Talk:Matriarchy/Archive 7

This article is extremely biased
and should be split, with the feminist ideology of a matriarchy in it's own article, and the general stuff in this one. Anyone disagree, and why? Bumblebritches57 (talk) 06:49, 24 October 2013 (UTC)


 * There's not necessarily such a neat distinction, since ideas similar to those of some 1970s radical feminists were first introduced by 19th century anthropologists who were not necessarily feminists. Not sure how you consider the article "Biased",but it would probably be better if Nick Levinson didn't introduce semi-irrelevant material or attempt to triangulate between dictionary entries... AnonMoos (talk) 02:36, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It's got incredibly bloated since I last visited. And it is verging on promoting a fringe idea. Nevertheless, the article has to show the following: that some 19th century anthropologists posited that there had been past societies where women dominated, were venerated, etc. (one variation per anthropologist); that these ideas were picked up by a current within 2nd wave feminism (one variation per feminist); that the idea has cropped up quite often in fiction (one variation per novelist); that the current academic consensus is that while some past societies allowed women an important role, or even the most important in some spheres, there has never been any society that can unambiguously be called matriarchal. What I would like to see taken out from the article is the material on the status of women in various religions. Mostly these religions are ruling against gender equality, not against matriarchy per se. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:43, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Feminist content used to be in a separate article and the consensus was that it should be in this article instead, so it was put into here. If there's a better title for a separate article, please propose it or write the article.
 * I agree that feminist systems and others are not very contrasty. The former tend to be explicitly feminist while some of the latter may specify motherhood and not simply femaleness as a criterion. They mostly overlap.
 * Bias due to the nature of the subject or due to the sources is accepted by Wikipedia. Feminism is fundamentally a critique of society and therefore feminism's bias is not Wikipedia's bias. Our responsibility is to report in accordance with the sources. As far as I know, we've done just that. If you know of a source that would illuminate the subject in a new way, please add it. But we can't just delete content because it's feminist or ideological. The feminist and ideological content is notable and is due weight. Not even all feminists agree with what some feminists have written, indeed probably most feminists would probably disagree (except perhaps in the world's most patriarchal societies), but we follow sources. Readers can then verify and judge the content as they see fit.
 * Generally, one view per person is stated as including their qualifying statements, so as not to omit necessary context from their own works.
 * The dictionary entries, besides being sourced, are on point. A subject can be somewhat beyond an article title, because otherwise titles would have to be lengthy and would be hard to remember. That's why several related concepts are included and, as I recall, I didn't introduce all of them or all of the content or sources for them; other editors share credit for that, maybe most of the credit.
 * The theology contents are about matriarchy: e.g., "female political leadership" (Islam), "women ... hold[ing] public office" (Judaism), "admit[ting] women to the Saṅgha[,] .... Buddhism's most fundamental institution .... [for] political power" (Buddhism), "women ... [as] nationalist political leaders" (Hinduism), and "women reigning ... above any realm, nation, or city" (Protestantism). There is context, but I don't think there's anything there that's only about gender inequality and not matriarchalist, pro or con.
 * None of it is fringe; for example, the religions and the feminists whose views are stated are notable on their own. Matriarchy generally is a minority view, but we report minority views across Wikipedia, and the article is already clear that the view is a minority view.
 * Articles often include general and specific information in the same article. Unless there's so much total content that the article gets to be too long, which hasn't happened with this one and doesn't look like it's going to anytime soon, we generally keep it together. It hasn't grown much in a very long time.
 * The proposed content is already present, other than that perhaps more popular culture can be added. If additional fictional literature, films, or such should be cited, please cite. I think there's probably some.
