• Z3k3@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I always read this type of statement as man = species.

    I know this particular thinking is falling out of fashion but it’s not totally dead yet

    • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      Thing is, statements like the one in the post are just as ignorant as the claimed “enemy”.

      You know what else takes 28 days? A moon cycle. We have absolutely no context, what this means. A period tracker bone is a perfectly valid hypothesis, but without any proof or context nothing more than this. It could have been used for moon phases, sheep counting, trade, or simply for testing stone knives.

      • bouh@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Seeing the reactions in this thread, it does seem that a lot of men are indeed enemies of women. Why would it be so hot otherwise to discuss this?

        • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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          10 months ago

          And this reaction of yours is a prime example of jumping to conclusions based on political views.

          You can argue, that this bone was used for 400 different things. Without context, arguing that it’s definitely something about menstruation is just pseudo-feminist circle jerking. They just choose this interpretation because it fits their views and goals. That’s unscientific.

          What you’re doing here is also not much better. Instead of actually engaging with the argument I brought, you just assume, that everyone who disagrees with a pseudo-feminist interpretation of a bone, must be the enemy. That is not exactly scientific.

          • bouh@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            you talked about enemity first, remember? you have this view of a fight, and that anyone who dare say that a woman did something and not a man, is fighting men.

            You have a very defensive position. Which means you feal attacked. You say it directly when you talk about “enemy”.

            You are the problem my friend. Your first comment is aa problem. And the support it receives is concerning and scary.

            • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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              10 months ago

              Nope, I just pointed out, that an absolute statement like the one above is not valid. And the “enemy” I brought up, was used as a description of the position shown by the proponents of the menstruation bone absolutism.

              And labeling me as a “problem”, without even an attempt at telling me where I might be wrong is pretty, well, bold?

              Think about it, I write, that absolutism is not good, and your first response is “you are evil because you dare question whatever I happen to believe in”.

              You don’t help feminism like that. And that’s pretty sad.

              • WldFyre@lemm.ee
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                10 months ago

                Professor: Maybe it was a woman? Just consider it with an open mind.

                You: This gender absolutism is the enemy™!

    • Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      10 months ago

      This specific instance probably.

      But the point is soo much of history ignores the female perspective (or the non-european perspective). Sometimes intentionally like all the female scientists that contribute to foundational studies and don’t get their name on the published paper.

      And this is really damaging; I have a family member that legitimately believes that european-descent men are the smartest throughout history (when I brought up the Islamic Golden Age as a counter example he accused it of being propaganda).

      American schools are so bad at teaching diverse history. So many still struggle with the basic truths about Columbus and the Natives.

      • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        So I what you are saying that we should ban all DEI activity, ban a bunch of books, and regulate Women’s bodily autonomy? /s

      • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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        10 months ago

        Look at the ancient structures found throughout the world. The only one I know of in non-Mediterranian Europe is Stonehenge which, while impressive, is some stones hauled over a great distance and placed is an astronomically significant manner. Then you have pyramids and ziggurats in just about every other region except Northern Europe, North America, Australia, and Antarctica, ancient cities on every continent except Northern Europe, Australia, and Antarctica, Polynesians developing a means of marine navigation that is effective across the southern hemisphere (the Norse had a system that was effective in the North Atlantic), Australia having an oral history that has evidence of recording events that go back at least 10000 years (while surviving in some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet). When you look at it, significant achievements in ancient Northern Europe were pretty sparse. We do seem to have caught up in the modern era, though.

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Agreed, when speaking of the distant past, I always assume that by “man” they mean “mankind” aka human… Not males.

      In the grand scheme, I don’t think it matters whether the thing was done by a male or female, the fact that it happened is the interesting thing about it.

      I’m 100% positive that both men (males) and women contributed to these things, and it is impossible to know how much influence each sex had on any given thing, so I’m not sure why the sex of the ancient person who did it, matters.

      • krashmo@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I’m not sure why the sex of the ancient person who did it, matters.

        Make that a common sentiment and a good chunk of the division surrounding modern discourse goes away. People care way too much about genitals both in the past and present.

        • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          Not only what your genitalia is, but what you do with it, seems to be a top priority for far too many people. They’re not your genitals, so maybe don’t worry about it?

