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In this question, I detail a world with a third human sex, lilim, who have bat-like wings and taloned feet like a bird's. The TL;DR is that lilim give birth to equal numbers of men, women and lilim (and early-miscarried male lilim), while women give birth to only men and women. Lilim are a female sex.

The issue is that given that lilim have slightly lower birth rate than women, and only 1 in 3 births is a lilim and 1 in 3 is a woman, while half of the offspring of women are women. Going by pure genetics without considering selection pressures, lilim are doomed to becoming extinct or a minority curiosity.

An additional complication is that until the age of between 6 and 9, a woman-child and a lilim-child are indistinguishable.

However, lilim aren't willing to just sit back and let that happen. On the world to which lilim fled after it became apparent that their sex would become extinct on our own world, there was a war between the Vilifiers - lilim who vilify women and advocate preventing them from reproducing, and the Nurturers, who couldn't stomach the wholesale sterilization and/or murder of a third of the population. The result of the war was that the population separated, with the Vilifiers on the original world and the Nurturers on a new world.

I'm sure that we can imagine the sorts of atrocities that a people at war with their own genetics could perpetrate. However, I'm interested in more subtle methods of controlling the population of women that the Nurturers might practise. The Nurturers are still lilim, and are still not willing to allow their sex to become extinct, they just have more scruples.

So, the question: How might lilim reduce the rate at which their woman-children reproduce without denying them the opportunity to reproduce at all, with the most effective and least intrusive, cruel or obvious methods being preferable.

Edit:

Religious solutions are not acceptable. Their society rejected religion at a particular point in their history prior to the Vilifier/Nurturer schism. I'm looking primarily for psychological, sociological and legal solutions.

Technological, magical, surgical or pharmaceutical solutions are also out unless the women voluntarily have themselves sterilized or use birth control, the Nurturers feel that such solutions are a step too close to the practises of the Vilifiers. Any such solution must be voluntary and not coerced at a personal level.

The lilim understand Mendelian genetics, but are not capable of genetic engineering.

Edit 2:

To bring the genetics in from the linked question, men have X and Y chromosomes. Women have XX. Lilim have LX. LY male lilim offspring do not implant into the uterus, and so is lethal. Viable LXY male lilim occasionally occur, but are not genetically significant, as they are sterile.

Also, for the sake of evolutionary history, before Adam meddled, Women had WW chromosomes, men were WY and Lilim were WL. LY was still lethal, as were WW women-children when they were carried by lilim. Women became extinct due in part to the higher survivability of lilim. Then Adam changed the W chromosome in men to X, and added selection pressures which led to the elimination of the unmodified W chromosome.

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    $\begingroup$ @JBH I've updated the question with the acceptable methods. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 3, 2022 at 7:38
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    $\begingroup$ "Lilim rejected religion at a particular point in their history" - in terms of humanity it's like saying "women rejected religion at a particular point in their history". They have anatomical differences, not hive mind. It makes them look like a separate species in superficial contact with society of "normal" people. $\endgroup$
    – D'Monlord
    Aug 3, 2022 at 9:57
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    $\begingroup$ I just wondered, with whom Lilim can have children? Men, women, other lilims? All at once? $\endgroup$ Aug 3, 2022 at 10:10
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    $\begingroup$ @Tortliena Lilim are a female sex. They mate with men in order to reproduce in much the same way as women. In mythology, Lilith was said to be Adam's first first wife, but they separated when Lilith would not subordinate herself to Adam. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 3, 2022 at 10:22
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    $\begingroup$ Not considering selection pressure makes the question moot, in real populations there are selection pressure, that is the only thing that keeps the ratio of human sexes at roughly 50/50. there are dozens of genes that favor one sex or the other. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Aug 3, 2022 at 13:02

13 Answers 13

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Small frame-challenge beforehand

Saying that the population is doomed is kind of an over-extent. Indeed, lilims would be a minority, since regardless of how you plan things, they are mathematically less or equal in numbers to men and women by being only 1/3 of the people. But evolution just doesn't work in a "they exist or go extinct", it's a gradient which balances naturally itself out.

