Marija Gimbutus, Her Works

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I personally dislike the dominant way that pandd entered this discussion. I think it was extremely counter productive to the other members here, and could have been much more polite and less argumentative. Gary makes a point about getting to know people before just attacking what they write. Entering the discussion with opinions about what multiple members in the discussion have stated really overbearing. We've been on this thread for days, and now we are dealing with a total topic killing know-it-all. The idea isn't to exemplify AS traits to an extreme because you don't have an outlet elsewhere, unless that is the whole point of a thread, in which case, this is not. Everyone in this thread had been really cool with differences in opinion until now. I'm not going to do the mental work for someone else that I've already done for myself concerning forethought and approach to a thread discussion and how it affects other members. My point is that I'm not learning anything new about the topic by getting into silly personal quarrels that someone wants to start directly with the discussion group. That type of communication wouldn't last in a real discussion, and it won't last here. I hope that we can put a stop to it, forever.

pandd, again, you make no sense. You're so emotional. If you want to say that I am intellectually bankrupt for making the statement that matriarchies are egalitarian, no matter what the dictionary says, that's fine. If you find the word "fancy" to not be acceptable somehow, I really don't care. But you sound silly to me, as you have yet to refute what I've said, beyond claiming the dictionary says something else. I made it clear why I believe the dictionary definition is incomplete. Please try to contradict my statement that patriarchy is not the opposite of matriarchy, and that matriarchies are egalitarian. If you like, we can discuss why feminists insist on keeping the word matriarchy, instead of egalitarian. Somehow I doubt you're interested, though.

Are you claiming I've called you names? I have not. I did just call you silly, and if that counts as name calling, then I'm guilty. No need for you to make things up, though.

You are also exaggerating when you call my opinions about mras "hysteria", or that I'm "desperate to engage them". The truth is that I had my fill of dealing with them a long time ago. Once I figured them out to my satisfaction, I quit dealing with them altogether. Now I only aim to educate others on them, as they are not what they purport to be. No need to speak to them any longer to hear more of the same old baloney. I was less than thrilled to think I had encountered one, and I still think that your initial dealings with me on this thread are very similar to how they behave. If you are not familiar with their ideas or behavior, then you cannot refute my opinion about them, or say that my knowledge of them is "hysteria". If you are familiar with them, you are being untruthful in feigning no clue about them. Which is it?

If my guess that you have a dislike for the feminist movement is incorrect, you should correct me. I find it telling that you didn't acknowledge that I said you come off as having issues with feminism. I could be wrong, but I doubt I'll get a straight answer out of you. Oh, well.

Does anyone think that men could have peacefully ended a matriarchal society?

I'm leaving this thread alone, in hopes that removing myself will get it back on topic. I was really enjoying it, until recently. It felt great to talk to people who had different opinions, stated in such thoughtful, non-personal ways. I had just been telling my significant other how refreshing that was, literally moments before the flaming started. Hopefully, it will pick back up and I can rejoin. And maybe pandd will stick around and state some real opinions. Maybe let us know what's going on behind that fire. I really don't like guessing peoples' motivations, but when they won't talk to me and tell me what said motivations are, I may end up with an incorrect view of them. I truly do not want that to happen.

I personally have no idea what you're talking about.

I think there was nothing impolite and argumentative about my post, and I think if you really cared about politeness and not being argumentative, your comments would be directed elsewhere. I find your accusations dishonest.

This is not the 'getting to know you' section of the forum. There is a sub-board specifically for that purpose, and this thread is not in that section.

No it is not. Trying to exclude someone from the conversation is overbearing, against the spirit and purpose of this forum, and seems very petty, elitist and immature.


Actually you and sheknight are killing the topic by turning from the subject matter to personal attacks in an attempt to exclude another user. This strikes me as very catty and high-school-esque behavior.

If you can point to where I was impolite before sheknight launched into her snide and aggressive attacks (which in her hot-headedness inadvertently included an attack on your own words) replete with lame attempts to name-call, I'd be most interested. The point is not to re-create NT patterns of cliqueness, and inability to engage in discourse without trying to turn everything into some pathetic little high-school cat-session.


