Talk:Matriarchy/Archive 4

merge Gynocracy into Matriarchy?
Proposals to merge part of the now-deleted Gynocracy article into the Matriarchy article are under discussion, in the Gynocracy deletion review. The Gynocracy article was about women governing women and men, as described from the past or aspired to for the future. Some parts of the article discussed matriarchy, although none of the historical and aspirational descriptions were limited to mothers as the women governing, all being open to women generally. There are prominent feminist advocates and several secondary sources. Viewing might be possible through a temporary undeletion or by getting a copy from an admin. Thoughts on a merger? Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:30, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I woud support merging some of the material from that article into Matriarchy. Some of it seems like it would be quite relevant here. Kaldari (talk) 00:04, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
 * An editor has apparently objected, apparently for both separatist feminism and matriarchy. I hope this can be worked out, since the editing will take a lot of work to do. I'm wondering if a committee can be formed, because I don't want anyone claiming that I'm trying an end run around deletion. Nick Levinson (talk) 02:14, 9 January 2011 (UTC) (Corrected a misspelling: 02:20, 9 January 2011 (UTC))

"Gynocracy" is indeed just a synonym of "Matriarchy", apparently coined by people who don't know Greek and thought gyno- was the compositional stem of gyne "woman". The correct term is, of course, gynecocracy, which has been redirecting here since 2007.


 * Replying to dab's unsigned comment above:


 * Neither is an exact synonym of matriarchy. That's confirmed by dictionaries cited infra. Etymology is interesting and tells a lot about ancient speakers' societies, for example, but, whether a coinage was rightly or wrongly etymologically rooted, meanings do not freeze in place. Language evolves with people and linguists agree that meanings change. Matriarchy is based on mother-rule and gynocracy and gynecocracy are not. The similarity is in the presumption is that women become mothers. To the extent that's true, the words would be synonymous, but so many women don't become mothers that probably most societies recognize a difference. That Wikipedia redirects either term to matriarchy for however long is not proof of synonymity but may be appropriate because redirects may be for nonsynonyms as well.


 * The dictionaries: Webster's Third New International Dict. gives gynocracy as a synonym of gynecocracy but defines gynecocracy without reference to motherhood except to say "compare MATRIARCHY ", thus not synonymously with matriarchy. Shorter Oxford Eng. Dict. ([4th] ed.) comes closest to finding synonymity but distinguishes between gynocracy and gynaecocracy while matriarchy has more in its definitions about family and other units as matriarchal. American Heritage Dict. (3d ed.) gives gynocracy as a variant (synonym) of gynecocracy but defines gynecocracy without reference to motherhood and defines matriarchy in reference to either societies or families, so that a matriarchy but not a gyn(ec)ocracy could be a family in which a woman is the family head.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 23:44, 16 January 2011 (UTC) (Corrected my bad error re W3 dict.: 23:53, 16 January 2011 (UTC))

Gynocracy DRV
In view of your interest in this topic, please comment at Gynocracy DRV if you haven't already. Thanks. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 17:19, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

New section
I want to point out that this topic is about feminism, specifically second-wave feminism beginning to end. Apart from early stuff like Bachofen, this is about feminist ideas including feminist archaeology, feminist anthropology and feminist theology. The new section adds the angle of radical feminism as a political ideology aiming for the transformation of modern society into a matriarchy. Also, Nick Levinson, from your contribution I must conclude that you are really incapable of writing coherent encyclopedic prose. All your edits end up as chopped-up and fragmented collections of soundbites littered with footnotes, and so full of quote marks that it is impossible to judge which are scare quotes and which are just intended as citation-quotes.

It is clear that you are interested in this topic and have good references to work with, but we really need to do something about presentation here. --dab (𒁳) 14:07, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I also suggest that only material that is directly related to matriarchy is inserted here. Your generic "feminist supremacy" stuff may find a home in a section at radical feminism. --dab (𒁳) 15:47, 16 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Not a single scare quote is in my work.


 * Every footnote I placed supports content that is a quote or is a statement that otherwise risks loss of the connection between content and footnote. Some editors would attach only one footnote to a long sentence, but that does not accommodate future edits, because it's often time-consuming to find the original posting of a passage in a long history and probably most editors don't bother, thus leading to loss of connection and then to content appearing to be unsupported when it was fully supported.


 * I used the style with which you began. I would have edited offline and much more of it before posting, but you jumped the gun, so to speak. If my style is as bad as you say, the model that inaugurated the section has something to do with it. It does make for unusually long sentences, but I was concerned that we'd have a new issue about undue weight if I formatted the content into many shorter sentences and thus many paragraphs. And because sources include both those by authors advocating and by authors analyzing what the advocates said, the sentences are longer. If you don't think undue weight will be a problem, I can edit accordingly, but I think it will be.


 * I never contended that everything belongs in Matriarchy; quite the contrary.


 * I'm responding to some points in a coming separate talk thread.


