> Hi Brian. I don't have the name of the tribe with me, but I'll do my best to
> find it (saw the film in sociology/anthropology classes at my old school, can't
> find it here) I think they're located on an island somewhere near Australia(?)
> but maybe that's just my brain telling me something wrong.
>
> When i say the roles are reversed, I mean it. Women are the ones who decide
> who they marry, whether or not they divorce, etc. Men have no say in these
> things. A "pretty" man is a good man, and therefore, the men beautify
> themselves in ways similar to the ways women do in this culture - jewelry,
> elaborate costumes. And an old, "ugly" man who has been left for a younger man
> will have an impossible time finding a new spouse.
>
Thanks for your response. Do you know if marriage in this society
has the some economic importance for men as marriage does for women
under patriarchy? If so, this would be a true matriarchy--women
as a class exercising power and control over men as a class. I'm
interested in this example because it is so relevant to the
essentialism issue. If there exists one true matriarchy, not derived
from a previous patriarchy, that is very strong evidence against the
existence of important essential differences between women and men.
It seems that in the vast majority of societies in which women have
status and control over their lives, the women do not choose to try
to exercise control over men or animals. If this is true of ALL
societies it is partial support for some kind of essentialism--maybe
not biological or anything that strong, but some kind of
cross-culturally universal difference between women and men (as
classes, not necessarily as individuals) vis-a-vis control and
domination.
> A woman of the tribe (don't know if she's their "leader" or what) who doing
> much of the talking kept saying things such as "women are better at
> EVERYTHING," although many of the things that women were doing that men were
> supposedly incapable of doing (such as knowing how to gather fish when the tide
> went out) are obviously simple enough that anyone could do it.
>
This is not quite enough to show matriarchy, darn it, because
differences in esteem do not necessarily imply differences in power.
>
> It will be interesting to see how things change when patriarchal cultures begin
> influencing this culture, what do you think?
>
It's possible that patriarchy is already using this culture. There
is a man who develops and defends techniques of self-mutilation (body
piercing, etc.) who refers in his book to a culture that sounds very
similar to the one you described. His point in referring to it,
apparently, is to argue that self-mutilation is universal, and, more
particularly, that it is not inherently patriarchal--justifying by
normalizing. I can get the reference if anyone is interested.
Brian Luke