 * Nick Levinson (talk) 16:00, 25 October 2013 (UTC) (Rephrased & linked: 16:10, 25 October 2013 (UTC))
 * On the religion point I would like you to tell me that you understand what I am saying. If a theologist says "women may not govern", he means that. Women may not govern at all. No Indira Gandhi, no Margaret Thatcher, no Golda Meir. These views are very common, but they have opponents. The opponents want women priests, bishops, possibly even a woman Pope. But they don't want all the priests to be women. "Women governing" is not a definition of matriarchy, if women govern alongside men or alternately with men. Or if women "govern" in certain areas, e.g. the head of midwifery services is a woman. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:57, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I understand, but the claims in various sources are not always absolutist either pro or con. For instance, some fundamentalist Muslim leaders allow that possibly a woman could govern but that they don't know of a woman who would qualify (I recall one in Pakistan saying words to that effect as reported in the U.S. press) and thus that usually a man would have to govern; Mohammad's hadith on point has been interpeted in more than one way but not all Muslims agree that it is ambiguous, and they prefer that women be excluded altogether if possible. Being less than absolutist applies to many major human endeavors. If Wikipedia reported only absolutist claims and nothing else, most of the encyclopedia would have to be deleted. The article is not about the occasional woman governing where men do (Thatcher, Gandhi, and Meir are not in the article) or about occupations in which women predominate (such as women's auxiliaries and prostitution, midwifery not being in the article), but about public leadership generally of whole societies and, as when Moynihan commented on it as matriarchal, families in society. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:38, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. We are having a real difficulty with "governing", aren't we? I am coming at it from sociological rather than a political science angle. Let's say that we have a concept of social control, sidestepping the question of the prominent individual. Well, then there are societies where males exercise social control (patriarchy), posited societies where females exercise social control (matriarchy), and societies where social control is shared between males and females (no single word, gender-equal). This article is only about the second of these. If religions are resisting moving from patriarchy to equality, that is outside scope. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:06, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I have focused on governmental rather than social. I haven't looked for sources on women being the parents more responsible for immediate decisions on child-raising, influencing shopping for family cars, or asking husbands to take out the trash, although there might be secondary sources calling those matriarchal. There's quite a bit of sourcing out in the world on the governmental levels of matriarchy and that's what I've looked for.
 * Any critique of female leadership other than anarchy necessarily gives relative approval to male leadership, so such a critique necessarily opposes equality. In the religious section, the content is limited to critiques opposing women in governmental leadership or women being allowed to vote, including leading as heads of states or in judicial positions, legislative positions sometimes being seen as an exception (although I think only when women are in a very small gender minority). Regarding Protestantism, women teaching (probably a relatively low position compared to government) is discussed but only as the claimed ground for the opposition to women being at higher levels, such as queen. I deleted a sentence that counters the theological opposition because it may be too vague in its relevance (a sentence about Queen Elizabeth and referring to inheritance and divinity for herself personally but otherwise not to women's leadership generally) (presumably she was Elizabeth I but perhaps II and since I'm not sure which I didn't move it to an article about I or II).
 * Nick Levinson (talk) 18:37, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

reverted edits of October 17–18, 2013
I reverted the article, because it needed editing and it was getting too complicated to edit it item by item. Too much sourced content was deleted without explanation, other than that apparently some contradictory content was being added, in which case the new content should have been added in order to present controversy, probably without deleting what was already in the article. Some of the content may belong in the body and not in the lead, since the lead is only to be a summary of the body. Much of the writing style was not appropriate for Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. Some new content was lacking page numbers and even sourcing. Some additions were off-topic, belonging in other Wikipedia articles, which can then be linked to from this one. The first section heading was deleted, confounding the lead. A source was cited without content; such a source may belong under Further Reading or External Links. I plan to review what I reverted and edit and re-add what appears to belong and the editor who originally added most or all of it and any other interested editor/s may edit and re-add as they see fit. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:28, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * In consideration of recent edits I had reverted, I have edited anew to re-add in edited form what is consistent with sources, policies, and guidelines, including clarifying that mothers are a subset of females and not separate from them, adding on the semantics of gyn- words, adding about Cynthia Eller's history of matriarchy as a term, adding what Friedrich Engels and August Bebel said, copyediting, and conforming other text. I did not re-add "from this time on, communism or socialism and the notion of matriarchy as a 'golden age' in the past or in the future have been aligned inseparably" because some sources already cited in the article would disagree and the statement appears to be original research, but if the statement has a source and is attributable please re-add it with an in-text attribution and with a citation, marking it as a quotation if that's what it is.