          But “God” or something. I don’t know.

          • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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            10 months ago

            I didn’t take it as a correction. More of a clarification. I omitted some extraneous detail that they added. I felt it was implied well enough by context that it didn’t need to be said, obviously they wanted to add more clarity to the statement.

            In my mind the two statements are identical, except that mine relies on context and theirs is a bit more explicit in what is said.

            • JungleJim@sh.itjust.works
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              10 months ago

              “clearly wasn’t”

              I see now, you just phrase things abruptly in a way that SEEMS rude but clearly isn’t. My mistake. Have a nice day.

              • krashmo@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                You figured out what it meant. That’s clear enough for communication purposes imo. You’re welcome to your own interpretation though

      • bouh@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        You are ignorant of recent history then.

        Men did do their best to segregate women in the 18th and 19th century. And they succeeded. Even in the language.

        Women fighting for women to be recognized in history is an important fight for women to be respected and recognized for their doing, because even now they aren’t.

        And I’m not saying it’s an all men problem. It’s a society problem.

        • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          Oh, wow. Um…

          We’re talking about bone carvings. And you’re well into or after the bronze age.

          What I’m referring to is significantly prior to anything you’re talking about. The events you’re referring to are a few hundred years ago, part of recorded history, while I’m talking about the early days of mankind, well before the printing press, paper, or even writing instruments like the fountain pen or quill.

          When you go back, well over 1000 years ago, more like 3000+ years ago, why does it matter if a thing was done by a human person with male genitalia or female genitalia?

          That was my statement. Either you vastly misunderstood, or you’re so occupied by making a point, you didn’t care.

          • bouh@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            We’re talking about history where mysoginy left a big footprint because it was made by men that incapable of thinking that women could be more than what they were in their time.

            Exactly like today. You’re asking why it matters whether it was a man or a woman, yet this whole conversation sparked because someone said that it could be a woman.

            That’s conservatism for you.

            • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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              10 months ago

              I’m not disputing the fact that misogyny was (and is) and big problem, that women’s contributions were either disregarded or coopted by some guy and credit taken away from the actual contributor.

              That happened. A lot.

              But in the times before the written history books, we should be less concerned about the gender of an individual who we think used a thing in a new/innovative way for the time. I don’t think that studies of bone carvings or other ancient artifacts, being referred to as an “achievement of man” should imply, or was ever meant to imply, that it was done by someone with a penis. In that context, in all cases, for all intents and purposes “man” should, and as far as I know, is, thought of as “human” or “mankind”.

              This isn’t a debate about the sociopolitical unfairness towards women, it’s a semantic argument about using the term “man” to refer to a human individual or someone who is a part of mankind. Bluntly, I took the statement in the OP as a tongue in cheek joke by the professor. They know that’s not what it meant, and used the assumption that “man” = “mankind” as the juxtaposition to subvert expectations, to crack wise about it. The same way someone would say “you know what sucks about twenty six year olds? There’s twenty of them” where the premise directs you to think of someone who is 26, and the punchline indicates that your assumption of it being a statement about people who are 26 years old, was wrong. That’s what makes it funny. Granted, that’s not very funny, but it’s the structure of a very common type of joke.

              That’s what’s in the OP.

              Instead, here we are talking about women’s suffrage for a field where they probably only remark about the gender of someone as a footnote.

    • KombatWombat@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      That’s the correct interpretation of that use of the word, and the quote in the post is meaning to use it in that way before pretending it’s a gotcha.

      The term man (from Proto-Germanic *mann- “person”) and words derived from it can designate any or even all of the human race regardless of their sex or age. In traditional usage, man (without an article) itself refers to the species or to humanity (mankind) as a whole.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_(word)

    • Mwalimu@baraza.africa
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      10 months ago

      Same here. My native langauge is not gendered and I rarely associate “man” in academic spaces with “gender” category. I usually need more info to tilt to gender in discussions.

      • multifariace@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Which is your native language? I keep looking for ways to ungender my english if possible. Removing gender from language feels more honest.

          • Gabu@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            False, English is a gendered language that lost most of its gender usage. Some words still retain gender, such as blond/blonde.

