Iceland

There's a bunch of stuff on Native American tribes as well, you can find for yu'sen — unenlightened

That’s funny. There are quasi native people near me who say "youen" to mean "you all."

Plains Indians weren't exactly matrilineal, but to the extent that they had property, it was owned by the people who made it. Dwellings were made by women, so they owned them. Arrowheads were made by men, so I guess they owned them.

Plains Indians weren't exactly matrilineal — frank

With matrilineal descent and matrilocal residences, motherhood, not fatherhood, was central to Navajo culture. The earth, agricultural fields, and sacred mountains were all called mother, as were corn and sheep. Motherhood was thus defined in terms of reproduction and the ability to sustain life. Mothers were responsible for passing along Navajo religion and traditions to their young children and sustaining them through love and care. Three of their most central mythological characters were the maternal figures Changing Woman, Spider Woman, and Salt Woman.

https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1106&context=historical-perspectives

Navajos aren't Plains Indians. They live around the Grand Canyon. Plains Indians are usually Siouxan.

What sort of property did Navajos have before white people showed up?

Now there are two major asymmetries between our society and the one being envisioned here (I am going to ignore as merely cosmetic the notional liberation of women). And they concern childbirth of women, and the physical strength of men, that mean that matrilineal matriarchy is not a mere inversion of our patrilineal patriarchy.

A matrilineal society has no need to control sexual relations, because there is almost never any question as to who the mother of a child is. Patrilineal society needs to know the father of the child, and therefore needs to control the sexual relations of the woman. (Hence, for example, the 'value' of female virginity, still of vital importance to royalty and others.) The matriarch does not need to possess a man as husband, the way the patriarch needs to possess a wife. The pressure is off, wrt sex. A man's as well as a woman's loyalty will be largely separated from his/her sexuality, because their loyalty will be to the tribe of mother, sisters and nieces, while their sexuality will be external to this family. And a man's economic responsibility will be for his sisters' children rather than those of his personal begetting.

The asymmetry of physical strength means that in a matriarchal society, social control and status is not associated with physical strength to the same degree. It will be largely divorced from power and status, but remain probably a sexual attraction. — unenlightened

The notion of ‘power’ in matriarchal society would be more associated with qualitative potential or creative capacity than any quantifiable consolidations of potential or possession of value. The notion of ‘societal control’ would be replaced by that of collaboration, rendering ‘loyalty’ less of an issue overall.

The notion of ‘societal control’ would be replaced by that of collaboration, rendering ‘loyalty’ less of an issue overall. — Possibility

Yes, except that collaboration is controlled. Not all control is coercive. I'm trying to imagine, without being totally utopian, how a a post-industrial matriarchy would function. Big institutions, national government would probably become less dominant, in favour of regional and tribal administration.

Mothers are loyal to their offspring. It kind of sounds wrong - too obvious to mention - I want to suggest, that the matriarch, in general, in a matriarchy, as opposed to the patriarchal matriarch one sees, is not an entirely separated self, identifying with an abstract body (oxymoron) as head, but as the birthed birthing of the extended family - I am the ancestors-and-inheritors ...* There is something radically different in the psychodrama of matrilineality.

*There is something of this in our (UK) current queen, even within the heart of patriarchy, dedicated to a lifetime of service as an almost religious duty. So old fashioned! So subtly different with the typical male identification of self with state that we call 'loyalty'.

Another example

The matrilineal principle in Judaism does not mean Judaism is matriarchal, let alone feminist. Judaism is as patriarchal as all other monotheistic religions.

https://verfassungsblog.de/the-stubborn-subversiveness-of-judaisms-matrilineal-principle/

Basically, I presume matriarchy is both necessary and natural to the maintenance of a matrilineal society to at least an extent that makes it a noteworthy difference from Western culture which is patrilineal and patriarchal. — unenlightened

The history of Iceland brings this into question. To this day girls inherit their mother’s name and boys inherit their father’s name. Women also used to fight, control ships and lead others. I guess such women would be viewed as ‘patriarchal’ though because they were ‘acting as men’ or some such nonsense?

The notion of ‘power’ in matriarchal society would be more associated with qualitative potential or creative capacity than any quantifiable consolidations of potential or possession of value. The notion of ‘societal control’ would be replaced by that of collaboration, rendering ‘loyalty’ less of an issue overall. — Possibility

Why? You have not presented any kind of argument here.

The history of Iceland brings this into question. To this day girls inherit their mother’s name and boys inherit their father’s name. Women also used to fight, control ships and lead others. — I like sushi

I stand corrected. Twice.