The real issue to my eyes is that for your lilim to continue existing, they need to overcome their poor ratio of 1/3 lilim every birth. In our world, a population is considered stable if each woman has at least 2 children in order to replace mommy and daddy. For your lilim's case, they would need to have 3 children at least so that on average, 1 is a lilim who can perpetuate the legacy.

This could be done by various, society-wide changes (lower life level, culture and traditions...). However, increasing birth rates plainly in all the population is not what you ask for visibly, so we'll focus on adjusting the gender proportion in the society, ie. less women, more lilims instead.

Answer : Alter gender images and roles, create a new "nobility"

Now, supposing the birth rate is naturally high enough, how can we increase the proportion of lilims in society?

Lilim's infantilization of their rights like what women suffered in old times could be a possibility, making them the gender to "take care of house and children" (and thus, make children). However, I think it's much more efficient to glorify the lilims -think old Nobility- and create strong genderization in the society for four main reasons :

  • First because it's much easier to find positive traits than negative traits about people who can fly and traverse worlds -I skimmed your old question-. Having such abilities make them look "better", even if they don't use said qualities everyday. What's important is the picture people have.
  • On the reverse, making lilims only good at "making children" is very, very likely to reduce their political and social influence. As a lilim you don't want to lose control when you're already few and want to influence society to stay afloat.
  • Then because it'll socially protect them more than other genders, meaning more help when in case of trouble, and first ones out of conflicts.
  • Finally because we have to remember that men-to-women/lilim ratio is lower than expected, comprised between ~50% (case only women had babies in the previous generation), and ~67% women/lilim-to-men (->only lilims had babies). So there's more women/lilim candidates than men. The choice, even more so than most real-world societies will be up to men. Advertising lilims increase the likelyhood men will find them attractive, making lilim/men couples more likely than women/men's1.

As such, lilims will have more value as wedding candidates, with women coming only second. Because (or therefore?) lilim give birth to 67% higher-valued persons (sexually-valued men and glorified lilims) instead of 50% for women, lilims also become de facto the best choice as wedding candidates when looking only at numbers. This will in turn change culture where lilims are the "wifes to get", and women will be more strongly educated and enticed to have "worker-ants" roles in the society instead.

Glorifying lilims is a pretty straightforward job : Prioritize lilim-only sport-events -ideally at things only them can do-, make them the main actor-ess in movies, expose great lilim explorers, artists and scientists in museums, take high political positions and so on. This can be done even without the numerical majority. For genderisation, do like old societies : gendered schools, strong gender norms, pressure to "fit in the mold"... Just go gentle and sneaky with changes or else other genders -'specially women- will react and strifes can happen.

And if you think ahead -and subvertly- about the eventual overpopulation2, institute a law which penalizes having more than 2 children. You can officially state population's stability is ensured, and at the same time "discarding" women first for having lower value. If not by IGVs and child abandon, by lower education and all subsequent issues (lower lifetime, less chance of finding men, higher-risks jobs...).


1 : You could think polygamy is an alternative, but... It doesn't change the ratio men will look for lilims, it only spreads men on two genders with two opposite gender ratio directions.
2 : 3 children per Lilim means that your population will grow, even if women are a minority in dating men (you only need 2 to reproduce, while you produce 3 to perpetuate, with one producing "byproducts"). This will always lead to some overpopulation eventually, with its issues like wars for ressources. Fortunately if treasured your lilims should be the first one out of danger during those kind of things.

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    $\begingroup$ I most societys men are the desired child, men have decided this, Lilims only have a 1/3 chance of having your desired male. This needs overcoming. $\endgroup$
    – WendyG
    Aug 4, 2022 at 11:02
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    $\begingroup$ @WendyG If men have decided men are important, so can lilims for lilims }i{. Especially when it's in a time of changes and rebuilding, like after a war. $\endgroup$ Aug 4, 2022 at 11:54
  • $\begingroup$ You write "women will be more strongly educated" and "by lower education and all subsequent issues". Which is it? $\endgroup$
    – wizzwizz4
    Aug 4, 2022 at 19:42
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    $\begingroup$ @wizzwizz4 More strongly educated in order to become workers, that's what I meant. This include knowledge and also social behavior. $\endgroup$ Aug 4, 2022 at 19:50
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    $\begingroup$ At some point you could also introduce the possibility of men having sex with multiple lilim. That way you'd need a smaller number of men to reproduce. $\endgroup$ Aug 5, 2022 at 13:57
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Child support for lilim big enough to not work, only make babies.