            • robotica@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              🤦‍♂️Yes, in that sense, English could be gendered. But what it actually means is that English used to be gendered and retains some gendered words from that time.

              Another example, Russian has noun cases, but not the vocative case. However, it does have two words that have a vocative case from when the language as a whole did use to have the vocative case - Бог (Боже) and Господь (Господи) - but that doesn’t mean that Russian has it now.

              Also, blond/blonde are pronounced the same so the distinction is lost in speech and probably soon in writing as well, and words like fiancé/fiancée (which are also pronounced the same), widow/widower, actor/actress do not signify grammatical gender by itself.

          • multifariace@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Why do I have to know the gender of a person in order to talk about them in third person singular? On more days than not, there is conversation about someone I never met where there is an irrelevant sidebar to clarify gender before communication can continue. I find this relic of the language to be inefficient, pointless and annoying. Daily life would be a lot easier with a non-gendered word for referring to a single person in third person. Languages like Spanish, with gendered nouns, is confusing for even native speakers. I am fascinated by how different languages have different ways of being complicated as well as by their phonology and syntax. I asked my question because I was looking into how other languages use gender and came to the conclusion that none were free from that complication. So I agree with you so far. All languages have gender.

        • Mwalimu@baraza.africa
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          10 months ago

          Swahili. If you want to translate “she/he went to the river”, you say “Alienda mtoni” which collapses she/he into the subject A- (Alienda) to mean “the person”. You always need context to use a gendered word (like mwanamke for woman) otherwise general conversation does not foreground it. There is literally no word for he/she in Swahili, as far as I know.

        • Gabu@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          That shows you have no idea what grammatical gender is. It has no relation to your social behavior or what you have between your legs.

          • multifariace@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            I’m not sure if you were responding to my question or if you are presumptuous and angry. I hope you have a nice day.

    • anyhow2503@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I’m pretty sure that was the intent behind the original wording. The interpretation of this being the remnant of a female human makes sense to me, but as this is an anecdotal account of Sandi Toksvig’s time in university, we really have no idea if this is a good example of the lack of a female perspective in anthropology or just a convenient strawman to make a point.

      In any case, cool meme.

    • bouh@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I don’t know about English, but in French in the 19th century men did enforce the use of homme (men) instead of humain (human) in the déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, and in the language, because they did want to segregate women. It was a purposeful and deliberate decision.

      I am convinced it’s exactly the same in English.

      • Z3k3@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        In the context of prehistory it’s to my knowledge taken to be short for mankind and feck all else. I agree its ambiguous in the modern age which is likely why it’s dieing out. Science doesn’t like ambiguous wordage

        In history where we have names and context I absolutely agree and it is good to see the important women in history finally getting brought to the forefront

  • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    I mean the lunar cycle is roughly 29 days with the argument that it’s 28 if you don’t count the new moon.

    I realize this is a neat thought idea but it I think best demonstrates how easy it is to jump to conclusions.

        • Dharma Curious@startrek.website
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          10 months ago

          I just finished TLA. I’d never seen it, and now I have, and it’s gone, and my life feels empty. Why would you bring this up? Why would you hurt me so?

          Korra is good, but it doesn’t hit the same, and 70 years is not enough to fully industrialize a society.

          • po-lina-ergi@kbin.social
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            10 months ago

            70 years is not enough to fully industrialize a society

            Russia, China

            Also, I imagine industry in general becomes significantly easier when you have people that can summon construction projects out of the ground or weld with their bare hands.

            Also, society isn’t industrialised. One city state within society is industrialised.

            Also, the fire nation was already undergoing industrialisation at the time of ATLA.

            • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Seriously, the Fire Nation had mass produced internal combustion engines in ATLA. They put them in their mass produced tanks. Not to mention the fleet of ships with smokestacks indicating they probably had either diesel or steam powered ships. The Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes are both still in the process of industrializing, but the Fire Nation was already pretty much there, and the United Republic is primarily a Fire Nation breakaway state.

              • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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                10 months ago

                More than likely steam. Don’t need fuel to burn when when you can just make fire with magic. And we know people get employed for their bending ability since Mako got a job lightning-bending at the power plant.

          • AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Look up the Meiji Restoration in Japan. They went from a feudal, near-medieval society to an industrial society between 1870 and 1920, by the time they were done they are participating in both world wars.

            You actually don’t have to suspend your disbelief so hard here, it’s the most believable part of the story of people who can bend elements with tai chi

            • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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              10 months ago

              Even if you take a Western lens to it and say ATLA takes place around 1850 that still puts Korra in the 1920s (and the air nation falling around 1750) and the only thing that really would be innacurate for comparing their timeline to ours is the lack of trains connecting the cities, at least in the earth kingdom where theres a lot of land to be crossed.

              I suppose if you assume that Ba Sing Sa is self-sufficient with it’s large farms in the outermost ring then it makes sense from a tactical perspective to have fewer points of entry to the city. You’d also have to assume there’s either significant brain-drain from the villages into the city or that the villages keep to themselves so much that they have no need for better transportation between them

              I’m not finding any good sources right now but some of the earliest trains were actually a singular railcar on wooden rails pushed by 1-2 people in much the same manner that the trains in Ba Sing Sa do, just sans Earth bending of course

              • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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                10 months ago

                I over thought this a lot and the only conclusion I could come to is the earth nation should be covered in railway lines. Extremely shortly after some of the first viable self-propelled steam locomotives were invented the first railwaya were built, and within 50 years entire countries were covered in railway lines connecting the smallest towns both that existed before the railroads and many built by the railroads.

                The existence of bending would only accelerate this development since right of way would be rapidly built through earth bending, and locomotives could simply have a closed system of water to be bent to produce propulsion. An earth bender could also spin a stone flywheel attached to gears to produce propulsion too. Or combine these with steam propulsion to overcome the limitations of early steam engines and the poorer iron and steel alloys of the time

                • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  TLOK does depict a railway network having been set up through the Earth Kingdom after the war. The Earth Kingdom as a whole is still very far behind in industrialization, though.

          • daltotron@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            I think that most of the criticisms directed at the industrialization and mecha stuff is mostly just a byproduct of the worldbuilding in korra broadly not being very good. Not even necessarily bad a lot of the time, but just not as good as avatar.

            Bending styles became more homogenized and choreography is worse, everything became a kind of 1920’s hong kong steampunk, and lots of the city shots, there’s basically nobody walking around. You have things like tasers and huge mechas, but huge mechas and tasers without explanations for how they’re getting such dense energy storage, or circumventing some real world problems with those technologies in a 1920’s context. With various forms of bending, you can kind of get around the energy density problem a little bit, since it’s just straight up magic that seems like it violates conservation of energy, but with korra’s stuff, that doesn’t apply a lot of the time.

            Lots of little things like that kinda give the impression that the world is made of paper mache, or that a lot of things are just kind of done because they’re a cool idea, rather than because they’re both a cool idea and make a little bit of sense. I’m not really opposed to the idea of a car in the setting, but it strikes me as quite a bit easier to power a car if you have a mobile human power plant that can produce large amounts of energy. I think it’s also kind of a shame to disconnect the tech from this for a different reason, as well, and that’s because it means that the bending is kind of, less broadly useful and applicable. It takes up less space in the setting, it has less utility, it’s not as cool, and the show doesn’t really end up giving many good replacements for it as time goes on.

            That’s really nitpicking, though. I think the broader point is just that there wasn’t much done in the series to really show the continuity between ATLA and korra (do not mistake this for fanservice), and they really feel like different shows. Feels kind of like about a quarter of the reason why people didn’t like the last jedi, but that’s kind of a whole other deal. Anyways, that being the case, korra’s more of a stand alone kind of deal, and I think it kind of falls flat on it’s own, because it just isn’t very good and I don’t like it as much as the OG.

            You also get a lot of people that will blame all the problems on the show that it kept getting renewed season after season without any real knowledge of the future viability of the show, but I think I would still just blame the writing, in that respect. You can make a good, contiguous series of media based only on good improv, only on good setup and payoff, external to the idea that the show has multiple locked-in seasons. I don’t think it matters too much, if you’re good enough. Main example there is probably just venture bros, though.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      In English common law, a “lunar month” traditionally meant exactly 28 days or four weeks, thus a contract for 12 months ran for exactly 48 weeks

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_month

      So, depending on the legal framework, a 28 day marker could be very useful. If they were actually tracking the moon, you’d think it would be 29 units even though a lunar month can vary between about 29.1 and 29.9 days. Then again, 28 notches on a stick means 29 sections, so…?

