The Masuo Matriarchy: A Feminist Paradise!

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....SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is Mosuo society a paradise for feminists?
Coler: I had expected to find an inverse patriarchy. But the life of the Mosuo has absolutely nothing to do with that. Women have a different way of dominating. When women rule, it's part of their work. They like it when everything functions and the family is doing well. Amassing wealth or earning lots of money doesn't cross their minds. Capital accumulation seems to be a male thing. It's not for nothing that popular wisdom says that the difference between a man and a boy is the price of his toys.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is life like for a man in a matriarchy?
Coler: Men live better where women are in charge: you are responsible for almost nothing, you work much less and you spend the whole day with your friends. You're with a different woman every night. And on top of that, you can always live at your mother's house. The woman serves the man and it happens in a society where she leads the way and has control of the money. In a patriarchy, we men work more -- and every now and then we do the dishes. In the Mosuo's pure form of matriarchy, you aren't allowed to do that. Where a woman's dominant position is secure, those kinds of archaic gender roles don't have any meaning.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What astonished you the most?
Coler: That there is no violence in a matriarchal society. I know that quickly slips into idealization -- every human society has its problems. But it simply doesn't make sense to the Mosuo women to solve conflicts with violence. Because they are in charge, nobody fights. They don't know feelings of guilt or vengeance -- it is simply shameful to fight. They are ashamed if they do and it even can threaten their social standing.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: And when there's no solution to a problem?
Coler: Either way, there won't be an altercation. The women decide what happens. Some of them do it more strictly and others in a friendlier way. They are strong women who give clear orders. When a man hasn't finished a task he's been given, he is expected to admit it. He is not scolded or punished, but instead he is treated like a little boy who was not up to the task.....

....SPIEGEL ONLINE: How does this division of roles function when it comes to love?
Coler: In the matriarchal society, love and eroticism are omnipresent. But there is a big difference between the two. They constantly crack double-entendre jokes. Someone always wants to present you with a woman and there is always a woman there who is smiling at you. Like I said, these are very strong women who give the orders and yell at you as if you were deaf. But when it comes to seduction, they completely change. The women act shy, look at the floor, sing softly to themselves and blush. And they let the men believe that we are the ones who choose the women and do the conquering. Then you spend a night together. The next morning, the man leaves and the woman goes about her work like before.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: A paradise of free love, in other words?
Coler: The sexual life of the Mosuo is very distinctive and very active -- partners are changed frequently. But the women decide with whom they want to spend the night. Their living quarters have a main entrance but every adult woman lives in her own small hut. The men live together in a large house. The door of every hut is fitted with a hook and all the men wear hats. When a man visits a woman, he hangs his hat on the hook. That way, everybody knows that this woman has a male visitor. And nobody else knocks on the door. If a woman falls in love, then she receives only the specific man and the man comes only to that woman.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What makes a man attractive to a Mosuo woman?
Coler: When she can talk with a man, have sex, and go out, then she is in love. Love is more important for them than partnership. They want to be in love. The one reason to be with another person is love. They aren't interested in getting married or starting a family with a man. When the love is over, then it's over. They don't stay together for the kids or for the money or for anything else.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does the concept of marriage exist for the Mosuo?
Coler: Yes, the children are even threatened with it: "If you aren't good, then we will marry you off." The children understand marriage as a horror story. They asked me how we live. I said: man meets woman, they fall in love, have children and live together for their entire lives. Oh, they said, that must be great. But you know that they laugh at the fact that we constantly repeat something that even we know doesn't work.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: May we ask if you also hung your hat on a hook?
Coler: One woman wanted to have a child with me. I told her, no, I can't have a child with you because you live here in China and I live in Argentina. "So?" was the reaction. The children always stay with the mothers. I said that I couldn't have any children whom I could never see. She just smiled as if I took it too seriously. When they have kids, the children are theirs only -- the men don't play a role.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In Chinese society, there is more value placed on the sons than on the daughters -- is it the other way around with the Mosuo?
Coler: A family without daughters is a catastrophe. Furthermore, these families do worse economically because the women are the ones who deal with money. One family has 15 to 20 members. Although, there are also small families with five or six members. They are allowed to have up to three children, which is unusual in China, where the urban populations are only allowed one child and people in the countryside can only have two. But the roughly 25,000 Mosuo have the status of ethnic minority and thus they can have three.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do the Mosuo actually have a word for "father"?
Coler: Yes, there is a word but nothing like our concept of what a father should be. These duties are taken over by the mother or the family. Often, the women don't know which man is responsible for the pregnancy. So the children also don't know who their biological father is. But for the women it is usually not important because the men barely work and have little control over things of material value. The family is what's important and they would never separate themselves from it.

Why should a matriarchat be a a paradise for feminists, that are interested in genders being given the same rights and worth?

Thats as weird, as if you´d say that a vegetarian shop, was a paradise for a steaklover?

I thought that Feminists were for female domination, or at least for promoting advantages for women? If they were for equality, then they would be called humanists or egalitarians rather than Feminists.

... I first learned of it while watching Michael Palin discuss Masuo sexual customs with a Masuo woman in his documentary Himilaya. This woman explained to Palin that in her culture women and men define themselves through their connections to maternal clans. When a girl reaches the age of sexual maturity, her mother prepares a room where she can invite a man to dine with her. If she chooses, she invites him to spend the night with her. Children produced from such unions become part of the maternal clan. The “fathering” role is assumed by the uncles and brothers of the mother and the mothering role is shared among sisters. If either member of a couple tires of their sexual relationship, they end it and find other partners. Michael Palin obviously had a hard time believing his ears.

This story illustrates an important difference between the matrilineal and matrilocal customs of the Masuo and those of the patriarchal cultures with which we are familiar. Among the Masuo women choose their sexual partners freely and are free to end one sexual relationship and find another. There are no illegitimate children because all children have mothers. There are no “loose” women (think about the meaning of that term) or “whores’ because women are free to have sex with whomever they choose. The Virgin-Whore dichotomy–so well-known in patriarchal cultures–simply does not exist.

With the contrast provided by the Masuo, I came to understand on a deeper level that patriarchy is a system of male domination in which men dominate women through the control of female sexuality. The control of female sexuality through the institutions of patriarchal marriage is not incidental to patriarchy, but rather is central. The customs that surround patriarchal marriage including the requirement that brides are untouched sexually or “virgin,” the “protection” of a girl’s virginity by her father and brothers, the seclusion of girls and women, the requirement that wives must be sexually faithful to their husbands, and the enforcement of these customs through shaming, violence, and the threat of violence, all have one purpose: to ensure that a “man’s” children are his. While it is relatively easy to know who a child’s biological mother is, it is not so easy to be certain about the biological father. If a woman has more than one lover, then without DNA testing, which has only recently become discovered, it is nearly impossible to be absolutely certain who a child’s father is. One solution to this dilemma is to define fatherhood in other ways. The second is to control women’s sexuality absolutely.

One might ask: why it is so important for a man to know who his biological children are that a complicated system of secluding and shaming women in order to control their sexuality had to be developed? The answer is found in the next clause of my definition: patriarchy is a system of male domination in which men dominate women through the control of female sexuality with the intent of passing property to male heirs. Marx and Engels were right that patriarchy and private property are integrally related. There would be no need for a man to be sure of the paternity of his children if the institution of individual private property did not exist and if the value of individuals were not defined by the property they own and pass on to their heirs, usually sons....

So basically you know absolutely nothing about feminism and continue to whine about it for no reason at all.

Women have a different way of dominating......Amassing wealth or earning lots of money doesn't cross their minds.

...our sons will grow up and will go into a world which we never knew. A world which feminists didn’t even dream of in the 70s. A world in which our boys will grow up to be, on average:

1. Less educated than women

2. Earn less than women (this is currently the case for young men and women)

3. More vulnerable in divorce and family courts

4. There is an unclear and ever increasing definition of what sexual harassment is and laws which see two drunken people having sex as rape

5. Men are to be less healthy than women and die younger, yet get less health budgets

6. There are less and less marriages and the bonds between men and women tend to be shorter, easily dismantled, based on less emotions and more sex.

7. Most children are born out of wedlock (this number is currently 42% and is expected to keep growing).

8. Boys are raised more and more without the presence of a father, and the men figures are replaceable while the woman is not. Most boys will not have a male family lineage; girls will have a female one.

Point 8 is crucial. Due to this reason I believe we are currently seeing the creation of a matriarchal society, since such societies (such as the Masuo matriarchal society) are characterized by the elimination of the father from the family. This gives the women the power within the household and boys are raised without masculine guidance and under the authority of a woman. This is already the case today in the vast majority of single parent homes. Furthermore, social help by the state is effectively transferring wealth from traditional families and men (on average) to these woman-led households. Women today can get the support of men, due to taxes and child support, without giving men any say within the house or on the way that the money is spent. This arrangement does seem to be sustainable.

This data is unprecedented in the western world. We are in a new world, with different rules and different power structure. The feminists may as well have a victory parade and celebrate in the streets (they won’t because they need women to feel like victims, not powerful matriarchs, in order to gain public support).

You can love it or you can hate it, it doesn’t matter. Reality has changed, this is not a man’s world anymore and our sons will grow into a basically matriarchal society....