#peggy reeves sanday

[haggishlyhagging]

The evidence marshaled by anthropologists showing the effects of Western colonialism on traditional female power and authority is impressive. The work of some writers has led to the conclusion that "the penetration of Western colonialism, and with it Western practices and attitudes regarding women, have so widely influenced women's role in aboriginal societies as to depress women's status almost everywhere in the world." In this chapter two case studies showing the manner in which European influence eroded the bases of traditional female authority are presented.

In one case, the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria, the struggle was between Igbo women and British administrators, with Igbo men playing a passive but supportive role. In the other case, the Iroquois, the struggle was between Iroquoian women and the followers of a charismatic Iroquoian male who, aided by Quaker missionaries, sought to revitalize Iroquoian life and institute a new sex-role plan. In both cases women resisted the forces of change. Igbo female resistance led to the "women's war," in which thousands of women marched against the British and destroyed property. Iroquoian female resistance led to witchcraft accusations, resulting in the execution of some women for following traditional female patterns. The killing and wounding of approximately 100 Igbo women and the token executions among the Iroquois broke the spirit of resistance.

-Peggy Reeves Sanday, Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality

[croziers-compass]

georgey boy eating his cannibalism meal with a fork and knife and then acting like going to mass is the same as eating another person —> delusional survival

He may not be as delusional as we think. Perhaps. If you'll care to entertain my thoughts on this... Here is where I think George Hodgson and I have a strange and distinct similarity. Ritual Cannibalism is most prominently observed in the dialects of Christian Religion.

Now. One may be a bit more literal (eating Gibson or Dr. Goodsir), yes. But in a Sacrament, the point is that you're recreating the imbibement of the Body of Christ. Taking someone else's body and making it Holy and putting it into your mouth, chewing it, swallowing it, digesting it. Intimately. You can be saved if you eat of the body. I do possess the largest collection of books on Anthropophagy and Theophagy in my area, I think. However, the distance between Symbolic Theophagic Anthropophagy to straight Anthropophagy is as far as you can open your mouth.

How wide can your mouth open? Or will your jaws stay shut?

I suppose it depends on how hungry you are, doesn't it?

[bechdelexam]

This vision of matriarchy has produced more than a century of squabbling. It arose in the nineteenth century by analogy with "patriarchy" or "father right," not from ethnographic study. Matriarchy was defined as the mirror image of patriarchy, its female twin.  Armed with this definition, countless scholars went looking for primitive matriarchies during the twentieth century, but they turned up nothing. It was impossible to find something that had been defined out of existence from the start. Defining a female-oriented social order as the mirror image of a male form is like saying that women's contribution to society and culture deserves a special label only if women act and rule like men

Peggy Reeves Sanday, Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy

[wan-shuxin-things-blog]

To Eat, or To Be Eaten? Cannibalism in The Merchant of Venice

No one can ignore the bloody flesh to be cut off from Antonio when reading Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The Jewish usurer Shylock’s demand for a pound of flesh seems so ruthless and gruesome because it bears a cannibalistic undertone. Shylock once says: “But yet I’ll go in hate to feed upon/ The prodigal Christian.” It reminds the audience/reader that Shylock, who has a desire for human flesh, is more than greedy but cruel.

（Image: https://www.weibo.com/u/6468308564 )

How does the terrifying image of flesh and cannibalism matter in this comedy? It has a direct implication on Shylock’s motivation. His big appetite for money is very similar to the image of cannibal as an immoderate eater. Moreover, Shylock takes his revenge against Antonio’s longtime discrimination, but in a quite primitive way, which can be read as an instinctive desire in human nature, a sign of animality.

As one of the prominent conflicts in the play, religious hatred makes the Jews and the Christians two opposing communities. Interestingly, the tension between them responds to a pattern of exocannibalism, referring to eating someone from outside the group. It is in this “eat and be eaten” relationship the Jew is degraded in terms of civilization. The cannibalistic feature of Jews is linked to barbarism, something you certainly would not expect in a civilized community. By contrast, the Christian occupies a moral high ground since the flesh he provides has every implication of the Eucharist. Thus, a Christian community with mercy and refinement is portrayed. The projection of cannibalism on the Jews shares a lot with colonial discourse and functions as a symbol of cultural order. In an exotic imagination of the barbaric “other”, the invaders confirms a self-superiority over the cultures they are eating.

