An era of matriarchy?

[Ciel_Rouge]

Probably deserves it's own thread, however......

That we find examples of societies where inheritance can be (or is exclusively) aligned along the maternal line does not warrant a conclusion of matriarchy, let alone "an era of matriarchy".

Fertility is powerful. Androgeny is "mystical"..... What about a King seems matriarchal to you?

The trouble is that we just can't find evidence of any era of matriarchy (or any of the other attendant assumed attributes when we find an example of what -might- have been a matriarchy, or at least a more egalitarian society). Whatever hatred you see towards women is much more likely a product of the cultures general level of home grown misogyny than any effect of some prehistoric coup d'etat.

I have even read of more recent matriarchical societies but they were isolated and not very large, some tribes in Siberia or something like that.

Regarding kings, I read that in the ancient middle east kings wore fake boobies which seems like a relic of an era where rulers were naturally female.

Besides, we DID have successful female rulers like Elisabeth, Catherine the Great or... Angela Merkel So women are capable of ruling or even having authoritarian and absolute power, it is just social suppression that prevents that.

Is there any inherent reason to hate women? Unless you have a bunch of men who are fed up of suppression under matriarchy...

Furthermore, the usual pasiveness and submission of women is a learned trait. If you look at little girls many of them or even the majority are NOT submissive, to the contrary - they seem quite dominant and defiant. Only the subsequent social repression and "role models" change that. So the idea that women have been always tread upon since prehistory seems like catchy propaganda and nothing more.

If we go beyond 3000 or 5000 BCE we still have thousands if not tens of thousands of years of history and plenty of room for exotic social and political configurations.

[kılıç_mehmet]

There is no reason. Under the great blue skies, men and women are equal. Indeed, they are not equal in their bodily prowess maybe, neither in their resilience and action under certain circumstances, but they share the same responsibilities towards society. If so, why should society treat them any different?

[The Grand Nudger]

I have even read of more recent matriarchical societies but they were isolated and not very large, some tribes in Siberia or something like that.

Matriarchal, matrifocul, or at least more egalitarian societies do show up from time to time.

Regarding kings, I read that in the ancient middle east kings wore fake boobies which seems like a relic of an era where rulers were naturally female.

Why does it seem like that?

Besides, we DID have successful female rulers like Elisabeth, Catherine the Great or... Angela Merkel So women are capable of ruling or even having authoritarian and absolute power, it is just social suppression that prevents that.

Of course they're capable.

Is there any inherent reason to hate women? Unless you have a bunch of men who are fed up of suppression under matriarchy...

None that I can see, but I don't see any reason to suppose suppression under matriarchy either. It might be useful to note that those societies which we do point at as being somewhat ambiguously matriarchal arising before say, the bronze age, don't seem to be much different from societies that were unambiguously patriarchal. They waged war, aggressively secured territory, men participated in all of this. Cultures which we have found clear indications of a sort of "feminine trend" in what we assume to be their artifacts of spirituality were still often patriarchal.

Furthermore, the usual pasiveness and submission of women is a learned trait. If you look at little girls many of them or even the majority are NOT submissive, to the contrary - they seem quite dominant and defiant. Only the subsequent social repression and "role models" change that. So the idea that women have been always tread upon since prehistory seems like catchy propaganda and nothing more.

Who said anything about being tread upon?

If we go beyond 3000 or 5000 BCE we still have thousands if not tens of thousands of years of history and plenty of room for exotic social and political configurations.

Sure do, but whatever room there may have been does not seem to have been filled by an era of matriarchy.

:late edit: Personally, I think that the groundwork for an era of matriarchy is much better laid now than at any point in our past in any case. Maybe someday someone will dig up our descendants and find it, just hasn't happened yet as far as we can tell.

[Ciel_Rouge]

There is no reason. Under the great blue skies, men and women are equal. Indeed, they are not equal in their bodily prowess maybe, neither in their resilience and action under certain circumstances, but they share the same responsibilities towards society. If so, why should society treat them any different?

Why not bodily prowess? There are women who are physically stronger than men and also resiliant quick thinkers capable of action. It is just the society that makes them passive.

I suppose very wise societies treat both genders equal and simply nobody is suppressed. If a very advanced civilisation like Atlantis really existed, I suppose they were egalitarian.

Regarding kings, I read that in the ancient middle east kings wore fake boobies which seems like a relic of an era where rulers were naturally female.

Why does it seem like that?

Why else would a king put on fake boobies???

None that I can see, but I don't see any reason to suppose suppression under matriarchy either. It might be useful to note that those societies which we do point at as being somewhat ambiguously matriarchal arising before say, the bronze age, don't seem to be much different from societies that were unambiguously patriarchal. They waged war, aggressively secured territory, men participated in all of this.

Having a matriarchal society does not mean that men are made to sit at home and cook dinner Still, it is difficult to infer anything from just artifacts - imagine scientists in the distant future trying to infer anything about us just based upon a couple of broken laptops and rusty cars.

[Anomalocaris]

primate physiology make the women statistically very likely to be substantially weaker than the average men in her society in terms of upper body strength, track and field type exercise, and advanced spatial perception.

