Marija Gimbutus, Her Works

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Anemone, pandd's giant issue is that I said matriarchies are egalitarian societies. He's completely pedantic in his criticism, and is hung up on what his dictionary says. I'm guessing that what he was actually reacting to was all of my other posts, which had some pretty blunt things to say about patriarchy, and the apathy of some men. In his desire to prove me wrong, he latched on to minutia, rather than argue amicably against what I'd said.

This whole thing would have been easy to get beyond, if his desire to fight, rather than discuss, hadn't taken hold. An impartial observer could say that we both are correct (nuances are definitely lost on pandd), and leave it at that. But no. Pandd wants to throw out personal attacks, exaggerate my positions, and make snide remarks about my intellect, because he can't express what he thinks about the sum of what I've said, rather than one little statement. He keeps saying that I have some secret agenda in stating that matriarchies are egalitarian, when in fact, all I'm saying is that matriarchies are egalitarian. That's it. Now he's moved onto claiming I am somehow afraid of mens rights activists, a group that certainly does not intimidate me in the least. In his hysteria, he wants to project, and make me out to be the hysterical one.

This whole thing is crap. Am I irritated? Of course. I'm only human, and I've had this stranger go out of his way to irritate me. Here I was, genuinely happy to have found a woman's forum on an Aspie sight. The womens' forum is the whole reason I joined this site, and I was especially enjoying it. Pandd wanted to bully me right out of that joy, and he did. I feel like I've just spent the afternoon with the brattiest of children, which sucks. I really thought I'd found a place where people didn't behave like this, but was I ever wrong.

I can't figure out how to put somebody on ignore. Surely there's a way to do that? Any help would be appreciated, as I'd like to forget about pandd and go back to my happy place.

I just discovered that pandd is a she, not a he. Lovely. I was roped into fighting with another woman. My day is just getting better and better.

Just another day at the funny farm.

I knew pandd was female, and saw a female who would rather criticise than participate beforehand in the discussion. It was unfair to those of us who have built this thread. If someone wasn't criticised then it is easy not to be offended, but for someone to just post opinions mostly related to context and not be a constructive participant is rude when all they add is criticism to what's being said, or want to add loony sideways agreements that might appear to be arguments. Totally rude. Pandd came out of no where and I for one have never really participated in discussion with her the way that I have with Anemone, Gary, sheknight, and a few others. Hi, pandd, I'm mixtapebooty, who are you and why are you not taking the context of the general discussion into account before trolling for attention by being immature? Secondly, societies occasionally die on their own and do not have to be violently overtaken, but this is not direct criticism, so don't get an irrelevant attitude with me. TRY TO FIGURE OUT THE CONTEXT, it is important to every discussion.

Gary is right about both sexes being violent. The overall question is, "who has more of a violent advantage?". Overall, and generally speaking, it's men. Men win, and women lose, with the exception of minor individual cases within a male established and run society. Do you know how hard it is to convince men that women don't have a fair chance, even today? Yeah, every woman experiences a loss in quality of life due to men being ignorant which I believe is a result of inherently violent traits that society has actually subdued on the surface to create an illusion of peace and fairness towards women.

BLAM!, E=BLAME

Another variable in the dispute here is that pandd has been around for a while and those of us who have seen her around tend to see her as pretty reasonable (at least I do). If you're new, you don't already have that to draw on when you read a post of hers that you disagree with. Sometimes those of us who have been around for a while forget that when we're talking to people who are newer we have to start over again to build up trust. There are men who have been making some pretty negative comments in this forum recently (see the "sweetie" thread for example), and then there are long time classics on WP in general like, oh, I don't know, ProtossX ? (who made his mark then left). When you've been around for a while it all becomes relative.

I would give pandd a break given what I've seen so far overall. But everyone has posters they like and posters they dread, so I don't expect everyone to agree with me.

At any rate I must admit that it has been many years since I read Gimbutas so there has been a certain amount of faking it in my posts. Hope I haven't been too off in spite of that.

