Matriarchy

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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Matriarchy: My book, The Inevitability of Patriarchy–Wm. Morrow & Sons (Updated edition: Why Men Rule==Open Court–examines the issue of matriatchy and examines the original ethnographies cited (never by the ethnographer)as indicating the existence of a matriarchy.

There is not one of the thousands of societies tht lack three realities: patriarchy (hierarchies filled primarily by men), Male Achievement (males dominate high-status, non-maternal roles (whatever these may be in any given society), and Male Dominance (male dominance in male-female relationships is acknowledged, if sometimes abhored, by both men and women).

It may be that there are societies in which the woman’s maternal role is given highest status; I did not examine this.

But there are no matriarchies or “egalitarian” societies.

Given the enormous variation in other respects of all these societies, this evidence would indicate a biological male-female difference that predisposes males–statistically-speaking–to dominance. Whether this is a “need” or a “drive” is semantic. The point is that males are more stongly “motivated” too do what is necessary to attain dominance (as such factors underlie the woman’s maternal tendency).

And there is an enormous amount of direct biological evidence explaining the male’s tendency to dominate.

Steven Goldberg (AKA Estes)

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You usually should provide a link to the article you want to discuss in here.

-XT

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There are a few matriarchal societies in science fiction and fantasy, perhaps because they’re so unusual IRL: Paradise Island, Wonder Woman’s home; Vulcan and Cygnet XIV, described as matriarchies in ST:TOS, IIRC; and Angel One, in ST:TNG. I’m sure there are others.

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[QUOTE=Steven Estes]
There is not one of the thousands of societies tht lack three realities: patriarchy (hierarchies filled primarily by men), Male Achievement (males dominate high-status, non-maternal roles (whatever these may be in any given society), and Male Dominance (male dominance in male-female relationships is acknowledged, if sometimes abhored, by both men and women).
[/QUOTE]

I’d love to know how you explain the !Kung, the Machiguenga, and the Shoshone. All three of those lack male dominance. While the two sexes often fill different roles, they are hardly distinct, and cross over one another quite frequently.

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IANAAnthropologist, but that hasn’t stopped me from working in its backyard and writing about it. When I was researching Medusa, I read a lot of Marija Gimbutas’ stuff, and I was frequently struck by strong cases of WTF? Gimbutas would frequently assert things without any proof that I could find to back it up. My interest was in her writings about two “Medusa” figures she found, which she clasimed to be direct ancestors of the gorgon of Greek myth. But, search as I might in her writings, I couldn’t find anything to support this. There’s a considerable gulf of time between her finds and the earliest Greek Gorgon, with no examples I’m aware of to connect them. And, of course, this entire pre-Kurgan period is pre-literate as well. You’d be hard-pressed to validate her claim. If there were an unbroken chain of such images through the years, or a characteristic of the artwork that identified it to a high degree of certainty that they were identical to the Gorgon, that would be something. But her sculptures don’t even resemble Gorgons. I can’t find anything beyond her assertions to back it up.

Her claims about matriarchy seem similarly unsupported. What could be preserved to prove, or even to strongly suggest such a social system? Certainly no writings can support them.

As for other societies in the modern world, there are apparently some where women have a greater degree of political power and social control than others, but my understanding is that these are far from what one would call a “matriarchy”. But i do admit that I haven’t studied this in any depth.

for fun, there’s always Robert Shaeffer’s Domain of Patriarchy. Schaeffer is a good debunker of UFOs and other paranormal claims, but you’ll have to evaluate his believability on matriarchy on your own. He gives lots of cites, though.

http://www.debunker.com/

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IANAA either, but I’ve certainly wondered about this. My WAG: Without modern machines, physical strength is much more important than it is today, and without modern birth control, women spend much of the time pregnant. It’s hard to convince men you’re equal if you’re too weak to do their everyday activities and can’t even get up off the floor without help.

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Note that that’s upper-body strength. Women’s legs are comparable to men’s.

And don’t forget nursing, which is both time consuming in itself and a natural reason to dump the management of smaller children on the woman, too.

