army1987 comments on Notes on the Psychology of Power - Less Wrong

34 Post author: gwern 27 July 2012 07:22PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 28 July 2012 11:56:47AM 0 points [-]
Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 29 July 2012 03:22:10AM *  9 points [-]

From army1987's link:

Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal, but possible exceptions include the Iroquois, in whose society mothers exercise central moral and political roles.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 28 July 2012 06:25:40PM 1 point [-]

However, this reluctance to accept the existence of matriarchies might be based on a specific, culturally biased notion of how to define 'matriarchy': because in a patriarchy 'men rule over women', a matriarchy has frequently been conceptualized as 'women ruling over men', whereas in reality women-centered societies are - apparently without exception - egalitarian.

In other words, there isn't a trivial symmetry between those societies that are called "patriarchy" and those that are called "matriarchy".

Comment author: [deleted] 28 July 2012 06:56:17PM 2 points [-]

"Across all cultures and all times and by a large margin" is still an exaggeration.