You may find this link interesting. It’s from a book given to me by a friend of mine from the pueblo.
I’m sorry, I’m having a hard time following. I never said there weren’t matriarchal cultures – there may have been. However, just because property goes down the maternal line doesn’t mean the culture is matriarchal – the men could still be in charge of the government, marriages, divorces, etc., regardless of how the property gets inherited.
I find it difficult to believe that there is a culture that lets kids “choose” their gender identity – I think that would be unique throughout history, although I don’t have a cite. Who said anything about castration?
I would be surprised if any native culture, any historical culture, was more open for women than most Western cultures today. In the US, UK, Europe, women are the heads of companies, heads of state, and can even take a leading role in some of the religions. There is work that remains to be done, of course – I do not claim that our culture has full gender equality. I do believe that the US, UK, and Europe, at least, are closer to gender equality than any other culture throughout history.
Well, when you visit acoma pueblo, the first thing the tour guides will tell you is that they are a matriarchal culture.
What you are describing is a situation in which women are finally allowed to play by the boy’s club rules. Therefore, we are expected to be more macho than a man, if we intend to garner any respect. (witness my hazing here…)
A matriarchy, on the other hand, is characterized by equal respect for differing roles. A woman at Acoma pueblo does not have to act like a man in order to win respect.
Joseph Campbell is given way too much credence. His “Hero with a Thousand Faces” is a giant exercise in confirmation bias. He ignores any part of a myth that does not support his view, and even accepts opposite statements as supporting the same thing. I had to read him for a humanities class and spent the entire class ripping him apart. His work is no better than trying to use the fact that floods occur in many mythologies as proof that Noah really built his ark.
My memory matches Una’s. This was mentioned in a Sociology course I took about two years ago. Also mentioned were several tribes that let parents assign gender based on dreams during pregnancy, and a South American group, similar to the Amish, who have a high rate of indeterminate visual sexual differentiation at birth. They raise all such babies as girls and never check again until puberty, when if they are physically male, they are given a choice of gender (with some limitations on marriage).
Please be careful of falling for the “noble savage” fallacy of assuming that there is some “natural” state that pre-dated modern times that was perfect in some way. Most people advocating it are either projecting or making it up from whole cloth. Some societies may have been free in many ways, but they all had their drawbacks.
Jonathan
[quote=“Una_Persson, post:40, topic:474328”]
Likewise, it would be a height of ignorance to automatically assume that a person on a message board who has not presented a Q&E, nor been around long enough to have been validated as a person who is an expert in the field, would have accurate information and/or be conveying it properly.
I have no PhD to validate me. My only credentials are an IQ of 132, the following link;
http://www.healthline.com/galecontent/giftedness?utm_term=genius&utm_medium=mw&utm_campaign=article
…and a passion for comparing indigenous cultures from all over the world, as a way to understand more about human nature.
Like I said, I’m fully aware that nothing is perfect in this world. These days, I’m just not convinced that our culture is better either. I do not subscribe to the noble savage view. I have delved into a variety of histories, not just one. I could also suggest ‘A People’s History Of the United States’ by Howard Zinn.
I recommend “How the Mind Works” by Steven Pinker. He goes into some of the innate differences between men and women, some of the aspects of human life that appear to be the same in every culture, some of the aspects that differ, and so on.
I think it is overbroad to say that a woman has to act like a man in order to be respected. In some roles, say, leadership roles, it may be that certain aspects that you associate with men are helpful (lack of emotion, maybe, I don’t know – you’re the one making the statement). If I went to a female doctor that acted all macho and manly, I don’t think it would make me respect her more. I don’t think Oprah Winfry (sp?) acts manly, and she commands a lot of respect. I don’t think respected female scientists or engineers act especially manly. If you are only speaking of leadership roles, however, maybe you have a point – some features that people more often may associate with men seem to help leaders of corporations, governments, etc.
