Oh yeah, they weren't like democratic utopias, lol.

The point being that Sparta was as shit as anything in history, but they were a bit less discriminatory towards women. Probably because they weren't really as posessive of them as many other cultures. For... some reason.

On the night of the wedding, the bride would have her hair cut short and be dressed in a man's cloak and sandals. The bride appeared dressed like a man or a young boy to be perceived as less threatening to her husband.

In Sparta [...] the cropping of the bride’s hair and transvestism likely aimed to transform her temporarily into an adolescent Spartan boy – a less threatening figure to the groom, who probably had made his own transition to adulthood via a close emotional and sexual relationship with an older male and was now in the position to sexually initiate other boys into Spartan society