Is it reasonable to assume the near-extinction of women?

Question

The world of Ruquelis has some problems. It is populated by men, women and winged lilim as in this question: How to get the Lilim to breed true?. People on Ruquelis reincarnate according to the mechanism I describe in this question: Is it reasonable that a nation reject reincarnation?.

Ruquelis has some pretty distasteful customs, including the mass removal of girls who do not become lilim by their ninth birthday from the gene pool, by execution, forced sterilization and/or cannibalism, that have been reinforced by reincarnation. Part of these problems have been compounded by a drug, hialutabu, which makes its users experience pain as pleasure, which is administered to the girls or women to be disposed of in order that their next incarnations remember the experience in a positive light.

The worst part of this systemic prejudice against women is that children born on Ruquelis are raised to believe that women have no value as parents, that their only value is for what they can learn before their deaths and reincarnation, and perhaps for the value of their flesh for the meat trade, and that their deaths are both a positive personal experience that will be remembered by their next incarnation and a positive contribution to their society.

These customs arose as a response to the birth ratios of breeding between men and women, and men and lilim: all offspring of women are 1/2 men, 1/2 women, while the offspring of lilim are 1/3 men, 1/3 women and 1/3 lilim, and have a slightly lower birth rate than women due to 1/4 of fertilized ova being non-viable. Going by pure mathematics, this would appear to be a recipe for the extinction of lilim.

I am considering the implications of an outside party genetically altering all lilim so that instead of the birth ratio described above, lilim bear 50% men, 50% lilim children, and half of their fertilized ova are non-viable. This would be done in an attempt to eliminate the Ruquelians' vile and murderous customs.

Is it reasonable to assume that in a Ruquelian society with reincarnation reinforcing tradition, that such a change would result in a drastic crash in the population of women that might result in their extinction, or would the value of women as the only source of new women increase, leading to their being allowed to reproduce in order to provide new woman-children who could be used to continue the Ruquelian traditions?

Further, if the value of women rises as their population falls in the areas with a tradition of cannibalism, is it reasonable to assume that the traditions of killing, sterilizing or cannibalizing them will abate as it becomes too expensive to continue them?

Answer 1

Purpose-bred women would remain as livestock only

A society that has come to the conclusion that

their deaths are a positive contribution to their society

isn't going to see the continuation of women as a "breed" as a desirable thing in itself; and none of the other "uses" of women (reincarnation, breeding) are women-specific, so the only reason to keep them around would be as a delicacy for men and lilim who have developed a taste for human flesh. I can definitely see the more "enlightened" members of society (relatively speaking) taking the position that is it better, and more humane, to let women go extinct, like some animals' rights groups argue in our society regarding domesticated animals; to keep breeding women would end up being, counterintuitively, the more reactionary opinion, driven by traditionalists, cannibals and perhaps fetishists.

Naturally born women may be treated quite differently

Depending on how you decide to implement your genetic rebalancing system, you may end up with a situation where some % of progeny from a man x lilim pregnancy is a woman. Up until now, lilim knew that half their daughters were going to be destined for the roasting tin, and must have behaved and prepared themselves accordingly (not sure how, this setup is utterly horrific). Now, however, woman daughters are quite rare and unexpected. Parents may allow themselves to grow attached to their daughters assuming that they're almost certainly going to develop as lilim. What happens once they reach the age of 9 and they don't grow talons?

Some parents may be horrified and do all they can to get rid of this undesirable, shameful, defective daughter. But others may refuse to let her be sacrificed, having spent many years bonding with her as a human being deserving of a future. Girls who have grown with the expectation of a full life (because the vast majority of children are either boys or lilim, so there's less need for the societal indoctrination that would have made them sufficiently pliant and accepting of the ninth birthday culling) may be more inclined to try their luck by running away to join communities of escaped women; their parents (some parents) may help them accomplish this. Age 9 is pretty young, but over time a network would form supporting these runaway girls.

The obvious caveat is chromosomal screening: if you don't have to wait until age 9 to tell that a daughter is a woman, then you'd just get selective abortions. But if so, your premise (of waiting until the ninth birthday to sacrifice the girls) doesn't quite work either.

Answer 2

Reincarnation is gonna make rich men want to keep harems.

You have reincarnation, where people can regenerate with their memories somewhat intact. Many of those people will likely be wealthy men who are somewhat heterosexual, and who want to sleep with women. As such, they would make active efforts to preserve the population of women against any tradition.

Smarter women are gonna rebel and form societies away from the mainstream.

Your society sounds horrible to live in, a hellish dystopia that most would hate. A lot of people are gonna leave and live away from the mainstream in remote areas or other kingdoms.

Answer 3

The social desirability of lilim will diminish

As you said:

These customs arose as a response to the birth ratios of breeding between men and women, and men and lilim: all offspring of women are 1/2 men, 1/2 women, while the offspring of lilim are 1/3 men, 1/3 women and 1/3 lilim, and have a slightly lower birth rate than women due to 1/4 of fertilized ova being non-viable. Going by pure mathematics, this would appear to be a recipe for the extinction of lilim.

So lilim are socially exalted over women because they are rare. But as you have set things up, lilim are gonna become super common. Indeed women are going to become rare.

So why would these customs continue? Further wouldn't genetic modification of lilim mean that you have a dichotomy between altered lilim and "natural" lilim, with the latter being more prized?

Answer 4

If 50% of the fertilized ova are not viable, instead of 1/4, then per fertilization the lilim give birth to 25% men, 25% lilim, and have 50% miscarriages. I fail to see why this is better than 25% miscarriages, 25% men, 25% lilim, and 25% women, as it stands. Unless the point was to just stop giving birth to women. If this society wants women to go extinct, they can just kill them at birth, or abort babies in the womb as soon as the sex is determined.

The same could be said if the women are considered breeders for men; per fertilization of a women (which happens more often) half are men, half are women, and other than her own replacement female (to keep the women population stable), the female fetii could be aborted quickly, so the women can recover and be re-impregnated to try again. If men are valued, the women have value for making more males, and replacing themselves.

If the women are allowed to produce more than one female child, then you can still "harvest" women for sacrifice or economics at young ages as a process of selective breeding, like we do with livestock.

I'd worry, if I were writing this, that even if it was my original idea I might be seen by agents and publishers to be writing a knock-off of The Handmaid's Tale. It sounds similarly oppressive, to me.