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 Cyborgs Versus the Earth Goddess



Review:
"In a rousing, incisive tome that spans centuries, Moses Seenarine deftly unpacks the suppressed histories of female-centered cultures that pre-dated traditional patriarchal hierarchies based on the colonial subjugation of women, children and animals.  Using Stone Age Goddess culture and iconography as a guidepost, Seenarine argues that patriarchal dominance was an anomaly in prehistory.  He explores the ways in which female-centered communities established peaceful, communistic societies anchored by female gathering rather than male hunting.  In so doing, he seeks to challenge the prevailing Darwinian narrative that cultures based on male dominance—predicated on meat consumption, territorialism, misogynistic power and asymmetrical control—were ultimately the most successful and “inevitable” systems of human social development. Acknowledging his privileged position as a male scholar and researcher, Seenarine provides a valuable overview for those interested in the crucial connection between the radical politics of ecofeminism and the contemporary battle over climate change, food justice and sustainability." - Sikivu Hutchinson, Author, Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars

The First Domestication Was Feminist

Female Great Apes Tamed Male Primates Millions of Years Ago

[Excerpt from Cyborgs Versus the Earth Goddess: Men’s Domestication of Women and Animals and Female Resistance (forthcoming, 2017) by Moses Seenarine, Ed.D]

The Great Apes
The subduing of mammalian males by females is an extensive and ongoing process in numerous species across the Globe. The first domestication realized among the great apes family in the primate order was the taming of sperm-producers by egg-producers. Even though balance between the sexes fluctuates, females wield great power in sex-selection.

Female reproductive achievement is limited by resource availability and acquisition. In contrast, male reproductive success is limited by access to mates and the number of fertilizations, and may therefore be more variable. Phallic apes have to obtain young-bearers' approval, who may have a preference for younger mates. So power relations among social primates are situational and constantly changing.

Primates are characterized by refined development of the hands and feet, a shortened snout, an ample brain, as well as an increased reliance on stereoscopic vision at the expense of smell, the dominant sensory system in most mammals.1 Many primates have specializations that enable them to exploit particular foods, such as fruit, leaves, gum or insects.2

The great apes or Hominidae are sizable, tailless primates, with the smallest living species being the bonobo at 60 to 90 pounds (30 to 40 kg) in weight, and the largest being the eastern gorillas, with males weighing 300 to 400 pounds (140 to 180 kg). The Hominidae family include seven species in four genera. One genus is Pongo consisting of the Bornean and Sumatran orangutan. Another is Gorilla, with the eastern and western gorilla.

A third genus is Pan comprising of the common chimpanzee and the bonobo. And finally, there is Homo, with human and near-human ancestors and relatives, like the Neanderthals. Fruit is the preferred food among all with the exception of human groups. Human teeth and jaws are markedly smaller for their size than those of other apes, which may be an adaptation to eating cooked food.3

(Image: Orangutan-human comparison)

Similar to the male bias held by mainstream anthropologists, primate researchers are male-centric, and their work has focused on the role of phallic individuals vying for leadership of groups. Often viewed as more passive, egg-producing apes' manipulation of sex selection and other aspects of power are frequently understated and misinterpreted in primate studies.

The great apes have varying degrees of female-centered involvement in their cultures, from solitary orangutan mothers who avoid contact with males to female-led bonobo clans of over 100 individuals. Resident orangutan females live in defined home ranges that overlap with those of other adult egg-producers, who may be their immediate relatives. Females tend to settle in home ranges that overlap with their mothers,4 and so live mostly within a gynocentric grouping.

The notion of phallic-dominated gorillas with a lone silverback defending a group of egg-producers is problematic since this leads to increased sexual insecurity for sperm-producers. There are several advantages for silverbacks to follow the wishes of female gorillas, for example, food and reproductive security.


(Image: Bonobos are very social apes - W H Calvin)

Pan: Bonobo
The most successful first-domestication among the great apes was that of bobono sperm-producers by egg-producers. This taming can probably be traced to the split between the two Pans, around one million BP. In contrast to chimpanzees, bonobos are relatively egalitarian and nonviolent. They are not phallic-dominated but instead display a mix of gynocentrism and sexually receptive behavior.

