Priapus

Oops, I did jump the gun on a bit of this but the main thrust of what I said still stands.

Yes, and that is why I called this discussion a joke. You might as well define it thusly: 'Patriarchy is when men have penises (penii?)' then look around and go, 'patriarchy is (near) universal'. Of course it is men who risk life and limb for money/power; they don't have anything else to sell but what material they can get their hands on. Might I ask you, who makes use of what they acquired? The problem with these sort of discussions is that male and female power are never discussed, only male power and the poor women who are deprived of it. That is precisely what has aggrivated me about this sort of discussion as long as I can remember. Because of these antiquated ideals of prestige and power, women are allowed to portray themselves as hapless victims to the whims of men when generally only the inverse could be close to the truth.

To me, its such an odd world-view that those who work to provide are considered 'in power' and those who make use of what they provide are somehow disenfranchised. Maybe you should visit a fishing village when the men are out to sea to understand real politics. Maybe a person should divorce themself of the linguistics and conceptual baggage people attatch to their actions and study their behavior as you would any other animal in order to acertain the truth. If any other animal had X behavior how would classify it?

Well, I'm just a funny guy. I do have to reccomend again to look up the Mosuo there is absolutely nothing else to call them but Matriarchal, even using the horrid Anthropological definition.


Matrilineal societies aren't considered to be "Matriarchies", what the hell is the definition of a Matriarchy now? Oh, is #2 a qualifier for a Matriarchy? Well then its little wonder one has never been found. *ugghh* Anthropology needs to be beaten with Evolutionary Psychology, drug out behind the University, and stripped of its 'ology' suffix.


This is the oops. That was a misunderstanding on my part, I just heard Steven Goldberg so I jumped in head first. I remembered reading several of his articles on the site www.debunker.com awhile back, and I thought it was his face on the web, when I checked back however, I realized it was this whole other dumbass.

lpetrich

That's Robert Sheaffer -- someone who apparently believes that women are taking over or something like that. Which would be contrary to Mr. Goldberg's thesis that women can never dominate society.

RED DAVE

About 35 years ago, I read, in the writings of Robert Graves, an exponent of matriarchy (yes, I know his works are discredited), about a town in southern Italy, that allegedly was matriarchal. It's name was Baganara, in the province of Calabria. Graves alleged (if my memory serves me) that the Bagnarans were descendants of the Locrians who were the priestly caste in ancient Troy: a group that preserved matriarchal customs in the patriarchal age.

This I have to see for myself. So, I took the train down to Bagnara, which is about 20 miles from Reggio, the capital of Calabria. It remains one of the more shocking experiences of my life. Graves was right, at least about the matriarchal customs (I have no way of judging his history).

I spent about 4 days there. (Yes, I know, a very bad statistical sample.) Many of the families there were traditional Italian: women looking very oppressed, wearing black on black, etc., as was common in rural Italy back then. But, there were a significant number of families that were different. The women seemed ethnically somewhat different from the other women of the town. Maybe it was my imagination, but they seemed somewhat taller. They certainly carried themselves differently. They were mostly barefoot, wore their hair in a chignon and wore, I swear it, Cretan bell skirts like you see in murals of 3000+ years ago.

Their manner was forward if not aggressive. I hooked up with a family that owned a restaurant, and I got to know them with the help of an engineer who was down there working for the government and whose English was excellent. After a couple of days, I was asked why I was there (it's not a tourist venue, just a charming fishing village). When I told them it was because of the women (they are called "the Bagnarotte"), I was given knowing smiles.

When you get to know an Italian family, you sit with the head of the family after dinner, you drink wine and shoot the shit. That's what happened. I sat with the head of the family, a woman, and discussed politics, psychology.

What can I tell you? This all happened. the essay the tipped me to this place appears in Graves' book entitled STEPS.

RED DAVE

contracycle

Lol. I'm not so sure; Evolutionary Psychology gets a fair amount of criticism too. I mean, you've got to wonder.... the word is matriARCHY. What was so confusing?