 * Please apply AGF. I didn't earn punishment, since I did far more work toward resolving differences than almost anyone and I was the one against whom unsupported accusations and mutually contradictory claims were made and endorsed complete with the contradictions, the contradictions still continuing. The patience was my burden. I'm doing the work even now.


 * Thank you very much. Nick Levinson (talk) 22:44, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Saying your edits are misguided or problematic doesn't violate "AGF", so I am not sure what you mean. I just don't see why we need three dozen footnotes and "direct" citations in "quotation marks" in order to establish the simple fact that some radical feminists since the 1970s have advocated matriarchy. If your contributions make any statement beyond this, it hasn't become clear so far. If you think prose of the kind of this,
 * Phyllis Chesler wrote[43][44] that feminist women must "dominate public and social institutions",[45][46] that women fare better when controlling the means of production,[47] and that equality with men, being "spurious",[46] should not be supported,[48][46] resulting in women being "superior",[46] even if female domination is no more "'just'"[48] than male domination.[48]

is normal for an encyclopedia I must assume that you yourself were socialized during the most dadaistic phase of 1970s postmodernism. I congratulate you on your ""'just'"". See what I just did? I put quotes around the quotes you put around the quotes set by Chesler. Hilarious, isn't it.

Quoting stuff like Mary Daly's  hag-ocracy, "the place we ["[w]omen traveling into feminist time/space"] govern",[58] and of reversing phallocratic rule[59] as part of a serious article is simply funny. Look, we don't write the James Joyce article in prose imitating his style, do we? So why should we make fun of the feminists by writing the matriarchy article in the worst kind of prose hardcore feminism has to offer? --dab (𒁳) 14:46, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Critiquing is fine. Consistency of standards was my point.


 * The extent of quoting and sourcing is because editors denied that these things had ever been written, or said it was OR, so multiple sourcing was necessary. Secondary sources confirming other sources were also required by editors and I supplied them.


 * Phyllis Chesler wrote the word just in quote marks in her book and I was quoting that, thus "'just'". I have no reason to add more quote marks to that. Coincidentally, if I hadn't used quotes, it would have looked like it might have meant 'mere', which it doesn't, in its context. She used just as in justice.


 * For Mary Daly, if I had quoted only "the place we govern", a question would have been, who's "we"? Thus, the quoted insertion was needed.


 * Beauty or ugliness of sources' writing styles is not so important given past challenges. None of it makes fun of anyone. Bracketing within quotes and quoting within brackets allows rearranging a passage to be more concise, and WP needs that. I could assign one footnote to a sentence and solve the problem of losing connections between source and what it supports, but that requires a much longer footnote, explaining what supports what, and that would be that much harder for another editor to disaggregate later. I think WP doesn't want that, so writing more footnotes so each one can be more specific is the way to go.


 * I can rephrase, but what's obvious to you is not all obvious to some other editors, and presumably not to some readers. We should lean over backwards to adhere to WP:SYN and WP:OR, and that limits how much smoothing out we can do. Maybe you're okay with paraphrasing these sources for the sake of better writing, and I'll try that after I get the content in, given the time brevity imposed.


 * Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC) (Corrected grammar ("was" to "were"): 02:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC))

separatism is not matriarchy
Let's work on a mutually acceptable wording, dab, unless you have a source from a separatist or a matriarchalist saying the two phenomena are the same thing or almost the same thing. I have no such source.

The difference between feminist separatism and matriarchy in who gets governed is about half the population and not a single source as presented in my work is separatist. (Some may be elsewhere, at least one is, but not in what I quoted or cited.) Whether, by your edit summary, separatists have to be radicals is irrelevant, because matriarchists are not separatists, unless they happen to be both if, say, they believe an organization within a matriarchal society should also be exclusionary in its membership and thus be separatist. That combined view likely exists but I haven't seen even that in a source.

The See template is shorter but misleading by implying too-close a relationship, and that needs clarifying. If the Distinguish2 template language should not be restored, please propose a clearer distinction.

Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 22:57, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

sure, feminist separatism is a different idea, I never disputed that, I just linked it as a closely related topic. --dab (𒁳) 14:38, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, I'll try other language. Hatnotes are often more useful when explanatory. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 08:32, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

matriarchy is not all feminist
In response to the section title edit, matriarchy is not always feminist, and so the whole article is not about feminism, although some feminist content appears elsewhere in it.

A requirement that a ruler be a mother denies women reproductive choice, a denial against feminism. Matriarchy as defining who heads a family when not extended into national rule means men are left as national rules (someone has to do it except in anarchy) is relatively not feminist (one could argue that women could be entirely powerless and therefore being allowed to run a family is somewhat feminist but that's a problematic argument).

Matriarchy is feminist in some contexts, but not in all. I was considering the possibility of moving some of the feminist content in other non-lede sections into this section, although I hadn't yet read the article from that organizational perspective, so I don't know if it was feasible yet.