 * I re-added a German language source, but in general English sources are preferred; if an English language source has essentially the same content, it should replace the German one. Possibly more of the sources are in German and should be marked as such.
 * I tagged where pages are needed for citations, because citing just a whole book is usually not specific enough for verifiability. I also tagged where citations are needed because I was not clear whether Eller's Gentlemen and Amazons was intended as one statement's source and regarding Friedrich Engels for other statements.
 * I anticipate more editing from the reverted edits soon.
 * Nick Levinson (talk) 17:04, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I added Kuznar's and Wesel's statements, added Page Needed templates, and reformatted citations. I decided to edit a citation that was to p. 52–3 so that it is now to pp. 52–53 (which is plausible per Google Books without searching for text, as accessed a few minutes ago), but if it originally was to a single page known as "52–3" please edit accordingly. I did not re-add the links to http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/864_reg_print.html or http://www.amazon.com/dp/080706792X because the first is only promotion about the book and the promo does not support the statement for which the including citation was provided and the second is Amazon's sale page, which I don't think is a reliable source (I didn't check the whole Amazon page for support for the statement since customer reviews are not reliable sources), but I re-added the reformatted citations on the assumption (based on another editor's editing) that the books do support the statement. More editing may come. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:28, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I re-added into a new subsection on intergenerational relationships. I assumed "matrilinearity" (which is not in the Oxford English Dictionary as accessed online today and is little in Google results) should have been "matrilineality" and edited accordingly. Matriarchy is not necessarily intergenerational although, if one lasts long enough, it often will be. However, I tagged the source citation as needing verification because I found in WorldCat, as accessed Oct. 27, 2013, that the book either has a different title or a different year, making it unverifiable as cited. We need to know whether the source supports only the last statement in the paragraph or all of it (or some amount in between) and to whom to attribute in the text the statement/s it supports.
 * I also re-added the rephrasing to "some claim that there is a matriarchy among Black families in the United States, because a quarter of them" were single-woman-headed and added an attribution to it, replacing the former phrasing.
 * I did not re-add the phrasing "some authors ... go against all the evidence", since it is an unsourced exaggeration to say "all" in that context and the rest is unnecessary because the article already makes clear what the predominant view is.
 * I did not re-add the following: "However, from what was reported above it should be clear that 'Matriarchy' was always meant to mean domination of mothers (or women), but not 'gender equality'. Accordingly, it is a contradiction in terms to speak of 'Matriarchy' as 'egalitarian society': either a society is a matriarchy or it is an egalitarian society, but not as both at the same time. If the terms are synonyms, the term 'Matriarchy' could be desposed of." English errors aside, the specific point it makes about linguistics is unsourced and incorrect because in a widely-spoken natural language synonyms are commonly kept and used and, while many sources view matriarchal societies as not including genderally equal societies, an occasional source nonetheless views any nonpatriarchal society as matriarchal, and we report according to what sources say, thus we report the contradiction as a disagreement.
 * I did not re-add this either: "Against this background it is irrelevant for the question of 'Matriarchy' that there are societies anthropologists have described as matrilinear, matrilocal, or avunculocal". This appears to have been sourced to Heide Goettner-Abendroth's definitions, but she apparently did not write that those are irrelevant and seems to have been writing the opposite. If so, it's an apparent misattribution and the statement is unsourced. It is more a critique of the article than of matriarchy and, as a critique of the article, it may belong on this talk page, but not in the article. As a contribution to the talk page, it may be appropriate to copy or move some content to other articles. But that there is an overlap or confusion in sources can be discussed in either this article or the other/s with both matriarchy and other concepts discussed together, when the overlap or confusion is itself sourceable. It is valid for the article on matriarchy to discuss overlaps and confusions with other concepts. That is done with patriarchy and properly so; and it being done with other matr- concepts is also valid.