Note, too, that it was actually the modern era that saw Western women at their weakest. Many traditional female positions of power were lost due to:[ul]
[li]the loss of nunneries in Protestant countries, and weakening thereof in Roman Catholic countires,[/li][li]the loss of small home businesses to mechanization,[/li][li]male democracy displacing mixed-sex aristocracy, and[/li][li]the loss of household servants, reducing housewive’s executive function,[/li][/ul] among other things.

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[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
There are a few matriarchal societies in science fiction and fantasy, perhaps because they’re so unusual IRL: Paradise Island, Wonder Woman’s home; Vulcan and Cygnet XIV, described as matriarchies in ST:TOS, IIRC; and Angel One, in ST:TNG. I’m sure there are others.
[/QUOTE]

Also thought of Amazon culture in Greek myth (a good bit different from Wonder Woman’s), and the quasi-Wiccan priestesses of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon.

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OK, I’m missing something in Slug’s picture (this is not uncommon) – what is the backwards “K” on the guys’ shirt supposed to be? And why isn’t the guy wearing pants?

RR

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[QUOTE=RiverRunner]
OK, I’m missing something in Slug’s picture (this is not uncommon) – what is the backwards “K” on the guys’ shirt supposed to be? And why isn’t the guy wearing pants?

RR
[/QUOTE]

“K” for “Kurgan” – the invading warriors who supposedly overthrew the matriarchy, backwards because he’s, well, backwards.

No pants because everything’s more fun without pants.

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[QUOTE=WoodenTaco]
I’d love to know how you explain the !Kung, the Machiguenga, and the Shoshone. All three of those lack male dominance. While the two sexes often fill different roles, they are hardly distinct, and cross over one another quite frequently.
[/QUOTE]

Matriarchy (Earth Mother Thread)

“Wooden Taco” suggests that three societies have lacked the institutions I discussed: The !Kung, the Machiguenga, and the Shoshone.

The quotations below are from ethnographic materials I have at hand. I trust this will persuade “Wooden Taco” that they are dubious exceptions. If not, I can get others, but they take weeks to get.

The !Kung: I suspect that the belief that the !Kung are an exception derives from one of the tertiary sources referring to Bloomberg’s Social Theory. Many such sources have done this, without reporting Bloomberg’s acknowledgement (page 277) that the !Kung are “comprised of “male-centered groups” in which men “have power and can exercise their will in relation to women” (p. 277).

The Machiguenga: “Rosengren sees a general pattern of male dominance.“ (Page 94)

“Men are associated with strength and courage. Husbands inevitably precede their wives (and their children)…Women are described as fearful. (pages 92-3)

“Men must be strong. A woman cries at a harsh word.”

Moreover, the Machiguenga are polygynous. Even without other evidence, it would be a stretch to see the a society in which a man can have more than one wife as lacking male dominance.

Source: Families of the Forest: The Machiguenga Indians of The Peruvian Andes. (University of California Press, 2002)
The Soshone: None of the sources I have at hand directly discuss the male-female issue. However, Shoshone Bannock; Subsistence and Society(Robert and Yolanda Murpheyt (University of California Anthropological Report, 1947) makes clear that all of the chiefs and nearly all of the other leaders are male.

A few additional points:

[1] There are a few very small societies comprised of roaming families with little need of superfamilial institutions. To the extent that these lack hierarchy, they, of course, lack male-dominated hierarchy. But it every such society there is a male dominance and authority in male-female encounters. I argue that this is owing to the same, or similar, neurondocrinological male-female differences that xplain male dominance of hierarchies.

[2] “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” When we see that all of the thousands of societies anthropologists have examined are male dominated, a claimed exception must be pretty clearly an exception. Clearly, none of the above are.

[3] Secondary sources, like anthropology and sociology introductory texts, often have claimed exceptions. When one consults the original source, it always becomes clear that the claim is bogus. (I have consulted all of the original sources claimed by such books. The dust on these ethnographies makes it clear that the textbook writers never look to the original, but merely copy another texts false claim.)

[4] The important male-female difference is neurological, a difference in the biology of dominance tendency. Physical strength plays a small role. (Technological societies are more male dominated than many primitive societies.)

Anyway, members who are interested in all this might like to take a look at my Why Men Rule (A later edition of (The Inevitability of Patriarchy).

Steven Goldberg