Based on your comment, I'll likely edit the title shortly to emphasize the future, since that's a valid angle not clear simply from "project".

Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:04, 16 January 2011 (UTC) (Clarified by editing "in" to "against": 23:11, 16 January 2011 (UTC))

matriarchy as second-wave
This responds to an opening talk statement that "this topic is about feminism, specifically second-wave feminism beginning to end....".

Topicality as second-wave feminism is being understood backwards. Second-wave feminism partly embraced matriarchy. But, as you acknowledged, at least the articulated concept of matriarchy existed long before second-wave feminism began. Matriarchy is not limited to second-wave feminism or to feminism generally.

Which raises the question about why the feminism sidebar was deleted. If your view is that it is about feminism, and I agree that feminism is strongly relevant, the sidebar belongs. I propose restoring it, so please suggest why it wouldn't belong. (I must have double-clicked and thus missed seeing that you had moved the template two minutes later. Sorry.)

Nick Levinson (talk) 23:16, 16 January 2011 (UTC) (Struck out erroneous content, retitled topic/section, and explained: 02:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC))

No, but the only people today who believe in "matriarchy" as a historical or future form of human society are second-wave feminists. It may have been a scholarly hypothesis in the 19th century, but it's just a political ideology today. --dab (𒁳) 14:36, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Even if so, the article is about both feminism and nonfeminism, partly because the history is part of the article, and that affects article sectioning.


 * Re two of your edit summaries, different questions that different people might answer get separate sections, otherwise we risk missing respondents and getting TLDR and no new info. H2 is a focal convenience for editors, you and others.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 01:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

whether it's radical feminism
I haven't gotten to editing the radical feminism article. Much may not belong there.

Some of the advocacies came from radical feminists and some from lesbians, but I don't know that they all did, and those are not my criteria in researching the subject outside of Wikipedia and have not been. The subject has been discussed in the context of radical feminism, but no source that I know of defines all such advocacies as radical. Not everything unusual, unrealized, believed in by a minority, or that someone feels threatened by is radical. It has to do with how radical is defined in politics.

Not everyone necessarily wanted to transform the society they were living in into a woman-ruled society. Some advocacies are about creating such societies without giving their addresses, so they could be new or elsewhere and yet just as genuine as advocacy.

If you know of a source from within feminism that collects all of these advocacies as radical feminist, please cite it. An antifeminist claiming that it's radical is not likely reliable, since in general in politics anyone someone disagrees with is deemed extreme or crazy, unless the disagreed-with party happens to be liked for some other reason. However, the talk leading up to the AfD and the AfD itself stated arguments that a single tying-together source did not exist. I did not find such a source either. I want one. And, if it had been found, it might have precluded the AfD in the first place. If you have found one, please post it.

Nick Levinson (talk) 23:27, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Seriously, are you saying you are a feminist? And actually advocating any of this? Then you should read WP:TIGERS. Your radical feminist literature is primary for this topic. What we should cite is not "anti-feminist" literature, what we should cite is encyclopedic literature that is as unbiased as possible. Also I don't see how you can seriously suggest we should discuss whether feminism advocating "matriarchy" can be anything other than radical. Generally, feminism is about equal rights for women. I would suggest that anything that goes towards the direction of exterminating or subjugating the male sex can safely be considered "radical". I do not wish to waste time over debating the obvious which is why I ask you again to read WP:TIGERS. --dab (𒁳) 14:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Advocacy of matriarchy, unless it's hedged round with qualifiers, is pretty much synonymous with the radical feminist current. Having said that, I'm not quite sure that the mainstream of feminism can be completely reduced to "equal rights". Itsmejudith (talk) 16:21, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * In short, I read the Tigers essay.


 * We need a source that says that they're in radical feminism. My saying that they're all talking about essentially the same thing has already been deemed OR. The AfD critiqued me for not having a source that tied everything together. You speak as if it's obvious, but, if it were to editors, the AfD wouldn't have been started by a feminist. Evidently, it's not obvious. Please get a source saying that it's all within radical feminism. Evidently, that source must name these authors or use the same words they did. Several sources that do so would be equivalently acceptable. If you have such, at least give me a clue, such as its title or URL.


 * Encyclopedic secondary sources are cited. Most are secondary per WP:PSTS because of their level of removal from the personal. They analyze other sources. Being about politics, feminism, or radical feminism does not change PSTS. Primary sources may be used with care, and that is relevant to only two authors, both legitimate sources; the others are secondary. Besides the rest of the major ones being secondary, they're analyzed in further secondary sources, which are also cited.