      It’s interesting that a woman’s menstrual cycles is approx 28.1 days on average, with a standard deviation of 3.95 days. That means 28 days is a lot closer to the average menstrual cycle than the average lunar month. But, the standard deviation is a lot greater.

    • ChexMax@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Other than tides, why do you need to know when the next full moon is? And can’t you just look at the moon and see how close it is waning to the full moon?

      Not saying the calendar is definitely a woman’s, but wanting to know when you’re going to start leaking blood onto everything near you seems like a good reason to track a period.

      • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        I mean you can look at the moon to get a general sense, but if you want to be more precise then I’d use the new moon as the start and count the days until the next new moon.

        As far as why, I mean the seasons generally follow the lunar cycle so it would be a way to count the seasons and time and plan and do literally anything you’d need to do that you’d track time for.

        I bet you’d even want to track your menstrual cycle, I just wouldn’t limit it to that.

        I think the real “issue” with the OP statement and what my response is meant to say is that it doesn’t have to be either or.

      • Rinox@feddit.it
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        10 months ago

        So, since Islam uses the lunar calendar, you’re telling me that the reason why they use it is to track menstruations?

        Good to know they are attentive to their women’s needs

        • ChexMax@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I’m saying you don’t need to make marks on a bone to track the lunar cycle… you just look up.

  • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    A woman’s cycle varies between 15 and 45 days, averaging 28.1 days, but with a standard deviation of 3.95 days. That’s a hell of a lot of variability from one woman to the next. And the same variability can be experienced by a large minority of women from one period to the next, and among nearly all women across the course of their fertile years.

    On the other hand, the moon’s cycle (as seen from Earth) takes 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes to pass through all of its phases. And it does so like clockwork, century after century.

    Of the two, I am finding the second to have a much stronger likelihood of being the reasoning behind the notches.

    Strange how gender-bigotry style historical revisionism and gender exceptionalism seems to get a wholly uncritical and credulous pass when it’s not done by a man.

    • Seasoned_Greetings@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      While I agree with you that the teacher in this post is wrong about what this is, I don’t think labeling “gender bigotry” indiscriminately as something both sexes do under one umbrella is accomplishing anything but minimizing the struggle women have endured for basically all of human existence up until the last few decades.

      Personally, I wouldn’t fault this woman for thinking what she does if she’s willing to accept a broader explanation later, given that women have literally been sold as property up until a couple hundred years ago.

      Women have the right to at least posit the ways they as a group have been held down, and that includes accepting their indignation and allowing them grace for when they’re wrong, because without those things they won’t actually learn the truth.

      Further than that, I think it’s necessary for women learning now to have the same realization this one did that women throughout all of history save for this recent tiny sliver have been oppressed. Even if it’s built on an incidentally faulty premise, that doesn’t mean the realization itself is wrong.

      Covering up the discourse by labeling the process of realization as “gender bigotry” is itself an attempt at erasure, and very much puts you on the side of the oppressors, just because you think it’s distasteful to have this realization yourself.

      I’m sure gender bigotry exists in the direction of women towards men. This ain’t it.

      • reric88🧩@beehaw.org
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        9 months ago

        The gender-bigotry comes from the “what man needs to mark 28 days?” There’s snark behind the comment, and it’s unnecessary. That said, a woman could be just as likely as a man to mark moon phases. But saying “man” doesn’t mean “male” when talking about us as a species from my understanding. Seems like a broader term to use which includes the entirety of the homo-whatevers.

        I’m just some guy here and am not educated in this stuff, though!

    • SqueakyBeaver@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      I doubt the teacher really believed this, and they were likely striving to just open their students’ minds to the idea that most innovations are probably assumed to be made by men

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          10 months ago

          This is a class on anthropology, the point was to challenge the assumptions made when interpreting artifacts/history with little context. No one made anything up lol

      • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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        10 months ago

        Why not use a real and confirmed example, then? Because they do exist.

