Question: historically, were there any human societies that were matriarchal rather than patriarchal? Also, which present day countries treat women best?

Ambitious_Cup5774 · 2021-07-25T16:52:20+00:00

I know the Mosuo are technically matrilineal, but also are classified as matriarchical. Unfortunately women do most of the labor while men laze about, but women do have more power in society. I really like studying the matriarchical societies in Africa, I remember seeing a short documentary studying a tribe of only women, and they will chase men away❤

SmallBunny0 · 2021-07-25T17:38:53+00:00

Yes! I saw a documentary awhile ago “I think called Taboo”? About different types of societies. There is one (I think in Cambodia) of indigenous people that are matriarchal. The word “rape” doesn’t exist in their society and all women have multiplied husbands to help with child rearing. They also have very open views regarding sex and young women holding the power.

peaches88888 · 2021-07-25T19:10:41+00:00

Orcas!

Emergency-Feed8216 · 2021-07-26T06:50:26+00:00

Read evolutionary scientist and primatologist Richard Wrangham's Demonic Males: Apes and the Evolution of Human Violence for interesting research on the question of whether true matriarchies ever existed.

Lemon_bars_addiction · 2021-07-25T15:46:19+00:00

Yes and some still remain today ! Especially in Asia and Africa. Google matriarchal societies and enjoy the deep dive ☺️

NemesisNoire · 2021-07-25T18:22:03+00:00

patriarchy's beloved r@pe culture is global, so it's relatively shitty everywhere. won't change until women and girls create a sovereign nation state for ourselves like the Vatican. speaking of religion...

♀️The worship of God as Mother💕 came before all other devotions. Archaeological finds show that feminine pre-eminence was a universal, and not a localized, phenomenon. Female-centered civilizations and their iconography are found in neolithic sites worldwide.

Not only was there a time before male dominance, male myths and their sky daddy gods of war, but that God as Mother constitutes the very basis of our civilization and the vast majority of our history.

Toward the end of the 19th century, when the ignorant notion that human civilization began a few thousand years ago was conclusively disproved, it was also discovered that most civilizations before a certain point had an almost exclusively feminine iconography.♀️

Many traditional peoples organized their social activities and institutions in imitation of, "those things first done by the gods", so the very distinction between iconography, religion and social organization is a purely modern one. Female-dominated iconography implies a female-dominated society. In pre-patriarchal societies the iconography is completely different from anything found in any patriarchal society, "Goddess-worshipping" or not. It is a wholly or predominantly feminine iconography throughout the society.

Matrifocal pre-Minoan Crete, for example was a society with great multistoried palaces, villas, farmsteads and harbors, with advanced transportation. This was a society where the feminine image was vastly preponderant. Archaeologists are also struck by the marked absence of signs of warfare, in sharp contradistinction to all comparable societies in which the male image predominated. Also striking is the fact that when, at a later period, male images and male myths begin to dominate, fortifications and weapons of death and warfare appear at the same time.

Notice in all later patriarchal versions of "Goddess worship", we see Her supposed male "consorts" and other male appendages horning their way in. Where Isis is worshiped you will see osiris. Where Ishtar/Inanna is worshipped you will see dumuzi/tammuz. Where Quan Yin is worshiped you will see many male buddhas: and all this is aside from the male-dominated secular imagery that abounds everywhere in such societies.

What the radical change in iconography, found throughout the world, indicates is precisely that iconography is vital to the structure of a traditional society. Patriarchal societies seem to have needed to insert male images at every level into the formerly female-dominated iconography: because they certainly did it everywhere, with depressingly systematic regularity, regardless of whether their societies were "Goddess-worshipping" or not.

Painfulmenstruation · 2021-07-25T15:10:19+00:00

Not Canada. That’s all I can say.

Adventurous_River_64 · 2021-07-25T18:12:08+00:00

Yes, in a college sociology class we studied a matriarchal community in Papua New Guinea. It was very cool and inspiring as a young woman.

jagupp · 2021-07-25T18:50:00+00:00

No, there is no evidence of any matriarchal societies having ever existed. This was actually quite the topic of debate within earlier waves of feminism (i studied it in a feminist anthropology class). A lot of movements against oppression involve a period of revisionist & revivalist history. Its basic aim it to get people to be proud of their roots. Restore a sense of self respect and self esteem as infliction of inferiority is a prime tool of psychological subjugation. Feminists weren’t able to find evidence of this glorious past of woman rule. To many this was deeply troubling. But it also strengthened their case for how damning and nefarious patriarchy is. And just how essential it is that we’re emancipated from this class oppression.

There is often confusion between matrilineality and matriarchy. Sometimes societies have been wrongly assumed to be matriarchies due to their descent patterns but in all cases, a closer examination of how power was actually distributed led to it being disproved.

But hey, just because it hasn’t happened in the past, doesn’t mean it won’t in the future. We’ve made tremendous strides in gaining personhood and freedom. The fight will continue to prosper :)

Pornruinedsociety · 2021-07-25T15:51:48+00:00

I would hazard a guess at Sweden and maybe other Nordic countries?

PeaceExternal51 · 2021-07-25T18:04:14+00:00

Iroquois people

Title	Question: historically, were there any human societies that were matriarchal rather than patriarchal? Also, which present day countries treat women best?
Author	foxorhedgehog
Upvotes	136
Comments	36
Date	July 25, 2021 3:08 PM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/ord8vp/question_historically_were_there_any_human/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/question-historically-were-there-any-human.794708 https://theredarchive.com/post/794708

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