Any lilim will get support for their child until age 9 or until maturity if the child is lilim. Regular women do not get child support.

Result–Lilim will have lots of children where 1/3 will be lilim. Normal women do not have money to rise children if they do not have a partner who helps.

Disadvantages–kids with male/female gender after 9yo can be abandoned by lilim mothers. Some lilim will make making babies their way of life, having 20-30 of them and rising only lilim to maturity.

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    $\begingroup$ What level of development this lilim society has? Because "child support" is something that has only existed for some social-democrat western countries for the last 50 years. Before that there was no child-support, there were "support children", as is, having many children is actually an asset since they can contribute to the family sustain from ages as young as 6. Having many children is how poor families have tried to survive through the ages; it's only in highly developed nations where they may be an economical burden for the lower-middle class only. $\endgroup$
    – Rekesoft
    Aug 5, 2022 at 9:01
  • $\begingroup$ @Rekesoft, Call it late 1800s to early 1900s, but with more magic than technology. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 5, 2022 at 15:00
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Sexual freedom and abortion

Woman are classically thought of as needing to select their sexual partners carefully. They need to be sure that they get the best seed and that their kids, as well as themselves, are cared for.

Lilim will not have those luxuries if they want to stay relevant. The advantage is that they live in a society. With the right push this represents they can get much more cohesive, allowing better distribution of wealth and care between the Lilim.

As care for themselves and kids is dealt with they they can have a much more sexually free (sub)culture. They can still have fixed partners, but it isn't required. Lilim can thus be much more promiscuous as the threshold to get kids is much lower.

Now imagine a society where woman still act as they do on Earth and all their cultural and personal differences. Now add a second group of ultra promiscuous women than are generally very much ok with unprotected sex and in many cases will take care of the kids if any arise. The rate of men 'getting lucky' at the end of the night goes up, the amount of pregnancies of Lilim will go much higher than normal woman.

Abortion

There is still one difficulty. Even at the best times a 1/3rd is expected by the law of big numbers. That is if only Lilim get pregnant. The trick is during conception. At several intervals you can check the DNA of the baby. You can choose to abort it if the DBA is himan female.

If the difference of Lilim and woman isn't visible in the DNA it can only be an environmental trigger. This triggers gene expression into woman or Lilim. If it is an environmental trigger it can be controlled.

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    $\begingroup$ Or abort all males. The Lilim male fetuses are going to miscarry anyway. The Lilim mothers then produce 50% children who cannot bear lilim. As do the human women. $\endgroup$
    – Willk
    Aug 3, 2022 at 14:59
  • $\begingroup$ A 'DNA' check is possible, but is rare and very expensive. Hence the Vilifiers' practice of sterilizing/murdering women. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 4, 2022 at 0:20
  • $\begingroup$ @MontyWild In real life, Willk's sollution (selectively abort males) is relatively cheap; you can do ultrasounds.(Also, in the real world, it's considered not a very good thing.) $\endgroup$
    – wizzwizz4
    Aug 4, 2022 at 19:55
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Compulsory childbirth for Lilim.

In this world, fertility has fallen. Millions of individuals and families wish to adopt and are in demand for a child. In this world, the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted has become virtually nonexistent. It is in the interest of the state for the population to grow and because 2/3 of Lilim children can themselves have children (as opposed to only 50% of children to human mothers) it is in the interest of the state to compel Lilim to bear more children.

The system will be analogous to a draft, which historically required males to give the use of their body for some years to the state, to be used for military purposes. Lilim will likewise be compelled to give the use of their bodies to the state for purposes of bearing children who then will be made available for adoption. Of course it is only just that if a Lilim who is compelled to bear a child wishes to herself raise the child, that will be allowed.

Taking the choice to bear children away from Lilim (for a short period) will result in more children total and necessarily more Lilim children. This advances the interest of the state that the population grow and that adoptions of non-domestic infants be made unnecessary. In this democratic society, the factions who feel the reproductive draft is unfair are balanced by the factions of those who wish the long term preservation of the Lilim type.

