But I'm not analyzing indigenous cultures through a Western lens - but the reverse. I'm analyzing current Western cultures through the lens of history - which includes are Paleolithic ancestors who did live in egalitarian enclaves until around the time of the agricultural revolution when dominance hierarchies took hold and patriarchy became the primary social system. And what on earth makes you believe that I think our culture is universal? I've never said anything remotely like that, and in fact, if you ever got that far, you would find in my catalog all sorts of stories that speak to the fallacies of imagining that everyone else in the world lives the way that we do. You are mostly barking up a tree that has nothing to do with my assertions or beliefs. Why do you keep doing that? Interface with what I actually say - not what you assume I believe or mean.
Some of the assertions you are making about indigenous cultures are concerning however because they are so general and sweeping. There are all sorts of indigenous cultures, and the properties and specifics of their particular elements depend on all sorts of things - including how long they have had contact with outsiders/colonizers, but also things like whether they are hunter-gatherers, or farmers, fishers, etc. As already stated multiple times, hunter-gatherers prize their egalitarian cultures even today, but farming (particularly if it requires a plow) changes many of the social and hierarchical aspects of the culture. It also matters whether men tend to move in with their wives families or if women move patrilineally. Then there are all sorts of other nuances. Most hunter-gatherers today don't marry until about 17 for girls and 22 or so for boys. In much of lowland South American tribes practice partible paternity, where two or more men has sex with a woman and are considered the fathers of her child. For the Ache of Paruguay, no marriage or divorce ceremonies are performed. Generally, the man simply moves to the woman’s hearth if he is young, or brings her to his if he is older and powerful. Postmarital residence is strongly matrilocal for young couples but bilocal for older couples. You can't make gross generalizations about "indigenous cultures" to someone like me with a strong foundation in anthropology and expect to be taken seriously.
Here's one story of mine that discusses the differences in what terms like marriage and monogamy mean in other cultures.
"Many of the relationships that are characterized as marriage in other cultures look nothing at all like the concept we have of that institution. Words like marriage, mating, and love are socially constructed phenomena that are culture-specific and have little or no transferable meaning outside of that culture.
Ritualized group sex, mate-swapping, unrestrained casual affairs, and socially sanctioned sequential sex are all reported in cultures that some anthropologists may characterize as monogamous simply because they’ve determined that something that is referred to as “marriage” takes place there. Even today, there is a lot of investment in relationship styles that make sense to us by Western standards and fit our norms."
And none of this speaks one bit to the fact that anthropologists (and not just feminists) have determined that a new social system arose around the time of the agricultural revolution. It had elements of male domination and control over women, but also brought about social classes, hierarchy, and domination of anyone weaker for the first time in human history. And yes, those social systems are problematic. They spread because they were disruptive and caused social upheaval, as well as a lot of inequality that was affirmatively harmful to those on the lower rungs. Remember the Chilean mummies and the Mycenean royalty that were inches taller than the plebes and had a fraction of the bone lesions they had?
A book called Agricultural Societies, the Rise of the State, and Patriarchy says this:
"Today, most anthropologists would agree, regardless of their stance on issues such as the universality of male dominance, that an entirely different order of male dominance became associated with the rise of the large and populous agricultural states organized in terms of classes. The patriarchal systems that emerged brought women for the first time under the direct control of fathers and husbands with few cross-cutting sources of support. Women as wives under this system were not social adults, and women’s lives were defined in terms of being a wife. Women’s mothering and women’s sexuality came to be seen as requiring protection by fathers and husbands. Protecting unmarried women’s virginity appears to go along with the idea of the domestication of women and an emphasis on a radical dichtomy between the public and the private sphere."
Sociological and anthropological systems of patriarchy were noted and discussed by Mills and Wollstonecraft, but they were describing things that had been in play for thousands of years already. They did not invent patriarchy by discussing it. This is honestly anthropology 101 so you continuing to argue against it is irrelevant. It doesn't change the facts. And to be honest, you haven't actually said anything that meaningfully challenges that, other than you can't seem to wrap your head around the fact that I know more about this topic than you do.