The stories of the berdache, at least what we know of them, is fascinating. But be careful not to project your own attitudes on others. The status of berdache varied from tribe to tribe. It is also not wise to say because one well respected and honored berdache existed, that all berdache were treated the same. I don’t think that you would say that Dame Edna being a popular British television character since the 60s means that transvestites and transgendered persons have been as openly accepted for the period.
I have read all of that book. Therefore, I know that it is intentionally biased and inflammatory. Zinn’s stated purpose of that book is to help incite a socialist revolution in the United States. That does not make him wrong in what he reports, but you need to keep that in mind when consider what he chooses to put in and how he presents it.
Jonathan
Kindly cease talking nonsense.
I am also shocked that the writings of Sargon were ignored, as were the diaries of Hatshepsut, and the complete indifference to the great warrior Drupada is offensive in the extreme.
Hey, the OP claims to have an IQ of 132! You mean you aren’t impressed?
…you misogynistic patriarchal hazer you.
First, I apologize for my tone. It has been rather harsh, and that’s not at all conducive to good communication. In truth, when I get frustrated and confused, I get snarky, and I really need to work on not doing that. I’ve been very confused by your posts, as they seem to lack a clear thesis supported by evidence, or even a coherent through-line. In short, I have been struggling to understand what your point is, in regards to this article you’re commenting on, and it’s been frustrating. When I get frustrated, I lash out verbally, and that’s not a good habit. I’m sorry.
If you picture thisas me, you’ll be on about the right track. I don’t feel any animosity towards you or women’s issues; I feel animosity towards myth and falsehood being presented as fact. As a practicing neopagan, and as an herbalist, I hear a lot of the same things you’re saying presented as Goddess’s Gospel without any sort of evidence, and as a very fact and evidence based person, it drives me a bit batty. Still, I need to learn to address these things more calmly if I want to increase the amount of Light and Love in the world and not create more barriers and negativity. I’m going to try and do more of that.
Now, all that being said: I’ve never claimed to be “committed to women’s issues”, and I suspect that in the way in which you’re using the term, I’m not, particularly. I’m a health care educator and advocate in the area of women’s health, and I’m pro-choice and pro-contraception and sexual education for both genders. I’m not a captial-F Feminist, I don’t protest, or join women’s only groups focused on gender issues. I think that the patriarchy outrage is both overhyped and underestimated at the same time. I think men are just as much a victim of the patriarchy that they were born into as we are - no one alive right now *created *this system. I think the incidences in our American culture of intentional and focused misogyny are quite low, and that most of what exists is a low level, partly unconscious “us versus them” mentality on both sides. In popular culture, I see more examples of misandry right now than misogyny. I think there are biological differences between the genders on a large scale, but that those differences should be irrelevant on a small scale: yes, women might generally be “better communicators”, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t let men speak or a talented man be our spokesman; men might generally be stronger at spatial skills, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t teach women physics or a particular woman become an engineer. But I do think that research on biological differences between the genders should be encouraged so that we can better understand the biological basis of behavior. I think that information can be used to target assistance where it’s more likely to be needed, but I would not in any way support its use to subjugate either gender in any area.
(I have “Sister Suffragettes” from Mary Poppins stuck in my head right now. Coincidence? 
)
But here’s the thing: I want our appreciation of women’s issues and our admiration of women to come from the truth. I want it to come from the wonderful, powerful, beautiful beings we are and lives we’ve actually lived. I don’t see how, outside of a religious context, perpetuating myth is the way to go here.
I think that Campbell and Gardner and lots of the other people you’ve mentioned have created wonderful stories for us to tell our children, and each other, in a cultural and religious setting. I think they transmit powerful mythic truths about who we are in our hearts and souls, and the sort of world we’d like to create as people. But I think we also need to be clear that they are literary truths only. They didn’t actually happen any more than the stories in the Christian Bible happened. Did some of them really happen? Maybe, possibly. Did they happen just that way? No, probably not.
Did three wise kings wander through the desert following a star to find a manger in the middle of nowhere where a baby was lying and give him stuff? Probably not. But that story communicates the values of hard work, continued striving for the moments of spiritual perfection that come in unexpected places, and the value of being generous with your own gifts and talents with those who can appreciate them.