        Making a story up - such that it can be actively undermined - certainly does the job poorly at best, and actively hurts the objective at worst.

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      10 months ago

      Other than tides, why do you need to know when the next full moon is? And can’t you just look at the moon and see how close it is waning to the full moon?

      Not saying the calendar is definitely a woman’s, but wanting to know when you’re going to start leaking blood onto everything near you seems like a good reason to track a period. Plenty of women are regular like clockwork, I was at 26 days almost exactly for years.

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        10 months ago

        If you start to notice one thing happens pretty regularly and another thing happens regularly but on a larger scale… Say the monthly moon phases and the seasons, you can use the more frequent one to roughly track the less frequent one.

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        10 months ago

        There’s both practical and more spiritual/philosophical reasons for this.

        Before artificial light sources, especially electrical ones, moon light let people stay productive longer whilst outside. This was especially important for comunal activities like hunting, harvests or celebrations too. Keeping track of moon cycles is thus valuable for preparation in scheduling. And once you do that it can also be used to organize other social events around that. Similar to how our modern calendars and schedules are built around important fixed events.

        The moon and sun as celestial bodies also gained prominent religious and mystical significance in ancient cultures. Remember that people didn’t actually know what the moon or sun were in the modern scientific sense. But for some strange reason these mystical glowing disks on which people were so reliant kept rising with unerring synchronicity. The inquiry into the movements on the firmament lead many a civilization down the paths of observation, record keeping and math too.

    • bouh@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      So you’re arguing that people would have more use to write moon cycles than women cycles? And you talk about bigotry?!

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    10 months ago

    i think they mean ‘man’ as in ‘mankind’. also any ideas why would they carve it into bone and not bark or something more flat?

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      Likely durability. A bone and a stick can both be thrown into a bag and carried with you, but a bone is much more durable than a stick. It’ll be less likely to break or wear down as it rubs against everything else in your bag.

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      Sure, you can say “man” means “mankind”, but when you use gendered language like that, most people picture a couple of caveMEN sitting around a fire carving bones rather than caveHUMANS (edited – I think it would benefit us to picture all genders around this hypothetical fire). Even though we try to use gendered language in a neutral way, listeners will often perceive the language in a gendered way.

    • Rowan@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Likely durability and portability. Think of it as something they use month over month and just mark the day with something like a string band. Bone would be light enough to keep with you, strong enough to not break, and common enough to be available for household use.

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        10 months ago

        no i mean, by the people ‘who consider it’. i think the speaksr didnt understand that theyre saying it’s mankind others are talkint abkut

        • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          Oh but the word mankind in itself overlooks women. We’re all supposed to be saying humankind now.

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            10 months ago

            etymologically speaking im not even sure if thats right. i heard somethibg like this and they either said woman doesnt derive from man or that man used to mean woman and man but woman became its own thing, cant recall

            • John_McMurray@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              “man” in the contexts not directly related to being a male, means human. “Man” used to have a prefix vaguely pronounced “were” and “woman” used to be “wifman”. Female werewolf would be a “wifwolf” then. So anyways, “Man” never changed it’s meaning, it really just gained an additional one, and yet again, whiners need to read a book.

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    IIRC “Calendar” was one of the proposed solutions, but the bone actually had a lot more than 28 holes. It’s one of the reasons it’s purpose is considered unknown.

    I always find this particular strain of antiintellectualism deeply ironic, because it claims to oppose women being forgotten, but the premise assumes the “scientists” are all male.

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      I don’t see it assuming scientists are all men. Women are just as capable of internalized misogyny and just as capable of being dense as men.

      With the willendorf Venus, it wasn’t until a woman who had already had children worked with it, that they suspected it might be a pregnancy self portrait. There had been women already there, but none who knew what a pregnant person looks like from that perspective.

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          I’ve never been 7+ months pregnant (not a sad thing in my case, no worries), but I can 100% imagine that it feels like being the willendorf Venus. I love the idea of some woman however long ago half annoyed and half teasing making it and giving it to the father, saying “this is what I am now,” though.

