Talk:Mosuo

I came across this article quite by accident. The sentence that begins the matrilineal paragraph is not clear, and I do not know how to fix it. ‘Except the women and men who are loss in Mosuo society or separation’ Should the word loss read lost?

[Untitled]
Obviously some sections are too short. Please expand it.Dust429 (talk) 14:39, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

No Word for "Murder" and "Rape"
The article says: "Perhaps most telling about this particular social arrangement is that the Mosuo have no words for the concepts of murder, war, rape and jails. This social system appears to be the example of the matriarchal societies that are envisioned by Riane Eisler and many other feminist social thinkers." What is the source for the claim that they have no such words? One would think they would at least have picked up such words from the Chinese. And the idea that a society where men have little or no responsibility to care for their children is a feminist paradise strikes me as a little silly. - Nat Krause 20:53, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Seconded. I'm always very suspicious of claims that some ethnic group or another doesn't have words for certain concepts. It usually turns out to be wrong. - Haukurth 17:03, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

There was a PBS Frontline special on the Mosuo people. On the Frontline website, the statement in question is there. PBS is a reputable source, and certainly a documentary on the Mosuo people can give more insight to their culture. Simply saying that you're suspicious doesn't guarantee proof. Have you studied their language? Certainly, I am sure that they have learned of the words for murder, war, and rape from Mandarin Chinese, but Chinese languages and dialects remain strongly unique, and picking up words here and there does not generally happen. Regions and their people remain very proud and firmly rooted in their own culture, dialect/language. -- Anonymous
 * Add it back, then. But please attribute it carefully to its source. And I suspect a more original source than the PBS can be found. - Haukurth 22:20, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Response regarding murder/rape
Regarding the "accuracy" of a documentary, there have been numerous documentaries about the Mosuo, most of which continue to perpetuate common myths about the Mosuo. In fact, most such documentaries base the majority of their research on previous documentaries.

It is curious that you bring up the question "Have you studied their language?". Because I very highly doubt that you have. And I know that the majority of documentary producers have not. On the other hand, I have not only lived with the Mosuo, I am the founder of an organization that is working to create a written form of their language (which currently is a purely oral language), and work with anthropologists and linguists who do detailed study of the language. As I have said elsewhere, it is technically true that there are no words for "rape" or "murder" in their language; but they have other words that are used for that meaning (such as using "kill" to cover both accidental and intentional killing). And any attempt to draw the conclusion that the lack of such specific words indicates a lack of murder or rape is ludicrous, as the Mosuo themselves will readily attest. I regret that I lack solid documentation of this, as by far the majority of my own information comes from speaking with the Mosuo themselves. However, you can feel free to check out our organization's website, Lugu Lake Mosuo Cultural Development Association, which has extensive information about the Mosuo that has all been provided and approved by Mosuo academics (including Lamu Gatusa, the leading authority on Mosuo history/culture, and a prominent Mosuo leader). I don't object to including information about the lack of particular words in their language; only with the common conclusion that this is an indication or proof that such things don't happen in Mosuo culture. --- John Lombard

This may be from "A Society Without Fathers or Husbands: The Na of China" (ISBN: 1890951129) By Cai Hua. ('Na' is what he says the mosuo self-identify as). When I find my copy, I'll have a look.

It's almost always significant to find a society without words that are commonly found in other societies. Murder and rape may not be unknown to the Mosuo now, but my guess is that at some point in the past they were. Athana 22:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the focus of these claims is wrong. There have no doubt been societies that did not have a word for "gravity". But I suspect those cultures understood the concept of gravity and correctly predicted what would happen to dropped items. The interesting question is do the Mosuo have the concepts of rape and murder and do these things occur in their society with more or less frequency than other societies that might reasonably be viewed as similar? Insight into this can be had by answering whether they punish these transgressions. Gbambo (talk) 05:19, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I forget how to add a separate section in the discussion section, and my comment is on religion. I added this very significant phrase to the religion section: ".... based on animistic principles and involves ancestor worship and the worship of a mother goddess: "The Mosuo are alone among their neighbors to have a guardian mother goddess rather than a patron warrior god" (Mathieu, 2003)." Cai Hua, too, discusses the Na mother goddess in several places in his giant ethnographical treatise, so let's not leave her out, here! Athana 22:21, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

BTW, John, thanks for doing this. I think that overall it's very good. Athana 22:24, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

fishermen
Under the lifestyle section, shouldn't "fishermen" be replaced with fishers?