Did 9 million herbalists and midwives get burned to death in sixteenth century Europe for following an ancient goddess based religion instead of a Christian one? No, definitely not. There may have been a handful of such, but the vast majority of people put to death during the so-called Burning Times were Christians of a different ilk than the current politically powerful sort. But that story tells us that sometimes people aren’t to be trusted to leave us in peace for our own beliefs, and we’re sometimes better off keeping our odd religious practices covert for our own safety. This was a terribly valuable lesson in the 1950’s when Gardner first used the term, and a housewife could lose her husband and children if it was discovered that she was “dabbling in the occult”. Later, it was amplified and spread during the early '80s during the Satantic Panic, when, again, people were being accused, jailed and investigated for Satanic Abuse; a good time for a Wiccan to keep her head down and her profile low.
So these stories have mythic or literary truth, but not *literal *truth. Bring them out as fact, and you quickly lose respect and the argument both, as you found out here. Start believing them as literal fact, and you set up a potentially dangerous reality in which You are Right and They are Wrong, and things go downhill fast and crusades and jihads happen.
Now, going back to your question, or what I think your question was: why didn’t Cecil address access to abortion and birth control in his article? I can’t answer for him, of course, but if I had been the writer, I would have found the issues irrelevant. The question wasn’t why women had babies they didn’t want, the question was did they chose to abandon them on doorsteps. They could have raised them, or sought adoption through regular channels, and instead they chose abandonment…or did they? That was the question, not why unwanted pregnancies occur.
I would like to thank you, though. Because I had to google to verify that the Burning Times was the sixteenth century, I found the most awesome Wiccan website ever created. It’s not mine, but it could have been. I’ve *got *to meet this woman.
Myth of Matriarchy
Great post. I am not sure if the OP will be back since it she may feel she is being unfairly attacked on all fronts here, but I too was not trying to be mean about it.
Off topic, but I think one of things that get people worked up on this is that they take difference in median or average to mean difference in individuals. The fact is for most things we currently consider imporatn, men and women overlap a lot more than they deviate. The one thing I remember that has no overlap is sense of touch. The least sensitive woman (withing the normal range) is more sensitive to touch than the most sensitive man. For things like spatial reasoning, the peak of the distribution curves were at slightly different points, but the majority of both men and women fall in the same range.
Jonathan
Oh, …I get it. This straight dope column deals in conventional wisdom and hard science. Well, you all do a diligent job on your research, but remember…science changes all the time. What were once scientific facts become proven wrong in time. That is the nature of science. Don’t get me wrong, i respect science. That’s why i take it on faith that venus is hotter than crabcakes, and also why i don’t believe in aliens among us. If this column existed at the time of Gallileo, it would insist that the earth is the center of the universe. All i see here, with a few exceptions, is a lot of terror at the prospect of thinking outside the box, which is a feature of genius, and genius shoud be respected, at least, ya think?
Also, excuse me, but I’m tired of dogfighting in the boy’s club style. It’s too stressfull! I think I’ll go hang out with my girlfriend’s knitting group of innovative thinkers instead, and have a better time.
“the smart fish leaves the school.” --Captain Beefheart
Did you know that you can’t be a mental slouch and knit a decent sweater?
Where was the moderator when I needed him?
Isn’t it rather patriarchal of you to assume the moderator is a “him”? :rolleyes:
now we see the violence inherent in the system!
Every post has a red triangle in the upper right hand corner. If you click it, you can report the post, which sends an email to the moderators of the forum.
Incidentally, the only reportable (that is, breaking the rules of the message board) post in the thread that I can find is yours. Namecalling (“macho jerk”) is not allowed in this forum. I did not report your post, however, as I think that a. you weren’t entirely wrong on that point and b. I hoped we could come to an understanding via dialog if I stopped the snark. I’m sorry that’s not to be.
Have fun at your knitting circle. Sounds like a good time, enjoy - and I mean that quite sincerely.