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  • $\begingroup$ I think it'd be even more prominent if the fall in fertility happens more often for women than lilims. It's less efforts for more results :). $\endgroup$ Aug 3, 2022 at 16:06
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    $\begingroup$ I wonder if the downvoter thinks this would not work, or downvoted because it is mean to Lilim. Or maybe because it is not silly enough? I worried about that last one... $\endgroup$
    – Willk
    Aug 4, 2022 at 1:09
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    $\begingroup$ It does seem a bit heavy-handed when subtlety is required. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 4, 2022 at 2:24
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    $\begingroup$ @MontyWild Having a law that 'discriminates against Lilim' but actually secures their demographic and political supremacy is subtle as well as brazen. $\endgroup$
    – user86462
    Aug 4, 2022 at 10:33
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    $\begingroup$ @SeanOConnor is thinking the way I was thinkingZ. The OP requires subtle action against human females. No mention is made of action or subtlety as regards men or lilim. The subtlety of this approach is that there is no apparent action at all as regards human women. $\endgroup$
    – Willk
    Aug 4, 2022 at 13:00
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I Have a solution for the Lilim extinction problem, which simply involves some policies. There will be no need for any war or sky-portals to an exoplanet. But, the solution does rely on 2 kinds of Lilim. One set seemingly will be more socially dominant than the other, but that will be a later discussion.

I have made population simulator with time using Python, and implemented policy decisions in form of modularized code. In order to simulated the effect of policies practically, I have used some heuristic models, which work quite well. I have results to show.

Basically, I have been able to achieve multiple scenarios, in which the percentage of each gender in the population finally achieves a stable percentage after a number of epochs, and remains the same for remaining epochs. This constant state is achieved at around epoch 40. In one of these, the final unchanging percentage of men is ~41, women is ~32 and Lilim is ~27.

To understand the policies, one must first understand these terms:

  1. lilithPref : The percentage of men who prefer Lilim and are going to marry them if any are available.
  2. polyPref : The fraction of Lilim who practice Polyandry (Female Polygamy), as is required by the law for certain number of Lilim to be alawys married to as many partners as is prescribed by law.
  3. polyNumber : The number of husbands Lilim who practice polyandry can have. Everyone else in the population can have at max 1 partner only.
  4. deathToBirthRatio : I am using 0.4, which is close to current global average.
  5. The simulation starts with an initial number of 50 men, 25 women and 25 Lilim in the world. Feel free to try different seeds.
  6. epochs : The number of epochs for which the simulation was run for each set of unique parameters is 100.
  7. total : The total population at the end of 100 epochs.
  8. Also, unfortunately, all Lilim who are following polyandry have to discard their women children. This will be more easily done if chromosomal testing of the fetus will be legal, but there can be other solutions as well, such as disallowing female children of Lilim from giving birth, so these women are not accounted for in this simulation. Probably, these women will finally end up being Amazons and leading society ? Monogamous Lilim do not have to do this, and are strictly prohibited from doing so (Treating their women-born any differently).

The graphs below show results of different policies. The calculations omit exception LXY beings (they are basically counted as men, although in reality, they will be able to contribute lilim offspring as well). 0.33 of the offspring of Lilim are of each gender, and 0.5 offspring of women are men and women respectively. First, the men who marry Lilim, including the polygamous Lilim are accounted for, then, the remaining men marry as many women as are available. All of the parameters are taken into calculation.

The new generation comprises men and women from both Women parents and Lilim parents, substracting the women born of polygamous Lilim, and the lilim come of course only from Lilim parents.

In each epoch, the total number of (cumulative) existing men, women and Lilim participate as parents, and after the epoch, the new generation has m new men, w new women, and l new Lilim. The number of total men, women and lilim are then updated to:

men := men - deathToBirthRatio*m + m and the same rule applies to women and lilim.

