From: shava@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Shava Nerad Averett)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: warfare and women (was:something about greek gods)
Summary: Shava starts another flamewar on alt.pagan
Keywords: peace sex dominance violence war resources economics law history
Date: 10 Apr 92 00:05:17 GMT
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

In article <1992Apr5.151611.9064@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> pciszek@isis.cs.du.edu (Paul Ciszek) writes:
>pharvey@mipos3.intel.com (Paul Harvey) writes:
>
>>Most paeolithic peoples, (100,000 to 12,000 yrs ago), did not know warfare. 

Source, please?

>>To be fair, the population density was much lower and the climate was more 
>>hospitable. Stone age peoples did not really have the concept of possesions,
>
What in the world would make you think that?  Interviews?  Written documents?
Seems to me people from this period are buried with a lot of clothing and
trinkets.  Why would you bother to clothe a corpse unless you considered
that the clothing belonged to them.

>Fruit was probably unknown to
>many paleolithic people.)

I'm sure that's not really what you mean.  We find fruit pits in lots of
middens of very old sites.  There is no way of knowing if fruit were 
dried for later use, however pemmican-like preserving is probably very
very old technology.

>>Some people claim that the early Greek goddess cultures were free from warfare.

Hmmm...  I can't say that I would believe this, but then, I don't think
I believe that warfare is necessarily a bad idea in a 'primative' society.
[shava ducks at all the flamage she's about to get back...]  Are you
sure that this isn't some sort of utopia you are creating, that you 
place before history in the same way the ancients had their paradise
myths placed 'before time,' or in the 'time before {the world, man, the
current gods,...}'.

>>The theory goes that the early Greeks were a female dominated society. Women
>
>This has never been substatiated so far as I know.
And a lot of people think that it was a non-male-dominated (i.e. more
egalitarian than matriarchical) society.

>Marija Gijumbutis (sp?) makes such claims, but her methods, such as listening
>to what the trees tell her, are held in suspicion by other experts.
> 
Gimbutas.  Perhaps she was mistaken in reporting that.  However, I would 
note that a lot of scientists get their inspirations for their hypotheses
from dreams, hunches, and other signals from the unconscious (or where/
whomever ;-).  One of the major myths of modern science is the story
of Newton and the apple.  I guess this means that Newton was just too
flaky to be taken seriously as a scientist, right?

The point is not where the ideas or information come from.  The point should
be if the idea holds water from available evidence and data.

One of the most famous sites Gimbutas discusses is the "kiva of the niche
goddesses" (I don't know what she called it, but that's how I think of
it).  A round, underground room was lined all around the wall with niches,
and in each niche was a stylized statue of a female form, like the German
'venus of wittenburg' (is that the right town?).  At one point, I was 
caught in a discussion with someone about the existance (or not) of 
ancient goddess cults.  "How else could you possibly explain the purpose
of this place?" I asked.  And then it suddenly hit me:  Gimbutas was
wrong!  This place was, in fact, the first penny arcade of prehistory,
and those little figures were the cupie dolls...NOT.

>>But, eventually, the men got tired of worshiping all these women, and they
>>discovered warfare, a power that few women have ever grasped. Through warfare
>
Ummm....  Sorry, I *really* think this is a little lame.  For one thing, 
there is good evidence (sorry I don't have a quote) in art, legend, and
greek history (such as it is) in the ancient world of mediterranean area
women who were warriors.  (Hence the legend of the Amazons, the repeated
instances of women warriors in the greek legend/myth cycles --like the
queen of troy, the goddess Athena, etc.).  For another thing, there is
excellent evidence of women warriors in northern europe, including fairly
late roman accounts of the celts.  The romans were horrified that they
had to reduce many celtic settlements in total bloodbaths, because the
women and older children would take up the arms that men from either side
had dropped and come into battle unarmored.  The accounts are too fre-
quent to be pure fabrication.

>>the goddess of war later on. If you think about, does "goddess" of war
>>make any sense?
>
[Shava grins a mighty grin, and thinks about her bow-hunting days, and
her double barrel lady's shotgun with the nice ironwork bits.]  Yes, 
it does.  If some bozo came after my kids, I would be a pacifist in
my heart.  I would shoot the bastard to keep the peace.

Has it occured to people that most wars of ancient times were fought
over commodities like cropland, with the notion that the person with
the cropland got to feed his/her kids, and the people without didn't?
It seems to me that women have got to have some complicity in this
complex.  There are cultures in the south pacific where, upon first
contact with westerners, the native women confided that they sometimes
wished that the men would go out and have a war, because they were in
the way at home all the time otherwise.

Some of the nastiest powerbrokers of Chinese and Japanese history have
been women.

Women are not, by nature, peaceful or passive.  We don't have as much
testosterone and such running in our bloodstream to make us as 
momentarily agressive compared to men.  However, women have a great
reputation for territorialness, political infighting in families,
keeping and promoting feuds, and imposing moral sets on unwilling
others.

Women in this society have been taught to sublimate any agression into
manipulation, in general.  This does not make us peaceful people.  It
makes us into people who fight *nasty*.  This means that it is not in
our favor for conflict to escalate into physical agression, wherein we
are no longer trained, and of which we are trained to be afraid.  Ergo
it is a stupid woman who will encourage conflict to escalate into 
physical violence if she thinks she might be involved.

However, you will find as few women as you will find men who are interested
in promoting a simpler lifestyle, lower consumption, and other measures
that would cramp her life and have a hope of promoting less conflict over
resources in the world.

Women are not pro-peace.  They are anti-violence.  They are taught to
be "nice," and they want everyone else to be nice too, dammit.

Although I was raised to believe that women were somehow more peaceful,
I find women I run into in social situations to be more petty, underhanded,
judgemental, competitive (probably because I am also female), moralistic,
and backstabbing than men, as a whole.  (Perhaps this is accentuated 
since I have been living in the south, but it was also true in New 
England).

One is almost inclined to believe that the peacefulness of women is a
myth created by warlike male-dominated societies to be able to control
at least half of their subject population without having to resort to
arms.  Or perhaps it's just part of the 'pedastal' complex.  However,
I think it is a myth.

The separation the ideas of violence and war/conflict is as necessary as
the separation of the ideas of procreation from the idea of sex and
affectional preference.  Especially today, when most of the wars being
fought in the world are doing a pretty good job of avoiding violence,
and staying in the more rarified world of economics and international
law.

-- 
Shava Nerad Averett				shava_averett@unc.edu
/*  all materials (c)1992, Shava Nerad Averett, and have nothing significant
    to do with the University of North Carolina, a mostly owned subsidiary 
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