You have not presented any kind of argument here. — I like sushi

That's right, we are speculating and imagining. The global prevalence of patriarchy makes the evidence thin to the point where it is almost impossible to disentangle social nature from social nurture. That's why I am as interested in the fiction as much as the anthropology. There is a thread within patriarchy, of virtual nostalgia for matriarchy.

Levi-Strauss did a fair bit to show how different family/tribe relations can be. In one instance the mother’s brother had more of a role in bringing up the child than the father - who was more of an uncle weirdly.

The most common factor is simply down to DNA. Brothers sharing a wife makes sense as their family genes are being past on.

In communal living where mother’s and father’s are not known and children mingle they don’t tend to see each other as anything other than brothers and sisters, so that is problematic.

For any large scale society to function for prolonged periods I believe there is a need for higher than normal levels of tolerance (to differing members of said society), or rather a ‘mechanism’ in place that allows different members of a given society to adapt.

Ideas of sex, sexual orientation and sexuality are just small pieces that can cloud judgement if not considered alongside various other factors, but need to be looked at so as not to miss their importance in combination with other aspects of human interaction.

It just may be that women that excel at being women suit positions that differ from men that excel at being men … the question is then more about what exactly we could possibly mean by saying ‘excel’ here and this inevitably cannot be disentangled from cultural factors above mere physiological processes.

There is then the issue of fertility and age. Women and men are in better positions to contribute to a given society in different episodes of their lives. I think people do not tend to view the elderly in as good a light as they used to (in Western Culture especially).

To keep on track with the topic how do roles differ between older men and women? Is there less difference?

In one instance the mother’s brother had more of a role in bringing up the child than the father - who was more of an uncle weirdly. — I like sushi

Yes, that seems quite natural to me in a matrilineal society. A man's children are those born to his sister, rather than to his lover. His lovers children will not inherit from him, but from their mother's family. The mere facts of life are unimportant in comparison to the social constructs of life.

Sometimes the men stay with their birth family, and sometimes with their spousal family, and that obviously affects which children they are more close to.

To keep on track with the topic how do roles differ between older men and women? Is there less difference? — I like sushi

I don't think it's possible to answer. One is dealing with 'old-fashioned' - shall I say? - tribal groups that cannot be compared with youth obsessed modern urban culture. Elders are generally respected in stable societies, but modernism rejects stability in favour of progress.

It just may be that women that excel at being women suit positions that differ from men that excel at being men … the question is then more about what exactly we could possibly mean by saying ‘excel’ here and this inevitably cannot be disentangled from cultural factors above mere physiological processes. — I like sushi

The question that I'm asking myself about this is what you could possibly mean by "women that excel at being women". The only sense that immediately occurs to me is that it means "women that excel at performing the role of being a woman", but that is the thing that we can only measure the excellence of, relative to the society that assigns and defines that role. The role that we are talking about the transformation of. Am I tying myself in knots here?

I don’t know what could mean to ‘excel at being a woman’ and I stated that it is unlikely to untangle it from culture (you just chose ‘society’ as a replacement for the term ‘culture’).

I don’t think it is hard to argue that men and women are different, but sometimes people forget that compared to most species the distinctions between male and female are small in humans. We can talk about general trends but given that, psychologically speaking, men and women are far more alike than different from individual to individual it is mostly conjecture. We are better off talking about what allows humans to ‘excel’ rather than reduce humans into select categories.

If we are talking about the structure of societies we could even argue about what does and doesn’t constitute a ‘society’ and whether or not social structures inhibit certain aspects of our nature or not. It is endless.

In terms of ‘excelling’ at being a man or a woman my view is that it is completely dependent upon the circumstances said men/women find themselves in. When it comes to circumstances that tilt towards physiological differences then men and women are equipped differently.

When it comes to leadership both masculine and feminine traits serve society. The biggest error in colloquial thought is that ‘masculine’ means ‘male’ and ‘feminine’ means ‘female’. I don’t see how society can shift this thought without destroying the truth of these reasonably distinctive categories that shed light of human psychology. I see it as rather bizarre that women who act like men - buy into power structures and act aggressively and competitively) think they are empowering women … they are neither empowering women nor disempowering women, they are merely empowering the system that is already in place.

I heard an interesting, and highly speculative, idea put forth by the guy who wrote Homosapiens. He posed that males have a better psychological make up for ruling over large portions of the population (with something of a hypnotic effect). I don’t really think so myself but it did make me think about population size versus certain innate psychological traits. I do wonder if certain traits at one level cause problems in leadership roles where at another level they are a boon (in terms of sphere of influence and numbers). For example neuroticism may be extremely useful on a one-to-one basis as it can reveal difficult problems at an intimate level whereas on a large scale it would look more like mob mentality.