 * Nick Levinson (talk) 21:22, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I re-added the intensifier (turning "a more" into "an even more") to the inclusive redefinition by Göttner-Abendroth.
 * I did not re-add "because there is no good empirical evidence for the existence of any 'Matriarchy', the term can only be maintained when its field of reference is so much broadened that it becomes virtually meaningless. For example," which precedes a quotation defining a matriarchy as a 'non-alienated society'. The article is not a place for editors to comment on sources, because that is original research, which Wikipedia doesn't publish. If a source is provided, it could be re-added at that time.
 * I did not re-add "against the background of this extent of softening of the concepts of 'Matriarchy' and of 'Patriarchy' by implication it is not surprising that the term and concept [sic] has become a battle cry for the marketing of particular interests, mainly the interest of white middle-class women in Western countries." This would be a good criticism to publish but is apparently unsourced.
 * I did not re-add this (as edited): "The feminist Maria Mies wrote, patriarchy" literally means the rule of fathers. But today's male dominance goes beyond the "rule of fathers" it includes the rule of husbands, of male bosses, of ruling men in most societal institutions, in politics and economics, in short, what has been called "the men's league" or "men's house". In spite of these reservations, I continue to use the term patriarchy. My reasons are the following: the concept "patriarchy" was rediscovered by the new feminist movement as a struggle concept, because the movement needed a term by which the totality of oppressive and exploitative relations which affect women, could be expressed as well as their systematic character. Moreover, the term "patriarchy" denotes the historical and societal dimension of women's exploitation and oppression, and is thus less open to biologistic interpretations, in contrast, for example, to the concept of "male dominance (Mies 1998: 37; Hervorhebungen d.d.A.)." This is about patriarchy, thus not for this article but another; a comparison with matriarchy is publishable in this article but the comparison has to be clearer and not just inferable from content. Extending this into a discussion of matriarchy is original research. It needs a better citation. And there seem to be some typing errors. Beyond those issues, the relevance of a "struggle concept" (at another point referred to as "mere struggle concepts") needs explaining (e.g., is it necessarily contradicted by academic precision or only sometimes? terms are not usually abandoned because they are sometimes misused) and the explanation needs sourcing.
 * I did not re-add the following (as edited): "From this, it is clear that Mies herself regarded patriarchy and matriarchy by implication as mere struggle concepts used to imply a specific ideology and a specific construction of history, in which men and women stand in for the bourgeois and the proletarians as antagonistic groups. And this shows once more, why feminst theory is socialist or Marxist. " The first sentence, unless supported by the citation a sentence later, is original research. What is meant by "mere struggle concepts" needs explaining, with sourcing. The leap to "stand[ing] in for the bourgeois and the proletarians as antagonistic groups" is quite a leap and needs sourcing. That "feminst theory is socialist or Marxist", if sourceable and if an in-text attribution is added, belongs in the article on feminist theory, if anywhere, not in this article.
 * I left out that "a more detailed report on the development and the uses of the term 'Patriarchy' is provided by Heike Diefenbach - but only for those who can read German" and " ". The way we refer to an additional reading if we're not supplying content from it is by listing it in a Further Readings or Exernal Links section, not in the main sections of the article. This article is not about patriarchy, so these passages don't belong. And we don't cite blogs, except for some that are part of reliable sources, like a blog written by a newspaper's reporters and supervised by its editors.
 * On the dating of words: The statement, "matriarchy is a term created in the 19th century .... At the same time ..., the term 'Patriarchy' was established" (word debolded & italicized here), is incorrect, because the Oxford English Dictionary gives the years of the earliest known uses as 1885 for matriarchy but 1561 for patriarchy (both full entries as accessed online Oct. 27, 2013). That's not nearly simultaneous. And whether they were coined in those years is not known, unless a source says so. All the OED says is that its editors have not found evidence of use before those years, not that a word was coined then. Either word may have been coined far earlier but not written down in anything that was preserved and made known to OED editors.