You certainly cannot put a stop to people posting comments on the forum, nor on them posting comments that respond or comment on other peoples' comments. Your point ignores the purpose and function and mode of operation of these forums. There might be forums somewhere where it is fine to exclude others as you are attempting here, but WP is not such a forum. At WP it is not considered rude to post in a thread, or to respond to multiple posters within one post (rather these are common standard practices), but it is rude anywhere to try to limit the participation of others.



How very ironic. What makes you think I'm emotional, because I'm quite certain you are, and somewhat paranoid (of these MRA folk) to boot. Clearly history going on there. Has it occurred to you that your history with these people might be clouding your judgement?


You've given no reason why the dictionary definition is incomplete, and as I have already pointed out (and you prefer, quite dishonestly, to ignore) the dictionary is the least of the reasons for my opposition to the definition you are attempting to posit, simply because you believe such a definition would make your argument correct. If you do not understand what is intellectually bankrupt in redefining words to make otherwise untrue statements true, all for the purpose of pushing your ideological cart (and why have such an ideology if it is unsupportable without resorting to such nonsense), then it's unlikely I or anyone else can explain it to you. You either 'connect' with logical processes and respect them, or not.


Please actually present an argument (you know premises with logical connections that imply a conclusion) for your assertion, because I've presented my argument, you have not countered it, and I see no reason why your lack of an argument, with a failure to counter mine, would call for further arguing on my part.
I doubt you can present an argument to support your definition, because the only reason you wish to change the definition is to make a statement that otherwise appears wrong to you correct, for ideological purposes. You want it to be true that there are and have been matriarchies, yet believe you cannot do so if you apply the proper definition of matriarchy. Apparently those that do not play along with this blatant ideology-serving nonsense are universally Mens rights activists. Odd, I did not know MRA were the only type of people interested in truth and logic.

All this MRA is simply petty name calling, plain and simple. Deny it all you like, you are very transparent, although your emotionality might not allow you to see just how much so.

LOL, no, it is not an exaggeration. You give so much about yourself away with your snide attacks and attempts to label others as MRA (as though everyone shares your view of these folk thus making it some kind of deep and meaningful insult....in your mind).


And started seeing them where they are not, which fact is quite revealing about you.


Of course, I'm sure in your mind all your 'enemies' (and no doubt they are legion) all conduct themselves the same way.

If you were less hot-headed and emotionally wrapped up, you might realize that I've never commented on your knowledge of these people you refer to. What demonstrates hysteria and paranoia to me, is the way in which you see them where they are not, seem to view them as hive-like clones who act as one, and seem very reactionary towards people you (for no reasonable cause) assume to be one of them.
Looks like hysteria and paranoia to me.

If you were interested in a rational and mature discussion, it would not matter to you whether or not I were anti, neutral or pro feminism. If of course you merely want to engage in ad hoc personal attacks, obviously the identity of others becomes more important. The meaning of matriarchy does not depend and is not defined by my personal views (nor your's although this latter point appears to go way over your head), so my personal views are not relevant to the conversation. Your attempt to make the issue personal is revealing of the kind of person you are. Your comments say much more about you than they do about me, these MRA folks and anyone else combined.

I find it telling that you launch these personal and obviously very emotional attacks in an attempt to control discourse and frame things according to an ideology that apparently you think is unsupportable unless you dishonestly redefine the meaning of matriarchy without giving any reason why others should accept this redefinition, but simply endlessly asserting it while making accusations that the un-countered arguments of others are non-arguments.
In the mean time, I doubt the MRAs are hiding under your bed, or in your fridge, and I doubt there are any participating in this thread. So Dont' Panic.

I cannot imagine any means of ending a society (of any kind) that I would apply the word 'peaceful' to. It's plausible a society could be drastically altered by peaceful means, but I doubt that it's particularly common.

I've changed my mind. Humans of both sexes are all violent and aggressive beings.

I'm a little confused about how things blew up here. I didn't see anything wrong with pandd's original post. Isn't it normal to split hairs over terminology? Plus I suspect that the feminist definition of matriarchy is different from the mainstream one. Mainstream thinkers may not be familiar with the models that feminist scholars talk about.

Here's an example of a matriarchy from another species. According to the book The Lemur's Legacy, ring-tailed lemurs are matriarchal through most of the year (although I don't remember if the writer actually uses the term matriarchal or not). The males have their pecking order, the females have their pecking order, and for most of the year the males defer to the females. That's because the males are low-testosterone outside of mating season. Come mating season, however, it's a free-for-all as male testosterone levels surge and all heck breaks out. I wouldn't want to live there.

There may be other social species that also follow this pattern: elephants?

Humans are not matriarchal in this sense, because men are high testosterone year round and high testosterone folks do not naturally defer to lower testosterone folks. However, some societies are matrilinear (which is different), and societies in which females make higher economic contributions (agriculture, textiles, gathering in more primitive societies; office jobs in modern economies) are generally more egalitarian than societies in which females do not make major economic contributions (e.g. where hunting or herding is waaay more important than gathering or gardening, usually because of the climate or ecosystem type). I think if you had a society in which women long made major economic contributions, that society might look matriarchal to someone in a more patriarchal society. But "matriarchy" has also been used to refer to societies where women had any voice at all - I'm thinking of an early Star Trek episode, which made fun of a planet ruled by women. So I'm not sure what you would call such a society.

Are people arguing about whether egalitarian societies exist? or what to call them?

All pandd wants to do is cause tension. It's obvious. Like a little four year old, demanding that everybody look at him. The intent was to focus attention on himself, and he got his way. He came in stomping and hollering, got the reaction he wanted, and still, it's not enough. This thread has to be about him, and that's all there is to it. He'll get attention any way he can, including blatant lies, and ridiculous assumptions about paranoia, etc. Pandd is maaadddd, and he wants everybody to know it. Okay, we get it.

Pandd, you are acting like a little kid. A whiny, snot-nosed little brat. Grow up. I realize I hit a nerve with you, but get over it. You write the longest posts on this thread, and every one of them is about you. No substance. You have no idea how I feel until I tell you how I feel. At least I had the decency to state that I wasn't certain if what I was getting from you was in fact true. Yet with every line you write, your insecurities grow brighter.

Something that life experience has taught me is that there are some people who just get off on being obnoxious. Nothing can be done about them, except to walk away.

Hopefully this forum allows us to put annoying punks on ignore. (now you can truthfully say I called you names, unlike before, when you lied. You are an annoying PUNK) I'm going to go look for that option now.

I left because I was getting afraid of getting hit with a rock from some old dig in Turkey or something.

Anemone, pandd's giant issue is that I said matriarchies are egalitarian societies. He's completely pedantic in his criticism, and is hung up on what his dictionary says. I'm guessing that what he was actually reacting to was all of my other posts, which had some pretty blunt things to say about patriarchy, and the apathy of some men. In his desire to prove me wrong, he latched on to minutia, rather than argue amicably against what I'd said.

This whole thing would have been easy to get beyond, if his desire to fight, rather than discuss, hadn't taken hold. An impartial observer could say that we both are correct (nuances are definitely lost on pandd), and leave it at that. But no. Pandd wants to throw out personal attacks, exaggerate my positions, and make snide remarks about my intellect, because he can't express what he thinks about the sum of what I've said, rather than one little statement. He keeps saying that I have some secret agenda in stating that matriarchies are egalitarian, when in fact, all I'm saying is that matriarchies are egalitarian. That's it. Now he's moved onto claiming I am somehow afraid of mens rights activists, a group that certainly does not intimidate me in the least. In his hysteria, he wants to project, and make me out to be the hysterical one.

This whole thing is crap. Am I irritated? Of course. I'm only human, and I've had this stranger go out of his way to irritate me. Here I was, genuinely happy to have found a woman's forum on an Aspie sight. The womens' forum is the whole reason I joined this site, and I was especially enjoying it. Pandd wanted to bully me right out of that joy, and he did. I feel like I've just spent the afternoon with the brattiest of children, which sucks. I really thought I'd found a place where people didn't behave like this, but was I ever wrong.

I can't figure out how to put somebody on ignore. Surely there's a way to do that? Any help would be appreciated, as I'd like to forget about pandd and go back to my happy place.

I just discovered that pandd is a she, not a he. Lovely. I was roped into fighting with another woman. My day is just getting better and better.

Just another day at the funny farm.

I knew pandd was female, and saw a female who would rather criticise than participate beforehand in the discussion. It was unfair to those of us who have built this thread. If someone wasn't criticised then it is easy not to be offended, but for someone to just post opinions mostly related to context and not be a constructive participant is rude when all they add is criticism to what's being said, or want to add loony sideways agreements that might appear to be arguments. Totally rude. Pandd came out of no where and I for one have never really participated in discussion with her the way that I have with Anemone, Gary, sheknight, and a few others. Hi, pandd, I'm mixtapebooty, who are you and why are you not taking the context of the general discussion into account before trolling for attention by being immature? Secondly, societies occasionally die on their own and do not have to be violently overtaken, but this is not direct criticism, so don't get an irrelevant attitude with me. TRY TO FIGURE OUT THE CONTEXT, it is important to every discussion.

Gary is right about both sexes being violent. The overall question is, "who has more of a violent advantage?". Overall, and generally speaking, it's men. Men win, and women lose, with the exception of minor individual cases within a male established and run society. Do you know how hard it is to convince men that women don't have a fair chance, even today? Yeah, every woman experiences a loss in quality of life due to men being ignorant which I believe is a result of inherently violent traits that society has actually subdued on the surface to create an illusion of peace and fairness towards women.

BLAM!, E=BLAME

Another variable in the dispute here is that pandd has been around for a while and those of us who have seen her around tend to see her as pretty reasonable (at least I do). If you're new, you don't already have that to draw on when you read a post of hers that you disagree with. Sometimes those of us who have been around for a while forget that when we're talking to people who are newer we have to start over again to build up trust. There are men who have been making some pretty negative comments in this forum recently (see the "sweetie" thread for example), and then there are long time classics on WP in general like, oh, I don't know, ProtossX ? (who made his mark then left). When you've been around for a while it all becomes relative.

I would give pandd a break given what I've seen so far overall. But everyone has posters they like and posters they dread, so I don't expect everyone to agree with me.

At any rate I must admit that it has been many years since I read Gimbutas so there has been a certain amount of faking it in my posts. Hope I haven't been too off in spite of that.

I agree there was an intent to focus attention on me personally, and confirming who's intent it has been is as easy as checking who turned away from the subject of the thread to instead concentrate on me personally. In case you have genuinely forgotten, that would be you.

It is not my fault you either cannot or will not provide any good cause for why matriarchal is either synonymous with egalitarian, or a special kind of egalitarian society, or even clarify which of these you mean, and it is far from unreasonable (or impolite, or rude, or attacking or flaming) to query such a claim and attempt to find if there is any veracity to your further claim that it is everyone else who misunderstands the word matriarchy.

It is very obvious that I was not rude or impolite to you in anyway before you decided to turn from the subject matter and engage in personal and slighting comments.

You claim any objective observer would recognize that we both are right in some way, and have claimed that people are generally confused about what matriarchal means. None of this supports a view that when you accused me of deliberately trying to turn the word matriarchy into something it is not, that you honestly believed this was the case.

To be quite blatant, I strongly suspect that the value you appear to place on the premise at issue, is entirely misplaced in any case.

Given that what is, does not necessarily imply what should be, and that novelization has been demonstrated as plausible, time and time again throughout human history, how does it matter whether there are or have been matriarchies? Even if there are, this does not demonstrate that there should be. Even if there are not (and have never been) this does not demonstrate that there should not be, nor could not be.

Proof that there are or have been matriarchies does not substantiate the proposition that there should be, nor does proof that there are not, nor have ever been, substantiate that there should not or could not be. While you might believe that whether or not matriarchies exist or have existed is somehow relevant to worthwhile feminist efforts and aspirations, I strongly disagree, find the suggestion itself rather mysterious and illogical, and certainly could not be expected to guess that you were so devoted to it that honest and polite questioning of it would be treated as though intentional blasphemy had been leveled at something sacrosanct.

However was I to know you are so defensive about the issue that polite comments that attempt to discuss the matter with you would be subject to such an unseemly backlash?

As for being 'roped into' anything, this is grossly inaccurate. Might I suggest chaffing at the bit, and unable to reign yourself in as more accurate descriptives?

It is in your interests to point out to you that not every user here will grant you the same latitude in terms of not reporting your rule breaking to moderators. Further you should not expect that I will continue to grant you such consideration in the future, it is certainly not as though you have done anything to earn as much from me.