From: good@turing (Joe Good)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Matriarcal Societies
Keywords: South America, Southeast Asia
Date: 10 Sep 92 17:03:12 GMT
Organization: Math Department, UC Davis

In article <1992Sep10.135901.2728@mks.com> viktor@mks.com (Viktor Haag) writes:
>
>Pardon me, but I think you confuse the term matriarchal with
>matrilineal.  Plenty of matrilineal descent systems exist among the
>worlds cultures.  This does not, however, have very much to do
>with matriarchiality.  I find it doubtful that the term "matriarchal"
>carries any sort of utility.  At the very least, anyone who uses it
>should provide some sort of definition for it.
>-- 
>Viktor Haag					viktor@mks.com
>Mortice Kern Systems				(519) 884-2251
>35 King North, Waterloo, Ontario		ext. 16
>"we are not thugs. we are vitamin supplements to justice ..." | a selector

	I am well aware of the definition of the term "matriarchal", and
such societies DO exist; where the women control all property rights,
make the major decisions for the tribe, and otherwise hold positions
of power over the society.  I took a one-semester Antropology course
at UC Berkeley and learned of several such cultures. For
example; in the Navajo tribes, even to this day, property
rights descend through the female line, from mother-daughter.
While their society is not strictly matriarchal, the women
hold considerable power, and there are other cultures in which
women hold even greater power than the men. In the Phillipines,
there are tribes in which the women hold power, and can control
men at will.  Another strictly matriarchal society, where the
women make the decisions and control the men, can be found in
New Guinea.  As an example of a matrilinear society; the Hopi
trace their lineage through their mothers, not their
fathers.
	Pick up a good book on Anthropology from your local
University Book Store, or a book by Tamara Gordan on Gender roles
in various societies, and you'll find that such societies do
exist and existed extinsively before the coming of Christianity
(my soon-to-be Mother-in-Law is writing a text on Goddess worship
in ancient cultures, and she can provide names and reference texts
for quite a few societies in which the women made the rules.)
	Admittedly, there are very few matriarchal societies;
even Tamara Gordon went so far as to say that in essence, men
dominate women throughout the world, which is essentially true,
when you consider the tiny populations of the tribes where
matriarchy still exists.  However, to state that "there are
no strictly matriarchal societies, and never have been" is
strictly false.
	In any case, please stop implying that everyone who claims
that such societies exist is ignorant; I've seen you throw that
"definition" argument at several people, and it is getting
tiresome.

	Matriarchal: Women hold power over men, and make the major
		     decisions.  Example:  small tribes in New
		     Guinea and the Phillipines, perhaps others.

	Matrilinear: Lines of descendence, inheritance, etc. go 
		     through women, rather than men.  Examples:
		     The Hopi and the Navajo.


===============================================================================
Joe "BD" Good, President, BRS movie reviews; and generally nice guy
... "We owe it to the brain of our species to stand here and die!" ...
... "OH, little grasshopper; Zen is the art of saying little and meaning all"..
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