 * Reporting on misunderstandings of matriarchy is certainly legitimate. Wikipedia requires sources and gives weight to points to be covered in accordance with their weight across sources. Original research can be turned into usable content by sourcing it. And it appears that the views being criticized have a substantial following, so that what we may be reporting is simply a disagreement between a predominant view among academics in the relevant disciplines and views among some others, including some feminists and some of the general public. The narrower meaning of matriarchy is probably the consensus view but the wider meaning likely is due some weight. In that case, we say so, and we report both views, with sourcing.
 * Grammatical tense was changed here and there. The past tense is often more accurate for much content, but some editors may disagree. I haven't looked up the MOS guideline to see if either past or present tense is preferred for sources published a few years ago but neither yesterday nor a century ago.
 * I've finished with this series of edits.
 * Nick Levinson (talk) 15:52, 28 October 2013 (UTC) (Corrected misspelling, rephrased, added nowiki tags, restyled word, & qualified phrase: 16:09, 28 October 2013 (UTC))

phrasing re "inside"
The phrase "Bachofen and Lewis Morgan confined the 'mother right' inside households" appears in the article, but I suspect it should be "Bachofen and Lewis Morgan confined the 'mother right' to inside households". The first phrasing means that even within the household the right is confined, so that it does not encompass everything even within the household; but the second means that it does not go outside of the household. Does anyone know what the sourcing says? Nick Levinson (talk) 17:56, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

main definitions besides feminist
My fault: I had assumed that the main definition (not necessarily the wider ones from feminist sources) was sourceable to the Oxford English Dictionary and that the lack of a citation was simply an oversight, so I added the citation/s. I should not have done that without correcting what the article said. Now I've corrected that. But the new issue is that the definition sourceable to the OED is more encompassing than we had been discussing and that I had been assuming.
 * The OED definition applies to organizations. So, generally, a women's auxiliary is a matriarchy even though it is guided by the main organization to which it is auxiliary and which is likely run by men. It probably does not apply to unorganized prostitution but it does to a woman-owned brothel or outside prostitution service, including a sole proprietorship.
 * The OED definition of matriarchy accepts an overlap with matrilineality.
 * The OED definition may even include, say, the United Kingdom when Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher ruled together and perhaps when the Queen is the only woman at that level, Pakistan under Mrs. Bhutto, and the U.S. if Hillary Rodham Clinton is inaugurated as President. This is widely disputed and I join the dispute, but we may need to find sourcing on both sides of whether one woman at the top of an almost entirely male governing structure is enough to constitute a matriarchy, so that the dispute is not answered only by Wikipedia editors.

Further, comparing the OED definitions of patriarchy and of matriarchy shows they're not parallel, not even close to it. Sources, I think mainly feminist, criticized the thesis of parallelism for these two words, and that thesis is popular in the general public and among Wikipedia's readers, as some remind us from time to time, but we may need sourcing to support parallelism if we aim to report that claim other than to critique it.

The OED is a dictionary of the general language as understood by the general public and editors of major media but it is not mainly a dictionary of exclusively academic terminology. Useful would be more definitions from academic sources (e.g., treatises, journals, and glossaries) about their respective fields, including for different definitions that are credible or to show that an already known definition is a consensus view in a field.

Nick Levinson (talk) 17:45, 4 November 2013 (UTC) (Rephrased: 17:53, 4 November 2013 (UTC)) (Rephrased: 17:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC))


 * Unfortunately, your personal method of dictionary triangulation is problematic. Dictionaries can be handy for providing a minimally-controversial summary of the basic meaning of a word, but comparing and contrasting and micro-parsing with a fine-tooth comb various dictionary entries in order to decide which topics should get a separate Wikipedia article, and which should be combined, is not likely to give good results, and is not an approved Wikipedia method... AnonMoos (talk) 02:22, 5 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I have accurately represented all of these sources I've cited. I don't want to cherrypick.