  1. Men Domination:

This appears to be the best policy, since lilim do not dominate but are nearly 25% of the population

This appears to be the best policy, since lilim do not dominate but are nearly 25% of the population

  1. Women Domination:

This is unsustainable, since Lilim drop to 0

This is unsustainable, since Lilim drop to 0

  1. Lilim Dominance:

Here, the Lilim dominate. Even this is sustainable, but seemingly dystopian

Here, the Lilim dominate. Even this is sustainable, but seemingly dystopian

Do feel free to make experiments of your own. I think that this adds a good flavour to world building. It is to be noted that I have used heurstics such as epochs here, but this adequately models the real world, although in the real world, the coefficients used would be exponential, there will be many more variables, and everything will be continous (hence requiring calculus or functions to model).

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  • $\begingroup$ This is very interesting. However, as I wrote the history, things started on Earth with dominant males with a preference for women, and just 1 woman. Then, after the exodus from Earth to the new world, lilim became dominant, with about 25% men and no women. Additionally, lilim follow the male pattern of promiscuity/extramarital affairs rather than the women's pattern. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 5, 2022 at 15:12
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Your lilim are a dispersive morph, which means they are widely recognized as vital to the human ecology.

It is unusual for mammals to do this, but naked mole rats have a special dispersive morph, which is to say fatter mole-rats that seek out reproduction with other colonies. The evolutionary logic is clear: ordinary women (who might even, by analogy with termites, be considered supplemental reproductives) are competing with each other to pass their genes on in the local environment. But on your planet it is for some reason very important to get genes to spread long distances. Hence the lilim, and especially, their wings. Nothing shouts "dispersive morph" louder than an improbable set of wings!

The scenario for this in the other post looks creationist and magical, but a world from before the Sun and Moon might work much like a tidally locked planet around a red dwarf, with many isolated valleys at the twilight zone heated partially by geothermal sources. The valleys periodically change temperature, water availability, and exposure to X-ray flares. Populations who have lost genes needed to resist radiation or other extreme conditions will inevitably die out. But there are also important genes local to any one valley regardless of weather conditions - resistance to arsenic or boron, for example. Your lilim evolved in order to ensure that every population receives a certain minimal level of genes from outside their comfort zone, meaning that they are well-poised to adapt as conditions change. (They still would need several generations to adapt to avoid being bottlenecked down to a few individuals)

Because the lilim bring "bad" genes poorly suited to a population, they might be seen ("Vilifiers") as a eugenic threat to the population, inflicting suffering on offspring who are constantly shivering or disfigured with hard radiation-resistant cuticles. They themselves have a broader view that comes with travel, and understand themselves to be an essential part of their people's ecology.

In the long run, communities which reject the lilim and drive them off will die out. It may take hundreds of years before well-deserved disaster strikes, but "Nurturers" would be expected to call it justice when it does. Clearly, the death of entire lilim-free communities and their replacement from scratch by lilim colonists will reduce the non-lilim reproductive rate. However, it is also possible for "Nurturers" to cause women to accept that a certain fraction of births from their community must be lilim, in order that its genetic heritage passes on to the rest of the world, and that women should forego pregnancy whenever their community is deficient.

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  • $\begingroup$ I'm still not sure that this answers the question. However, lilim evolved on my Magical Earth as a sex that bred true, but with a birth rate half that of women, since a lilim's XX and LY offspring always miscarried, meaning that they would only carry XY men and LX lilim to term. After Adam meddled in evolutionarily recent times, the X chromosome was modified so that XX offspring of a lilim could be carried to term. How does that affect your analysis? $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 5, 2022 at 15:27
  • $\begingroup$ The key criterion is that a community has to produce lilim - this is what they measure to see that their genes are being dispersed, and probably it carries other social implications (vaguely reminiscent of royal marriages, opening cultural links etc.) The meddling you describe certainly can be undone - the lilim could abort, chemically castrate, or sacrifice female offspring, for example - but you didn't sound keen on such approaches. So I just stuck with the notion that the women feel they have an obligation to reduce their reproduction to allow the lilim to make their quota somehow. $\endgroup$ Aug 5, 2022 at 15:40
  • $\begingroup$ I certainly considered the approach of removing unwanted women, and that's the approach one of my two worlds with lilim have taken, but the other world - the one that is the subject of this question - refuses such tactics. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 5, 2022 at 15:45
  • $\begingroup$ With reproduction there are always a lot of ugly shades of gray, and there is plenty of room between those two positions. For example, the lilim might control a trade network that offers worldwide markets and imported goods - they offer a comfortable life to women who are subjected to the extreme form of "female circumcision", as verified by periodic checks, while others are relegated to a desperate underclass. But it's hard for us to explore that when we're not sure what your culture's ethical boundary would be. I'm saying women certainly could voluntarily choose to preserve lilim. $\endgroup$ Aug 5, 2022 at 16:00
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"The issue is that given that lilim have slightly lower birth rate ... lilim are doomed to becoming extinct or a minority curiosity" - nope.

