Months created by women?

Sorry i said mensis = moon, but i meant mensis = month!

Christianity = patriarchy, no?

I have witnessed periods sync, my doula said that she often bled a little at people's births. I had a really heavy period recently and two friends bled at the same time, even though it wasnt their period normally, so debunked or not I definitely think there is some connection.

Do languages other than English have similar words for moon and month?
Answer after a quick survey: some do, some don't. Eg:

French : lune / mois
Spanish: luna / mes
Slovak: mesiac - the same word unless Google Translate has got stuck
Swedish: mane / manad

The periods 'synching' theory has been completely debunked.

Not patriarchy, but Christianity. 13 was a lucky number to the Celts & the Scandanavian polytheistic cultures.

To the Christian missionaries it was the number preferred by devil worshippers.

13 moons a year though, women have 13 periods (generally). 13 is the unlucky number.... Or so patriarchy tells us of course....

I know the Ancient Egyptians had a 10 day week. They had 12 months of 30 days with each week being each phase of the moon. They then had 5 days called epagomenales which were the birthdays of the five gods/goddesses- Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Seth and Horus.

I once read that before colonialisation, some places in Africa had a three day 'week' , every third day was market day and that just went on always. The seasons are different there due to being so close to the equator, so rather that the 4 seasons we experience, it was just two seasons, wet and dry.

Women do sync with the moon. I have always bled with the moon. We live in nature amongst many people who have 'returned to the land' .. peoole who are back living alongside natural cycles, and most women here cycle with the moon.

Periods, being 'moon time' for teaching the younger girls.

Mens-truation, menses, from latin 'mensis' meaning moon.

Month = moonth

All my friends who are midwives say full moon is busiest time on maternity ward.

There was a 'thing' on MN some time ago that things went weird at the full moon, and for a while the Talk home page in the browser had a phase of the moon image. Doesn't seem to be there now.

Do any cultures have a different 'week' length, or none? I think I once read that when france was trying to get everything nicely rational and decimal, they tried a ten day week but it didn't work out.

It is now, but wasn’t in prehistoric times. The moon has been gradually moving farther away from Earth.

Isn't there something to do with electric light affecting us.

I have 4 dds and their periods synch MagpiePi, thats a fun few days every month. 🙄

A lunar month is every 29.25 days, so it would make more sense to round it up to 30, divide it up and have 5 x 6 days weeks in a month.

My feeling is that the 7 day week is also associated with menstruation - most women’s cycle is 28 days - mine is, it’s always been pretty bang on. 28 as a number can only really be divvied up in a few ways and 4 x 7 seems to be pretty sensible.

The goddess Selene had 50 daughters, called the ‘menses’.
50 lunar months = exactly 4 years and although we think of the Olympics were ‘every 4 years’, they were actually every 50 menses or months, for the ancient Greeks.

Obviously the moon goddess Selene having a daughter every month, is referencing women having a period every month.

It’s a garbled & possibly plagiarised anecdote, and it shows.

I have read the original, or an earlier version at any rate, from a feminist writer of the 70s or before (I wonder if it was Margaret Mead? Can’t remember). I read it in the early 80s.

It may have been used by one of Toksvig’s lecturers, perhaps, in which case either they or Toksvig misunderstood it. She did study anthropology & archaeology.

The point is that the moon’s cycle is 28 and a bit days. So a bone incised with 28 grooves might equally be a menstrual cycle OR a lunar month - there’s no way of telling.

But the bones which have been discovered were reported as having groups of grooves of between 25 & 32 incisions.

Which is no lunar cycle any human has observed, but might well be an irregular menstrual cycle.

I read this story. The lecturer apparently asked her class who might need a device to enable them to track 28 days.

It's not preposterous or idiotic to ask such a question.

It’s the Romans’ fault. They brought us the ten month year and then Julius Caesar added two months dedicated to himself to make it twelve.

Ok. I’ll calm down then. 😉

She didn't pick the example, merely recounted it ... and this would have been before the recent revaluations based on DNA. But yeah, it's a pretty weak story.

Yeah, well she should have picked a better example to illustrate “male assumptions” like all these prehistoric “warrior graves” that have been originally sexed as male based on societal assumptions of man=hunter & fighter and woman=gatherer. Recent DNA analysis is now flagging around 25% of these up as XX female warriors/hunters.

She shouldn’t have picked an preposterous thing like a 28 day tally and mused it was about periods FFS. She’s just made herself look a fool.

On this Solstice day, I've been vaguely wondering why New Year's Day isn't today, and now why we have 12 rather than 13 months. Nothing to do with feminism!

Happy Solstice all.

don’t know who Sandi Toksvig is, but they’re completely out of their depth.

She is a woman who has been discredited by her involvement in a political movement which was taken over by the gender warriors. I guess she is hoping for a bit of ( unsuccessful) credibility.

I don’t know who Sandi Toksvig is, but they’re completely out of their depth.

A comedian, and QI host. Also one of the founders of the 'Women's' equality party...
she got a first from cambridge in law, archaeology and anthropology, I think this anecdote was based on the musing of a lecturer. While it's certainly a stretch to suppose that the 'lunar calendar' (if that's even what it was) had anything to do with period tracking, I think the point might more have been about challenging the 'default male' assumptions made by some archaeologists when assessing their finds.

Lunar calendars are easier for people to follow without the use of any technology (stone age or modern), but they don't work for anything that needs to be kept track of annually. 12 lunar months are about 10 or 11 days shorter that the time it takes for the Earth to orbit the sun once, ie one year.

No, they work fine for annual tracking. There are 365 days in a year which equates to 13.04 lunar months in a year. So that’s a 1 day slip per year and most cultures would have 1 day holiday between old and new year, making their calendars actually more accurate than our current Leap Year one.