Another excellent analysis :) Why are so many researchers trying to "prove" that the past was a better, less oppressive place, while there's every evidence that it wasn't ?
I enjoy your summing up. The white washing of indigenous cultures in the Americas often makes me blush. I think the whole world being patriarchal (while clearly true, even of our primate relatives), offends the political alliances of the left, which are often anti-colonial/women's rights/immigrant/anti-traditionalist/non-christian. Given this repeating pattern throughout the world, the 'only white Europeans were patriarchal' myth is extremely useful politically, and due to a lack of writing throughout much of the world, relatively easy to convince people of.
A second point, it is very easy to argue that patriarchy is natural. This is a conclusion many people want to avoid for the above reason. Inventing "primordial cultures" who are supposedly older (again, mostly untrue) helps prevent folks from coming to that conclusion.
It's really striking how much the first paragraph would be nearly the same in any apologia for the ante-bellum South, or any (every) patriarchal society. Did the Romans not have vestal virgins? Did the Greeks not have female goddesses? Were they not patriarchal? The answers are so trivially obvious as to be boring.
This is less relevant to the Aztecs, who clearly were organized at large scale, but i wonder if the origin of some of this sentiment isn't just due to the small/local scale of hunter gatherers.
I can imagine that in modern times criminal organizations occasionally have women in high ranking positions due to family connections and contingency. On the other hand the Catholic Church is never going to have a female bishop by accident.
So if you just look at whether on rare occasions a woman has a fair amount of power you'd say that the Mafia is less patriarchal then the Catholic Church. But i don't think that's right, and thinking about college and the average experience of women is the way to realize that.
Another excellent analysis :) Why are so many researchers trying to "prove" that the past was a better, less oppressive place, while there's every evidence that it wasn't ?
I enjoy your summing up. The white washing of indigenous cultures in the Americas often makes me blush. I think the whole world being patriarchal (while clearly true, even of our primate relatives), offends the political alliances of the left, which are often anti-colonial/women's rights/immigrant/anti-traditionalist/non-christian. Given this repeating pattern throughout the world, the 'only white Europeans were patriarchal' myth is extremely useful politically, and due to a lack of writing throughout much of the world, relatively easy to convince people of.
A second point, it is very easy to argue that patriarchy is natural. This is a conclusion many people want to avoid for the above reason. Inventing "primordial cultures" who are supposedly older (again, mostly untrue) helps prevent folks from coming to that conclusion.
Thank you again.
It's really striking how much the first paragraph would be nearly the same in any apologia for the ante-bellum South, or any (every) patriarchal society. Did the Romans not have vestal virgins? Did the Greeks not have female goddesses? Were they not patriarchal? The answers are so trivially obvious as to be boring.
This is less relevant to the Aztecs, who clearly were organized at large scale, but i wonder if the origin of some of this sentiment isn't just due to the small/local scale of hunter gatherers.
I can imagine that in modern times criminal organizations occasionally have women in high ranking positions due to family connections and contingency. On the other hand the Catholic Church is never going to have a female bishop by accident.
So if you just look at whether on rare occasions a woman has a fair amount of power you'd say that the Mafia is less patriarchal then the Catholic Church. But i don't think that's right, and thinking about college and the average experience of women is the way to realize that.