Clean-up
My apologies that the original entries I made were not entirely up to Wikipedia editing standards; it is my first time to make a major entry like this, and I was unfamiliar with what is required. I have edited it further to make it more readable, and hope that it is found to be suitable. If there are further changes required, please let me know. -- John Lombard

Alternate names (Nuerguo 女儿国 / Nuguo 女国 / "Women's Country")
I remember reading about the Mosuo culture, but had only heard about it under the name of 女儿国 or "Women's Country" or "Girl's Country". It seems they are somewhat common terms for Lake Lugu (Google search for '女儿国 lugu'), should it be mentioned in the article? --Lost-theory 14:26, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Political power in the hands of men
Since the Mosuo culture is often pointed to as an example of a matriarchy or at least matrifocal and the political position of men is often seen as a rebuttal to this, could we get a description of the political system in Musuo culture? How it is operated, what role to those not in the system have to play, the possibility of women exerting control outside of the system in an indirect way, etc. etc. --Wolfrider (talk) 19:44, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please, because there seems to be a lot of bs-ing in the matriarchy section, with no citations to back it up —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.13.130.18 (talk) 03:21, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

The article discusses the hypothesis that the matrilineal nature of Mosuo culture was an attempt by nobility within a feudal society to neutralize threats to their power. I assume the power referred to was political power. Now political power in all other feudal societies I have heard of is grounded in property rights. But there is insufficient information to understand how their feudalism compares to the European paradigm of feudalism.

For example, it would seem a necessary implication of labeling their society as feudal that all land owndership resdies with the nobility. If this is so, the metrilineal passage of property between generations among the matrilienal portion of society (which is presumably composed of serfs) is the mere inheritance of chattels. But this would represent nearly none of the total societal wealth in a feudal society. In this sense, focusing on these properties rights while failing to clairify real property rights (land) is profoundly misleading. It feels like the article is trying to avoid making clear that while Mosuo culture gives women more status than most societies, this is only true of the segment of Mosuo society that has essentially no wealth or political power, as this seems to be the clear implication of what is said.

So the questions I believe need clarification are: (1) Who owns real property? (2) Does the property of nobility descend through parallel lines of descent or otherwise? (3) What is the character of those members of society referred to as commoners? Gbambo (talk) 05:11, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

"Myths and Misperceptions" Section
I'm kind of new to the wikipedia editing thing, but I noticed that the whole Myths and Misperceptions thing is taken from this: http://www.mosuoproject.org/myths.htm page. It should probably be sourced, I'd think, but I'm not sure what the proper way to do it is so I didn't want to go in and mess it up. :-) Rabbittime (talk) 15:04, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the source that the entry provides in the "Myths" section is false. In fact, the source that the myth section provides does suggest that Musuo women are "promiscuous" if by that is meant having "50" or more sexual partners in a life time, and having multiple sexual partners at any given time, and having no formal commitment to being sexually faithful to one person. Given that the source provided (http://staff.washington.edu/tamiblu/Na/myths.pdf) actually states the opposite of what is provided in the section, I am going to change it to reflect what is actually in the source once I figure out how. I am new as well. The musuoproject.org site provides no sources itself, and I couldn't find where they got their information from (for example, a particular anthropologist). Standupcat (talk) 17:32, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you to John Lombard and others
Some time ago I was scratching around for reliable sources on the Mosuo, sadly for the same reason many people do -- is this the Shangri La of feminism?

The great thing about researching evidence in cultural anthropology is "picking up" the genuine human involvement between ethnographers and the people they study. People are interesting for themselves and what they teach us about our human family. Over and over again my academic and political issues are stripped away as informative and insightful prose takes me into wonderful worlds of other people and their issues.

As a sometime linguist, the Mosuo's script fascinates me. It is impressive that they (or the Na) seem to have developed an independent form of their own.

Although there seems to be a speculative element to some historical projections of the Mosuo, it may be that their current, unique social structure has elements derived from two substantial tragedies -- a genocide of their ruling class and the economic redundancy of occupations men used to engage in for the benefit of their society. If these things are true, it seems to me our first thought ought to be one of grief and concern, not one of what does this mean for the "battle of the sexes".