 * None are about exterminating men. (Patriarchy is not about exterminating women and is not generally called radical.) But if anyone has a source that says this set is radical feminist, we want the cite.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 01:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * what we really need is secondary literature that establishes that such extremist fringe literature even has sufficient notability to be covered here. We cannot use radical feminist literature as "secondary" sources informing Wikipedia's voice. We don't base our Al-Qaeda article on press releases made by screaming and sabre-brandishing radicals foaming at the mouth, we base it on secondary authors who have studied the phenomenon. No, Nick Levinson I do not see you citing secondary literature. You are still only compiling a reading list for radical feminism. I have no idea what "being about politics, feminism, or radical feminism does not change PSTS" is supposed to mean. Political pamphlets are primary sources. I really have no intention of discussing the obvious with you. If you are here to push an extremist political viewpoint, you should be prepared to see your edits reverted without further comment. --dab (𒁳) 10:13, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Not a single pamphlet or press release was cited. Each of the advocating authors is already notable separately (they're linked) and their statements are backed up with additional secondary sources already cited, mostly books and a few articles, the sources generally scholarly. To say that none of my sources is secondary is flatly misinformed. If you'd like additional details about some of the sources, such as their reliance on internal bibliographies, let me know; I have some of them at home temporarily, until they go back to the libraries, and I can look things up for you. They may be available to you via interlibrary loan, too, if you prefer.


 * No pushing is from me, except to state the subject; the criticisms paragraphs, formerly a subsection, balance it.


 * Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 12:05, 18 January 2011 (UTC) (Corrected re subsection: 12:15, 18 January 2011 (UTC))
 * Here's a pretty typical source saying that advocacy of matriarchy is part of radical feminism. Feminists and state welfare By Jennifer Dale, Peggy Foster p 52. Various similar available. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Applications of feminist legal theory to women's lives: sex, violence, work ... By D. Kelly Weisberg. p.54. It's a book of readings, and this is in the introduction to a section. Implies, interestingly, that matriarchy is one vision of equality. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you. A library has copies of both for use there, so either I'll go there one of these weekends or I'll make an interlibrary loan request, which will take a few weeks to a few months. I'll try to get them soon. If other titles occur to you, please post. Thanks again. Nick Levinson (talk) 03:36, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Found the books:


 * Feminists and State Welfare tentatively says that radical feminism could include matriarchy, although it does not say that matriarchy is necessarily radical feminist.


 * In Applications of Feminist Legal Theory to Women's Lives: Sex, Violence, Work, and Reproduction p. 54 contained only nn. 22–25 for other pages, the notes unrelated to this topic, while the section introduction that encompasses p. 54, at p. 5 ff., was largely about pornography. At p. 9 ff., in the same introduction, the subsection Radical Feminism says in a context that "women must organize against patriarchy as a class" (p. 9) and that "[s]ome radical feminists ... opt ... for anarchistic, violent methods" (p. 11). How matriarchy is defined for the book is unclear, whether antipatriarchy is the same as matriarchy is questionable, whether radical feminists relied on by this introduction's author meant they were the same is not clear, the introduction's means description as "violent" needs clarification as property-centric if there's no evidence that in general radical feminism called for violence against men or people, which is how the word violence is popularly understood, and the means description as "anarchistic" seems to deny matriarchy (except for matriarchy defined as 'anything not patriarchal'). The index had nothing on matriarchy, gynocracy, gynecocracy, or government and the table of contents didn't indicate any other unit covering it.


 * I included both books in editing the article. They have utility. Thanks for finding the cites. Nick Levinson (talk) 08:11, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Besides an al-Qaeda comparison being astonishingly inapt in substance, we could use their self-statements along with secondary sources, but in that particular organization's case self-statements may not be reliably available, thus not verifiable, thus not usable, but that's because, as I understand, their websites are frequently shut down and reopened at new domains with limited announcement, generally preventing verification. Nothing like that is the case here. For what I've written for this article, the key sources cited are readily available, in addition to being secondary and backed, as previously noted. Nick Levinson (talk) 08:47, 30 January 2011 (UTC) (Corrected for precision by adding "generally", since verification within the first few weeks or so may be feasible, but not afterwards: 08:59, 30 January 2011 (UTC))

Does anyone know whether Heide Göttner-Abendroth self-identifies, or is reliably identified, as a radical feminist? Unless she was, I propose to rephrase this article to indicate that feminist advocacy for matriarchies was mainly from radicals (the other key sources named qualify) but not all of it. While Heide is a feminist, I don't know if she's radical. In addition, a woman quoted by reporter Margot Adler is not identified as a radical, although she's likely a feminist. I recall that Catharine MacKinnon, a feminist often described as radical against porn and who worked closely on that issue with radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, in one of her books eschewed the term radical for herself, preferring clear, so describing a feminist as radical because of belief in a particular politics may not be accurate. Thus, my question is about Heide, if anyone knows. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:55, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In the description of who advocates for women to govern women and men, unless there's an objection, I'll probably edit "A minority of radical feminists and lesbians ...." to "A minority of feminists, generally radical or lesbian, ...." That's consistent with the sources I know of. Heide has not been identified as a radical feminist and radical lesbianism turns out to be a specific movement in which Monique Wittig may be alone of these advocates. If an additional source turns up, please let us know. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 11:21, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 22:18, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