This does not make any individual woman less suited to lead in most modern circumstances, but it does explain the stereotype of women not possessing martial virtue which have long been regarded as the most basic role of the leader.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why would being wise or advanced lead directly to egalitarianism? Why couldn't Atlantis (lulz) have been full of brutal patriarchs?

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Why might a man don androgynous ritual attire....aside from the possibility that he liked titties, was a transvestite, or could do whatever the fuck he wanted as king? Let me make sure I've got this right, you read that a king somewhere would stuff his bra and from this concluded that an era of matriarchy is a likely explanation? If you were hoping to emulate a matriarchy (or draw legitimacy from it) what about breasts do you think would accomplish that? This is one of those things that eventually become troubling for our notions of an era of matriarchy to begin with. Those things which we pointed to as support of such an era were very often things which were ascribed to matriarchy or femininity by patriarchy. We found goddess figurines, for example, and concluded that women must have been important, but we ignored that what was clearly important (as evidenced by the figurines themselves) were the working bits as might have been (or indeed was at the time) deemed to be important from the point of view of patriarchy. Tits, ass, etc. The reasons that a king might wear such a costume are many, and without a specific example it would be difficult to discuss the why (if we know why to begin with) but it's very easy to criticize the notion of "cross-dresser ergo era of matriarchy".

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TLDR: Until you get specific, I'm going to go with; "It's good to be the king".

No, matriarchy means a society in which men are ruled over by women, it would be something of the opposite of a patriarchy. It isn't important what duties or roles are assigned to the respective gender. What is important is who assigns those roles (and enforces them). This is why it is accurate to say that we see societies which are less patriarchal, more egalitarian, more matrifocul, but very rarely, matriarchal. Again, because we do not find these examples it becomes difficult to understand why anyone would assume an era of matriarchy (why assume some over arching pattern when a single example is tough to come by?).

A couple of broken laptops and rusty cars would provide a much greater wealth of information about us than the artifacts available have to offer with regards to our ancestors. What else do you think I should be weighing in here, if the artifacts are insufficient? Intuition? I'll pass.

[Ciel_Rouge]

primate physiology make the women statistically very likely to be substantially weaker than the average men in her society in terms of upper body strength, track and field type exercise, and advanced spatial perception.

This does not make any individual woman less suited to lead in most modern circumstances, but it does explain the stereotype of women not possessing martial virtue which have long been regarded as the most basic role of the leader.

Advanced spatial perception is impaired by hormonal issues too. Many women have an unhealthy lifestyle - stress and malnutrition - or take contraceptives which clearly make them weak and disoriented. We are related to monkeys etc. but we are NOT monkeys. Maybe we are built in a much more egalitarian way but only suppress it. There are women climbing the Mount Everest etc. so maybe they are not as incapacitated as we think.

The Amazons possessed martial virtue.

Besides, in a matriarchy men would be warriors subordinate to a female ruler. I suppose it is often a very natural course of action. A relic of this are women ordering men to beat somebody up - happens very often in present day society.

Why would being wise or advanced lead directly to egalitarianism? Why couldn't Atlantis (lulz) have been full of brutal patriarchs?

Because they would be advanced enough to realize that the suppression of any social group does not bring any serious gain. It only leads to them performing much worse at whatever they are doing and also leads to them craving mutiny at some point. It is not only about women but even teenagers etc. - sometimes there are teenage geniuses etc. who are suppressed and sent to hospital. Imagine a civilization where everyone is allowed to contribute to science, technology etc. and where teenage geniuses are allowed to work legit instead of forcefully making them retarded and ignoring just because it is the "wrong age" to be smart.

There is one branch of life which already does that - in classical music you have "prodigies" who are allowed to study with grownups and treated seriously even if they are only 7 or so.

A strong society, powerful scientifically and economically, is one where all members can contribute freely. In Islamic countries women are suppressed. And the Islamic countries do not have very advanced science nor a space program. They do hower often seem to have advanced frustration.

Regarding breasts and what could be so special about them Well, all this social conditioning seems to stop working once a woman is drunk. Drunk women display their breasts when they are happy or excited etc. and they are also much more active, assertive and dominant in their behaviour towards men. Social conditioning destroys their confidence and forces them to wear a bra and always cover their titties etc. even though they still tend to display them with low necklines etc. All this smells a lot like a relic of a time when women could display their natural behaviours more freely. In Islam they are even forced to cover their face. It is not natural. Similarly, bikini suits were a shock at some point but aren't any more. I read of protests of women in Japan who wanted to publicly go without a bra when the weather was very hot since men are allowed to display their upper body and can thus prevent overheating. So breasts seem to be special, covering them seems unjustified especially in a form of wearing an undergarment which often is uncomfortable and does not allow for proper ventilation.

[The Grand Nudger]

Because they would be advanced enough to realize that the suppression of any social group does not bring any serious gain. It only leads to them performing much worse at whatever they are doing and also leads to them craving mutiny at some point. It is not only about women but even teenagers etc. - sometimes there are teenage geniuses etc. who are suppressed and sent to hospital. Imagine a civilization where everyone is allowed to contribute to science, technology etc. and where teenage geniuses are allowed to work legit instead of forcefully making them retarded and ignoring just because it is the "wrong age" to be smart.