I do hope western tourism does not undermine the Mosuo adapting and growing their culture in ways that they believe serve their best interests. From what John has said, I have every confidence in his organization that they minimize interference, maximize aid, and represent a positive human inter-cultural exchange, like many in history.

Best wishes for your organization and for our cousins the Mosuo. I look forward to them contributing at Wikipedia some day.Alastair Haines (talk) 05:04, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Matrilineality article
First (see my Edit summary), I replaced a sentence which had been inserted in the Mosuo article's "Matriarchy" section earlier this year without giving its source. The source for my version of the sentence was simply a sentence in the article's "Walking marriages" section -- the sentence's content belongs in both sections, rephrased of course.

I came here from the Matrilineality article and have enjoyed this Mosuo article. It is very unusual, for sure, and appears to be both reliable and uptodate (at least as of 2006, the date on the article's source webpage, www.mosuoproject.org ). I judge that I can respect the opinions of John Lombard and Alastair Haines, above, whose opinions match mine, I believe. I don't see how any encyclopedia can have a better reference source than the above webpage, evidently due to Lamu Gatusa in 2006, on top of Cai Hua (2001) and Christine Mathieu (2003).

The group behind the website, Lugu Lake Mosuo Cultural Development Assoc'n, welcomes us to come and see their popular matrilineal culture for ourselves (eating and staying at their places of business, clearly), and they say Chinese tourists do so too. I just hope they succeed at making a living by portraying themselves, essentially, and serving those who wish to visit them and their culture. Namely, I am very glad there is at least one culture in the world where matrilineal surnames can stay alive and well, as well as well-documented. Well, that's why I came here from the Matrilineality article (currently tagged for not being well-documented), to see whether the latter article's information from the Mosuo article is well-documented (a judgment I feel qualified to make because of my academic research background). I vote a strong "Yes it is".

Finally, I would rate the Mosuo article quality with a class A, but could not find the "class parameter" mentioned in the following sentence: "Revisions of assessment ratings are done by assigning an appropriate value via the class parameter in the WikiProject Ethnic groups project banner." Not that I claim to be qualified to rate article quality; I do like the Mosuo article. For7thGen (talk) 07:40, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Benefits
Isn't stating benefits a little subjective? Especially stating that there is no preference to male or female offspring. If there are no female offspring in the Mosuo household, wouldn't that end that families line? To me that would seem to cause a bit of a gender preference to offspring and to adoption in the case of no female offspring. Nadav Hirsch (talk) 21:26, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Possible Vandalism?
''It has been theorized that the matriarchal system of the lower classes may have been enforced by the higher classes as a way of preventing threats to their own power.[citation needed] Since leadership was hereditary, and determined through the male family line, it virtually eliminated potential threats to leadership by having the peasant class trace their lineage through the female line. Therefore, attempts to depict the Mosuo culture as some sort of idealized “matriarchal” culture in which women have all the rights, and where everyone has much more freedom, are based on faulty evidence; the truth is that for much of their history, the Mosuo peasant class were subjugated and sometimes treated as little better than slaves.[citation needed]''

This looks stupid. Maybe some masculinists' slander on the Moso culture. As far as I know, the Mosos are indeed poor but freer than the outside world, as power of government rarely reach there. And this person seems to intentionally mix up the Tibetans with the Mosos, in all the talk about commoners and serfs and a presumed higher political power.

And there's some BS in the "political" section too. Moso men don't enjoy the whole rights of politics -- how would that be possible if Grandma has all the money? As far as I know, there's little concerned with "politics" in Moso society, unlike the outerworld, and if any, it is shared by both genders.


 * Indeed. Cai Hua's book says the opposite: that the elite were matrilineal as well, but married in order to fit in with the Empire. Evidence cited for this is that once the Na ruler's title was removed due to Communism, his family reverted to the 'walking marriage' type relationship. I would suggest deleting this section unless some evidence for it can be found. Ajb (talk) 08:23, 19 August 2010 (UTC)


