What a great culture to see! I certainly hope the Moso people don't change, but sadly, it's most likely inevitable considering how they are receiving so much media attention. Either way, I love receiving this view of a matriarchal society.

Really interesting, and I'm glad it covered good and bad aspects of the publicity the Moso are getting. It's strange...first I was taught that ancient cultures were matriarchal. Then in college I was taught that no culture has ever been truly matriarchal, because even if family heritage was traced through the mothers, men were property holders and had more say in public affairs/government. But the Moso men interviewed seemed to be saying that men had no status, which seems to support matriarchy but could mean any number of things. In any case, it's great to hear what it means to the Moso themselves, with as little filtering as possible.

The video doesn't really say much of anything about power structures in Mosuo society. They're definitely matrilineal, but there seems to be some dispute among scholars about whether they're matriarchal or whether men hold political power.

I was rather forcefully assured by a professor in my undergrad years that Matriarchy had never existed, no never, not even there, nope. There was no evidence! And that was that!

I didn't do well in that class.

The video has a lot of slippage in the terminology used, which creates some confusion about whether what they're showing is indeed matriarchy. So here's the run-down:
Matrilineal societies trace descent through the child's mother. That is, a child belongs to his/her mother's family. (Compare to patrilineal--descent traced by father; or bilateral--the child belongs to both father's and mother's families.)

Patriarchal societies (as we are all aware I'm sure) are characterized by the centrality of men's roles and lives. Men typically lead families and households, have prominent positions in or even sole access to public and political life. Most often, patriarchal societies will have ideologies of male superiority or dominance, will allow greater access to prestige and power to men than women, etc.

To be properly 'matriarchal', we would have to find evidence that was essentially the reverse of the above--that women dominate positions of power within public and domestic life, that they have special access to prestige and social status that men are denied, that the society would share ideologies of female superiority and value women over men. When anthropologists or other social scientists say there aren't matriarchal societies, this is what they mean.

We do find societies which are more or less egalitarian with respect to gender. That is, male dominance does not seem to be universal, and counterexamples come largely from non-European regions. Also, it does seem that matrilineality, along with other cultural practices such as matrilocality (married couples living with or near the woman's family, thus keeping her close to help and support from her kin), can help give women more status, power, and autonomy than they might tend to have in patrilineal, patriarchal societies. Main point being that there is a more nuanced continuum of kinship practices and gender relations than simply "matriarchal OR patriarchal".

The video is obviously pretty short, and so to be honest we couldn't really make an accurate assessment of the Moso power structure from what was shown. It does appear to be relatively gender-egalitarian, based on what we saw.

Great video. And it seems to show some of the internal conflict, like with the guy at the end who said he was building a guest house and was going to put on a big spectacle to show tourists the "real" Moso culture. (I'm assuming the guy is not Moso, but from elsewhere?)

I hear lots of homophobes using this "heterosexual marriage is the fabric and the rock of society, and allowing gay marriage will cause society to collapse" argument. These people obviously don't realize that marriages are done and have always been done differently in different times and places, and that lots of different "types" of marriages work. I'm fascinated by this idea of a walking marriage. It sounds like the kind of marriage I would want. :o)

I agree with Human_Bean- there's no proof that this is actually a matriarchal society.

Sorry, not interested in a matriarchy, patriarchy, or anything else ending in -archy.

i wouldn't refer to this culture as matriarchal,

i think a more correct term would be matrifocal.

thanks for the video!

>

Also, what little we know of prehistory does not point to matriarchy....even in societies with lots of female goddesses. And not all is speculation, there is quite a lot of gender-informed archaeology these days (google feminist archaeology, or gender and archaeology).

Human Bean is correct; there's really no way to evaluate the political and economic power that women wield in Moso society from this video. To say "matriarchy exists" based on a video clip is not smart, and ignores a lot of good feminist anthropological work that says (unfortunately) it doesn't (and didn't) really exist in the way we would like it to have existed.

Regardless of whether this society is matriarchal or not (and I don't think it truly is), it seems that the post and some of the comments here are celebrating matriarchy as preferable to patriarchy.
There have been too few instances of matriarchy in recorded history to ascertain whether it would be more beneficial to a people than a patriarchy. It would be too easy to accept matriarchy as the perfect answer to the oppressive patriarchy that many peoples have endured. In either case a group is being marginalized based on its gender. From an anthropological standpoint it would be inappropriate to make a value judgment of matriarchal culture but I would assume that an egalitarian society would be preferable and probably ideal.