The notion of ‘societal control’ would be replaced by that of collaboration, rendering ‘loyalty’ less of an issue overall.
— Possibility

Yes, except that collaboration is controlled. Not all control is coercive. I'm trying to imagine, without being totally utopian, how a a post-industrial matriarchy would function. Big institutions, national government would probably become less dominant, in favour of regional and tribal administration.

Mothers are loyal to their offspring. It kind of sounds wrong - too obvious to mention - I want to suggest, that the matriarch, in general, in a matriarchy, as opposed to the patriarchal matriarch one sees, is not an entirely separated self, identifying with an abstract body (oxymoron) as head, but as the birthed birthing of the extended family - I am the ancestors-and-inheritors ...* There is something radically different in the psychodrama of matrilineality.

*There is something of this in our (UK) current queen, even within the heart of patriarchy, dedicated to a lifetime of service as an almost religious duty. So old fashioned! So subtly different with the typical male identification of self with state that we call 'loyalty'. — unenlightened

What you’re talking about is a flip in the qualitative attribution of ‘loyalty’ - from a person’s loyalty to their leader, to a leader’s loyalty to her people.

What is the nature of our ‘loyalty’ to our mothers? It’s not a blind sense of loyalty, but a collaborative one. Her overall capacity to care for us - her loyalty or service to us - is enhanced and ensured by our ongoing qualitative contribution. This is not transactional, and is expected to include care and concern for our ‘siblings’ and extended ‘family’, whose needs also impact on the extent to which that overall capacity may be stretched. In this sense our mother takes care of all of us, and we are all responsible for taking care of our mother by doing what we can to help ensure each other’s immediate needs are met.

Collaboration would be not so much ‘controlled’ as limited by a perception of capacity.

An excellent and thought-provoking discussion, thanks all.

Interesting overlap with @_db's 'Women hate':
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12648/women-hate/p1

Hope you don't mind but I've linked to some of your comments, here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/669853

Cheers :sparkle:

I don't understand something. Why is lineage an either/or deal? Too, it seems that most people don't really care which it is - patriarchy/matriarchy - they choose the side that's greener in a manner of speaking. Typical human behavior if you ask me.

Why is lineage an either/or deal? — Agent Smith

For example, if you took both names, then after a dozen generations you'd have 4096 names. One has anyway to be in one tribe or the other. There was a hippy movement in the UK to reject surnames along with the possessive implications thereof, but to comply with the law at the time, such revolutionary offspring were all surnamed 'Wild'.

However, it seems to still be about an either/or arrangement. Patriarchy v Matriarchy.
I don't think this is helpful. Indeed, doesn't it play into the fear of males that women are taking control and being less than subservient? Women have their roles to play; the main one being a mother? — Amity

If you look around, there are quite a few inbetweeny cultures of various complexions, but I'm not remotely wanting to take account of the fears of unfulfilled patriarchs. That is why I took myself off to another thread, and wrote a long op with lots of links. :wink:

Here are some inbetweeny oddities for you:
https://www.ssozinha.com/post/5-african-traditions-where-gender-roles-are-reversed

Fact: GARTHER, n. Men invented this elastic band to keep women from jumping out of their stockings and desolating the country.

Ambrose Bierce understood why matriarchy ought always to be nipped in the bud.

such revolutionary offspring were all surnamed 'Wild' — unenlightened

:lol:

Surnames, biased patriarchally, are unfair to women. It's as if their contributions to the familiy and its achievements don't matter or are relatively insignificant. The fairer sex would complain if it were not the case that it's a double-edged sword; who, man/woman, would want their name to be associated with the black sheep of their stock?

Food for thought, from Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex:

Matriarchy is a stage on the way to patriarchy, to man's fullest realization of himself; he goes from worshiping Nature through women to conquering it. Though it's true that woman's lot worsened considerably under patriarchy, she never had it good; for despite all the nostalgia it is not hard to prove that matriarchy was never an answer to women's fundamental oppression. Basically it was no more than a different means of counting lineage and inheritance, one which, though it might have held more advantages for women than the later patriarchy, did not allow women into the society as equals. To be worshiped is not freedom. For worship still takes place in someone else's head, and that head belongs to Man.