Evolution works like charm on animals but not on people. Take medicine. Specimens who would inevitably die are cured and keep living. People do evolve but they do so very slowly and without any drastic changes.

Lilim are not doomed. Considering they were part of humanity for hundreds of thousands of years and survived the worst - famine, ice ages, epidemics - there is not even a slightest chance for them to succumb to evolution pressures when people reached other worlds. There are none.

They are firmly part of humanity. Usual societal defense mechanism would work - "do to others whatever you would like them to do to you". Lilim may reject religion but they can't reject trivial demands of coexistence in society.

"The result of the war was that the population separated, with the Vilifiers on the original world and the Nurturers on a new world" - the problem solved itself.

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  • $\begingroup$ At some point medicine will be good enough to make Lilim advantages not usefull and then Lilim will be doomed. OFC charm can do job and make them survive. $\endgroup$
    – Kamitergh
    Aug 3, 2022 at 8:52
  • $\begingroup$ @Kamitergh - no one cares about "usefulness". Evolution eradicates bad traits, humans do not. They may even cherish them. One of the biggest problem of humanity now is overpopulation - it is very difficult to make people stop to reproduce even when they starve. Lilim are fine. $\endgroup$
    – D'Monlord
    Aug 3, 2022 at 9:17
  • $\begingroup$ Sexual transfered disease. Cured by penicilin. No effect on males and Lilim. Klilling females in 2 weeks if not cured. After penicilin Lilim will be smaller and smaller part of population. Before - even 45%. If tere will be no problem with enough Lilim representation then there will be no this question. $\endgroup$
    – Kamitergh
    Aug 3, 2022 at 9:28
  • $\begingroup$ @Kamitergh - sorry, I have no idea what you trying to say. $\endgroup$
    – D'Monlord
    Aug 3, 2022 at 9:35
  • $\begingroup$ Lilim originally bred true since their woman-children were miscarried, and women became extinct, but by modifying the X-chromosome so that woman-children were not miscarried, they no longer breed true. That's a rather big change. It can't be said that current lilim have existed for millions of years, when this situation is only thousands of years old. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 3, 2022 at 9:56
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My own ideas to encourage lilim to reproduce and discourage women are a combination of education, economics and tradition.

At the moment when a girl begins the transformation into a lilim, she is removed from the school that other children attend, and sent to a lilim-only school, where lilim are supported through the uncomfortable transformation, taught to fly, and educated to a higher standard than the teaching available at the school for woman-children and boys.

The end result of this is that lilim are better qualified for further education, and have more and better employment prospects. With a higher income, lilim are more able to afford to have children.

The next aspect is that women are traditionally wet-nurses and milk producers. This means that after a woman has given birth, she may find employment in feeding the offspring of lilim or producing milk for sale. The side-effect of this is that lactating women are much less likely to become pregnant. Lactation is a natural (and real-world) contraceptive. It's also a job that doesn't require much education.

The third aspect is a product of the 1:1:1 gender balance between men, women and lilim. This gender balance means that men are outnumbered 2:1 by women and lilim. As a consequence, pair-bonding means that one third of the population will not be able to find a mate, and economics will cause men to tend to favor unions with richer lilim rather than poorer women. Additionally, lilim can engage in casual swoop-and-snatch sexual encounters with willing men, while women are both less able and biologically less willing (because women are more likely to become pregnant after any given sexual encounter) to do the same.

Lilim are encouraged to resume their occupations soon after giving birth, especially those in higher-skilled and higher-paid jobs, meaning that a wet-nurse is a necessity for a career lilim who wants a family.