Sharing 98.5 percent of the same DNA as humans, it is not surprising that bonobos possess very human-like qualities. They embody a profound intelligence and emotional capacity. Bonobos have picked up on many facets of human culture through simple observation, and have learned how to communicate in human languages, use tools, and play music.5

Egg-producing bonobos frequently form coalitions even though they are generally with non-relatives. All-female coalitions of two or more individuals form spontaneously to attack males, usually after sperm-producers behaved aggressively towards one or more bonobo female.

Bonding enables bonobo females to dominate most of the males. Although male bonobos are individually stronger, they cannot stand alone against a united group of egg-producers. One researcher concludes, “coalitions in female bonobos might have evolved as a counter strategy against male harassment.”6

Interestingly, bonobos have highly individualized facial features, as humans do. So like us, one individual may look significantly different from another bonobo. This adaption facilitated visual facial recognition in social interaction.

Bonobos can live in close-knit social groups of a hundred individuals or more. During the day, the group break into smaller groups to forage in different areas, but the whole clan sleeps together at night. The ancestors of humans might have adopted the same foraging and sleeping behavior. And they may have occupied temporary retreats, or settlements, for extensive periods of time. So human settlements, or what is commonly considered as 'domestication,' is much older than 12,000 years.

Between bonobo groups, social mingling may occur, in which members of different communities have sex and groom each other. This behavior is unheard of among common chimpanzees. While social hierarchies do exist, rank plays a less prominent role than in other primate societies. Primatologist Frans de Waal thinks that bonobos are capable of altruism, compassion, empathy, kindness, patience, and sensitivity. He describes "bonobo society" as a "gynecocracy."7

Females have a higher social status in bonobo society than the other great apes. Aggressive encounters between females and male bonobos are rare, and sperm-producers are tolerant of infants and juveniles. Bonobos carry and nurse their young for four years and give birth every 4.6 years. Akin to the other great apes, bonobo mothers assume the entirety of parental care.


(Image: A bonobo mother and infant at Lola Ya Bonobo sanctuary in Kinshasa, DRC. - Christina Bergey)

A male bonobo derives status from the social position of his mother, similar to chimpanzees, and hanging out with mom can boost a sperm-producer's chances of getting intimate with a fertile female.8 The mother–son bond often stays strong and continues throughout life.9

Compared to chimps, bonobos show more sexual behavior in a greater variety of relationships. Bonobos frequently have sex, sometimes to help prevent and resolve conflicts. Bonobos are the only non-human animal to have been observed engaging in tongue kissing, and oral sex. Bonobos and humans are the only primates that engage in face-to-face genital sex.10

Bonobos do not form permanent monogamous sexual relationships with individual partners. They also do not discriminate in their sexual behavior by sex or age either. When bonobos come upon a new food source or feeding ground, the increased excitement will usually lead to communal sexual activity, presumably decreasing tension and encouraging peaceful feeding.11

Female bonobos engage in mutual genital behavior, possibly to bond socially and form a female nucleus of bonobo society. Egg-producers rub their clitorises together rapidly for ten to twenty seconds, and this behavior, "which may be repeated in rapid succession, is usually accompanied by grinding, shrieking, and clitoral engorgement."12 Adolescent females often leave their native community to join another group. Sexual bonding with other egg-producers establishes these new females as members of the group.

Bonobos' diet is for the most part vegetarian and sustainable. Foraging in small groups, bonobos feast primarily on fruit, but they also eat leaves, flowers, bark, stems, roots, insect larvae, worms, crustaceans, honey, eggs, and soil. The female-centered nature of bonobo and other primate societies show that male domination among humans is an anomaly among primates, and that it can be changed.

