A devil's advocate rejoinder to the theory of indigenous matriarchy

     In my previous article, I discussed the book Matriarchal Societies by Heide Gottner-Abendroth and my generally positive (with a few qualifications) appraisal of this work. In the spirit of fairness, however, and given the highly speculative nature of any theory which back-projects onto a prehistoric past, I feel it is best to present the best "steel man" critique I can muster to the hypothesis of human's prehistoric matriarchal nature. This does not mean that I am personally "sold" on matriarchal prehistory being false, and in fact I think the Gottner-Abendroth version of this theory (as opposed to some older, highly essentialist versions of it) may well turn out to be accurate. I certainly believe it is a good deal more plausible than the standard evo-psych narrative of prehistoric, universal patriarchy in which men's paternity anxiety and 'natural' competitiveness ends up somehow creating stereotypical gender-linked behaviors (such as higher male sex drive or greater female social skill) that do not seem to exist outside of modern, westernized states. And any critique of ancient matriarchal prehistory which postulates a universal prehistoric patriarchy that I have seen ends up being far more flawed, and ultimately far more irrational and faith-based, than at least Gottner-Abendroth's theories.

    However, both the thesis of modern matriarchal studies, and that of the standard evo-psych model, rests on the concept of over-simplification of a bewilderingly complex web of evidences and data points collected over hundreds of years in thousands of different cultures. The fact that the former is much more willing to engage with the ethnographic data, while the latter typically relies on just-so stories and trust-me-bro narratives, is certainly an important distinction; but neither theory, if taken to a fundamentalist or dogmatic extreme, is likely to be very useful for teasing out the huge amount of nuance and cross-cultural variation on almost every aspect of sex and gender roles that we find in the ethnographic record. For this reason, I believe that the matriarchal hypothesis ought, at the very least, to submit to a "devil's advocate" critique, with the hopes that the questions raised in this article are eventually addressed by those in the field. The ultimate goal, I hope, is to help the matriarchal hypothesis grow stronger by refining itself, incorporating nuance, and being capable of answering more intellectually sound and ethnographically literate objections (as opposed to the usual illiterate and childish objections from 'mainstream' patriarchal evo-psych).

     Over my many years of amateur fieldwork, as well as reviewing and reading about gender differences and sex relations across hundreds of non-western (and pre-modern western) cultures, I have found that there is surprisingly little cause for believing that the "universal male" and the "universal female" conform particularly well to any particular model or philosophical form. In fact, the only universal of the ethnographic record seems to be that there are no universals. There are some behaviors which are more often male than female, and vice versa, but there are always some cultures which deviate from the "norm", and usually there are a large number of such cultures. Barry et al. found in their excellent 1976 article "Traits Inculcated in Childhood" that in the majority of cultures, there was equal social pressure in boys and girls towards being stoic, tough-minded, competitive, assertive, obedient, self-reliant, responsible and a whole host of other behavioral and psychological traits. The obsessive gender essentialism of our own culture, and the consequent extreme differences in (traditional) Anglo-American childhood social conditioning, are simply absent in the pre-industrial world. And this is true even in many of the cultures where adult men and women segregate themselves into different "spheres" (such as men's houses in parts of Melanesia and South America). 

    This is important because, despite Gottner-Abendroth and other anthropologists pointing to the non-essentialized and culturally specific constructions of male and female roles in actual matrilineal societies, the garden-variety boomer 2nd wave feminist proponent of matriarchal studies lacks the nuance of the ethnographers. Men and women are supposedly different, and their differences follow the typically stupid western model of modern post-industrial "androcentrism". In particular, women supposedly derive their privileged status in matriarchal societies because of their unique capacity as mothers and caretakers. They have a special relationship with their children that no man can possibly have, and they (due to biological factors, of course) are just naturally much better at being caring, nurturant, empathic etc. Meanwhile, "male traits" such as boisterousness, fighting, aggression, autism, bad social skills, competitiveness, inability to cooperate, social and emotional isolation, etc. exist in men (after all this is just male nature) but as a result, men are devalued. Women are the first sex because they are naturally and inherently the better sex. Older constructions of matriarchy take this a step farther and assume that matrilineal societies must be prudish and puritanical like their own socially-constructed Victorian women; John Jakob Bachofen, the linguist who originally proposed an era of universal matriarchy in the distant past, believed it came about because women (being naturally much purer and less libidinous than men) rebelled against the primordial sexual freedom of hunter-gatherer savages and instituted a highly restrictive, sex-negative agricultural "mother-right" based on naturally female virtues like sexual restraint, nurturance, moral purity and selfless love. 

