r/BeAmazed • u/medievalpeasant_ • Aug 09 '26

History The Tuareg people (despite being predominantly Muslims) have a culture where men veil their faces, while women do not

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u/babynotifs Aug 09 '26

Touaregs are Muslim but their society has a matriarchal structure where lineage, property, and inheritance pass through the mother.

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u/Lukainka Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 11 '26

It's matrilinear, not matriarchal. It's a patriarchal society with matrilinear kinship.

Edit: for more depth see comment below from u/AdAlternative7148

To describe Tuareg social organization as “matriarchal” is to conflate matrilineal descent reckoning with the institutional distribution of gendered authority. A more analytically defensible formulation would characterize it as a predominantly androcentric sociopolitical regime embedded within a matrilineally articulated kinship structure, wherein descent, filiative identity, property transmission, and certain successionary prerogatives are mediated through the uterine line without thereby constituting a generalized inversion of patriarchal power relations.

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u/[deleted] Aug 09 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/FragrantMoose4000 Aug 09 '26

The terminology sounds similar, but they describe completely different things.

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u/Veritech_ Aug 09 '26

Much like social democracy and democratic socialism

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u/RaisedByBooksNTV Aug 09 '26

I definitely don't know what either of those are and need to learn.

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 Aug 09 '26

Democratic socialism basically just means what it says, socialism enacted through democratic means. It's really a redundant name in theory (but not in practice), as since socialism is inherently democratic. The entire point of it is to bring democracy into the financial aspects of our life, just as democracy in our legal/governmental aspects of life has made things better compared to kings. That's why you see so many people say the Soviet's and other similar systems weren't actually socialist-much less communist, they weren't democratic in choosing the government.

Social Democracy essentially just means a type of system similar to parts of northern or western Europe. A typical capitalist system but with heavy social safety nets and strong regulations over companies to ensure they operate on the public's interests. Also a name that shouldn't need to exist but does, the original idea of a capitalist democracy is that corporations absolutely need strong regulations to ensure they do not cause more problems than they solve. But over time that has been whittled away until there's barely any regulations in list capitalist countries. Social Democracy is usually just a code word for systems like Norway or Sweden. High standard of living, healthcare and child care paid for by taxes, along with a high enough tax rate to pay for all of those positive things. But it's still a capitalist system at the end of the day, not much different from America as it was before Reagan/Nixon.

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u/Unusual-Locksmith832 Aug 09 '26

Yes but I think it's on purpose. If more people knew you can actually have democratic socialism/communism, they might be more open to the idea instead of thinking it always has to be a Soviet style dictatorship.

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u/Zanain Aug 09 '26

The amount of people I've encountered who absolutely refuse to believe that there is even one type of market socialism let alone a bunch of them is absurd.

People are absolutely married to the idea that socialism=planned economy, including some leftists.

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26

Yes exactly, it's so unbelievably frustrating. Democratic Market Socialism is by far the most likely version that could be enacted in the real world. But first you have the vast majority of people who don't even know about it as you said. And worse the leftists who insist that it's actually just capitalism on disguise and totally a betrayal of Marxist principals. It's absolutely infuriating, they want to just immediately jump to some utopian full communist system overnight, with some genuinely arguing that democracy is bad because of current capitalist democracies being corrupt. They genuinely believe it's right to want a takeover of the government by a small party of people dictating what's best. That's what they call the "will of the people".... Ugh sry just hate them so much.

Actual socialism, under a free market democratic system, could absolutely be achieved in the real world. It makes no sense that any Marxist of any kind isn't supporting that as the first step. And not as a temporary 5 to 30 year step but a likely permanent system that will last for decades to centuries until people decide they want to move to actual stateless and money-less economy.

All market socialism would really mean is getting rid of the stock market. Instead of all of the profits of a business going to stockholders it would go to the workers. Along with that every business would be governed democratically by every single worker. The end of the day all that would change is most people would get a massive pay bump.

That idea is more than easy enough to explain to people. Way easier than explaining 150 years of Marxist theory and history.