HAGIA's festivals and leader's anticipation
Why did this return to the feminism section after deletion? I couldn't find a source for it and the one given in the passage has been dead for a couple of months and is not available on archive.org. From what I can find, the organizing of the festivals may be out of date; as such, it may be historically interesting and relevant, but this is weaker than much content that was criticized for being too weakly sourced. This needs a secondary source and it reads like only a passive anticipation if she didn't call for matriarchy. If she called for it, that should be quoted or stated. Also, the academy's name shouldn't need quote marks. Please, let's not have one standard if I edit and delete my content for purportedly not meeting it but other people can edit by a lower standard in the same article and it stays. Here's what needs review, editing, or deletion:

Heide Göttner-Abendroth's "International Academy for Modern Matriarchal Studies and Matriarchal Spirituality" (HAGIA, founded in 1986) organizes "Matriarchal Mystery Festivals" as a "symbolic anticipation of a potential future matriarchal society".

Please discuss. Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 05:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC) (Clarified that "it" referred to "the organizing of the festivals": 05:36, 17 January 2011 (UTC))

Nick, I am glad that after much ado you could find yourself to contributing to this article instead of starting your own. But, I don't know, are you somehow trying an adherent or advocate of this school of thought? And seeing the level of material you keep adding, I find it rather ironic that you should question the relevance of Göttner-Abendroth's HAGIA. Unlike most of your material, Göttner-Abendroth is at least directly relevant to this topic because she is advocating "matriarchy" explicitly. --dab (𒁳) 14:25, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * A separate article was for reasoning already explained.


 * Heide Göttner-Abendroth and HAGIA are likely highly relevant, but:
 * She defines matriarchy as anything that's not patriarchy. That's legitimate, but it means an equalitarian government is also matriarchal. The key sources I provided were more specifically about women in charge, matriarchy narrowly defined. None were about sharing power with men. If what I supplied is not relevant to the matriarchy article, then hers isn't either. But women governing is within matriarchy even if radically feminist, so to argue that what I supplied doesn't belong, unless a separate article is broken out again, will be inconsistent with the AfD.
 * Dates of 2003 and 2005 on her and HAGIA's websites suggest the conference series is over, in which case a present tense should become a past tense.
 * Her coming-conference (May, 2011) announcement is vaguer about its program.
 * If she advocates only being ready if a matriarchy happens, that's different from wanting, facilitating, or developing a matriarchy. If she's advocating for matriarchal government, a source is needed. The link that was provided has been marked as dead for over two months. The quote is therefore effectively not sourced. I'm not clear that the link's domain owner has anything to do with her these days. The linked page even without the query string was not in the Wayback Machine. If it's in a search engine cache, that's not stable, and it's probably not cached anymore; it's not in Google. Please come up with some suitable source or the passage about her should be reworded or deleted.
 * A book may well satisfy. If it does, it should be cited. It isn't now.


 * I corrected this section's title; the misspelling was mine.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 01:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * For the latest edit, I tried to find a source describing Matriarchal Mystery Festivals, and all I found was trivia, such as that some art from a festival was displayed at a conference. Heide's own website (goettner-abendroth.de) and the HAGIA (hagia.de) website, the English parts, apparently no longer discuss them, unless I missed something. The singular term produced no results at all in Google. The plural term produces results that were apparently of official documents but apparently those documents are no longer available on the Web, and I didn't want to rely on Google's cache as a source. The other results did not appear to be for reliable sources, although I usually judged that by the domains and did not go further. At any rate, few results of any quality were available. I'll leave further research on point to any interested editor.


 * Other than that, I deleted a redundant statement about redefinition (what was said about matriarchy as nonpatriarchy in the subsection 20th Century was already said in the section Definitions and Etymology) and an attached clause that lacked a source (specifics about the redefinition as including matrilocality and so on), replaced the present tense with past conference years and linked them, deleted who hosted conferences besides HAGIA and Heide because the other names were trivial in context, limited conference locations to a nation and a state and linked them (giving two cities in Texas seems wordy and trivial), clarified that the matriarchy she described is egalitarian, removed scare quotes, two indirect links (the direct link to the same destination remains), and the founding date (dates of promatriarchal declarations are important but the founding date for a study of matriarchy is not, in this context), set words being defined in italic per linguistic convention rather than in quotation marks, removed quotation marks from around an institution's name, and simplified the writing style.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 08:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Bad, very bad!
Indeed, a single citation from Cambridge would force the two first paragraphs to be deleted! If Elam was at all times (not only of one of the most developed societies) a matriarchy accordind to Cambridge, so there was someday a woman-goddess-matriarchal society. You again trying to hide this citation and put under some 19th century subtitle --as you can see the first paragrapgh comes exclusevely from a 20th century sources!! So, why aren´t them under 20th century subtitle according to the new attempt to blow up any and all matriarchal footsteps. 187.21.132.250 (talk) 09:50, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

a Criticisms heading missing
Where six consecutive paragraphs state criticisms, why shouldn't they be given a subsubsection heading as Criticisms? I ask since the last heading to that effect was deleted and it would be useful to know why, or it should be restored. I assume being applicable to one subsection and not necessarily the whole article is not a reason for removing the heading, since its presence would only clarify navigation. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 08:18, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