I agree there was an intent to focus attention on me personally, and confirming who's intent it has been is as easy as checking who turned away from the subject of the thread to instead concentrate on me personally. In case you have genuinely forgotten, that would be you.

It is not my fault you either cannot or will not provide any good cause for why matriarchal is either synonymous with egalitarian, or a special kind of egalitarian society, or even clarify which of these you mean, and it is far from unreasonable (or impolite, or rude, or attacking or flaming) to query such a claim and attempt to find if there is any veracity to your further claim that it is everyone else who misunderstands the word matriarchy.

It is very obvious that I was not rude or impolite to you in anyway before you decided to turn from the subject matter and engage in personal and slighting comments.

You claim any objective observer would recognize that we both are right in some way, and have claimed that people are generally confused about what matriarchal means. None of this supports a view that when you accused me of deliberately trying to turn the word matriarchy into something it is not, that you honestly believed this was the case.

To be quite blatant, I strongly suspect that the value you appear to place on the premise at issue, is entirely misplaced in any case.

Given that what is, does not necessarily imply what should be, and that novelization has been demonstrated as plausible, time and time again throughout human history, how does it matter whether there are or have been matriarchies? Even if there are, this does not demonstrate that there should be. Even if there are not (and have never been) this does not demonstrate that there should not be, nor could not be.

Proof that there are or have been matriarchies does not substantiate the proposition that there should be, nor does proof that there are not, nor have ever been, substantiate that there should not or could not be. While you might believe that whether or not matriarchies exist or have existed is somehow relevant to worthwhile feminist efforts and aspirations, I strongly disagree, find the suggestion itself rather mysterious and illogical, and certainly could not be expected to guess that you were so devoted to it that honest and polite questioning of it would be treated as though intentional blasphemy had been leveled at something sacrosanct.

However was I to know you are so defensive about the issue that polite comments that attempt to discuss the matter with you would be subject to such an unseemly backlash?

As for being 'roped into' anything, this is grossly inaccurate. Might I suggest chaffing at the bit, and unable to reign yourself in as more accurate descriptives?

It is in your interests to point out to you that not every user here will grant you the same latitude in terms of not reporting your rule breaking to moderators. Further you should not expect that I will continue to grant you such consideration in the future, it is certainly not as though you have done anything to earn as much from me.

mixtapebooty
You might be interested to know that WP has a PM (private message) facility and this (rather than the public forums) is the appropriate means by which to carry out private conversations. You have no right to restrict or otherwise limit the rule-abiding posting of any member in any thread regardless what former contact or discussion you have or have not had with them. This is a public forum, not an exclusive hen's-knitting circle.

I see no further point in addressing your self-contrary, grossly inaccurate summary of events given how very clearly you have demonstrated your intent to ignore reality. Suffice it say, it is far from my fault you chose to argue your views by resort to a fallacy and if you cannot cope with objective, completely non-personal criticism of your arguments, then perhaps a public forum is not the best place to publish your arguments.

You did not inquire about the demise of societies, you inquired specifically about a takeover of a matriarchy by a patriarchy, and I stand by my response that this is very unlikely to occur by peaceful means. In fact I find it highly unlikely such a dramatic transition could occur (at least without intermediate steps) by peaceful means even if the agent/s for change are internal (rather than an external patriarchy).
Do you actually dispute the actual answer I gave to your actual question, or is the is appearance that you are grasping at straws for the sake of continuing your unnecessary (and unseemly) hostility entirely representative of the reality?

Last edited by pandd on 15 Jan 2009, 7:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes there is certainly a correlation between females' economic contributions, and female status/gender stratification (although just as you describe, it is general rather than determinate).

However, post marital residency practices, and ownership/use rights of resources, are also important variables, and some argue that economic contribution is a variably indicative proxy for the (as the argument goes) more important variable of resource ownership or use-right/control, which itself is difficult to separate from issues of post-marital residence and patterns of kin-ship recognition, (ie whether descent is reckoned patrilineally, matrilineally, cognatically, or bilineally).

