This book shows that culture was first built up by matriarchal societies between 50,000 and 2,000 years ago, and then degraded by patriarchies in recent times. Not particularly nice to read, both because of the contents, the lack of flow and the bitter anger, but a very worthwhile and convincing book. I bought it because Mary Daly in Gyn/Ecology mentions this as one of the classics in anti-patriarchal literature. The author shows time and again how important contributions of women to society have been given the silent treatment, been trivialised or have seen a shift in credit towards males. This is probably why she keeps heaping facts upon facts and then repeating it, to make sure that the reader will agree with her interpretation. Unfortunately, because of this she sometimes makes a statement out of the blue, that one might view with scepticism, because it is in straight contradiction to the approved interpretation, and one has to wait for three chapters before she gets around to laying out the enormous amount of facts that prove her point. The thing that shows how far we still are from an emancipated society is that she did all this 35 years ago, but the approved interpretation that she is proving wrong is still the same. So one of the eye-openers to me was that in the future, the time from 300 to 2600 A.D. will be known as the Dark Middle Ages.
""Since a woman must wear chains, I would have the pleasure of hearing them rattle a little""

Amazingly, this is the first BC copy of this book. Therefore I have turned it into a bookring with the following members:
mfa (Portugal)
misspriga (USA)
MollyGrue (USA)
katskil (USA)
EvaLowrain (USA)
Xana (USA)
This bookring is still open.

received it today - thanks. it looks quite interesting. will be read in a couple of days.

first of all, i do have to apologise - it took me much longer than acceptable to read and journal this. it arrived at a bad time, coinciding with the first trimester of my pregnancy (too sick to read) and now with an insane ammount of work before the baby is born. i must also thank xana and martinburo for reminding me i've had it for too long, otherwise it might still be on hold.

i was expecting a lot from this book, and i liked it, but i do have strong mixed feelings about it. it was quite challenging (and it felt good!) to look at history from a completely new perspective. of course women's oppression and enforced silence are no news to me, but i lacked historical facts in my anger...
however, i couldn't help but distrust davis' accuracy - and it is frustrating when you are faced with fascinating facts and just can't trust them. here and there i could tell she was wrong in her approach (linguistics, for instance, is my field - and believe me, simplicity in a language is symptom of evolution, not of a less complex mindframe!) and at times she even contradicts herself in the data (c'mon... if there are more women than men in the world, how could she say more boys are born every year?!). and the least you demand when history is being re-written is accuracy - no matter how much you know it needs to be written by others than the winners.
finally, what really got on my nerves was the whole idea of women's superiority to men - i call myself a feminist, but for me that means i would never want men to be oppressed like women are, and do not believe one sex is better, more intelligent or stronger than the other. for me feminist is about equality... and this book is not.
i know... i'm being unfair. but my reading does not disregard this book's historical importance in bringing up issues. it's just i look at it more like a sign of its time... and we still need books on feminism to be more than historical icons!

will be posted to the other side of the world tomorrow.

I HAVE to get this for myself because it is taking way too long to read it. But I like it a lot. I don't think it has an angry tone. I think women have a right to be a little angry anyway!