History vs feminism sections
I was wondering anyone else thought it might be helpful to rearrange those two sections, so that the present 20th century sub-section becomes "first half of 20th century", and most or all of the current "feminism" section comes into "history of the concept" under the sub-head "in second wave feminism". Itsmejudith (talk) 14:27, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It'd be problematic. A history book can describe the modern status. But Wikipedia articles tend to be organized to give the modern state separately from the history. Since the feminism section's key sources date from as late as 2000 and 2005, it's premature to consider it centered on the past, not to mention that the rest is only from the 1960s and later, not so far back. Granted the history section has a subsection on the 21st century, but I'm not sure that was a good way to organize, either. The mythology section would arguably belong as history, too, especially myths like that of Zeus, which, as far as I know, is not embraced as modern myth serving modern purposes but is studied as ancient, and essentially expired, myth. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

maybe defining matriarchy/patriarchy by method not sex?
Possibly, one definition of each of these terms is by a way of governing generally associated with the respective gender but nonetheless regardless of who has which sex. The hypothesis of the semantic development would likely be that the characteristic governing style being gender-defined rather than sex-defined and gender being socially constructed whereas sex is biologically determined the governing style and not necessarily sex or gender should be the defining difference between matriarchy and patriarchy. This would not replace genderal definitions but be additional to them. Does anyone have a source to supplement or replace this one? This definitional pair, if valid, is relevant to feminism, perhaps to thealogy, although with secular implications:

"A N EW P OLITICAL C ONCEPTION : A N EW P OLITICS

"Matriarchal spirituality is not an institution in the patriarchal sense but a movement possessing a political essence based on a different conception of politics: it is a politics that oversteps the system. The system that is overstepped is the mechanistic, one-sided, hierarchical system of thought and action of patriarchy. Matriarchal spirituality esteems diversity, change, vitality, and a dynamism that admits of no strictures or incrustation. Matriarchal spirituality respects and promotes the union of the psychic interior—which patriarchal politics obscures—and the physical exterior, one's well-being in the natural environment, which patriarchal religions and spiritualism have always obliterated. Matriarchal spirituality negates and neutralizes all types of dualism used by patriarchal politics throughout the millennia to secure domination. It is irrelevant whether it is a dualism that places the intellectual and spiritual above all else and despises the body—particularly the woman's—and controls women through forcible childbearing and unpaid work (as in all conservative patriarchal systems); or a dualism that seeks salvation in materialism or economic determinism and dismisses as superfluous all spiritual expression—a false parallel to the character of patriarchal religions; or the oppressive 'opiate of the masses' (as in all patriarchal systems influenced by Marxism). All forms of dualism serve the principle 'divide and conquer' and are the antithesis of the radical antiestablishment politics of matriarchal spirituality.7

"7. Cf. ["Charlene"] Spretnak, ed., Politics of Women's Spirituality[": Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power within the Feminist Movement (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1982)"]."

Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 09:17, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

content & debates from a previous article: preserving talk and history pages
Some content new to this article was previously in an article that was recently deleted, along with its talk page, on which some debates were held. The Talk and the talk history from the deleted article at some date may be made unavailable except probably to admins and higher and to them perhaps only temporarily. The debates may be useful in the future, so the last substantive revision of the discussions and the edit summaries are in an archive subpage. To my knowledge, no copyright or licensing problem exists or was ever asserted. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:06, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

whether word is out of use in anthro today
For any editor up to date on the anthropology: The article says "'matriarchy' has mostly fallen out of use for the anthropological description of societies". I assume that in anthropology that applies only to existing societies, not to descriptions of societies including hypothetical ones; or do anthropologists now claim that matriarchy is not just unobserved or unlikely but outright impossible? If the former, I propose to add "existing". Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:49, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Done. I added "existing" because a cursory search did not confirm that most anthropologists have ruled out that matriarchy could ever have existed, but it's likelier that they, when using the word in its narrower sense, don't know of any society that is a matriarchy. The word is added on the latter basis. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 22:27, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Ronald or female?
Could someone with the source please check the following? The passage, in the Mythology subsection Matriarchy, starts out by referring to Ronald Hutton, who, according to Wikipedia, is male, then refers to "her", then refers to Hutton. Perhaps the "her" should be "his" or perhaps someone else was the antecedent and subsequent editing of the article lost a connection.

"Historian Ronald Hutton has argued ... [about] female deities ..., noting ... [certain] religions, in which goddesses played important roles. The changes ... are not considered in her analysis, however, and the late classical myths were dominated by male deities. Hutton has also pointed out that ...."

