The Lion King: a feudal fantasy that completely misses the point

Anita Teresa
Nov 3 · 6 min read

My neighbor on a recent plane ride home was watching the new Lion King movie. It got me thinking about actual lion society and how it’s the complete opposite of the Lion King story. In reality, lions function as a matriarchal society. Don’t believe me? Keep reading.

The story of the Lion King is fun and absorbing as an anthropomorphism of male feudal power. But it isn’t remotely how lion society works. Yeah, of course I get this is a fairy-tale cartoon, but the problem is that it upholds and glorifies a sorely mis-charactized dictator model. Was the story lifted from European feudal fairy tales? In fact, the story is based loosely on the life of King Sundiata Keita, former king of Mali. Incidentally, his great-nephew Musa Mansa became the richest man to ever live (that includes Jeff Bezos, too). Written by white American men, there are more parallels to Shakepeare’s Hamlet than to the original story, (which is even more compelling), but that’s a whole other rabbit hole.

The point is, whether it’s the African version of feudalism, which led to the over-accumulation of wealth ($400 billion, by Musa Mansa), or European feudalism, which led to colonial expansion and rapacious global empire, both are glorified by Disney’s fantasy film, which uses anthropomorphic lions to get their point across.

This is ironic to me because lion society in actuality is matriarchal. Don’t believe me? Ohh…lemme guess, you thought that male lions are “kings” of their pride, with a large harem of females at their disposal, and that they “own” and “rule” their territories? Haha, well…actually, it is the females who occupy the land they live on and pass it to their daughters and granddaughters.

Some facts:

Did you know that male lions, when they are young adults, are typically driven off the land by their aunts and grandmothers? That very few male lions survive out in the wilderness as a nomad, alone? Did you know that the females do most, if not all of the hunting, and provide for the few males in their pride? Adolescent lions are spoiled by mama and auntie providing copious amounts of meat for them as they grow up. Then one day, they have to fend for themselves.

Male lions can be grotesquely lazy. They sleep up to 20 hours a day. Those fortunate and aggressive enough to become a resident lion stay busy patrolling the perimeters of their pride’s territory and do a lot of bravado-style bellowing to keep outside roaming males at bay. The rest of the unlucky and weaker nomadic lions tend to die off in the wilderness, alone.

Other than patrolling their territories, resident lions may show down the occasional hyena and sniff around when lionesses go into estrus (are horny and fertile), hoping to be picked by her to mate. Let me tell you, if you haven’t seen a lion try to mate with a female who didn’t want him, you would never think of male lions like sultans of a large harem. In fact, it is the lionesses who often mate with a trio of brothers. This usually happens in one day, repeatedly over many hours. Polyandry anyone? If you thought lions were polygamous, you don’t really understand lion society and how it works.

Lion society can also be considered matriarchal because life revolves around the females. They do the hunting, grooming, cub care, scouting, and general social management of the pride. The resident male lion(s) of the pride tends to hang out at the edges of this epicenter of female activity. Lionesses always outnumber males in a pride, and so if a lion steps out of line (tries to eat his nephew, for instance, which unfortunately seems to happen pretty often), the lionesses will literally drive him out of the pride, off the territory, where he must fend for himself.

If a lion gets too aggressive with cubs in general, a cadre of lionesses will wallop him, keep him at bay. Now here’s where it gets interesting. Outsider lions who wanna get in and take over the resident male position in any particular pride (which is what all nomadic lions are looking to do — I mean, who wouldn’t?), will size up the resident lion or lions — usually brothers — to see if they can stage a hostile take-over. This is where male lions’ brute force, sheer muscle power and thunderous execution pose a unique advantage that counter-balances the steady, central, life-giving nucleus of matriarchal power.

Lionesses will fight valiantly and ferociously when facing off with a male lion alone, but they are often forced to retreat and let their cubs get slaughtered by an intruding male lion if isolated. Not so if they are together with all their sisters. Power in numbers! There’s incredible footage of aunts and sisters repelling the onslaught of an invading nomad, defending their homeland and keeping their cubs safe while the resident daddy lion is out patrolling somewhere. Lionesses pose a major obstacle to hostile take-over when they are all together. This creates a dynamic balance — as with all matriarchies across nature — and definitely in human societies as well.

This is of course something sorely missing in the feudal king narrative. There is little to no depiction of the centrality of female power. The male feudal control myth, with the “king” lion at the top of the food pyramid, ruler of all the land, is little more than a cry for significance, driven by fear and a compulsion to control. In reality, most male lions never make it to full adulthood; they starve to death or are killed in face-offs with rival older lions. Nomads have incredibly brutal lives, as they are cut off from the live-giving nourishment and care of females who comprise the core of the pride.

Females are not ancillary side-kicks that “support” the male king in his quest to become god of the savannah. Lionesses are in fact, a kind of de facto collective ruler, if anyone. They are the keepers of the ancestral lands. It’s the resident male’s role to protect and serve that nexus of life: it’s also primary to his own survival, since he typically does very little of his own hunting. I’m sure that one day Disney — or whatever will replace Disney — will share new/ancient stories that convey the deeper reality of life on planet earth. They’ll convey myths and epics that reveal the dynamic balance between male and female governance — our glorious collective heritage which existed far before Shakespeare or Sundiata Keita took their first breath.

Written by

Male-Female Synergy & Leadership | Matriarchal Economics | Healthy Sexuality

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