 * The kind of dictionaries you're describing (those that are "handy for providing a minimally-controversial summary of the basic meaning of a word"), sounds like derivative dictionaries, such as collegiates and those for younger audiences, which are widely used. I use and cite more authoritative dictionaries, which linguists generally describe as primary (and which are secondary sources for Wikipedia). It is likely that in a well-studied field there are specialized sources that have even more precise definitions and they should be added to the article, other than those already cited; I just don't have them, but if anyone does, please add them.
 * If a reliable dictionary has different definitions for different words, then it's unlikely we should say they have the same meaning. In this article's case, the relevant words share something semantically in common, but that's not a ground for ignoring relevant differences.
 * An article may include closely allied areas of discussion. Those that warrant separate articles should be linked to, but in the absence of separate articles they can be discussed more fully in this one.
 * You may be giving me credit for more than I did. Several editors have contributed in this field.
 * This topic was a solicitation for additional definitions, especially from academic sources. That's still of interest. We can use more sources that define or distinguish. They can be from any relevant discipline.
 * Nick Levinson (talk) 17:31, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with AnonMoos. The OED isn't a useful definition here. The dictionary is doing a separate thing from the encyclopedia. The dictionary has to account for everyday, common and loose ways in which a term is used. A novelist can write, "Mrs Smith, the white-haired matriarch". If a sociology undergraduate tried the same thing, they would lose a lot of marks. Matriarchy is a concept from anthropology which was more or less superseded when it was picked up by one school of 1970s feminist writers. In both modes, it belongs to the social sciences and we should be using good scholarly sources from the social sciences. We will be laughed at if we claim that a sorority is a matriarchy, and you will not find a respectable source describing the UK, Pakistan or the USA as matriarchies. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:53, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
 * We are using scholarly sources, but Wikipedia does report in accord with the range of reliable secondary sources and the OED is scholarly but not specialized. I've avoided saying that a sorority is a matriarchy (I haven't looked for that kind of source and many of them would be unreliable) but we need to deal with how the word is understood, for which the OED is a very good source, and we can use sources that say that a sorority and nations like those we named are not matriarchies, thus reporting both sides of the dispute on what matriarchy includes or doesn't include, while retaining the distinction between lay and specialized meanings. Sources showing what is excluded (the largely-male-led nations, etc.) should be added. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:30, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Nick Levinson -- I'm sure you're incredibly earnest and sincere in your wish to improve the article, but other people are questioning whether the article has really in fact improved under your predominant stewardship (it certainly has deteriorated with respect to focus, or including only truly relevant material), and are pointing out that your personal method of dictionary triangulation is not an approved Wikipedia procedure. It would be good for you to step back for a while and rethink things, because if you double down and continue doing exactly what you've been doing, it's likely to result in some kind of Wikipedia process being invoked sooner or later... AnonMoos (talk) 22:54, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the thought. I have spent much time thinking about it and allied subjects. In this case, I'm doing separate edits as a series rather than together in one step because of the way issues were raised. I have some more to do (and indicated that in the talk topic/section Lead and Body Edits). Hopefully, the result will be agreeable all around. If you think another article would be an appropriate destination, please suggest one. In fact, some of my recent and new edits do the job of deleting or moving content that does belong elsewhere, so we agree on the principle. Relying on sources is what we should do, not on Wikipedia editors' views of what the sources ought to say, nor should we delete content because we disagree with source authors (or not much would be left anywhere in Wikipedia). That is why I point out gaps in our sourced knowledge and request sources on those, since I may well have missed some and perhaps you or anyone else may know of them and can add them. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've finished today's edits. I try to work on it each night offline so that the article's issues are resolved as soon as they can be, given concerns raised. I'll probably have more edits soon. Several editors have contributed over the years and I often left their contributions intact, and now I'm being blamed for having not been an owner. While you have made a point about dictionaries, I replied and, if the reply was not satisfactory, please state how, because simply repeating a rebutted charge is not helpful. Some statements left by various editors are unsourced; rather than delete, I tagged them so editors can see what needs attention. Quite a bit of material was in inappropriate sections and I moved it so that content makes more sense; I think more of that needs to be done. But not much content is left that does not belong in the article; I've already deleted much of what should not have been here and may be adding it to other articles or Wiktionary. I wish I could be faster, but I'm doing what I can. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:32, 6 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Don't mean to snap at you, but unfortunately I still have painful memories of when you decided to merge "gynarchy" with "matrifocal" -- in direct contradiction to the discussions which led to the creation of "matrifocal" -- based solely on your idiosyncratic personal method of comparing dictionary entries and micro-parsing their wording.  When I tried to discuss the matter with you, you turned out to be a lot more interested in bureaucratic details of where such a discussion should take place, rather than actually discussing the matter.  It certainly caused me to lose all interest in the "matrifocal" article (which previously had a promising beginning). AnonMoos (talk) 19:05, 6 November 2013 (UTC)


 * When I've diverged from a policy or a guideline, more often early in my editing years, I've heard about it a good percentage of the times, often accusatorily. Wikipedia's method is to learn as we go rather than to have an entry exam, and I try to stay ahead of the policies and guidelines I'm going to need to comply with (if an exception is warranted I should be ready to explain why). In the case of merging Gynarchy, it wasn't a big deal that you asked at my talk page, but article transparency favored the discussion being at the article talk page so other editors would know of it, so I copied the discussion there and steered it there, where it was continued. And the discussion, including by you, was substantive. The merger was into matrifocal family, which discusses ggynarchy essentially in terms of matrifocality. Generally, the pre-merger content of the gynarchy article and the pre-merger content of the matrifocal family article have been preserved in the live matrifocal family article, and both the Gynarchy pre-merger and live revisions include nondictionary sourcing, which I think I supplied, and if more is available to illuminate the subject I hope it'll be added. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:44, 7 November 2013 (UTC)


 * "Gynarchy" is another somewhat vague term for overall female predominance in society formed from classical roots -- in fact, exactly the first stem of "gynocracy"/"gynecocracy" and the second stem of "matriarchy" -- while "matrifocal family" is a highly-specific and well-defined anthropological term which refers to a kinship system in which the basic family nucleus usually consists of a woman and her grown up daughters and their young children, with various transient men coming and going. It means that adult men relatively infrequently have a strong enduring exclusive role in families, but it does not necessarily mean that women commonly have positions of power or influence outside of individual families, or an overall predominant role in society.  Only as a result of your problematic personal method of dictionary triangulation could "gynarchy" and "matrifocal family" be merged... AnonMoos (talk) 20:55, 7 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The reason the matrifocal family article discusses gynarchy is that an academic source gave a definition of gynarchy as 'the creation of short-term family structures dominated by women'. That differed from dictionaries but that's what the source says. The meaning that we so far have of matrifocal is this: "a family or domestic group is matrifocal when it is centred on a woman and her children", which is sourced in the matrifocal family article to another academic author. So, because of relevance of meaning, the matrifocal family article, in the history section, includes gynarchy. Etymons contribute to modern meanings but do not freeze them; meanings often diverge from origins, and efforts to forbid a larger community from diverging are usually futile. The definition of matrifocal family you gave is somewhat larger than that article indicates; if you know of a source for it, please add it. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:09, 8 November 2013 (UTC) (Added missing space: 17:14, 8 November 2013 (UTC)))


 * Whatever -- the fact that one translator of a centuries-old Chinese manuscript chose to translate a Chinese expression into English as "gynarchy", even though in modern terms it appears to refer mainly to matrifocality, is not much of a reason to merge the Gynarchy and Matrifocality articles. The only other motivation for merging the two articles comes from your problematic personal method of dictionary triangulation (or comparative micro-parsing of the text of dictionary entries, which probably won't hold up too well in a discussion at an Admin Noticeboard, or other suitable Wikipedia forum... AnonMoos (talk) 03:17, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * There's not a lot of sourcing available about gynarchy separately from other subjects. If you think the translator was wrong, please source the opinion of someone who disagrees. If you think there's enough about gynarchy for