A good man like Antonio is always ready to sacrifice himself, not only to help his fellowman out, but also to save his enemies by converting them to a blessed world. Then, who is one to be eaten after all?

To learn more about “cannibalism”: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25064862?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

References

Braunmuller, A. R. "Introduction to The Merchant of Venice." William Shakespeare: The Complete Works: pp. 285-92.

Kilgour M. From Communion to Cannibalism. An Anatomy of Metaphors of Incorporation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. Press (1990).

Sanday, Peggy Reeves, and Maurice Godelier. Divine hunger: Cannibalism as a cultural system. Vol. 56. Cambridge University Press (1986).

Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Penguin Classics (2017).

Shirley Lindenbaum. Thinking About Cannibalism. Annual Review Anthropology. 2004(33): 475–98.

[sanatakislari]

BARIŞ DÖNEMİ: Öncelikle günlük hayatta kullandığımız ataerkillik tanımının doğrudan karşıtı olan anaerkillik tanımı vardır ve buna göre anaerkillik; annenin ya da yaşça büyük bir kadının aile üstünde mutlak otoriteye sahip olduğu, buna ek olarak bir veya bir grup kadının da genel topluluk üstünde benzer seviyede bir otoriteye sahip olduğu düzendir. Anaerkilliğin bu tanımı, anasoyluluk ya da Türkçede karşılığı olmayan "matrifocal" (kabaca, "anne-odaklı") ve "matrilocal" (kabaca, "anne-yerel") şeklindeki kavramlarla tam olarak karşılanamaz. Anaerkilliğin diğer (günümüzde kabul görmek konusunda zorlanan) tanımı ise ilk tanıma tepki olarak Peggy Reeves Sanday tarafından ortaya atılmıştır. Ona göre anaerkillik, kadınların mutlak üstünlüğüyle ifade edilmemelidir; çünkü kadın yönetimi böyle uç bir şekilde görülmez. Onun tanımına göre anaerkillik, anasoylulukla birlikte, sosyal ve politik olarak cinsiyet eşitliğine dayanan bir düzen olarak anlatılabilir. Peggy Reeves Sanday, Minangkabau toplumunu birinci elden gözlemlediği ve yorumladığı araştırma kitabında gelenekselleşmiş anaerkillik tanımının erkek merkezli düşünme sonucu ortaya çıktığını söyler ve kadınların toplumsal hakimiyetinin diğer cinsin haklarını kısıtlama seviyesiyle ölçülmesine karşı çıkar.

[spectat-or]

" Transformar a vítima em bode expiatório - dizendo que ela causou a situação - é necessário... Assim como a eficácia do ritual de sacrifício já dependeu da ilusão de que a vítima era responsável pelos pecados do mundo."

Peggy Reeves Sanday, Fraternity Gang Rape

[haggishlyhagging]

Descriptions of female hunting in several North American Indian societies have been provided by Regina Flannery, Ruth Landes, and Louise Spindler. In the cases cited by them, certain females adopted "masculine styles" that they learned from men and performed out of necessity. When she lived among the Eastern Cree of the James Bay region of Canada during the summers of 1933 and 1935, Regina Flannery came to know several old women reputed to have been excellent hunters in the old days. They hunted either because of the illness or death of their male relatives or, as the women said but no man ever admitted, because of "just plain incompetence of the men at hunting." While living among the Mescalero Apache in the mountains of southeastern New Mexico, Flannery was told by a "shriveled-up, decrepit old woman" that in the past "young married women might go hunting with their husbands, not merely to accompany them, but actually to take part in the chase." Flannery found it hard to believe that such a woman "was once active and skilled enough to rope a buffalo, wind the rope around a tree, and kill the animal with an axe." However, she received corroborating information from others that in the past this was not an uncommon feat for women who, if they needed food, would kill whatever animals they came upon.