For instance in many PNG highland societies, villages practice patrilocal exogamy, acquiring their wives (sometimes as captives) from near-by villages with whom relations are often less than friendly. Although it is the wives who work the gardens, the gardens belong to the village and the wives (who are considered outsiders) are not viewed as owning the food they produce. Female status is very low in these societies.

Alternatively among the matrilocal (and matrilineal) Hopi, farm land was owned by clans, with use-rights of particular parcels of land under the control of matrilineages. Although husbands provided the labour (farming land whose use-rights belonged to his wife's matrilineage) it was a man's wife who was viewed as owning the food a man produced. Female status among the Hopi was much higher than that of females in the PNG highland societies referred to in the earlier example.

So the correlation you have posited is not entirely straight forward, although there certainly are examples where it appears both status and control of resources follow from actual labour contributions.

The Mbuti are good example of the latter, in that what property exists is generally controlled by those who produce it, female contributions to hunting are essential (indeed all able-bodied members of the band participate in hunting activities), both males and females gather, and males control some ceremonials which they are responsible for providing the resources for, while females have control over houses (which they build). In part, because of the importance of the labour of all band members (particularly to net hunting), wives are quite capable of simply taking their house down and walking away (to another band where she has relatives).

Such a series of variables limits the scope for inequality somewhat in that there are few resources to dominate, a lack of socially structured positions of power/authority, and all band members have the option of opting out (or voting with their feet as it is sometimes described) because their labour will be valued in any other band that will accept them (which is in most instances, any other band where they have a relative, by descent or marriage).

Because of examples such as these, some have argued that actual labour contributions might be a variably indicative proxy for resource control. Where labour results in control of resources produced, the correlation (between labour contribution and gender stratification) works much better than where the products are not controlled by those whose labour produces them.

Your comment about environmental factors is is also accurate.


It's not entirely clear; if sheknight means something other than that matriarchal is a redundant synonym for egalitarian and is in fact making an argument no different to "egalitarian societies exist", she has been less than forthcoming in confirming as much. Whether or not the Mbuti for instance, would qualify as matriarchal given sheknight's definition of matriarchal, cannot be either confirmed or denied on basis of the information sheknight has provided.

Quite what matriarchy means to sheknight is still a point of confusion to me, but frankly I see no likelihood of clarification of this matter arising from my querying her further on this.

In a rather round-about and convoluted way maybe my theory about men and women is proving itself out.

Try taking your own advice for once, and not breaking your own set of rules, there, pandd. For someone who knows so much about a topic, you are too quick, curt, and rude to justify yourself to me directly any farther. You're a really bad teacher that doesn't understand how to engage students who are trying to learn. Everything you wrote about me here is more grounds to establish that you are breaking WP rules than anything I've ever said about you directly. You're the f*****g hen in some unwritten pecking order that you are trying to establish in this thread by debasing people who are here trying to learn more about it, and who aren't following any strict set of guidelines for how they ask questions. Stop being a f*****g b***h.

The only rules that matter (and that I have referred to) are these. (They the TOS (Terms of Service) that every member must abide by as conditions of posting.)
I believe that I have not broken this set of rules, and I do not recall having previously stated that you personally had broken this set of rules.

Show me specifically where and how I broke the rule. You will only be helping the moderators purge me in your rampant attempt at a hostile takeover of this discussion. You're like a an intellectual fascist.

Calm down! No one needs to be banned here.

It's perfectly acceptable to disagree with someone's opinion, but not ok to trash them personally.

"I disagree" not "you're stupid, or hostile, or whatever". Don't ever assume you know what someone's intentions are when they post something. There are times I've been really surprised at what someone really meant. And disagreements can often be cleared up, or reduced, with more technical information on the subject at hand. Often, people disagree because it turns out they're talking about two different things.

Speaking of which, does anyone have anything more to contribute on the original subject, or have we all exhausted our memories for now?

For a subject I don't particularly find interesting, I certainly seem to be spending too much time here.

Pandd,

Is there any part of you that thinks maybe, possibly, you just came on too strong? Is there any chance that you were looking for a confrontation?