          • bane_killgrind@lemmy.ml
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            10 months ago

            “never more than 2 weeks pregnant” would be much less alarming, but it does have the implication of yeeting blastocysts at the grim reaper, however many or few…

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        I really like that idea, in principle, of a sculptor with no reflection to work from doing a self-portrait. But seriously, even somebody having triplets doesn’t look like that unless they’re like… super morbidly obese already. Even accounting for foreshortening, I mean damn. That kind of figure is a strictly modern invention. But maybe, it’s still an interesting idea. But seriously.

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          I’ve got a bmi of 19 and it doesn’t look so significantly different looking down when I’m not pregnant, lol. I even asked my husband to confirm it wasn’t hella body dysmorphia. I, uh, am not going to post a picture, but you can plug various values into this visualizer and change the angle of view. It has always been pretty accurate for me.

  • Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.world
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    For some reason I thought they meant they carved the calendar on their own bone and thought “damn that’s metal af”.

    Anyway, don’t farmers also need to tell the date? Was this bone from before we started doing that?

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        10 months ago

        First off: Everyone who played the historical documentary Brutal Legend knows that metal was a gift from the gods.

        Second: Miocene epoch heavy metal is my favorite genre!

  • Demonen@lemmy.ml
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    It occurs to me that the solution might be to start referring to men as “wermen” again, and revert “men” to it’s gender neutral roots. That also means we can have a bunch of other prefixes for other genders.

    Languages are fun.

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    “man” as in human kind.

    I agree the linguistics here are unfortunate, but here we are, and that word, in that context, is normally gender neutral.

    Also, 28 day calendar probably means it’s the moon.

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      It’s important to note how we got here. In old English man just meant human. Wereman meant male and wifman meant female. Over time that “were” prefix got dropped and man now means male but the ambiguous meaning of humankind stuck around. In fact “human” comes from old french “of man”, again the non-gendered use of the word man.

      The point is to fix all these problems we just have to bring back the “were”. The progressive werewolves are way ahead of us on this issue.

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      I’m not seeing a comment pointing out why 28 days isn’t a moon thing, so I’ll take a shot. If you watch new moon to new moon or full moon to full moon, it’s a 29.5 day cycle. It’s true, the moon’s orbit is only 28 days. However, that’s 360° of travel. We don’t track the moon against the stars for its cycle though, it’s tracked against the sun. A full moon sits opposite the sun, a new moon in line with the sun, etc. So, in that 28 day orbital period, the earth has also orbited about 1/13 of an orbit around the sun, changing the position of the sun against the stars . That means the moon has to travel an extra 28° of orbit to reach the new moon position again - about an extra day an a half.

      • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        You mean apart from them occuring at set intervals? The length of time between the average women’s periods is 28 days, but the moon’s 28 day cycle is 100% reliable, and always happens regardless of individual stressors. Having a regular solar event that confirms you’re accurately keeping track of days is pretty practical.

  • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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    I’m a woman and I have never needed to chart 28 days.

    that screenshot up there reads like some academic person with too much time on their hands trying too hard to congratulate themselves for solving some anthropological mystery.

    • workerONE@lemmy.world
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      But since before you were born people knew how long a woman’s menstrual cycle lasts. Most likely the Internet existed when you became an adult and thought about measuring things. The society you lived in had existing calendars that you were aware of if/when you had a menstrual cycle. You’ve never needed to “chart 28 days” but someone who lived long long ago may have wondered and they would have had no frame of reference so they decided to count.

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      Yeah, I don’t get it either. Weren’t most, if not all, ancient calendars lunar based? Far easier to work out a 28 day cycle than a 365.25 day cycle.

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      10 months ago

      Sandi is a comedian and presenter of UK show QI, not a researcher. She’s literally just talking about an epiphany.

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          Believe it or not, in civilized countries it’s common for people to get higher education for the sake of education.

          Her predecessor on QI, mr. Stephen Fry, was also an OxBridge fellow – known as one of Britain’s greatest comedians.

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      I’m a woman and I have never needed to chart 28 days.

      Is this because you don’t care when your next period is? Or because you don’t need to record it to remember it?

      I can imagine a modern woman might not care if she always has menstrual products on hand or nearby. But, it might have been more meaningful in ancient times when there might have been more taboos associated with menstruation, plus it might have been more important to know as part of family planning. And, it might have been much less convenient to carry around whatever was needed to handle menstruation.