-Peggy Reeves Sanday, Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality

[topazthecat]

Rape-Prone Versus Rape-Free Campus Cultures in Violence Against Women June 1996 by University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday She found 40% of societies that were rape free!

https://web.sas.upenn.edu/psanday/articles/selected-articles/rape-prone-versus-rape-free-campus-cultures/

[thefreedomspray]

Rape Culture Readings

Abdullah-Khan, Noreen. Male Rape: The Emergence of a Social and Legal Issue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Ballantine, 1969). Armstrong, Elizabeth A., Laura Hamilton, and Brian Sweeney, “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Multilevel, Integrative Approach to Party Rape,” Social Problems, vol. 53, no. 4 (2006), pp. 483–99. Azoulay, Ariella. “Has Anyone Ever Seen a Photograph of a Rape?” in The Civil Contract of Photography (MIT Press, 2008) Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (University of Chicago Press, 1995). Bevacqua, Maria. Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminism and the Politics of Sexual Assault (Northeastern University Press, 2000). Block, Sharon. Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Boswell, A. Ayres and Joan Z. Spade, “Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture: Why Are Some Fraternities More Dangerous Places for Women?” Gender & Society, vol. 10, no.2 (1996), pp. 133–47. Brison, Susan. Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self (Princeton University Press, 2003). Brownmiller, Susan. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (Simon & Schuster, 1975). Buchwald, Emilie, Pamela Fletcher, and Martha Roth, eds., Transforming a Rape Culture (Milkweed, 2005). Bumiller, Kristin. In an Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement against Sexual Violence (Duke University Press, 2008). Burstyn, Varda. The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics, and the Culture of Sport (University of Toronto Press, 1999). Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (Verso, 2016). Campbell, Kirsten. “Legal Memories: Sexual Assault, Memory, and International Humanitarian Law,” in Signs, vol. 28, no. 1 (2002), pp. 149–78. Cappiello, Katie and Meg McInerney, eds., SLUT: A Play and Guidebook for Combating Sexism and Sexual Violence (Feminist Press, 2015). Celis, William. “Date Rape And a List At Brown,” The New York Times, November 18, 1990. Clark, Annie and Andrea Pino, We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out (Holt Macmillan, 2016). Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015). Connell, R. W. Masculinities, 2nd ed. (University of California Press, 2005). Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6 (July 1991). Critical Resistance and Incite!, “Statement on Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex,” in The Color of Violence: INCITE! Anthology (Duke University Press, 2016). Davis, Angela. “We Do Not Consent: Violence Against Women in a Racist Society,” in Women, Culture, and Politics (Vintage, 1990); “Rape, Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist,” in Women, Race, and Class (Vintage, 1983). Deer, Sarah. “What She Say, It Be Law” in The Beginning and End of Rape (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). Dick, Kirby and Amy Ziering, The Hunting Ground: The Inside Story of Sexual Assault on American College Campuses (Skyhorse, 2016). Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse: Occupation/Collaboration (Free Press, 1987). Enloe, Cynthia. “Wielding Masculinity inside Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,” in Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). Estes, Steve. I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2005). Estrich, Susan. Real Rape (Harvard University Press, 1987). Factora-Borchers, Lisa ed., Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence (AK Press, 2014). Falcon, Sylvanna. “Rape as a Weapon of War: Militarized Border Rape at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” in Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader, edited by Denise A. Segura and Patricia Zavella (Duke University Press, 2007). Feimster, Crystal. Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching (Harvard University Press, 2011). Filipovic, Jill “The Conservative Gender Norms That Perpetuate Rape Culture, And How We Can Fight Back” in Yes Means Yes (2008) Flanagan, Caitlin “The Dark Power of Fraternities,” The Atlantic, March 2014. Freedman, Estelle. Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation (Harvard University Press, 2013). Friedman, Jaclyn and Jessica Valenti, Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (Seal Press, 2008). Funk, Rus Ervin. “Queer Men and Sexual Assault: What Being Raped Says about Being a Man,” in Gendered Outcasts and Sexual Outlaws: Sexual Oppression and Gender Hierarchies in Queer Men’s Lives, edited by Chris Kendall and Wayne Martino (Harrington Park Press, 2006). Gay, Roxane. “Peculiar Benefits,” The Rumpus, May 16, 2012. Gilmore, David. Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (Yale University Press, 1991). Goldin, Nan. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989); Nan One Month After Being Battered (color photograph, 1984) Gottschalk, Marie. “Not the Usual Suspects: Feminists, Women’s Groups, and the Anti-Rape Movement,” in The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Griffin, Susan. “Rape: The All-American Crime,” Ramparts Magazine, September 1971. Halley, Janet. “The Move to Affirmative Consent,” Signs: Journal of Women and Culture (2015). Harding, Kate. Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture—and What We Can Do about It (Da Capo, 2015). Harding, Kate. Asking For It (De Capo Press, 2015). Hartman, Saidiya. “Seduction and the Ruses of Power” in Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 1997). Hasday, Jill Elaine. “Contest and Consent: A Legal History of Marital Rape,” California Law Review, vol. 88, no. 5 (2000). Hesford, Wendy. “Witnessing Rape Warfare: Suspending the Spectacle,” in Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions, Feminisms (Duke University Press, 2011). hooks, bell. “Understanding Patriarchy.” Jarvis, Christina. The Male Body at War: American Masculinity during World War II (Northern Illinois University Press, 2003). Jones, Gayl. Corregidora (Beacon, 1987). Kahlo, Frida. A Few Small Nips (painting, 1935) Kimmel, Michael. Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era (Nation Books, 2015). Kimmel, Michael and Abby Ferber, eds., Privilege: A Reader (Westview Press, 2016). Kimmel, Michael Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (Harper Perennial, 2009). Kollwitz, Käthe. Raped (etching, 1907) Krakauer, Jon. Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (Anchor, 2015). Law, Victoria. “Sick of the Abuse: Feminist Responses to Sexual Assault, Battering, and Self-Defense,” in The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism, edited by Dan Berger (Rutgers University Press, 2010). Leo, Jana. Rape New York (Feminist Press, 2011). Levy, DeAndry. “Man Up,” The Players’ Tribune, April 27, 2016. Luibheid, Eithne. “Rape, Asylum, and the U.S. Border Patrol,” Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (University of Minnesota Press, 2002). Luther, Jessica. Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape (Akashic, 2016). MacKinnon, Catherine. “A Rally Against Rape,” in Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Harvard University Press, 1988); “Rape: On Coercion and Consent,” in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Harvard University Press, 1991). Marcus, Sharon. “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention,” in Feminists Theorize the Political, edited by Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (Routledge, 1992). Mardorossian, Carine M. Framing the Rape Victim: Gender and Agency Reconsidered (Rutgers University Press, 2014). McGuire, Danielle. At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power (Vintage Books, 2011). McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Meyer, Doug. “Gendered Views of Sexual Assault, Physical Violence, and Verbal Abuse,” in Violence against Queer People: Race, Class, Gender, and the Persistence of Anti-LGBT Discrimination (Rutgers University Press, 2015). Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye (Vintage, 1970). Morrison, Toni ed., Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality (Pantheon, 1992). November, Juliet. “It Takes Ass to Whip Ass: Understanding and Confronting Violence Against Sex Workers: A Roundtable Discussion with Miss Major, Mariko Passion, and Jessica Yee,” in The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities, edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (AK Press, 2016). Pascoe, C.J. and Jocelyn A. Hollander, “Good Guys Don’t Rape: Gender, Domination, and Mobilizing Rape,” Gender & Society, vol. 30, no. 1 (2016), pp. 67–79. Pascoe, C.J. and Tristan Bridges, eds., Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Continuity and Change (Oxford University Press, 2015). Patterson, Jennifer ed., Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement (Riverdale Ave Books, 2016). Peek, Christine. “Breaking out of the Prison Hierarchy: Transgender Prisoners, Rape, and the Eighth Amendment,” Santa Clara Law Review, vol. 44, no. 4 (2004). Prickett, Sarah Nicole. “Your Friends And Rapists,” December 16, 2013. Puar, Jasbir. “Abu Ghraib and U.S. Sexual Exceptionalism,” in Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Duke University Press, 2007). Reeves Sanday, Peggy. Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus (NYU Press, 2007). Richie,Beth E. Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation (Duke University Press, 2012). Ristock, Janice L. Intimate Partner Violence in LGBTQ Lives (Routledge, 2011). Ritchie, Andrea. “Law Enforcement Violence against Women of Color,” in The Color of Violence: INCITE! Anthology (Duke University Press, 2016). Roberts, Mary Louise. What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France (University of Chicago Press, 2013). Rumney, Philip “Gay Male Rape Victims: Law Enforcement, Social Attitudes and Barriers to Recognition,” International Journal of Human Rights, vol. 13, nos. 2–3 (2009). Russell, Diane. Rape in Marriage (Macmillan, 1982). Sapphire, Push (Knopf, 1996). Scully, Diana and Joseph Marolla, “‘Riding the Bull at Gilley’s’: Convicted Rapists Describe the Rewards of Rape,” Social Problems, vol. 32, no. 3 (1985), pp. 251–63. Sebold, Alice. Lucky: A Memoir (Back Bay, 2002). Simmons, Aishah Shahidah. “NO! The Rape Documentary” (film, 2006). Simmons, Aishah Shahidah and Farah Tanis, “Better off Dead: Black Women Speak to the United Nations CERD Committee,” The Feminist Wire, September 5, 2014. Stone, Lucy. “Crimes Against Women,” Women’s Journal, June 16, 1877; “Pardoning the Crime of Rape,” Woman’s Journal, May 25, 1878. Sulkowicz, Emma. Self-Portrait (performance, 2016); see also Conversation: Emma Sulkowicz and Karen Finley (YouTube video, 2016) Sussman, Eve. The Rape of the Sabine Women (video-musical, 2007); Giambologna, The Rape of the Sabine Women (marble sculpture, 1583) Syrett, Nicholas L. The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Haymarket, 2016). The Chrysalis Collective, “Beautiful, Difficult, Powerful: Ending Sexual Assault Through Transformative Justice,” in The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities, edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (AK Press, 2016). The Hunting Ground (film, 2015). Thuma, Emily. “Lessons in Self-Defense: Gender Violence, Racial Criminalization, and Anticarceral Feminism,” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 43, nos. 3–4 (fall/winter 2015). Tracy, Carol E. et al., “Rape and Sexual Assault in the Legal System,” Women’s Law Project (2012). Traister, Rebecca. “The Game Is Rigged,” New York Magazine, November 2, 2015. Van Syckle, Katie. “Hooking Up Is Easy To Do,” New York Magazine, October 18, 2015. Walker, Kara. My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love (exhibition, 2007) Wells, Ida B. “ Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases” (1892), “A Red Record” (1895), “Mob Rule in New Orleans” (1900). White, Janelle. “Our Silence Will Not Protect Us: Black Women’s Experiences Mobilizing to Confront Sexual Domestic Violence,” in The Color of Violence: INCITE! Anthology (Duke University Press, 2016). Williams, Sue. Irresistible (sculpture, 1992) Zirin, Dave. “How Jock Culture Supports Rape Culture, From Maryville to Steubenville,” The Nation, October 25, 2013. Zirin, Dave. “Jameis Winston’s Peculiar Kind of Privilege,” The Nation, December 5, 2014. Zirin, Dave. “Steubenville and Challenging Rape Culture in Sports,” The Nation, March 13, 2013. “In the Shadows: Sexual Violence in U.S. Detention Facilities; A Shadow Report to the U.N. Committee Against Torture” (2006).