    Even today, matriarchal studies has not completely distanced itself from gender essentialist malarkey and post-industrial norms which are projected onto the prehistoric past. While the third and fourth waves of feminism, and the rise of Gen Z, has done a great deal to dismantle the essentialist "TERFism" of classic essentialist "cultural feminism", matriarchal studies has until very recently been perhaps the last safe space for the TERF essentialists. Max Dashu, who keeps the "Suppressed Histories Archives", is a notable example; even Gottner-Abendroth, who has carved out by far the least essentialist and most nuanced version of matriarchal theory, has allied herself with the anti-trans movement. Note that I am not, by making this critique, allying myself with the pro-trans movement. I see the transgender phenomenon as being rooted in a fundamental role conflict between a person's personality and rigid, obsessively essentialized gender norms. The ideal solution to such a problem is the relaxation of said norms, rather than cutting off one's genitalia. However, this is not typically the argument made by essentialist "TERFs". Rather, they regard fluid definitions of manhood and womanhood as personal, existential threats; if men start invading women's spaces, then women will no longer be able to have their own socially-constructed, differentiated sphere of influence. The relatively androgynous and relaxed sex-gender norms which have characterized a number of actual traditional societies (including many of those described as "matriarchal") can be terrifying to the man-hating, lesbian "cultural feminist" for whom the phallus is a sharp weapon of horror and violence. Meanwhile, the rigid and harsh gender segregation practices that characterize many other traditional societies (typically, though not always, the ones which are more violent and misogynistic) can be comforting to a woman who fundamentally dislikes and distrusts men. This is one reason why many cultural-feminists seem to romanticize sub-Saharan Africa a good deal more than highland Southeast Asia ("Zomia"), despite the fact that the latter area, in the aggregate, presents a higher average status of women than the former. Tribal Asian cultures are much more frequently matrilineal and grant women more public and social prestige than many West and East African cultures, and women are never subjected to sexual mutilations which disrupt their capacity for pleasure which all women need. However, for the misandrist lesbian cultural-feminist of the 1970s and 1980s, the relative androgyny and lack of a segregating barrier (socially or sexually) between men and women in Zomia makes it a far more dangerous and anxiety-provoking place for women. To refer to the Barry 1976 study above, it is notable that Asian tribal cultures like the Garo, Andaman, and Nicobar Islanders were particularly unlikely to evince gender differences in child socialization; meanwhile, some of the largest gender differences were found in highly-segregationist East African cultures such as the Maasai and the Kikuyu. 

    Cynthia Eller's critique of matriarchal studies, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, points out many of the flaws of classic gender essentialist thinking and how it is applied to ancient matriarchal theory. Unfortunately, there is not much else I can recommend in this book, which paradoxically ends up quoting from a large number of evolutionay psychologists and anti-woman writers in order to bolster the far stupider theory of an ancient, universal patriarchy. One of Eller's main sources, The Inevitability of Patriarchy, will likely go down in history alongside other horrendously bad works such as David Buss' The Evolution of Desire, Donald Symons' The Evolution of Human Sexuality or David Gilmore's Misogyny: the Male Malady as doing far more severe damage to our understanding of human sexuality and gender throughout history than the worst of matriarchal studies. Heide Gottner-Abendroth has done good work critiquing some of the worst essentialist tendencies in the field, even pointing to the "essentialist thesis" as one of the main problems with classic matriarchal studies (and particularly the "goddess spirituality" movement). But the problem has not fully gone away.

    Certainly, one major issue with the claim to a "universal" prehistoric matriarchy (universalism itself being a springboard for essentialism) is that cultural universals of any sort seem to be rather difficult to tease out in the bewildering complexity of the ethnographic data. Even Westermarck's cultural universal of the incest taboo (widely accepted by anthropologists as the only true cultural universal) is frustrated by the existence of the ancient Egyptian nobility, and, it would seem, a small number of other societies as well. When it comes to the issue of a worldwide phase of matriarchy, it is basically impossible to find any data indicating the "universality" of this claim. Of course, as mentioned above, the genesis of the matriarchal thesis lies in the work of very non-feminist, highly patriarchal 19th century moralists. These moralists not only constructed a maldaptive and moronic image of "womanhood" which they back-projected onto the past, but they also typically interpreted history through the "Whiggish" lense of unilineal evolution from horrible savagery to scientific utopianism. The original matriarchal thesis cast matriarchy as a horrible era when life was "nasty, brutish and short"; an unpleasant phase which all civilizations must undergo for a time before the shining light of patriarchy can liberate them (though only the Anglo-Saxan aryan ubermenschen were destined for apotheosis). And indeed, there are a significant number of indigenous cultures which today are among the most virulently misogynistic in all of existence, yet maintain myths of a prehistoric time when women ruled society. Yet the large majorty of cultures, regardless of women's actual status, do not hold such a view: Martin Whyte's 1978 study of the Standard-Cross-Cultural Sample found only six explicit cases where a culture's folklore claimed that the status of women declined, and, interesting, four cases where it had improved. But in other 83 cultures for which we had data, there was no belief in such a change.