 * "Indeed. Cai Hua's book says the opposite: that the elite were matrilineal as well, but married in order to fit in with the Empire."
 * Cai Hua's book clearly states that the elite practiced a bilateral system of wealth distribution, with sons inheriting property and social status from fathers and daughters inheriting property and social status from their mothers. This part is even clearly stated in the current version of the article, with citations to Hua's book:
 * "An important historical fact often missed in studies of the Mosuo was that their social organization has traditionally been feudal, with a small nobility controlling a larger peasant population. The Mosuo nobility practiced a "parallel line of descent" that encouraged cohabitation, usually within the nobility, in which the father passed his social status to his sons, while the women passed their status to their daughters. Thus, if a Mosuo commoner female married a male serf, her daughter would be another commoner, while her son would have serf status."
 * This is further supported by anthropologist Ryan Ellsworth's citation of Hua's book in his negative review of sex at dawn:
 * https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/147470491100900305?icid=int.sj-full-text.similar-articles.1
 * "It also bears mentioning that the primary ethnographer describes the Musuo nobility as having traditionally practiced a bilateral system of descent with wealth and status being transmitted from father to son (Hua, 2001)—hardly a situation where paternity certainty would have been a nonissue."
 * As far as I can see, there is no evidence of Hua stating that the elite were matrilineal and that they reverted back to their walking marriages. Unless you can provide evidence for these claims, I would suggest you refrain from making unwarranted assumptions about Mosuo history. This topic is already controversial enough due to sensationalism and misrepresentation of Mosuo culture, as stated in the Myths section. The last thing we need is even more muddying the waters and reducing the reliability of this article. Ducornius (talk) 15:06, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

The Mosuo people are not a separate ethnic group in China, they are Mongolians
The article about the Mosuo people is inaccurate and based on anecdotes rather than factual information. There is a very good page in Chinese at Baidu, which is well written with direct information from the Mosuo people themselves. Please see this page at http://baike.baidu.com/view/262213.htm

In addition, the China Central TV aired a documentary on the Mongolians living in Sichuan in 2008. The Television crew got into great length in visiting Mosuo villages and interviewing the people. When asked who they were, the villagers all answered "we are Mongolian". They showed them some historical artifacts, told them about their story, and at the end showed them their personal ID cards, pointing to the word "Mongolian" at the "Ethnicity" column on the card.

In addition, there have been a few good articles written about the Mosuo people. One was jointly written by the two people in that TV crew, Mr Almaz Borjigin and Ms Bing Lin (copies of the article are available on request). This article, entitled "Mongolians far away from the steppes - in Chinese 远 离 故 乡 的 蒙 古 人", goes into great details about the origin of the Mosuo people and their matriarchal tradition.

Thus, it is essential that all pages related to the Mosuo people be re-written to reflect the facts and respect these people's personal dignity.


 * I think there are certainly people descended from Mongols (from the time of the Yuan) living in Sichuan, the Mosuos are not these people. Their languages are also very different. 81.129.180.47 (talk) 00:37, 22 April 2013 (UTC)


 * In the traditional Chinese way of thinking so are all non Chinese people a kind of Mongolians. Think not so much of it.Jesper7 (talk) 06:44, 22 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I mean there are really still people descended from Mongols (note Mongols rather than Mongolian) living there who still speak the Mongol language. The Mosuo language is not a Mongol language. 81.129.180.47 (talk) 14:52, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

This discussion of whether the Mosuo are a separate ethnic group or are Mongolian seems misplaced. They could clearly be both. This is not a claim, just an observation. One ethnic group can clearly be a subgroup of another. Treating ethinic classifciations as mutuallly exclusive categories makes no sense. As for their identity cards, it is a widespread phenonmenon in oppressive nations to miscategorize peoples ethnicity as a way of erasing them without the mess of committing genocide. Gbambo (talk) 05:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It might be more helpful to think of ethnicity as a sort of 'clade' system with the ability for overlap. Especially since ethinicity can get really messy and can be misleading. 66.45.157.213 (talk) 22:40, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Do Mosuos who move away still practise these traditions?
Do young Mosuos who move away to other parts of China or indeed to other parts of the world still practise their "marriage" customs because I can see men outside of their world wanting to take advantage of Mosuo women, especially young women? Also do European preachers and evangelists see the life-style of Mosuos as sinful? 81.129.180.47 (talk) 00:43, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
 * European preachers and evangelists do not respect indigenous peoples and fighting all their traditions and customs.Jesper7 (talk) 06:34, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Individuals who move to foreign countries must follow the customs prevailing in the country.Jesper7 (talk) 06:34, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

The Fall (TV series)
in the first 5 minutes of the pilot episode of The Fall (british crime drama starring Gillian Anderson) there are 2 characters on a date at a bar talking about marriage and children and settling down and one of them bring up the Mosuo, mentions their walking marriages, but then she says that their language(s?) "have no words for war, murder or rape and there are no jails".