[we-tokyoboy]

From James Dawes(Evil Men) To Peggy Reeves Sanday, Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus.: See HKU’s sex abuse scandal

[agneswsblog]

I find this argument so frustrating. What's even the point of feminist activism against male violence, if it's inherent and inevitable? To get all the women on Earth living in separatist compounds, kicking male children out at age 10? Separatism isn't even possible for the majority of the world's most vulnerable women. I get the disgust and rage that male violence inspires, they truly do act like monsters, but saying it's innate is a pretty myopic, western/modern- centric view. History and anthropology give us numerous examples of societies in which the men didn't behave like psychos, which were matrilochal, matrilineal, and peaceful (to somewhat varying degrees). The ethnographer and professor of anthropology Peggy Reeves Sanday, who spent years of her life living with and studying the matriarchal Minankabau people of West Sumatra, studied fraternity culture in the United States, and conducted cross-cultural research of 150 different tribal societies, found remarkable and important differences. She defined a rape-prone society as one in which the incidence of rape is reported by observers to be high, or rape is excused as a ceremonial expression of masculinity, or rape is an act by which men are allowed to punish or threaten women. She defined a rape-free society as one in which rape is either infrequent or does not occur (but did clarify that "I used the term 'rape free not to suggest rape is entirely absent in a given society but as a label to indicate that sexual aggression is socially disapproved of and punished severely"). By this measure, she found that of 95 band and tribal societies she had studied, 47% were rape free and 18% were rape prone. She found that in tribal societies, rape "is part of a cultural conflagration that includes interpersonal violence, male dominance, and sexual separation." She found that "Rape-prone behavior is associated with environmental insecurity and females are turned into objects to be controlled as men struggle to retain or gain control of their environment... Where men are in harmony with their environment, rape is usually absent." Think of the numerous examples in indigenous America of cultures which practiced various forms of sex egalitarianism. The Iroquois, the Arawaks, the Choctaw, to name a few. Men can't handle not having limits on their power, it makes them fuckin crazy. But when women are empowered to check and oversee male behavior, societies flourish and (bonus!) don't implode by destroying their environment

I think some of y'all are on some dumb shit with acting like there’s some natural reason for why men are awful. Like, there’s not.

And honestly, they want their actions justified as natural in some way. They justify themselves by saying that being aggressive is natural.

It’s all socialization. Same way I wasn’t born loving eyeshadow and being overaccomodating

[makingmatriarchy-blog]

Life In A Modern Matriarchy

Peggy Reeves Sanday is an anthropologist and the author of the nonfiction monograph Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy (2002) about the society of the Minangkabau. This book, published by Cornell University, is a firsthand story of Sanday’s visits with the people within the Minangkabau, a society located in West Sumatra, Indonesia and “the largest and most stable matrilineal society in the world today” (x). According to Sanday the people of West Sumatra are proud to state their affiliation with the society know as a matriarchaat and are known for it by the locals of Indonesia.

The Minangkabau have continued to obtain their matriarchal society despite outside influences of patriarchy from things such as immigrant kings and traders trying to establish a gold market within their land, and a long line of worldwide patriarchal societies presents to this day.

I enjoy that Sanday states in the preface that matriarchy is typically known as the exact opposite of patriarchy, or “it’s female twin” but then goes on to state that she hopes this book of her firsthand knowledge will redefine the word, and make matriarchy more of an accepted concept rather than a nonexistent form of society (xii).

Sanday, as an anthropologist, backs up my claims in previous posts of the fact that a truly matriarchal society has never existed, but I praise her in that we have the same idea and hope that instead of matriarchy replacing patriarchy it will become an accepted form of society that pays a newfound respect for women, a concept I will touch more on in an argumentative essay regarding modern matriarchy.

Photo of real Indonesia women in the Minangkabau

[audiopedia2016]