I wonder, can anyone tell me: in my reading of elderly writings, female warriors turn up frequently. I don;t have a handy listm, but certainly Japan, China, hell even the vikings, had (individual) Joan of Arc stylee characters. Why then the presumption of violence as a male domain?

Priapus also writes:
Ah well. Now this is exactly why "evolutionary psychology" is not terribly reliable. What we are seeing here is Victorian moralism reborn. Men don't have "anything to sell"... implying that women DO, their bodies... and thus women social role is, once again, primarily sexual. Men, allegedly, risk life and limb for power... women have and do, too. And yet so many societies are relentlessly male dominated. you ask who makes use of what is aqcuired... why, men do, of course, and a huge amount of what they acuire is derived from the labour of women (women do 2/3 of the worlds manula labour today, according to the UN.

And then, of course, the allegation to special prejudice: that the theory of patriarchy is a work of self-pity by the devious and crafty Jezebels, who portray themsleves as "hapless victims"... and they were never oppressed at all, oh no.

Exactly these arguments were used to deny wopmen the vote. Women, it was alleged,m weild immense power of their husbands and thus don't actually need a vote of their own. Basically, this is recidivist baloney.

brighid

Here are some examples of Matriarchal/Matrilineal/Matrifocal socieities:

Nagovisi of Bougainvillea in the South Pacific
Khasi of Meghalaya, India
Machingueng of Peru
The Pueblo, Zuni, Laguna, Hopi, Huron, Navajo and Cherokee Indians, as well as the pre 19th Century Iroquois and Innu Indians.
Hawaii under Queen Liliuokani
The Tuareg of North Africa
The Bedouins of Arabia
The Vanatinai of Sudest Island
The Kerala of India
Lakshadvip and Minicoy Island societies of India
The Tibetans (practiced polyandry)
The Mosuo of China
The Ryukyu of Japan

The Minangkabu of Indonesia, Sumatra - http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~psanday/eggi2.html

The Zapotec of Mexico ...

Brighid

lugotorix

I think it's a product of selective bias, specifically of archaeologists and anthropologists. I remember an article on women warriors. It mentioned Jeanine Davis-Kimball, who said that in the past archaeologists routinely found weaponry in the graves of women of the central steppes, but always assumed they were merely ceremonial grave goods. She worked on a find on the Russia-Kazakhstan border of several such graves, that included a young woman with bowed legs (suggesting that she grew up on horseback) and another woman with a bent arrowhead lodged in her ribcage.

That article also discusses the near-universality of patriarchy. One theory suggests that it was a gradual process, which got its start with the long-distance trading in metal ores, monopolized by males because they weren't saddled with nursing infants. It got a later boost when humans started using domestic animals for large-scale farming, which also favored men. Another thing that may have helped it develop was an obsession in some influential ancient cultures for "ethnic purity" -- Greece and China, for example -- which prompted more control of women as a way of controlling the bloodlines.

lugotorix

ps418

Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one as far as I know says that violence is an exclusively male behavior. Nevertheless, in every time and place for which we have records, males engage in violence at far higher rates than women. Are you aware of any exceptions to that generalization? Just curious.

Patrick

jayh

Nevertheless, in every time and place for which we have records, males engage in violence at far higher rates than women

This is indeed true, discussed in Pinker's Blank Slate and other areas. It is also true in many other species, and probably has a strong evolutionary component.

Female warriors are noteworthy because they are the exception. What appears to be the choice is that females are as capable of violence under the right circumstances, but are less likely to use it as primary choice.

j

jayh

Matrilinear, some of them. Martriarchal, no. The presence of a few high powered female officials does not make a society matriarchal any more than the presence of Hillary Clinton in the Senate does.

contracycle

No - I was alluding to examples such as the above, the finding of warrior grave goods with female burials. Or in the Danish histories, in which a female warrior is identifiable because of her long hair. I am not aware of, nor would expect to find, any cultures in which women where the major executors of violence. But its interesting to wonder how far our expectations have distorted existing records of gave find - it used to be that graves were sexed based on accoutrements, and so a skeleton with a weapon was identifed as male.