If you know the answer, please edit the article or post here. Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 10:22, 4 February 2011 (UTC) (Corrected the quotation to reflect recent editing and for grammar: 10:34, 4 February 2011 (UTC))

euphemism and nonparallelism
The following, which I cleaned up, is still confusing, because (a) it appears in the Matrifocality subsection and (b) I don't understand how it's a euphemism, i.e., what's being covered up by this word:

"Some consider the term a euphemism ... and as not being parallel to patriarchy, the latter because it is not defined in the same fashion differing only for gender."

Either this belongs with matriarchy (and away from this subsection) or it should be edited to be about matrifocality and patrifocality, but I don't know which. And both might be true. Certainly, matriarchy and patriarchy are not parallel.

Does anyone know what was intended by this passage? If you do, please edit or post. Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 10:42, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Done. I don't see support for either word being considered a euphemism, so I removed that phrasing. While I was at it, I moved the rest of the sentence to a more relevant section, since the sentence is about parallelism to patriarchy, so matrifocality seems irrelevant to the sentence as it stands now, and matriarchy relevant. Nick Levinson (talk) 22:39, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

words problem of variant spellings and meanings
(I copied the following from my user page and am replying in substance here:)


 * "Gynecocracy" and "gynaecocracy" are merely spelling variants, with no difference in meaning. "Gyneocracy" is a somewhat unusual (and some would say incorrect) form, and is not really worth listing in the same place as the others. "Gynocracy" shows haplology from "gynecocracy", but probably no consistent meaning difference. Etc... AnonMoos (talk) 01:01, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I have edited in response, and I'll describe the edit infra.


 * Your points are etymologically appropriate, and the Oxford and Webster's Third (W3) dictionaries provide support regarding at least some of the elements of which these words are composed. However, to extend the points into the full words would be synthesis, because the meanings of the words are not required to be limited to the composed meanings of the elements. The -ae- and -e- forms are probably mainly spelling variants, but the dictionaries do give somewhat different definitions. Therefore, we generally have to accept that the words have come to have shadings of meaning that differ somewhat. That happens throughout natural language because definitions are what people assign through use and not usually by law or institution. Dictionary editors then discover those usage-based meanings and report them, and I reported those results.


 * Gyneocracy is included because it is in the body of the article, several times, where History is discussed, both 19th century and 20th century. The word is now rarely used, which I noted ("... rarely used in modern times ...."), with a citation supporting that fact. Whether it is to be adjudged incorrect depends on the criteria to be applied, and probably that's not germane here, since it's used relevantly in the article and explaining it is appropriate. Whether anyone should use it in some other context is a separate matter, and not our concern.


 * Gynocracy being haplological doesn't make its use improper. English and probably many Indo-European languages over centuries exhibit simplification, especially of common words, and there's no duty to limit ourselves to older forms as long as newer forms we employ are understood, and evidently this one already is.


 * Words can acquire multiple meanings at any time and once a word has multiple spelling variants it's even likelier to acquire multiple meanings, and that evidently happened with gyn(a)ecocracy and gynocracy. Nonetheless, dictionary editors have ascribed to them somewhat different meanings, and I have no source that overrides them.


 * Fundamentally, semantically, they share a meaning in common, and the article says so. The differences are in where they don't agree, and the article notes the additional meanings, with citations. This I have clarified in the edit in response to your post, and I hope it'll be clearer to readers now.


 * The Oxford and W3 rely on a wide range of edited printed literature from which to deduce definitions, the Oxford probably more so. I've heard that the Am. Heritage relies on daily newspapers for the literature from which its editors deduce senses. I'm not clear what the Random House uses, although I recall a scholarly article by its former editorial director showing comparable sourcing for a word. All of these dictionaries are authoritative, the Oxford and W3 especially so. And the Oxford, at least, accepts evidential submissions from the public, including by email, and I don't think you have to be a subscriber to submit, so feel free to submit to them quotations from literature (what they call citations) showing that their editors have erred or missed.


 * The etymologies in the article probably belong in Wiktionary and not Wikipedia, but I'm leaving them in place.


 * You say "[e]tc..." Please specify the cetera.


 * Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 03:58, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * If an American dictionary gives a definition of "Gynecocracy" which is worded differently from the definition of "gynaecocracy" in a British dictionary, this does not mean that the two spelling variants have any real difference of meaning.  You list a lot of forms, but they're all really variants of the two words "gynecocracy" and "gynarchy" (and some variants are less worthy of mention than others, and should probably be relegated to a footnote at best, such as "gyneocracy"). AnonMoos (talk) 04:24, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Whether the meanings are somewhat different enough to be significantly different or not should be left to readers to judge. If you had written, "[i]f an American dictionary gives a definition of "Gynecocracy" which is worded differently from the definition of "gynaecocracy" in a British dictionary, this does not necessarily mean that the two spelling variants have any real difference of meaning", in other words, if the word "necessarily" had been included, I'd agree. But if the dictionaries disagree on the wording of meanings and they could be understood as being substantively different in meaning, the etymologies don't force the meanings to become essentially the same. In this case, for example, we probably don't want to contend that 'women's social supremacy' is quite the same meaning as 'government by one woman'.


