The Mosuo, who live in a remote part of western China, have a matrilineal social structure. Their ways are being rapidly superseded as modern China moves in: they have become a tourist attraction. The author has lived with the Mosuo part-time for some years. She grew up in the Chinese patriarchal system, which is much more extreme than anything we have in the West. So the Mosuo have been a deeply welcome arrival in her life.
The head of the family is always a woman, usually a grandmother, and with her live her brothers, sons, daughters and the grandchildren by her daughters. Any children her sons may have live with their mothers' families. It can take a bit of getting your head around. People do not get married. Women have lovers, and there may be a number of them - they are called 'walking marriages'. But they do not usually live with their lovers. Any children that result are raised by the mother, and the father does not play a part. It is the uncles, the woman's brothers, who live in the family home, who play the father role.
There is a chapter called 'How the Mosuo Women Rock' that shows just how confident these women are. It is a natural confidence, it is not about being combative. They live very simply, they are not sophisticated in the modern sense, yet taken to the big city, they are noticeably more confident and at ease with who they are than most women. They will, for example, go up to a group of men in a bar, in a way that could be seen as 'forward', and engage with them in a natural and lively way.
There is also a chapter called 'The Men Rock Too'. The men put a lot into looking and behaving in a way that will attract the women, they are 'peacocks'. Good looks and brawn are highly rated by the women. It is a simple and straightforward mating game. The men also hunt and play and hang out together.
None of this is perhaps easily translatable into the ways our society works. The key virtue, it seems to me, is that both men and women are confident in who and what they are, and there is no sense of either putting the other down. There is a centrality to the women's place, as the bearers of life, in the scheme of things. Men do the heavy physical work, and will represent the family in its public affairs. But at the home, around which all else revolves, it is the women who have the say.
You do not get the sense of couples who are hugely caught up with each other, in the way that we encourage with our ideas of romantic love and marriage. So nor does there seem to be the devastation and mess you get when a relationship comes to an end. For them, your relationships with your lovers are only a part, and certainly not a central part, of who you are. This feels like freedom and sanity to me.
I think that what is structurally key to this system is that men and women have their own worlds and parts to play, that are clearly defined, and which reflect their different natures and biological roles.
This is a difficult issue for us. Any suggestion that men and women are different can be felt by women as an attempt to put them back into their old, low-status roles, which they rightly rebel against. We often find ourselves in places of confrontation, alongside an ideological commitment to sameness. In our society, men and women no longer know who they are. There is a big adjustment going on, particularly as women have joined the workplace, which was traditionally the men's world. It is not easy for either gender. But here, maybe uniquely, and fast disappearing, is a traditional arrangement under which both men and women can know who they are and hold their heads high.
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