its own article, please write one and change the present redirect. Gynarchy so much overlaps other phenomena that, so far, in the absence of more content, it seems best treated with one of them, and that is done with quite a few subjects in Wikipedia, and that is what was done in this case. I don't object to a separate article. If you would like consensus to change, open a discussion to that end or simply create the article you'd like (that's a way of developing consensus) and we'll work from there. Articles are usually cross-linked and that will be satisfactory. For example, I've been deleting content from the matriarchy article that belongs in another article or project, while leaving relationships between subjects intact. I have no objection to that method. Parsing my motivation seems not to be working too well for you, as it doesn't for most people, so I sympathize, but, to find out my motivation, reading what I post would generally work well. What you call micro-parsing suggests that the result is one with which you disagree; if a view deserving of weight is missing from any article, please add it with appropriate sourcing. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:44, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Maybe there's not much separate info about "Gynarchy" because it's basically a now lesser-used synonym of "Matriarchy"??? If examined according to its literal etymology, the word "Matriarchy" suggests that women would predominate in society by predominating in individual families. Those who have other conceptions of a female-dominant society may therefore prefer words such as "Gynarchy" and "Gyn(ec)ocracy".  This really doesn't do much to suggest that Gynarchy is a suitable synonym for Matrifocal, and the quasi-idiosyncratic translation choices of one translator don't necessarily do anything to change that.  Furthermore, anthropologists are the ones who most directly define the meaning of Matrifocal, and they don't use Gynarchy as a synonym for Matrifocal... AnonMoos (talk) 10:17, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Gynarchy as a near-synonym of matriarchy is already in one matriarchy article section; and I agree it's less often used. I agree that etymology suggests a modern meaning; but etymology shouldn't be treated as binding on today's speakers, because the English-speaking community is far too unwieldy to be restrained much by such. No committee officially rejects meanings for inconsistency with etymology. Many words have acquired multiple meanings; e.g., modern technology comes with a slew of repurposed words and the OED lists large numbers of meanings for the words the and set, so it is reasonable that gynarchy has at least two meanings. Smith in defining gynarchy as related to matrifocality may diverge from the mainstream on the latter, as many scholars do on many issues, but the matrifocal family article gives both appropriate weights, a mainstream definition by stating it in the Definition section and Smith's definition relative to a 14th-century view by stating it the History section. Anthropologists may define it and Laura Hobson Herlihy may be an anthropologist (I don't have access to Proquest Dissertations and Theses where I'm sitting), but other disciplines may also use the term and define it, that being common across the language. While we report according to weight and sourcing, we may distinguish between the disciplines for clarity. Anthropologists may happen to be silent regarding gynarchy as a synonym for an anthropological term but that's probably not reportable until a source observes it or disputes anthropological use of the word. Perhaps that's a research project someone would like to take up, but I'll probably pass on it; for that, Googling the two words together could be a start.
 * People who conceive of female-dominant societies can prefer various gyn- labels or not; the choice of labeling by the people in question is not up to us editors to assign. The extent they do so prefer or not is only reportable as suggested by sources and we don't have a better research tool now.
 * Nick Levinson (talk) 19:02, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * We're not a dictionary. If there is a good source that is clearly commenting on matriarchy, but calls it gynarchy, then it can be included here. Equally, if there is a good source commenting on matrifocality that calls it gynarchy, then it can be included in matrifocal family. Let's not make unnecessary complications. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:12, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


 * That's essentially what we're doing. Some leeway is encompassed by the Article titles policy, such as where several words apply to a phenomenon, in which case we should choose one commonly recognizable name; in this case, matriarchy is that name. The policy's section on treatment of alternative names supports the inclusion of the other terms in this article, since sources use those terms for this subject. For example, Bamberger counts "female-dominated societies" as "matriarchies" in her article cited in this article, and female-dominated societies with other labels should be here, too. I have removed much dictionary-like content already, and what's left is in accord with the common practice of defining central terms in an article. I'll probably be back online Tuesday or Wednesday for futher editing. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:48, 10 November 2013 (UTC)