Bring Back the Matriarchy

Pay close attention. There will be a quiz at the end of this post.

So, don’t just revel in the entertainment value of these bizarre human customs. Thanks to Janice Zarro Brodman’s new book  Sex Rules: Astonishing Sexual Practices and Gender Roles Around the World we now know more about the sexual customs and gender roles that are practiced around the world. Just in case you thought that feminists were chasing rainbows, it turns out that the world they envision still exists… somewhere.

In a bow to French president Emmanuel Macron, the Apanyekra-Canela indigenous community of Brazil arranges for teenage boys to have sex with many women, but only women who are beyond childbearing years. As you know, in our own Puritanical culture, when an older woman chooses to initiate a teenage boy into the mysteries of sex she will be facing hard time. How can you not see that as a new way to repress female sexuality?

The New York Post reports:

“[They believe that] horny young guys should get it on with women in their late 40s and 50s. Sex with older women will make him strong and courageous, while sex with a young woman — even his wife — will make him weak and nervous.”

If a man should stray from this belief and hook up with a female his own age, he is “shamed and hazed before the whole village,” and is forced to “walk down a line of dancing women, all laughing and teasing him.”

As for how this makes him strong and courageous,  your guess is as good as mine.

And then Africa’s nomadic Wodaabe tribe has its own special customs. In an amazing role reversal men are made to compete in beauty pageants for female attention. Consider it an exercise in male pride.

There, the Post explains:

“Women are free to have sex with anyone they wish” and often pick their partners from the tribe’s popular beauty pageants — which feature men on display. For the guys, the preparation is lengthy and painstaking.

“First, shave your hairline way back,” Brodman writes. “Then smooth a layer of red clay all over your face. Carefully apply thick black eyeliner and black lip paint. Draw a white line down the center of your nose so it will look even longer than it is. Slip into your finest embroidered tunic, [then] pop on your headdress of ostrich feathers and horsehair.”

During the pageant, the men are expected to dance for the women, including having to “vibrate [their] throat, lips and mouth, roll [their] eyes to show how white they are, flash those pearly teeth, while stretching on tiptoes into the air like a bird.”

 

If you are seeking true gender equality, you can move to Indonesia and join the Tau Tau Wana tribe:

Meanwhile, the Tau Tau Wana of Indonesia believe more in gender equality than female dominance, but their version of equality would have many guys running for cover.

“They figure men and women are the same and everyone should get to do everything,” Brodman writes, “including having periods.”

The way Tau Tau Wana men “get” their periods is not for the squeamish, Brodman writes: “They go through rituals that slice the penis, which bleeds to make them mature, just as a woman’s periods do for her.”

One might argue, after famed Swiss sociologist J. J. Bachofen that these practices show a more natural and more original human condition, one where women ruled in a primal matriarchy. One might also argue that these practices lend credence to the views of Friedrich Engels, who followed Bachofen by suggesting that this primal matriarchy (and the joys of female sexuality) had been repressed by the patriarchy through the institutions of private property, the family and the state?

Has it been downhill ever since? Do we need a revolution, as Engels suggested, to overthrow the patriarchy and capitalism? Is that the only way that women will get back in touch with their sexual power?

Someone who believes that the most primitive organizations are the truest ones might accept such beliefs.

Otherwise, you will find a better answer to today’s quiz question: What do all of these communities have in common?

I am sure you have already guessed. They are all hopeless;y primitive and are probably on their way to extinction. If they have not been overrun by neighboring enemy tribes, it’s because they have nothing worth plundering.

So, if you are dreaming of a feminist paradise where women are in charge, where men are whining and mewling, you will have to ask yourself how many of your creature comforts, how much modern sanitation, how many modern conveniences, how much of your lifespan, how much of the internet you would be willing to give up in order to see men menstruate?