    Nor are there the consistent patterns of "matriarchal survivals" which might be expected, and which have been argued for, by many of the older scholars and ethnographers. Stories and legends of mother goddesses do not appear to be distributed across the ethnographic record, and customs and ceremonies which allow women some degree of indirect power and influence (usually over their own "sphere" of activity, however that might be defined in the society) can be explained just as easily as socially approved coping mechanisms for women's fundamental lack of power, rather than a survival of a time in the distant past when they ruled the world. Gottner-Abendroth's claim that all shamans and religious figures were originally female has little support from the ethnographic record; even in the most isolated societies, the ones that would presumably be least affected by the various empires and civilizations of history, men are as likely if not more likely to occupy the roles of shaman and priest. In fact, the association of magic with the female gender appears to be the strongest in highly organized, patriarchal states following Abrahamic religions like Christianity or (to a lesser extent) Islam, where magic is constructed as an "inferior" form of metaphysical practice to the male-dominated Abrahamic paradigm.

    Although early versions of the "matriarchal theory" proposed by very patriarchal and whiggish men generally assumed that there was a chaotic promiscuous phase that preceeded "mother-right", most modern feminist proponents of the ancient universal matriarchy see it as the primordial state of society, arguing that women's direct role in bearing children means that it is more natural for family lines to be traced through the female rather than the male. Of course, by dispensing with a hypothetical pre-matriarchal phase, they actually make their case a lot weaker. The most isolated societies known to anthropologists are the ones which had little impact from the various major empires, their technologies, and their agricultural methods. They can be found in places like the Australian desert or the Andaman Islands, and parts of South America as well. And it is notable that most of these isolated tribes do not follow matrilineal descent or matrilocal residence, both of which are considered to be foundational aspects of matriarchy. 

    The matriarchal phase as classically outlined, with its matrilineal descent, matrilocal residence, Earth goddess religion, gift-based economy, and pacifistic values system is most commonly associated with certain small-scale horticultural and primitive-agricultural societies, not hunter-gatherers. The Andamanese can be a case in point of an isolated (and therefore presumably under little external pressure to de-matriarchize) hunter-gatherer people who, while far from being patriarchal in any sense of the term, are equally distant from classic matriarchy. The great anthropologist, linguist and Catholic priest Wilhelm Schmidt described Andamanese society at length in his work Primitive Revelation. Schmidt, working based on previous analyses of the Andamanese society portrayed by writers like E.H. Man, theorized that these Andamanese natives were organized along completely egalitarian norms which promoted neither male nor female descent, that men and women had equal status and prestige in society, that marriage was strictly monogamous and indissoluble, and that religion was based around the quasi-monotheistic worship of a sky god figure named "Puluga". This understanding of the Andaman approach to society conformed, according to Schmidt, much more closely to the model of perennialist and hermetic prisca theologica, an indigenous monotheism and proto-Christian morality which lay at the roots of all world cultures, but which was corrupted in all but the most "primitive". Tellingly, he viewed the matriarchal period as a later, agricultural phase which was both morally and religiously corrupt. 

    As tempting as it is to interpret Schmidt's perspective as merely that of a biased Christian propagandist trying to push his pet theory of primitive proto-Christianity, subsequent ethnographers working in other Andaman tribes or with other data sets have confirmed most of Schmidt's original claims. Cipriani found a similar, albeit very "debased" from the Abrahamic perspective, understanding of a monotheistic male high god among the Onge people of Little Andaman, while Sarkar, studying the relatively isolated Jarawa during the early 1990s, found strict monogamy prevailing in the tribe. Some similar parallels have been found in other societies which Schmidt believed were especially representative of "prehistoric man": the California Coast natives, the Yahgan, the Ituri and Baka "pygmies", and the Orang Asli of Malaysia. Notably, none of these societies are matriarchal or patriarchal, but rather seem to follow the principle of ambilineal descent (descent through either or both lines) and egalitarian gender relations with few rigidly defined roles.