is this just another instance of romanticizing an indigenous culture?

i may be using indigenous incorrectly here.. i know nothing about the mosuo or anthropology for that matter.. being from north america i'm seeing it through our long ugly history of mistreatment. &asymp;Sensorsweep (talk) 19:06, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * In English you have only few letters but a word for all thing. In Chinese you have many letters but have need of sentence to express complex concepts.
 * Men who live in a female-dominated society, will try to behave as women to gain acceptance and respect. And when women do not kill, rape or war, so the men will avoid this. Men kill, rape or war to get for other men's respect.Jesper7 (talk) 21:34, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

The prior comment makes claims that I am unaware of being settled anthropological findings. Violence, especially institutional violence like war, may appear to be male behavoirs simply because societies have routinely made the same logical apportionment of duties maong the genders. A society that makes women wage war risks everything, since loss of a generation of women means loss of one's entire future, since large numbers of women are needed to repopulate a society, while only a handful of men is necessary to do so. Men are also stronger, which for most of history was an essential element of waging successful war. As for the fact there is much less murder and rape, is this not a general commonality among people living remote rural lives of subsistence? No one has anonymity for one thing is such a society. Gbambo (talk) 05:39, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * This isn't to mention that one really famous matrilineal society, the Iroquois, pretty routinely attacked other groups back in the day (and were known to torture captives to death). They didn't wage the same type of warfare that the Old World was known for, but they raided neighbors quite often and even had a way of replacing fallen warriors with captured men. Admittedly, warfare was carried out by men (who also were hunters). The Canella, another matrilineal society, was also very aggressive in the days before they were conquered. And after, there are known instances of gang rapes. Though to be clear, the level of violence, torture, and rape, even between tribes, was nothing like what we see from Europeans (and their descendants). And it is contested if even the most violent of small scale groups can match the violence (by scale) that we see among much larger state-societies. 66.45.157.213 (talk) 22:31, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

"Walking marriage" merger?
"Walking marriage" is now just a redirect to this article, but it used to have some content that is not in this article, visible at. Can and should it be merged into this article, or should it be reverted to a standalone article that covers similar customs in other cultures? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.192.180.160 (talk) 22:27, 17 July 2013 (UTC)


 * If there are other known instances I think it should probably have its own article as long as it goes into some degree of depth.66.45.157.213 (talk) 22:34, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

It is not a myth
What a surprise that western men cannot comprehend a society in which they are not central and do not hold absolute power, where they cannot rule over women and children. Of course you must declare such a social template as non existent. How could you possibly live with the idea that women do not really need you? Pathetic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.32.84.190 (talk) 09:52, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Barted-based?
I'm having trouble with this statement because, from what I'm aware, very few societies have true 'barter' economies, though there might be a few exceptions here and there (that I'm completely unaware of). Most of the time barter is either utilized in situations where war/violence would be the alternative or where people are used to having money but suddenly don't, which doesn't seem to be the case here (I'm pulling from David Graeber). As it is, how goods are moved around from person to person among the Na/Mosuo doesn't seem to be very well described, especially in the economic section (where you'd expect to find it).

And the source that we have that states that the Na/Mosuo are barter-based is encyclopedic in nature. I can't find their source material either. And it doesn't help that I can't seem to find who exactly is behind the site. Just a mysterious "Lugo Lake Mosuo Cultural Development Association" without any associated names or organizations. I have contacted them for their source material and to expand on what they mean by "Barter-based." Hopefully the answers I get will give me a chance to improve the article. In the mean time, does anyone know of any sources on the Na/Mosou that'll help us improve the economic section?66.45.157.213 (talk) 21:53, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

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Household arrangements
In the early '90s I spent 3 days at Lake Lugu and stayed in a traditional family home. The matriarch had a bed on top of a raised chest in the communal dinning and kitchen area. This was because it was in the warmest room in the house (at the time there was snow on the mountain passes) and we were told that the large chest under the bed contained the family treasures. Young women had the rooms nearest the gate that entered the courtyard enclosed by the house. This was so that their boyfriends could visit during the night without disturbing the rest of the family. In some cases men did spend time with their wife's family but were always on call by their maternal family to help with such things as harvesting, working the fields, et. Gambalunga (talk) 12:43, 22 February 2022 (UTC)