To be worshiped is not freedom. — _db

:fire: People only worship power, power comes with responsibilities. Responsibilities? R-E-S-P-O-N-S-I-B-I-L-I-T-I-E-S!!!!??? :death:

Fact: GARTHER, n. Men invented this elastic band to keep women from jumping out of their stockings and desolating the country. — Bitter Crank

Desolation, everywhere I look, it's desolation! I need to make an appointment with the ophthalmologist. Why does everything look gloomy grey and deathly brown?

It's the beginning of insight. Don't go looking for a new pair of rose tinted spectacles, instead look through the gloom of self for the jewel of life.

man's fullest realization of himself; he goes from worshiping Nature through women to conquering it.

The declaration of conquest of nature seems a little premature to say the very least. 'Man' is part of nature, entirely dependent on nature as 'other' for his existence. His conquest of nature thus turns out to be the sawing off of the branch on which he sits. The rape of mother nature is a Freudian fantasy whose realisation is the global catastrophe of man-made climate change.

But that is a rather misleading quote from a radical feminist Marxist, who is interesting but very controversial in her interpretation of psychology and biology. We could go into it a bit more if you are interested, but her views are not mine by any means.

We could go into it a bit more if you are interested, but her views are not mine by any means. — unenlightened

Please do, I am curious. Firestone has some interesting ideas, but there's a lot I find unconvincing, some of which I also find disgusting.

Ok, I don't have the book to hand, so I'm going to use some of the wikipedia material and quotes. If there is other stuff you want to look at put the quotes or links up if you can.

The first women are fleeing the massacre, and, shaking and tottering, are beginning to find each other. ... This is painful: no matter how many levels of consciousness one reaches, the problem always goes deeper. It is everywhere. ... feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature. — Firestone

So I am old enough to remember the times from which she speaks, when the rigidity of gender conformity was such that the Beatles caused outrage by growing their hair so long it covered their ears. homosexuality was illegal and depraved, and lesbians didn't exist, because nobody cares what women like or don't like. Abortion was illegal, and having a child out of wedlock was 1, shameful, and 2, economically ruinous. The culture was not quite Taliban, but it was closer to Taliban gender politics than to the modern West.

So it is understandable that women felt that their very biological nature betrayed them, but I think they, and she, was wrong about that. So all the stuff about liberation from childbirth, I simply reject.

There were no ancient matriarchies (societies ruled by women), and the apparently superior status of women in matrilineal cultures is due only to the relative weakness of men. Whatever the lineage system, women's vulnerability during pregnancy and the long period of human infancy necessitate the protective and hence dominant role of the male.

This dependence of the female and the child on the male causes "psychosexual distortions in the human personality", distortions that were described by Sigmund Freud. — Wiki

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5321759/

https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/ancient-cultures-matriarchal-society-0011588

The science and archeology has moved on, or rather back; the reality of ancient matriarchies is back in vogue. The evidence is that a matrilineal descent when accompanied by matrilineal property inheritance results in a more equal society, precisely because it does those things that I suggested in the op, it removes the necessity for the control of sex, and divorces power from physical strength. The methodology of matriarchal rule is thus more cooperative based and less violence based.

While I'm here, I'll also just mention that the incest Taboo is more regarded as a social amplification of the Westermarck Effect. Again this post-dates the Firestone text.

So it is understandable that women felt that their very biological nature betrayed them, but I think they, and she, was wrong about that. So all the stuff about liberation from childbirth, I simply reject. — unenlightened

The conclusion that I drew from her analysis was that, for all history, in order for the human species to survive, there has always been a need for women to get pregnant. If all women were to collectively say, no more pregnancies, there would be a dilemma. The species would end. There has always been some degree of coercion involved on the part of women because of their biology. A similar thing might be said about men (if men collectively said, no more sex, there would be a dilemma) - but men escape the burden of pregnancy, and the risks and pains of childbirth. It might be a more fair comparison if men suffered some serious risks and pains themselves in the process of reproduction, but they don't.

Pregnancy was, for a long time, a very dangerous thing for women, literally life-or-death. Technology gives women the ability to escape this biological imperative to get pregnant by transferring the process to an artificial womb. All of this assumes that the continuation of the species is something that ought to happen, but that's a separate topic, I think.

Interesting links, btw.

men escape the burden of pregnancy, and the risks and pains of childbirth. — _db

That's a fact and always has been, but whether it is women who are imposed upon or men who are deprived and dependent, is decided otherwise than as a matter of fact. My inclination is to suggest that procreation is desired by most people who are not alienated from their own bodies. And in that case it is a privilege and advantage for women, who always know that their children are theirs. Indeed that is the exact reason that patriarchy needs to control female sexuality.

That is an interesting take, I think I understand your point more now. Thanks