One of the comments reads : Actually, we will probably never figure out, was it man or woman. but I thought this comment of the professor was an interesting eye opener. https://mastodonapp.uk/@MarkHoltom/112070436760917344
You must log in or register to comment.
I’m guessing the implication is they were tracking their period?
Yeah, no way to know what gender someone had so we just pick one based on our twisted worldview where some gender must be better than other because reasons.
we just pick one based on our twisted worldview where some gender must be better than other because reasons.
The only one doing this here is you.
In which words did I choose which gender that inventor was?
well you seem upset that an archaeologist suggested it was likely a woman, so something made you mad
I am as upset with suggesting it was a man, as some may try to do.
Maybe my comment sounded weird with just the context of the post, but I wrote it also with other comments in mind.
Not sure why you got down voted because you are absolutely right
- we don’t know
- society ascribes everything to the male
If we defaulted to “he or she (they probably)” then things would be better but we simply don’t. It is always the man’s contribution and it’s disappointing
Bruh relax
Lmfaooooo I can’t believe you came and found me on another comment. You really do need to relax
We should have a neologism for gender neutral version of “mankind” definitely.
I am just this one person always pushing a stick into an anthill every time gender is assumed out of preference and getting all the hate from both sides.
A woman invented the windshield wiper. Granted, a man inventes the whole effing rest of the car…
a man with a wife.
it’s good to know when it’s time to spend couple of days hunting the sabre tooth tiger.
Wife bad amirite
PMS deniers 🤣
Tell me you’ve never found the man in the boat without telling me you’ve never found the man in the boat.
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
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”
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.
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!”
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.
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
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.
Any source on this claim about the declaration?
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.
look how much deeper blade three cut with a single stroke! Are you sure you want to go with brand 4?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Professor: Maybe it was a woman? Just consider it with an open mind.
You: This gender absolutism is the enemy™!
This and “hey guys”
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.
But its taken to mean both, so at least lightly attributes it to a man rather than a woman.
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
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.
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
Everyone loves traditions!
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.
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.
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.
Which is your native language? I keep looking for ways to ungender my english if possible. Removing gender from language feels more honest.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for explaining. I will look into this more.
I love you how specified “as far as I know” even though it’s literally your native language lmao
English is not a grammatically gendered language. Otherwise, all languages have gender.
False, English is a gendered language that lost most of its gender usage. Some words still retain gender, such as blond/blonde.
🤦♂️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.
I though yhe blonde spelling was just used for beer
Male or female beer?
You know I never thought to ask
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.
Removed by mod
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m not sure why the sex of the
ancientperson 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.
Not sure why you phrased that as correcting them when you were agreeing and adding to it.
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.
Fair enough.
I don’t think that’s phrased as a correction. It clearly wasn’t as you noted
“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.
You figured out what it meant. That’s clear enough for communication purposes imo. You’re welcome to your own interpretation though
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.
So they nailed it with the 28 day calendar and we are stuck with this one
13 months of 28 days with an extra holiday at years end, it works so much cleaner than what we use.
That’s just what Big February wants you to think.
Yeah, but then how could we make the important months longer than the rest? That would really piss off Julius and Augustus.
Slightly more sensibly, 12 months is easier to synch to the seasons, and calendars are very important to agriculture. 3 months for each season is convenient.
Thirteen also can’t be divided evenly and is widely considered bad luck.
well yes, but 28 day months dont divide nicely into 365/366 days, so it would not have worked well… uh, hang on. i’m being handed a note. huh. apparently our current calendar also doesnt solve this neatly at all, and is in fact a patched monstrosity more batshit than anything any single malicious person could come up with. well.
Let’s go with 12 28 day months and the overhead days are universal vacation days during summer. There you go.
What about summer not being at the same time everywhere? Which hemisphere do you wanna favor? What kind of problems do vacation days in summer create in agriculture?
Essential work will always need doing on holidays. Anyone doing essential work gets their free days at other times before of after these holidays.
Good point about hemispheres though. Put half of the days in between December and January and half in between June and July. Since it’s an odd number of days (unless it’s a leap year), alternate which of these gets one more every year.
well yes, the clear answer is to have “days outside the calendar”. this is how the hobbits do it too :)
Anyone working with dates and times was cursed in a past life. Timezones are a pain to work with. Daylight savings sucks. Some countries change daylight savings at different times. Some countries change timezones sometimes. Go further back and some countries had their own leap days. Different calendars don’t form neat cycles and must be manually synchronized every few years. Did you know Easter, for about 300 years, needed to be announced by the Pope each year because it was a lunar holiday based on a Jewish calendar but the Christians followed a different one? Also, every now and again we throw a leap second into the computers because the Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down and 365/366 days isn’t quite precise enough anyways.
I once read that when Sweden decided to switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar they didn’t do it all at once, disliking the idea of jumping so many days forwards/backwards (I can’t remember which way the Julian is out of sync). Instead they opted for a plan to move their calendar one single day every year over several decades. I remember the place I read about it saying that it just confused everyone and the plan was scrapped after a few years.
This is neat, but how is it a meme?
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.
I conclude the moon has a vaj
Well duh, Sokka was trying to get all up in it
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s not magic, it’s fire bending.
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
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
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
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.
Mussy?
Moossy
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.
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.
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
I’m saying you don’t need to make marks on a bone to track the lunar cycle… you just look up.
The same way Arab countries don’t need a calendar, they just look up
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.
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.
Who is responsible though? The historian, or the man who inscribed the bone?
Never mind anything, making the abstract connection between one event and the number of marks you scratch on a wall was probably the equivalent of genius of the time, the first mathematician.
> “… I thought this comment of the professor was an interesting eye opener.”
“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5)
Having your eyes opened to believe nonsense is the goal of such so-called ‘education’. For all we know the notches were a tally of successful hunts or a scalp tally. Or maybe the notches were to allow a sinew or leather wrapping to adhere to the bone, possibly being used as a handle for a tool. And who trusts a mere picture being held up as scientific evidence of anything?
Delusional people like to read their preconceived notions into everything. The eugenics supremacists in the education racket tell you that your ancestors were cave-dwelling monkeys so you filter artifacts through that lens and confirm that your ancestors were cave-dwelling monkeys.
Anyone who believes that man began living in caves and tried to make a calendar on a bone is an neanderthal cave-dweller’s son.
Savannah dwelling apes, not cave dwelling monkeys.
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.
lol what the fuck, yeah right, ancient germanic word “man” derives from latin… whoever drew this didnt bother to open up the dictionary once…
¯\(ツ)/¯
I’m not an entomologist.
“Entomology (from Ancient Greek entomon ‘insect’, and -logia ‘study’)[1] is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term insect was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arachnids, myriapods, and crustaceans. This wider meaning may still be encountered in informal use.”
pff nah, entomologists are experts at entoming people. you know, like putting them in a tom underground. dead. like that cara loft lady.
i need to branch out with my sources
Scholars seem to agree it stems from Proto-Indo-European, so Latin is not the source.
That’s also where the “were” prefix in werewolf comes from.
Does that mean female werewolves should be called wowolves? (Or even better, woowolves)
Wifwolves, unfortunately.
just lean all the way in and call us vermin
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.
Sandi is a comedian and presenter of UK show QI, not a researcher. She’s literally just talking about an epiphany.
“When I was a student at Cambridge…”
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.
deleted by creator
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.
This is a refreshing comment, if any. Especially coming from a woman. Thank you.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
You could have at least used the term “misogynist” so as to not imply that men’s rights are a bad thing.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
signed, a man
You could have left this part off, it was perfectly clear you’re a man
Have my upvote!