      Also, in a modern world where calendars are everywhere, I can imagine someone might say “ok, so my next period will be in early July”. But, there was a time when days and months were not tracked, or were only tracked by priests, etc. In that kind of situation, I could imagine it might be useful to count the days until the next period was expected. On the other hand, a primitive society probably spends a lot more time outdoors and sees the moon a lot more often, so it might be just as easy to go “ok, so my next period will be when the moon’s 3/4 full”.

      28 notches means that the bone had 29 sections, which more closely matches a lunar month than a typical menstrual period. But, I could see it being used either way.

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    10 months ago

    I keep track of my girlfriend’s ovulation because she can’t be bothered to do it. I don’t want her to get pregnant either. Just pointing that out.

    • ChexMax@lemmy.world
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      I hear you but it’s far more likely for a woman to track her own period than for a nearby man to track it. You’re the reason this professor felt the need to give this example. Because men assume all progress and intellectual pursuits were obviously sought by men. You guys think it’s the automatic default, and even the suggestion that a woman might have accomplished something is met with, “hey! It could have been a man!”

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        There’s some faulty reasoning here.
        Parent comment challenges the assumption that the marks were made by a female, and you say “you’re the reason the professor felt the need to give this example”, although the example was given in order to challenge assumptions of gender.
        OP is actually learning from the example if anything, since they are challenging gender assumptions.
        On top of that, your use of “you guys”, and your generalisations about men are evidence of the exact type of biased thinking this example is trying to challenge.

  • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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    Why wouldn’t a male have figured out a lunar cycle and tried to track the moon? Not that the female explanation is lesser in any regard, but why exclude all possibilities?

  • GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I am sure the comments on this meme community post in a niche social media site will not be filled with butthurt men’s rights activists.

    • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      You could have at least used the term “misogynist” so as to not imply that men’s rights are a bad thing.

      • TurtleJoe@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Hey, we found one!

        Not seriously, “men’s rights activists” are a specific group of people that only exist to complain about and hate women. They don’t care about men’s rights, they are anti-feminists.

        If you genuinely didn’t know this, then I’d love to know what Internet rock You’ve been hiding under. If you’re trying to concern troll, fuck off, MRAs are fucking scum.

        -signed, a man.

        • Quastamaza@lemmy.ml
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          Feels good to go with the flow, doesn’t it? And going for the audience’s applause? And while we’re at it, what are “women’s rights activists”, then? The undisputed incarnation of everything that is right and good in the world, I suppose?

          -signed, a man, like you.

        • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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          I’ve definitely heard of misogynists, and of misogynists disguising themselves as legitimate men’s advocates, but I’d never heard of “men’s rights activists” as a specific group of misogynists before this.

          Without this explanation, had someone said “men’s rights activists are misogynists,” I would have thought they were a misandrist, because it sounds like a general descriptor and not a specific group.

          So what do you call it when someone who’s not a misogynist advocates for equal treatment in the areas where men get the short end of the stick?

          • candybrie@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Generally, they’re described as part of the men’s liberation movement. The men’s movement split decades ago into men’s rights movement, which often comes at the issue from a more conservative premise that views feminism as going to far and eroding men’s rights, and the men’s liberation movement which generally is more liberal and wants to critically look at traditional masculinity and how those expectations may harm men.

            • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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              10 months ago

              Hmm, intuition implies the inverse. I would have guessed men’s liberation means “liberation from women” and thus misogyny. I guess unintuitive terminology is just the way things go.

  • Emmy@lemmy.nz
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    All the idiots claiming it’s the moon and giving more details about women’s cycles are missing the point of the quote.

    Which is spelled out, but I’ll place it here.

    The idea that it was a woman is just as valid as it being a man, but man is always assumed.

    The accuracy of the claim is not at issue. The assumption is.

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    10 months ago

    a man with a wife.

    it’s good to know when it’s time to spend couple of days hunting the sabre tooth tiger.

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          Oh no my loved one is about to experience terrible pain that comes every few weeks, better complain about how this affects me and go do my own thing for awhile

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            10 months ago

            More like he needs to know when to take a break when she’s most fertile so they can procreate. He’s already gone by the time she’s having “her time of the month”