 * As long as gyneocracy is in the body of the article and its modern rarity means readers probably won't recognize it (and as long as we're defining any words in addition to matriarchy), gyneocracy should be defined in the article. That it's definitionally close is not obvious, given how often other similarly-spelled word pairs differ semantically.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 05:22, 6 February 2011 (UTC) (Corrected my misspelling: 05:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC))


 * Unfortunately for you, the burden of proof is really on you to demonstrate conclusively from reliable sources that there is any kind of consistent reliable difference in meaning between mere spelling variants. AnonMoos (talk) 18:22, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The differences in question are between the Oxford (SOED) and W3 as to gynaecocracy, gynecocracy, and gynocracy. Quoting the dictionaries:
 * gyneco- in SOED: "comb. form ... see GYNAECO-, GYNAECOCRACY , etc."
 * gynaecocracy in SOED: "Government by a woman or women; female dominance; derog. petticoat government. Cf. GYNARCHY ."
 * gynaec- or gynaeco- in W3: "see GYNEC- "
 * gynecocracy in W3: "political and social supremacy of women — contrasted with androcracy; compare MATRIARCHY "
 * gynocracy in W3: " GYNECOCRACY "
 * gynocracy in SOED: "= GYNAECOCRACY ; a government of women; women as the ruling class."


 * All of these agree on the principal definition in common. What's left is whether they disagree as to additional meanings presented in the article. Treating the -ae- and -e- variants as being for the same word, then:
 * "social supremacy of women" is within one definition but not the other, so that nonpolitical social supremacy is within one definition but not the other
 * gynocracy is not to be compared to matriarchy while gyn(a)ecocracy is
 * gynocracy is not to be contrasted with androcracy while gyn(a)ecocracy is
 * the nonplural singular "[g]overnment by a woman" is within one definition but not the other, which is defined as always for plural rulers, so that a queen over an otherwise-male government constitutes a gyn(a)ecocracy but not a gynocracy
 * "women as the ruling class" is within one definition but not the other, so that women who compose the leadership of a society in general but not necessarily every government (e.g., federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial) within a society constitute a gynocracy but not a gyn(a)ecocracy
 * "female dominance" is within one definition but not the other, so that many midlevel decision-making bureaucrats being female, when top rulers are male, may qualify for a gyn(a)ecocracy but not for a gynocracy
 * The derogatory meaning "petticoat government" is within one definition but not the other


 * In no case does the Oxford rely on W3 or vice versa.


 * These are relatively small differences, but they are not trivial.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 21:30, 6 February 2011 (UTC) (Corrected erroneous italicization re petticoats: 21:43, 6 February 2011 (UTC))


 * Unfortunately, you've changed this section to a confused mess of insignificant distinctions between synonymous variants, and if you don't clean it up yourself, then someone will probably come along and radically simplify it in a way you won't like. AnonMoos (talk) 15:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The differences are significant and gyneocracy is rarely used but is used in the article, so defining is necessary for clarity of the article. All of the forms in question are used for redirects to matriarchy (I just made one for gyneocracy but the others were already redirecting), and that suggests what readers expect to find, so we should be prepared to meet their expectations with content, in this case definitions.


 * In linguistics, while gyn(a)ecocracy probably started life as only a spelling variant, in general people in England speak mostly with people in England and people in the U.S. speak mostly with people in the U.S. and so on, including via broadcasts (the BBC and CNN worldwide services being somewhat exceptional but they're one-way channels), and when most communication is intracommunity over a long number of years the result is usually a subtle dividing of a language into community-level dialects (and, in the case of a language like English, standards that encompass dialects), and dialects differ a little, and eventually a lot, in semantics. The definitions quoted from Webster's Third and from Shorter Oxford show that that has already taken place. Similar dynamics likely occurred with the other forms.


 * Synonyms are not necessarily exact as synonyms. They share essential meanings, but they may differ beyond their core meaning as well as in register. See e.g., Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms: A Dictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and Contrasted Words (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam (A Merriam-Webster), 1973 (SBN 0-87779-141-4)), p. 24a (Synonym: Analysis and Definition, in Introductory Matter ("Synonym" in title italicized in original)). Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms does not synonymize the forms we're discussing.


 * I added to the article a sentence to emphasize that the words are synonyms.


 * If you still find anything "a confused mess", please tell me what you don't understand and I'll work on editing to solve that.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 17:33, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Sock puppetry
IP edits (and I'm afraid the rest) deleted, see Sockpuppet investigations/Jackiestud/Archive, IP has been blocked. If anyone wishes to reconstruct their argument, feel free if you use sources. Dougweller (talk) 13:06, 17 February 2011 (UTC)