What is MATRIARCHY? What does MATRIARCHY mean? MATRIARCHY meaning - MATRIARCHY pronunciation - MATRIARCHY definition - MATRIARCHY explanation - How to pronounce MATRIARCHY? Source: Wikipedia.org article, adapted under http://ift.tt/yjiNZw license. Matriarchy is a social system in which females hold primary power, predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property at the specific exclusion of men, at least to a large degree. While those definitions apply in general English, definitions specific to the disciplines of anthropology and feminism differ in some respects. Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal, but some authors believe exceptions may exist or may have. Matriarchies may also be confused with matrilineal, matrilocal, and matrifocal societies. A few people consider any non-patriarchal system to be matriarchal, thus including genderally equalitarian systems, but most academics exclude them from matriarchies strictly defined. In 19th century Western scholarship, the hypothesis of matriarchy representing an early, mainly prehistoric, stage of human development gained popularity. Possibilities of so-called primitive societies were cited and the hypothesis survived into the 20th century, including in the context of second-wave feminism. This hypothesis was criticized by some authors such as Cynthia Eller in The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory and remains as a largely unsolved question to this day. Some older myths describe matriarchies. Several modern feminists have advocated for matriarchy now or in the future and it has appeared in feminist literature. In several theologies, matriarchy has been portrayed as negative. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), matriarchy is a "form of social organization in which the mother or oldest female is the head of the family, and descent and relationship are reckoned through the female line; government or rule by a woman or women." A popular definition, according to James Peoples and Garrick Bailey, is "female dominance". Within the academic discipline of cultural anthropology, according to the OED, matriarchy is a "culture or community in which such a system prevails" or a "family, society, organization, etc., dominated by a woman or women." In general anthropology, according to William A. Haviland, matriarchy is "rule by women". A matriarchy is a society in which females, especially mothers, have the central roles of political leadership, moral authority, and control of property, but does not include a society that occasionally is led by a female for nonmatriarchal reasons or an occupation in which females generally predominate without reference to matriarchy, such as prostitution or women's auxiliaries of organizations run by men. According to Lawrence A. Kuzner in 1997, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown argued in 1924 that the definitions of matriarchy and patriarchy had "logical and empirical failings .... were too vague to be scientifically useful". Most academics exclude egalitarian nonpatriarchal systems from matriarchies more strictly defined. According to Heide Göttner-Abendroth, a reluctance to accept the existence of matriarchies might be based on a specific culturally biased notion of how to define matriarchy: because in a patriarchy men rule over women, a matriarchy has frequently been conceptualized as women ruling over men, while she believed that matriarchies are egalitarian. The word matriarchy, for a society politically led by females, especially mothers, who also control property, is often interpreted to mean the genderal opposite of patriarchy, but it is not an opposite (linguistically, it is not a parallel term). According to Peoples and Bailey, the view of anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday is that matriarchies are not a mirror form of patriarchies but rather that a matriarchy "emphasizes maternal meanings where 'maternal symbols are linked to social practices influencing the lives of both sexes and where women play a central role in these practices'". Journalist Margot Adler wrote, "literally, ... means government by mothers, or more broadly, government and power in the hands of women." Barbara Love and Elizabeth Shanklin wrote, "by 'matriarchy,' we mean a non-alienated society: a society in which women, those who produce the next generation, define motherhood, determine the conditions of motherhood, and determine the environment in which the next generation is reared."

[agneswsblog]

Check out "The creation of patriarchy", by Gerda Lerner and "Female power and male dominance" by Peggy Reeves Sanday, too. There's a reason why these second wave feminist books are being taken out of University libraries and "women's studies" replaced with queer theory. These ideas call into question the foundations of this "civilization"

The notion that peoples gender is assigned at birth is ludicrous. Gender roles have been chained to women since the inception of agriculture.

This notion that it’s “assigned” is total bull shit, assign implies that it’s arbitrary, that either option is equal. It’s not arbitrary. It is a conscious act of suppression of half the population.

Assigned also implies individualism. As if the individual was the unlucky one here. Which is not true. Half the population is fucked over with gender. “Born into” is at least slightly more honest.

[mirrorontheworld]

Voici un résumé des études d’anthropologie, notamment celles qu’a menées Peggy Reeves Sanday, et qui l’ont conduit à penser qu’il existait des cultures sans viol et des cultures enclines au viol.

[haggishlyhagging]

[Note: Long but extremely instructive quote about a group of indigenous women who fought back against European colonization and lost.]

The [Igbo] women's war began in 1929 in a place called Oloko. The British had recently introduced a system of taxing men and had decided that in order to assess the taxable wealth of all the people, it would be necessary to count women, children, and domestic animals. When Okugo, the chief of Oloko, attempted, under instructions from the local British officer, to count the goats and sheep belonging to Nwanyeruwa, an important woman in the village, she yelled, "Was your mother counted?" at which point they seized each other by the throat. A meeting of women was called, where it was decided to send a palm leaf, the symbol of trouble and a call for help, to all the women in the area. Women poured into Okugo's compound from around the countryside and proceeded to "sit" upon him. To "sit" upon a man is a pidgin English term referring to the punishment inflicted by women on any man who has broken their laws. It has the same meaning as "spoiling" a person's property. The crowd mobbed the chief, damaged his house, demanded his cap of office, and forced the district officer to arrest him and charge him with assault. "The women," said this officer with some embellishment, "numbering over ten thousand, were shouting and yelling round the office in a frenzy. They demanded his cap of office, which I threw to them, and it met the same fate as a fox's carcase thrown to a pack of hounds. The station between the office and the prison ... resembled Epsom Downs on Derby Day."