    A final issue for matriarchal theorists to deal with is the question of just what is matriarchy anyway, and is it actually beneficial or advantageous to women? The best scholars of matriarchal studies, like Riane Eisler and Heide Gottner-Abendroth, have long since abandoned the "essentialist thesis" claims that women are naturally superior to men (famously and cringily associated with Ashley Montagu), as well as the belief that matriarchy is a reverse of patriarchy where men are oppressed in some sort of sadistic revenge fantasy. However, it could easily be argued that matriarchy is, in a strange twist of fate, actually more advantageous to men than women, while certain forms of patriarchy (especially the industrial westernized kind) actually privileges women over men. In other words, despite the outward appearances of maya, despite the shadow-puppets on the walls of Plato's cave, the deep truth is that matriarchy is the real patriarchy, and patriarchy is the real matriarchy. 

    What do I mean by this? To begin with, I am reminded of a quote by the great psychologist and early proponent of the "men's movement" (before the movement descended into anti-woman hysterics) Herb Goldberg, who wrote in his excellent 1977 work The Hazards of Being Male that "men have paid a tremendous price for their [alleged] privilege". Although most men at the time were gaslit with stories that they were the beneficiaries of the supposed advantages of living in "a man's world", the truth was far different: the same masculinist ideology that promised them the spoils of victory also made them dispensible and expendable pawns, who lived much dangerous and shorter lives than women, became emotionally constricted due to their efforts to live up to the "macho" maladaptive image, and socially isolated due to their participation in the highly individualistic, capitalist wage economy. Women, superficially oppressed by the patriarchy, in fact became the beneficiaries of most of its spoils: longer llives, greater health, fewer accidents and crime victimizations, more emotional and social freedom due to the lack of a "macho" role, etc. All this would have been impossible in a matriarchal society, where women end up shouldering a good deal of the burden of power and privilege granted to men in our society. As Stan Lee's old cliche goes, "with great power..." and we know the rest.

    Of course, pre-modern societies, whether matriarchal or patriarchal, typically tended to have much greater equality (and variance) when it comes to whose lives were shorter and more dangerous, men or women. The myth peddled by David Barash and others who back-project our norms onto human ontology and prehistoric "state of nature" is that women just have a universal, biologically-based advantage in the longevity department. This is a totally historically illiterate claim: copious documentation exists across hundreds of cultures for thousands of years indicating that men as frequently outlived women historically as women outlived men. And there is little difference between matrilineal, bilineal and patrilineal societies in this regard. For instance, some of the most famous matriarchal societies in the ethnographic record, such as the Garo, Tuareg, Trobrianders and Pueblo native Americans, show a significant male bias in life expectancy. This means that men traditionally lived longer than women; and this is doubly fascinating when one considers that all of those societies except for the Puebloans seem to have been fairly warlike. Even with the dangers of the battlefield, men still frequently had safer and less physically stressful lives than women did in these "matriarchies". Meanwhile, a good number of patriarchal and patrilineal societies showed the reverse pattern: in 1897 in the Russian Empire, the ultra-patriarchal Dagestan mountaineers showed a strong female bias in longevity (presumably due to the endemic blood feud tradition in the area), while the more egalitarian --- though still patrilineal --- Siberian cultures like the Evenki and the Ket showed a significant male bias. It would seem that certain weather and climatic factors played a role here: women have long been observed by both western neuroscientists and eastern Taoist mystics to flourish much better in hot and humid climates, while deserts and cold taigas are easier and less stressful for men than women.

    Matriarchy also results in women experiencing many of the constraints, aside from the merely physical stresses, that come from being in a position of power and authority. Competitiveness, which in our society is coded positively as a part of "intrinsic male nature" that brings us glorious capitalist stuff, has been noted by many psychologists as one of the key driving factors behind men's mental health decline and high suicide rates. It would seem that competition is only a good thing if you're one of the winners: the losers end up giving up on life and believing they are worthless and better off dead. And it should be interesting to note that this competitive "bullying" instinct and lack of solidarity and cooperation which strains men's relationships with each other in "patriarchal" cultures like the West is often transferred to women in matriarchal and matrilineal cultures like the Mosuo of China and the Khasi of Meghalaya. In both groups, women are more competitive --- the supposedly biologically "male" trait according to evidence-free gender essentialist claims from the West --- while men are more cooperative and more likely to stress getting along and nurturing positive egalitarian relationships. These studies, unlike the western just-so stories about post-industrial gender roles already existing in infant's brains, have successfully replicated over and over again.

    It would be fascinating to read a scholar of matriarchal studies rebut the points listed above, and I would look forward to that conversation. I would also be willing to have a debate with anyone from the patriarchalist, western-centric, "mainstream" evo-psych side for why their worldview seems to be so at odds with ethnographic data and human history. If any of my points are wrong, please let me know. I do not fear the truth. I seek it.