There is one branch of life which already does that - in classical music you have "prodigies" who are allowed to study with grownups and treated seriously even if they are only 7 or so.

A strong society, powerful scientifically and economically, is one where all members can contribute freely.

Why would they realize this? I don't think you understand my question. I'm not trying to argue ideology with you, I'm asking why you assume that some past civilization would have had to agree with your (our) ideology in order to be advanced, or as an effect of it's being advanced.

In Islamic countries women are suppressed. And the Islamic countries do not have very advanced science nor a space program

They don't now, but they were once the very center of the academic world. Snapshots in time. At that point in time they were very much under the control of brutal patriarchs.

[Ciel_Rouge]

Why would they realize this? I don't think you understand my question. I'm not trying to argue ideology with you, I'm asking why you assume that some past civilization would have had to agree with your (our) ideology in order to be advanced, or as an effect of it's being advanced.

They can be patriarchal and still be advanced of course. But if they were VERY advanced to the point of understanding and questioning their own social structure, then I suppose they would abandon unjustified social suppresion and become more open. This is what advanced and knwoledgable individuals tend to do. Einstein, Sagan etc. were against social discrimination. If you have a whole society of Einsteins they would probably be egalitarian - this is what I was trying to say. And we cannot exclude such civilizations in the past as it is very easy to wipe out entire cultures with only little trace or none at all. Ancient people do not have to be retarded just because they are ancient. Check out Hypatia or the Anitkythera mechanism - this is when we stop thinking about ancients as retards just running around half naked and eating grapes.

They don't now, but they were once the very center of the academic world. Snapshots in time. At that point in time they were very much under the control of brutal patriarchs.

They only came to be such way since Europe at the time was infested with extreme Xtianity which destroyed true science as well as many other things rendering the Europeans incapable of anything meaningful and drowning in superstition and paranoia.

I simply think that a society would benefit if it could use the full potential of all its members.

[The Grand Nudger]

They can be patriarchal and still be advanced of course. But if they were VERY advanced to the point of understanding and questioning their own social structure, then I suppose they would abandon unjustified social suppresion and become more open. This is what advanced and knwoledgable individuals tend to do. Einstein, Sagan etc. were against social discrimination. If you have a whole society of Einsteins they would probably be egalitarian - this is what I was trying to say. And we cannot exclude such civilizations in the past as it is very easy to wipe out entire cultures with only little trace or none at all. Ancient people do not have to be retarded just because they are ancient. Check out Hypatia or the Anitkythera mechanism - this is when we stop thinking about ancients as retards just running around half naked and eating grapes.

Hehehe, don't get me started on ancient machines...lol, It will get very boring very quickly. I didn't realize that anyone was proposing that they were retards, but they may have been (and seem to have been) patriarchal folks running around half naked eating grapes. What might have been and what we have evidence for are entirely divergent things, and in this particular case it seems to be an issue of "what one might like to have been". As per your comment earlier about what artifacts can tell us about people from the past. The very notion of an era of matriarchy is an artifact that could give insight to future scientists about us. We wanted to find it, we thought that it would be there. As it turns out we didn't find it, but future anthropologists will know that we wanted to (and one can infer quite a bit from that alone).

They only came to be such way since Europe at the time was infested with extreme Xtianity which destroyed true science as well as many other things rendering the Europeans incapable of anything meaningful and drowning in superstition and paranoia.

Oh, I don't know, I think that they may have had some hand in advancing those areas of understanding they advanced. That Europe was in a relatively sad state comparatively (and in some areas) is without question, nevertheless, their civilization provides an example of a society which, while patriarchal, was advanced. VERY advanced, in fact, to use the emphasis you decided to use. I think what you may be doing here is using our society, and including our current notions of gender equality as the standard for "advanced". If you set the metrics for "advanced" to be gender equality then you rule out such societies as advanced by default without actually explaining why this should be a metric for "advanced" to begin with. What you really mean here is "different" or "divergent". Maybe they -did- question their own social structure and for whatever reason they did not find it lacking (in the way that we might today). We'd have to turn the dial a little closer to our own time to get solid examples of this but supposing that we did, we do see societies questioning their social structure...and deciding that it was "best" (especially relative to their enemies) with some measure of reliability. Another interesting example (that might tickle you pink, considering) is that the cautionary tale of Atlantis is such that the reasons for it "sinking in a single day" was a decline of virtue followed by an attempt to invade the lands of the ancestors of the narrator and listeners. Of course one is left to assume that the virtue of which the narrator speaks is their own. And so it was that the gods decided to punish Atlantis.

I simply think that a society would benefit if it could use the full potential of all its members.

So do I, but is there something here which implies to you that such was the case at some foggy point in prehistory?

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Also, before I forget. Something in your response really caught my eye (and my ire). We can't exclude such civilizations? Let me be very clear...you need to include them, you need to place them into history, this "era of matriarchy" business needs to be ruled in, we don't have to rule it out. To start down this road or hang our laurels on it is to invite only tears - ask our resident apologists.