Edit: also my name somewhat references this. Emm=M, without the L. Marxist without the Leninist.

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u/Daewrythe Aug 09 '26

I guess they don't play Crusader Kings

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u/Worshipme988 Aug 09 '26

People cannot read. Whats taking so long for that to resonate?

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u/Lukainka Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 11 '26

Which is ironic when you know that matriarchy is structurally a patriarchal fantasy

Edit: I see redditors did their thing. That's on me, I didn't bother to elaborate. I was referring to scholarly work in anthropology and comparative mythology documenting the 'original matriarchy' narrative pattern recurring worldwide, which functions as a justification for why men have to dominate women. See for example Maurice Godelier The Making of Great Men: Male Domination and Power Among the New Guinea Baruya 1986 more recents papers by Julien d'Huy.

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u/SquirmyBurrito Aug 09 '26

How?

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u/Lukainka Aug 11 '26

Sorry, I edited my comment and gave some explanations to others.

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u/SquirmyBurrito Aug 11 '26

Appreciate the context, I was genuinely curious

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u/Novaer Aug 09 '26

Yeah those darn whales and their * checks notes * patriarchal fantasy.

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u/Lukainka Aug 11 '26

I explained it further to others. Take into account that I was talking about the regular definition of matriarchy, not the modern feminist egalitarist one.

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u/pridetwo Aug 09 '26

Lmao I love when people show up to a thread, say some monumentally stupid shit, then refuse to elaborate

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u/Lukainka Aug 11 '26

It's not stupid, it's scientific consensus. Sorry, I thought it was well known. I edited my comment.

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u/AdorableParasite Aug 09 '26

Not sure I follow, could you explain?

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u/Lukainka Aug 11 '26

So patriarchy is men having political and systemic power over women, and matriarchy is the opposite (modern feminism constructed another meaning for political purposes, but that's not what is at stake here). We don't have any evidence of such societies in ethnology, archaeology, or paleoanthropology. However, it's a recurring myth around the globe. Such stories, for example, explain how women held power in ancient times and misused it so much, causing so much destruction, that the men had to take it.

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u/AdorableParasite Aug 11 '26

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain, I was genuinely curious what you were referring to!

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u/Easy-Concentrate2636 Aug 09 '26

Interesting. Are you saying that matriarchy is created as a fantasy because of the strictures of patriarchy? I am just curious. I do think there could be an interesting argument to be made along those lines.

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u/Lukainka Aug 11 '26

Hi! Yes, that's what I'm saying. I'm sorry I didn't give any details earlier. It's a consensus among leading scholars in comparative mythology and anthropology. I can provide specific papers if you're interested. We don't have evidence of matriarchal societies, but the numerous myths describing them often serve as justification for why men must dominate women (for example, women were the ones hunting and killed all the animals because they didn't know any better, so men had to confiscate the weapons from them, and so on).

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u/Easy-Concentrate2636 Aug 11 '26

That’s fascinating. Thank you for responding and citing an article that covers this. I am doing a search right now on Godolier.

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u/Trollinator0815 Aug 09 '26

You guys could at least google the term before downvoting into oblivion. The term came from a historian who wanted to describe the way every society up until 10000 BCE functioned and proposed one with, and this is really condensed so do your own research, a sigular female deity at the center of every religious belief, women making all communal decisions and inheriting everything. It was basically patriarchy but men swapped for women. And he proposed it not because he was in favor of this kind of society, but to show that patriarchy was the result of societal evolition and was therefore the better society. Which is a pretty fucking patriarchal view on history. That's what OC ment, i assume. Through the last century, there has been much controversy revolving around the term, especially because second wave feminists like Heide Göttner-Abendroth and others proposed that societies with these characteristics were the default state of society until patriarchal horse societies (indo-germans) overthrew them and made the world like it is since the last three thousand years. Overall, modern and hostoric societies similar dont show never show all of the properties included in the Definition of "matriarchy" or at least theirs no evidence to support that claim and it's better to refer to specific aspects like matrilineality, matrilocal residence and matrifocality.