you could refer to their government as matriarchal in a sense, since the current alicorns are female, though I don't put much stock into that particular definition of the words 'matriarchy' or 'patriarchy', as the gender of the head(s) of state doesn't really have any significance unless the position is one locked away by discrimination or something else of that nature, which wouldn't be the case with Equestria since the position is based on who is good at being a benevolent leader and such, something that gender plays no role in.

 

Under that particular definition, you could just as quickly call any country with a king a patriarchy, and any country with a queen a matriarchy, which doesn't feel like a very useful or meaningful definition unless there's discrimination involved. By itself, it wouldn't imply any discrimination or anything really, other than the genitals of the head(s) of state in question. I mean, you could call the UK a matriarchy by that metric, I suppose. Either way, I stick very strongly by my assertion that Equestria is gender-egalitarian, but I've already said enough about that for one night, and I'm tired at this point.

 

One thing I'd like to say is that the government of Equestria is something we've seen very little of. The princesses, princes, and a few others are just about it. We have seen politicians and such of both genders, though, and considering the environment, I'd say it's sure shot to assume there are government positions filled by both genders. That could include anything from mayors of other towns, to whatever bureaucracy we may not be seeing due to the limited scope of the show. Ultimately, there's a lot we're not seeing there. By government, you do mean all government positions, correct, or merely the heads of state?

 

The thing is, I'm not taking Equestria's government and directly comparing it to other real world terms or systems of government. Equestria's current prosperity is far from ever being realistic. You can define what exactly Equestria's classification is, but you really can't take to a serious extent that it could even reflect real life. There is certainly no such thing as a utopia of this extent in the real world. As for a matriarchal society It's not defined by just queens, but each branch of government being vastly populated by female occupiers is long outdated, or far from being located in a 1st world country. 

 

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Just to be extra clear by where my point of reference to a matriarchy is. (Yes, I did mean government) There's no indication nor does there have to be an indication a female-dominant society has to oppress another gender. To answer your question on the big picture of Equestria's government, yes, it has been shown that high positions of power are mostly occupied by females. 

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The thing is, I'm not taking Equestria's government and directly comparing it to other real world terms or systems of government. Equestria's current prosperity is far from ever being realistic. You can define what exactly Equestria's classification is, but you really can't take to a serious extent that it could even reflect real life. There is certainly no such thing as a utopia of this extent in the real world. As for a matriarchal society It's not defined by just queens, but each branch of government being vastly populated by female occupiers is long outdated, or far from being located in a 1st world country. 

 

sig-4300788.sig-4300687.9lct45.png

 

Just to be extra clear by where my point of reference to a matriarchy is. (Yes, I did mean government) There's no indication nor does there have to be an indication a female-dominant society has to oppress another gender. To answer your question on the big picture of Equestria's government, yes, it has been shown that high positions of power are mostly occupied by females. 

 

Equestria's prosperity isn't really unrealistic, especially in-universe. It's a really nice, benevolent place, where friendship and love are highly valued, among a lot of other nice things I could say about it, but it's not as though it's totally perfect or that there's never any conflict whatsoever. Whether or not we'll ever have a society like that in our world? Dunno, I'd very much like that, but that's not really what I'm here to discuss.

 

And my point is that there's no indication whatsoever that Equestria is a female-dominated society, nor a male one, it's pretty clear that both genders are equally influential overall, with neither being advantaged or dominant, socially or economically. The current alicorns are, again, female, but gender would be irrelevant to who can become one. They are wise, benevolent leaders, and alicornhood seems to not be inherited based on title alone, but rather gifted to the right individuals. The current heads of state for Equestria are female, but their gender has nothing to do with them being there.

 

And as far as 'positions of power' goes, we simply haven't seen many of those, regardless of whether you're looking for male or female examples. Again, it's merely the princesses and princes, and a few others that are either minor side characters or background characters. Among those, we have seen politicians and such of both genders, even if they did not receive much development. Examples include the ponies in Games Ponies Play, or the two delegates in that more recent episode, plus likely a few others I'm forgetting, especially if you choose to count the comics as canon. Either way, you could probably count the government ponies with speaking roles on your fingers. There's really no evidence that Equestria's government is wholly dominated by one gender, and indeed, it would be very strongly against the rest of Equestria's portrayal that we've seen for that to be the case.

 

Bottom line is that Equestria's current heads of state are female, but they are not there because of their gender, nor is there some sort of system in place that advantaged them over others because of their gender. There is no evidence whatsoever for their society being female-dominant or male-dominant, as both genders have been shown to be equally capable and equally 'influential' overall, as we've seen many of both genders in all sorts of positions, some of which are economically or socially significant. I strongly stand by my points, that all evidence points towards it being gender-egalitarian, and that it's not a matriarchy or patriarchy. If you want to be overly pedantic, you can call their government matriarchal under that one definition, since again, that one in particular, useless as it may be, only really requires the head of state to be female, but there's no basis for calling their society matriarchal or otherwise dominated by one gender, as it's quite clear that they have pretty much perfect gender equality, and it shows in many ways.

 

Anyway, I'm not really sure if there's much else to be said here, nor am I entirely confident that we are even on the same page with a lot of these things. I will say that for a society to be dominated by one gender, that absolutely would require oppression/an unfair or skewed environment and stuff of that nature. But again, it's clear that Equestria isn't dominated by one gender, in any sense of the word.

Edited by Vixor
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  • 2 months later...

While it is indeed true we have seen solely female alicorns for the series thus far, it would be interesting to see a male alicorn spice up the series. Something new for a change is always welcomed! We've seen a lot of exciting moments from Friendship is Magic, so that doesn't mean things can't get more interesting from here.

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I just made a male alicorn oc and this thread got bumped.

 

Anyways, there's a lot of hints of not existing AND existing

 

For example, Prince Blueblood is a Unicorn, although you need to understand friendship to be a Alicorn.

 

And Star Swirl was also not a Alicorn because he didn't understood friendship.

 

Also, there was a Stallion Alicorn on the storyboards of The Cutie Map and a horse statue in Castle Mane-ia

 

Also, problably not cannon, but Léon is a alicorn foal.

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  • 2 years later...

Well there's Leon and I assume he has a family and there's the ones the creators draw accidentally all the time and Tempest Shadow was planned as the Princess's brother so we have to assume that males do exist we just don't see them it's most likely they'll pop up in Generation 5 

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On Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Pencil J. Doodle said:

I do believe that:

 

A.) Alicorns can only reproduce with other Alicorns. They can still have intimate relations with normal ponies, but can't make children (Which is unlucky for Cadence and Shinning Armour)

 

B.) Male Alicorns do exist, but are yet to be shown on the show. I have created several alicorn OC's (for fan-story purposes, not the be my primary OC), but of course, that's just fanon. Unless Alicorns reproduce asexually, then males must exist

Um, excuse me? They had a child. Flurry Heart? Is she not their child? Where are you getting this info?

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