Despite assurances from chiefs and administrative officers that women were being counted for purposes other than taxation, the trouble spread to Aba, an important trading center. There some 10,000 women, calling themselves "the trees which bear fruit" and "scantily clothed, girdled with green leaves, carrying sticks," converged upon the town. They attacked and looted the European trading stores and the bank, broke into the prison, and released prisoners. After 2 days of rioting, troops arrived and dispersed the crowds without serious casualties.

In another part of Igbo land crowds of women gathered, bedecked in the symbols of war. "Dressed in sackcloth, their faces smeared with charcoal, sticks wreathed with young palms in their hands, while their heads were bound with young ferns," they burned the Native Court and sacked and looted the European store and other property. They declared that the district officer "was born of a woman, and as they were women they were going to see him." When the women mobbed police and military troops, 18 were killed and 19 wounded. In another incident, elsewhere, 32 women were killed and 31 wounded after a mob of women made threatening and obscene gestures against the troops, calling them sons of pigs, and striking at the district officer with their sticks.

The trouble that broke out in early December was under control by the twentieth day of that month. Igbo men did not participate in the rioting. With a few exceptions, they acted as passive but consenting parties to the behavior of their wives. Children were nowhere in evidence during the riots. The rioting was carried out solely by adult women, who sent round the palm leaves to rally their comrades and beat the drums to convey the message of war, just as the drums are sounded to announce a council meeting. Unwilling women were forced to join. One woman, whose daughter-in-law was killed during the rioting, testified as follows:

We met a crowd of women heading to Utu-Etim-Ekpo. The women stopped us. There were plenty too much women, a very large crowd. They were coming along the road and beating their laps and lifting their heads towards the sky and waving their sticks. All had sticks; big sticks. I was afraid of them. They took away my basket and forced me to join them . . . "You are a woman, you must join us." They looked quite different from any other crowd of women I have ever seen. They had nkpatat (wild fern) round their heads. There were no children with them. As they had no children with them that also made me afraid. I do not know where any of the women came from. I was very much afraid of them and did not look at their faces.

The riots were a testimony to the vigor and solidarity of Igbo women. Although the threat of taxation was the immediate cause, they were really fighting to preserve "the spirit of womanhood." Speaking to the subsequent Commission of Inquiry, the women said, "We are not so happy as we were before . . . Our grievance is that the land is changed — we are all dying." Taking these words literally, the British did not understand their meaning. In fact, the women were right — their way was dying, their spirit and ties to the land were slowly being crushed by the new ways brought by the Europeans. The power of the women's councils had been eroded by the institution of a Native Court system composed solely of Igbo men. During the riots these courts were sacked and burned in 16 Native Administration centers. When giving evidence, the women "uttered a flood of criticism against the corruption and injustice of the chiefs and courts." The commission promised that the Native Courts would be reorganized to reflect more faithfully the Igbo system of justice, and that women would sit as judges.

In 1934 this promise had not been fulfilled. The women's councils had lost more power because the government forbade the women to "war," which had been their major means of enforcing their rulings. In rising to defend what they called the "women's world," Igbo women lost the women's war. Believing themselves to be inviolable, the women were shocked at the carnage leveled against them. Despite their assertions of being prepared to die, they firmly believed that the soldiers would not fire on women, that they had no bullets, and that women were never killed in war. As rioters, they compared themselves to vultures, which in Ibibio (a neighboring tribe) means the "messengers of God." One woman said to the commission:

I was surprised to see the soldiers fire as we were women we call ourselves vultures as we did not think soldiers would fire at us. Vultures go to market and eat food there and nobody molests them nobody will kill vultures even in the market, even if it kills fowls. We only fling sticks at them if they take our chop and so we thought soldiers will not harm us what we may do.

European education, Christianity, and the desire for European goods also contributed to the end of the "women's world." A fitting epilogue is delivered by Sylvia Leith-Ross, a concerned British woman, who wonders how long it will be before education can "give the girls something as important, as satisfying, as pervasive, as the land gave to their mothers." And so a new sex-role plan is imposed by the conquerors on the conquered.

-Peggy Reeves Sanday, Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality