Feminism in prehistoric times / primitive culture

Great post, Dervel.

Has anyone seen the documentary on the Celts by Terry Jones? It is an eye-opener. He produces quite a lot of evidence to show that one of the reasons why the Romans went to war with the Gaels was because they considered them uncivilised as women had equal status in Celtic society. Western owes a lot to the Roman idea that women were significantly inferior to men.

And I hate this modern anthropology that wants to compare humans to animals.

And I've always hated Woody Allen

Hang on, what about such luminary prehistoric feminist writers as Gloria StoneAge-em; Charlotte Perkins Caveman; and Naomi Sabretoothed-Wolf...

(I'm sorry - am sure you lot can do better than my feeble efforts....)

I want more choice of sexual partners like the primates. Sometimes I think there's poor pickings to choose from and its getting worse and I may as well stay single seeing as I'm not gay.

Very informative thanks Dervel😊

Comparing humans to other primates it would appear we have evolved from conditions where women had comparitively more choice about sexual partners. It's only comparitively recently (in evolutionary terms), that's changed.

A patriarchal bias in the study of anthropology minimises women's roles within other cultures. The Taino people (one of the first Native American cultures that Colombus encountered), incorporated a great deal of female power within society. It is often inaccurate when you think of 'Chiefs' to presume one single leader to which all the resources and status would accrue. In a lot of Native American socities there were many chiefs who headed and led the tribe on individual issues. We however would tend to equate any martial chief (male) as overall leader. The few tribes who fought with the patriots in the War of independence upon visiting the early American congress asked 'where are all the women?'.

I'd also take issue with the fact women's contributions to civilisation have been to shut up and make babies. Women have been there, constantly in every field of human endeavour and contributed vast amounts, but these women have been erased at every turn, or even banned entirely. Some of it also encompasses the back breaking labour like mining. There were female miners in Victorian Britain who worked right along side the men, until there was a public outcry and it was banned for being unladylike.

Distasteful as prostitution is, examine the political role prostitues played in frontier America. A lot of them built schools, public works and contributed a vast amount to the building of communities. All rendered invisible because they were both women and prostitues.

Women miners: www.historyextra.com/feature/scandal-female-miners-19th-century-britain

Prostitution in the old west:

The ghostbusters film was great, really funny, watched it with the whole family and they all loved it. Whiny mra's get offended when girls get to do stuff though.

ROSS! Whiney, Cowardly, won't just make a decision Ross! Ugh, no, not Ross. Joey actually started to have some hidden depths by the end, and at least was open about who he was, Chandler was fine nice enough (although he needed a boot up the backside to start actually doing something), but never Ross...

I may have watched too much Friends in my youth.

The mras went mental over the recent ghostbuster film. I saw it s few weeks ago and thought it was good.

Was it Emma Stone recently that said that they were giving her funny ad libs to the males in her films? Same actress that was in the Woody Allen Joaquin Phoenix film anyway and I did wonder.

Part of the problem in sitcoms is that the men are often the "funny" ones - zany, stupid, always getting into hilarious scrapes whilst the women are often the "straight guy" - more intelligent than the man, but there to roll their eyes at the man's antics while looking pretty. I know that certain MRA types interpret this as being misandric, but actually in a comedy the good roles are the funny ones. The male roles must be much more fun to play than the female roles in that sort of sitcom.
It's why I love Brooklyn 99 - its not perfect, but so much better than most. The women are allowed to be funny in it, and it passes the Bechdel test.

Yes!!! Woody fucking Allen. He did the same older guy very young woman thing in a film with Joaquin Phoenix recently. I couldn't be srsed to watch the whole thing.

Maybe the problem is that for these rich Hollywood types this is their reality. But in the real world it just doesn't go down like that.

I always quite liked Ross, and Chandler. The one I wouldn't have gone near was Joey, the archetypal ladies man. Did nothing for me at all.

On that topic, two words: Woody Allen.

The older and plainer he got, the younger and hotter the women starring opposite him got. Total power trip.

Yeah Chandler was alright.

Rachel!

I always thought chandler was a bit of alright... no?

Ross on the other hand would never have stood a chance with Jennifer

Fame not game

When Madonna dates hot young men so many in the media mock her and people assume the men are just in it for the money and game, despite her being beautiful and having a great body. But you just have to watch any of the real housewives programs to see beautiful young women with unattractive and non masculine men who are loaded. The women get called gold diggers but the men are never mocked and shamed.

The whole ugly guy stunning hot young woman in most films has been driving me batshit for years.
I think we should ban supermodels from dating fugly men!
There are never women who look like me represented in main roles, I would be the fat funny friend.

It gives men unrealistic expectations and causes far too much arrogance and conceit. On the other hand most women are very aware of where there place is socially and who they can partner with if they don't want to be mocked.

As it is when my beautiful 23 year old dd goes out she gets the fugliest old loser guys latching on to her thinking they are entitled to her attention. I have taught her to be polite and lie that she has a man already (is owned by another male) because when she was just telling them to fuck off a couple got very nasty and threatening to her. I was worried about her safety.

Aw thanks Suzie I was thinking argh Ive gone full ranting nerd

Well op you have opened my eyes and my mind, with your irrefutable logic.

All hail the men! You carry on 'working tirelessly behind the scenes to keep the show going' and I'll pop the kettle on and a bit of gossiping, bitching and moaning. Sounds fab.

the nerdy social misfit/unattractive (and completely shallow) guy who gets the uber hot 'it girl' often by making her rethink her (shallow) preference for attractive men to see him only for who he is on the inside' is a highly recurrent theme

That is why Paper Towns was so disappointing. It was supposed to be a feminist dismantling of the "manic pixie dream girl" trope but instead it was all about him and not about her. Plus the supposedly deep subplot of the beautiful shallow woman falling for the nerd was well just another "ugly man hot girl" pairing.

Also add Chandler and Monica to that list.

Where are the stories about the ugly / average women and their journeys? Their absence from our media just adds to the resentment of so many anti feminist men, those of the "women have so much sexual power over men" category because they're only talking about beautiful women (and what kind of power is that anyway?). Normal women don't even show up on their radar.

Great article Vestal

I enjoyed reading your post LilaoftheGreenwood! I agree that people are able to form rather odd beliefs about ancient/pre-history because we're not taught it as a rule and when we are it's through modern eyes. It seems bizarre to me that people think living in a primal way is best, be that diet or the way society functions, because we have evolved to live in a society with cooking methods and stuff and in developed countries we have the longest life expectancy and lowest infant mortality since the dawn of time.

Some ancient societies left their newborn baby outside for a night to see if they survived... maybe that would be a good way of weeding out weaklings such as the OP?

Think the Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast, Cerano de Bergerac... my feeling us that it these stories have historically been made up to make girls and women feel better about being 'given away' as child brides or other arranged marriages to men they feel repulsed at the thought of having to touch.

Yeah.

Ironically, in the Disney version, the Beast doesn't really have any more inner values than Gaston.
Here's an interesting article on that:
www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2017/03/how-feminist-was-disneys-original-beauty-and-beast

The beast does the exact same nasty things to Belle as Gaston (and then some) but is portrayed as somehow better.