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1Most primates have opposable thumbs and some have prehensile tails. Many species are sexually dimorphic. Primates have slower rates of development than other similarly sized mammals and reach maturity later, but have longer lifespans. Most primates live in tropical or subtropical regions of the Americas, Africa and Asia. They range in size from the mouse lemur, which weighs only 30 g (1 oz), to the eastern gorilla, weighing over 200 kg (440 lb).
2K Strier. 2007. Primate Behavioral Ecology (3rd ed.). Allyn & Bacon.
3Richard Wrangham. 2007. "Chapter 12: The Cooking Enigma". In C Pasternak. What Makes Us Human? Oxford: Oneworld Press
4EA Fox. 2002. "Female tactics to reduce sexual harassment in the Sumatran orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus abelii)". Behav Ecol Sociobiol 52 (2): 93–101.
5To 'ape' someone is to copy them. This points to how similar apes are to humans
6N Tokuyama & T Furuichi. 2016. "Do friends help each other? Patterns of female coalition formation in wild bonobos at Wamba." Animal Behaviour, 119:27–35 Sep
7F de Waal & F Lanting. 1997. Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape. U of California P.
8Martin Surbeck et al. 2010. "Mothers matter! Maternal support, dominance status and mating success in male bonobos (Pan paniscus)." Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Sep 1.
9Orcas, hyneas and other creatures also share strong mother-son bonds.
10Susan Block. 2014. The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace Through Pleasure. Gardner & Daugh
11F de Waal. 1995. "Bonobo Sex and Society." Scientific Am 272 (3): 58–64. Mar

12JP Balcombe. 2011. The Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure. UC Press. p. 88

Prehistory Was Female-Centered

Early humans lived in ecogynocentric cultures and worshiped Earth Goddesses

(Excerpt from Cyborgs Versus the Earth Goddess: Men's Domestication of Women and Animals and Female Resistance (2017) by Moses Seenarine)


(Female Hand print, Chauvet cave, France c. 32,000 BP)

The Earth and her organisms are wholesome, active entities. Each unique creature has individual and collective interests and relationships. However, acting like aliens, modern men or Cyborgs have reduced and eliminated the subjectivity of Earthlings to establish themselves as the only 'real' subjects in both theory and practice.

The status of being a subject is central to having rights and safeguards under a patriarchal society. Framing unique, individual beings as similar objects is a key strategy of patriarchal reduction and oppression. This article sketches female subjectivity during prehistory and their extraordinary decline in status when men gained control over human organization. It starts with a brief look at how female-centered societies were associated with Goddess ideologies. After this, the decline of the Greek Goddess, Metis, is explained. And the article concludes with an examination of the great fall in female status in the post-Stone Age.


(Woman/Goddess of Willendorf, Germany c. 28,000 BP)

Roles & the Goddess

Female-centered primate cultures existed for millions of years, and females held a high status within the earliest human groups, around two million BP. Also, from the dawn of the species over 200,000 years ago, females have been active participants in shaping culture, behavior, and human destiny.

The notion of a Goddess was central to Stone Age oral traditions, imagery, gynecology, and female-centered thinking. Gynocentric practices revolved around reverence for various Goddesses, and evolved along with our human-like ancestors.

The Goddess perspective was maintained during humans' continuous migration out of Africa to populate the Earth, so it was a Global one. Gynecological sanctions were part of Goddess narratives, and adhering to these environmental laws ensured long periods of sustainability for our species.1

Stone Age humans viewed the Earth as a providential Goddess and a fertile Mother, and females' prominent positions were connected to the bountiful Deity. Under the Goddess worldview, nature and animals were perceived as female – sacred, mighty, and nurturing. Men were active participants in female-led communities, with valuable roles and strong ties to their maternal clans.

As fully realized subjects, females led child-centered groups under the protection of various Earth Goddesses. Then, as now, egg-producing humans were creative, intelligent, reasonable, courageous, and powerful. They were likewise generous, compassionate, moral, socially responsible, and hard-working.

Stone Age females lived in matrilocal kin groups based on maternal residence and group motherhood. Clans were also matrilineal, with inheritance based on maternal lineage.2 The Goddess-centered economy was proportionate and equal, with gift-giving playing a primal role in fostering cooperation and solidarity between female communities.

The tightly-knit, female-centered social organization kept the power of human male animals in balance during the Stone Age. Lack of art and other physical evidence imply there was an absence of conflict, and the numerous successful migrations across the globe suggest vast periods of human cooperation.

In many parts of the World, Goddess worship and females held dominant roles, but over the past centuries, grave robbers pillaged a lot of this evidence. The burial of a 4,500 years old Siberian noblewoman from the ancient Okunev Culture that was found undisturbed provides a glimpse of the history that was wiped out.