So, the structure of Nurturer society favours lilim being mothers while those women who become pregnant look after both their own and lilim's babies, leaving lilim able to become pregnant again sooner, and women likely to lactate for many years, preventing their becoming pregnant again.

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    $\begingroup$ On Earth, higher education leads to less children $\endgroup$
    – bytepusher
    Aug 3, 2022 at 21:04
  • $\begingroup$ @bytepusher Of a society, or a group – and they're correlated, but the causal relationship isn't necessarily "higher education" → "fewer children". If it is, you'd have to drill down into the weeds of why in order to work out what parts of the effect would apply to individuals (lilim v.s. women) and what parts would apply to groups (lilim and women equally). $\endgroup$
    – wizzwizz4
    Aug 4, 2022 at 19:39
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    $\begingroup$ @wizzwizz4 The causal mechanism is pretty obvious, women put off childbearing for careers. Fertility is also strongly negatively correlated with employment and income. This particular correlation is indeed a case of causation. $\endgroup$
    – user86462
    Aug 5, 2022 at 9:12
  • $\begingroup$ My model suggests that lilim get pregnant, and continue to work as long as practical. On giving birth, their children would typically be placed in the care of wet-nurses, and the lilim would resume work within a couple of weeks. This allows both kids and career more easily. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 5, 2022 at 15:17
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Some recessive genes (eg. blonde hair, blue eyes) correspond to features that people continue to have. A common theory is that if everyone in the village has brown hair except for one blonde then standing out from the crowd will help that person get the attention of a partner, so have more offspring.

lilim (wings and talons) sound like they will stand out quite sharply! So if some % of men find the lilim more attractive than women, and if some other % of men are (for reasons of scarcity) drawn to whichever of the two is rarer then they will perhaps find it easier to find partners than women.

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  • $\begingroup$ Lilim are also more promiscuous, given their historically low pregnancy rate. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 5, 2022 at 15:13
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Mechanics of Reproduction

Lilim can take either role in the reproductive process. They can be impregnated by a man or impregnate a woman. In either case the child has 1/3 chance of being male, female, or lilim. On the other hand if a man impregnates a woman the child is male 1/2 of the time and female 1/2 of the time.

The Nurturers have designed their society so all reproduction is done through a Lilim. The inhabitants of the world believe this is the only way. Men and women cannot reproduce with each other. This legend has been perpetrated since the new world was settled.

I leave it to your imagination how they prevent people finding out. Perhaps they have released a pathogen that makes all male-female pregnancies unviable, but which Lilim are immune to.

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    $\begingroup$ From comments : "Lilim are a female sex. They mate with men in order to reproduce in much the same way as women" :/ $\endgroup$ Aug 3, 2022 at 11:23
  • $\begingroup$ @Tortliena Hmm. . . . I didn't see that comment. $\endgroup$
    – Daron
    Aug 3, 2022 at 11:30
  • $\begingroup$ Was expecting Monty to add it to the question, seems they didn't :'(. $\endgroup$ Aug 3, 2022 at 11:31
  • $\begingroup$ @Tortliena It was in the linked question, but I've added it to this one. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Aug 3, 2022 at 12:09
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Nasal manipulation

This is slightly handwavy,but might suit a near future tech / low magic setting.

Every cleaning product (or maybe food) on the planet is loaded with enzymes that destroy female pheremones and/or cause males to dislike or ignore them. They aren't really conscious of it. Lilim pheremones, in contrast, smell amazing.

This is insufficient in itself in a future tech setting but could couple nicely with some of the other answers. In any sort of magic setting, it's potentially a complete solution.

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Generous Social security / pensions...for women

Women have no fear of retirement; their pensions will keep them in comfort.

Lilim, in contrast, must either breed or save huge amounts of money. Surprise: they have lots of little lilims running around!

If you really wanted, you could have lilim getting family friendly tax breaks (especially income splitting, maternity leave, and child credits) in the name of fairness.

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The numbers don't work. Assuming a stable population overall all childbirth must be from the lilim just to maintain a stable lilim population.

Thus they're going to have to do something to alter the ratio of LX to XX children they bear. No incentives favoring lilim mothers over XX mothers can work.

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