I'm really interested in Moso/Mosuo people, and have been for about six months, after I Stumbled Upon a website for the preservation of Moso/Mosuo culture and language.

http://www.mosuoproject.org/

I kinda echo the comments here - I don't think the Moso/Mosuo are actually matriarchal - matrilineal, for sure, but I don't know about matriarchal. I also don't think a matriarchy would really be any better than a patriarchy. It's still privileging one group over another, and I think most of us want equality.

However, it's really interesting to see how this society functions and the ways the people who live there feel. I was hoping the girl in the interview would follow up her statement of "I used to sing when I let out the chickens and pigs" (or something close to that), as to what she does now. I assume she no longer sings, but why? I would love to see more of this in the media, to let us have a little window into other people's lives.

So I agree with the comments above about matriarchy not being the exact opposite of patriarchy, and that that perhaps raises the question of the benefit of an "-archy" meaning implies power structure. An "egalitarian" power structure seems a little bit of a contradiction in terms unless social mobility is very easy, and true social mobility is at least what most Americans, even anti-feminist Americans, uphold as an ideal (but with differing levels of ensuing moral muddles).

I love the walking marriage idea! I even want a walking marriage now that I see how my long-distance relationship actually ends up being more emotionally ensnaring and thus romantic than a more accessible one. However, perhaps it is preventing me from better spiritual detachment that some philosophers idealize. ;)

by this digression about my relationship I don't want to distract too much from the topic, but I think that ultimately when one is talking about power, one is also talking about morality or rather the maximum level of inequity that the majority is willing to tolerate, because inequity simply exists. If one is talking about morality, then I really wish some feminist, perhaps even as radical as Mary Daly, would inject philosophy and structured spirituality so that feminists could begin to have blocs as powerful as organized religions do. I even think the walking marriage is a place to start because it seems so much more sustainable than the marriage model we're used to.

Sorry if my comments are radical; I am not a radical person, just a feminist female who tries to see feminism from different perspectives. If feminists on the whole embrace disorganization and not-a-somewhat-monolithic-stance then that is fine; I just think that we will continue to be reactionary and confuse the hell out of the modern teenage boys who might have more than average oxytocin or romance in their bloods, and begin to feel vilified for the sins of their forefathers'. I.e. future feminist men and partners. I've noticed that becuase feminism is youngish, it has to be structured off of what society we do know, and that much of it is still detangling implicit sexism which is still simply reactionary.

I thank others who have already said that assuming a matriarchy would look just like a patriarchy but only the genders reversed is, in itself, patriarchal. Also, the fact that there isn't one doesn't seem to cause any questions about the definition which, I have to say, smells like willfulness in my opinion. Might the purpose be to define matriarchies out of existence in the first place?

Also, based on history, the Moso people have more to worry about with Christian missionaries than they do intermarriage with Han. I read one Christian mission site a year or so ago about how it was Christian duty to "encourage the men to accept their God-given place as head of the household" in such cultures. I don't remember whether it was this one or another one.

Herodotus's "Histories" mentions not only Scythian Amazons but several other examples of ancient women in control of their own destinies.

I'm very glad the video mentions the "expectations of sex tourism," which is something that I think causes problems for the Moso, and which Namu (the singer mentioned at the beginning) mentions in her autobiography. Definitely a threat not to be overlooked.

I'm very glad the video mentions the "expectations of sex tourism," which is something that I think causes problems for the Moso, and which Namu (the singer mentioned at the beginning) mentions in her autobiography. Definitely a threat not to be overlooked.

"matriarchal traditions allow for a type of freedom that modernization believes it invented"

Could someone explain to me what this means? To me it sounds like it translates to: "Freedom and personal agency for women were invented by matriarchal societies and anyone who thinks different is dumb"

I happen to think modernisation (particularly telecommunications) contributed a lot to more women in the world becoming more aware of their power as individuals.

Very interesting to say the least. Many in our society would have us all think that patriarchy and traditional gender roles are a human genetic trait