The early Bronze Age grave include an incense burner decorated with solar symbols - three sun-shaped facial images which match ancient rock art in Siberia. There were also two jars, cases with bone needles inside, a bronze knife, 1,500 beads that once adorned the woman's costume, and 100 pendants made from animal teeth.3

In the Americas, female authority persisted into the last millennia. For example, the priestesses of Moche were renowned for their monumental architecture and rich visual culture. Regarded as the first state-level civilization in the Americas, the Moche inhabited the north coast of Peru from 2,000 to 1,200 BP.

The Moche flourished before the Incas, but at the same time, the Mayas thrived in Mexico and Central America. The Moche developed the inland desert with a complicated system of irrigation used for agriculture. They built adobe pyramids, and, like other gynocentric cultures, used an Earth Goddess to unify their society.4

The Moche had no written language but left thousands of ceramic vessels with intricate drawings portraying their daily lives and beliefs about the human and supernatural worlds. Moche artists crafted ceramic and metal objects of striking realism and visual sophistication depicting the Goddess and female life cycles.

The eight royal tombs of Moche priestess discovered contained extensive artifacts, and the complexity of the burial reveal the power and influence the women wielded in life. Archaeologists know the eight women were priestesses because of their resemblance to figures depicted in rituals scenes found in Moche art.

The women were priestesses, but they could have likewise been rulers. The political and religious realms were blended in ancient cultures, and rulers were often the priests. For instance, the Señora de Cao, who reined around 1,700 BP, is considered the first female sovereign of pre-Hispanic Peru.5


(A winged goddess depicted under Zeus' throne, possibly Metis c. 2,550 BP)

Remembering Metis

In Greek, Metis means 'wisdom,' 'skill,' or craft.' In pre-patriarchal Greek religions, Metis was of the older Titan generation and an Oceanid. Metis was born of Oceanus and his sister Tethys. She is of an earlier age than Zeus, the chief male god, and his siblings. This era was the age of the Goddess when male deities were rare or insignificant.

Metis was the Titan­ Goddess of good advice, planning, and cunning. She was the mother of wisdom and sound thought. After the decline of gynocentrism, Metis was reduced to a counsel and spouse of Zeus, and besides, his cousin.

A prophecy revealed that she was destined to bear a son greater than his father. Zeus became jealous and tricked Metis into turning herself into a fly. Then, he promptly swallowed her. Trapped, Metis spent the rest of her life giving Zeus advice from inside him.

Inside Zeus' belly, Metis conceived a daughter. In time, she began making a helmet and robe for her fetus, and her hammering caused Zeus great pain. Eventually, her daughter, Athena, re-birthed from the god's head fully grown and armed with a war-cry.

In later Greek mythology, after the solidification of patriarchal versions of earlier religions, poets described Athena as a "motherless goddess" and did not mention Metis. Other versions of Athena noted that Zeus, her father, later attempted to rape her. Athena killed him without hesitation and took his name and skin. In many different versions of the story, Athena never has a birth mother. Plato identified Athena with Neith, a much more ancient Triple Goddess from Libya.

Zeus swallowed Metis and made her a part of himself. But that was not enough. By having Athena born only from Zeus, the narrative gave males authority and power over something that had previously only been a female realm, the cycles of reproduction. Moreover, this framing of male-birthing removed all female association with wisdom.

In remembering Metis, this study is reclaiming female prehistory and wisdom as female-centered. It is asserting that gynocentric cultures existed among early humans and lasted throughout the Stone Age. Honoring Metis reminds us that ancient gynecological principles were sustainable and a return to these practices can slow down planetary heating and help to restore harmony on Earth.


(Woman/Goddess of Çatalhöyük c. 8,000 BP)

The Great Fall of

Stone Age gynecological worldviews that honored females and nature through various Earth Goddesses survived well into the so-called 'agrarian' era. But by the Bronze Age, even though some Goddesses remained, sex roles and status were totally reversed. Maleness became prized, at the detriment of other subjects, and females, nature, and the Goddess were collectively debased to mere objects for male use.

Men's opportunity arose with females' continuous innovations in cultivating plants during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age (12,200 to 4,500 BP). Sperm-producing humans embraced, learned, then took over female cultivation technologies, but this was not the end. The stupendous decline in female status and culture, and the attendant rise of patriarchy, are related to animal enslavement that occurred later.

By 9,500 to 9,000 BP, agricultural economies that relied on a mix of domesticated crops and farmed animals were fully crystallized in the Middle East. Soon after, many aspects of daily life in the Fertile Crescent were diffused into the Mediterranean and elsewhere.6 The agrarian transfer package included subsistence agriculture, animal husbandry, social networks, and cyborg belief systems.

By 8,000 BP, male-dominated farming economies led to the rise to powerful cyborg city-states in Eurasia. The sovereignty of female clans honoring Earth Goddesses was comprehensively diminished, and egg-producing humans were prevented from amply expressing themselves in increasingly male-dominated societies. Formerly honored girls were disempowered and objectified into tools by the falsely entitled cyborg herders.

The Bronze-Age started around 5,000 BP, and durable weapons increased male violence across the Globe as embattled men competed to rule over each other. Across Europe, patriarchal ideology continued to replace matrilineal and matrifocal systems, which severely affected females' personal, social, and economic status.
The pistillate7 calamity intensified around 1,500 BP when Christians and Muslims began to replace the thousands of female-honoring Goddess cultures in Africa and Eurasia with a single patriarchal god. In a short time span, in cultures across the world, once sovereign beings were objectified into reproductive objects and restricted to the domestic sphere.

In Gyn/Ecology, Mary Daly notes, "this attraction/need of males for female energy, seen for what it is, is necrophilia - not in the sense of love for actual corpses, but of love for those victimized into a state of living death." The domestication of 'ladies' is ongoing and so too is its resistance. Sarah Ditum argues that women cannot remain neutral on the feminist issue because the battlefield is our bodies: “There’s no way to avoid picking a side when you yourself are the disputed territory.”

While there has been some progress toward sexual equality in modern times, gains have also been eroded and "the much needed positive developments are not happening fast enough.” This conclusion was made at the 2017 UN Commission on the Status of Women, by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of UN Women, the United Nations agency charged with promoting women's rights.8

In addition to receiving one-third less wages than a man, over half of all women workers around the world, and up to 90 percent in some countries, are informally employed. The informal economy consists of low-cost, female farm workers, street food vendors, care workers, and so on. These girls and women work without legal or social protection, and in India alone, this sector accounts for 190 million women. "They are the under-the-radar and under-valued cogs in the bigger wheels of the formal economy," Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

The UNW director note that changing discriminatory laws in over 150 countries "could affect more than three billion women and girls in the world." And empowering females politicallly can lead to many positive changes, including economic one. For instance Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka suggested that "advancing women's equality in total could bring a potential boost of 28 trillion U.S. dollars to global annual GDP by 2025."

Women and children represent seventy-five percent of humans. It makes sense that society should be organized around the interests of this majority, rather than a hopelessly insecure minority that is clearly unfit to rule. Returning the Goddess and women to their rightful place in prehistory and the present is not only good for females, but for males, and the entire Earth. Women and men ignore this imperative at our own peril.

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1Goddess beliefs were part of gynecological land management practices that contributed to the long-term survival of the species. The contrasting notions of power and transcendence over nature and nonhuman animals are fundamental aspects of patriarchal thought, which are unsustainable and self-destructive as the climate crisis demonstrates.
2Chris Knight. 2008. “Early Human Kinship Was Matrilineal.” In N. J. Allen, et al, eds., Early Human Kinship. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 61-82.
3Staff. 2016. "Found: grave of Siberian noblewoman up to 4,500 years old." Siberian Times, Aug 19.
4S Bourget & K Jones. 2009. The Art and Archaeology of the Moche: An Ancient Andean Society of the Peruvian North Coast. U of Texas Press
5Liz Mineo. 2016. "Where women once ruled." Harvard Gazette, July 19.
6Melinda Zeder 2008. "Domestication & early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, & impact." PNAS 105(33):11597-604.
7A flower that lacks stamens is pistillate, or female, while one that lacks pistils is said to be staminate, or male.

8Edith Lederer. 2017. "Women's Rights Are Under Attack Worldwide, Warns U.N. Chief." AP, Mar 13

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