The First Sex was a 1971 book by a then-61-year-old librarian, Elizabeth Gould Davis. 1971 (MCMLXXI) is a common year starting on Friday (click for link to calendar). ... The Librarian, a 1556 painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo A librarian is a person who develops procedures for organizing information and provides services that assist and instruct people in the most efficient ways to identify and access any needed information or information resource (article, book, magazine, etc. ...

Fitting in with the second wave of feminism, Davis aimed to show that historically human society had been matriachal "queendoms" based around worship of the "Great Goddess" and characterised by pacifism and a much greater degree of democracy than more recent patriarchal societies. She also believed that these societies developed a very high degree of civilization that was wiped out as a result of the "patriarchal revolution", which she believes introduced a new system of society based around property rights rather than human rights, and which worshipped a stern and vengeful male God - as seen today in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Feminism is a diverse collection of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies, largely motivated by or concerning the experiences of women, especially in terms of their social, political, and economic situation. ... Matriarchy is not a form of government or rule of women over men. ... Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture A goddess is a female deity, in contrast with a male deity known as a god. A great many cultures have goddesses, sometimes alone, but more often as part of a larger pantheon that includes both of the conventional genders and in some cases... Pacifism is opposition to war. ... Patriarchy (from Greek: patria meaning father and arché meaning rule) is the anthropological term used to define the sociological condition where male members of a society tend to predominate in positions of power; with the more powerful the position, the more likely it is that a male will hold that... A civilization (American English) or civilisation (British English) has a variety of meanings related to human society. ... God is the term used to denote the Supreme Being believed by the vast majority [1] [2] to be the creator, ruler and/or the sum total of, existence. ... Over at least the last two thousand years, Judaism has not been monolithic in practice, and has not had any centralized authority or binding dogma. ... The history of Christianity is difficult to extricate from that of the European West (and several other culture-regions) in general. ... Islām is described as a dīn, meaning way of life and/or guidance. Six articles of belief There are six basic beliefs shared by all Muslims: 1. ...

"The Gynocratic World"

In the first part of The First Sex, Gould Davis uses evidence from such archaeologists as Johann Jakob Bachofen and anthropologists like Margaret Mead to support a theory of matriarchal prehistory. The chapters in this section of the book focus on an individual parts of the evidence for peaceful matriarchal queendoms: three are titled "Mythology Speaks", "Anthropology Speaks" and "Archaeology Speaks". Gould Davis says that the "loss of paradise" when the "Great Goddess" is replaced by a vengeful God is the theme of all myth. Similarly Gould Davis argues that archaeology, even when still in its infancy as a discipline, always showed society to once have been matriarchal. Davis said that evidence from Çatal Hüyük showed there to be no wars or even violent deaths - and that even physical injury to animals was not permissible. Tombs in other parts of the Mediterranean show, in her view, clear evidence of female superiority because female tombs are preserved much more carefully than male ones. In "Anthropology Speaks", Davis focused on taboos, chiefly incest, and aimed to show how taboos against brother-sister relationships aimed to protect women against violent men. She also says that women's blood was originally sacred rather than polluting and that only when man began to eat meat did men become bigger than women - in her opinion because of selection of weak women by men. The Swiss Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–1887), is most often connected with his theory of matriarchy, or Mutterrecht, the title of his seminal 1861 book This presented a radically new view of the role of women in a broad range of ancient societies. ... Margaret Mead Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist. ... ... Anthropology (from the Greek word άνθρωπος, humane) consists of the study of humankind (see genus Homo). ... Importance and applicability Most of human history is not described by any written records. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Mythology. ... Excavations at the South Area of Çatal Höyük Çatalhöyük (also Çatal Höyük and Çatal Hüyük, or any of the three without accent marks -- Çatal is Turkish for fork and Höyük is Turkish for mound) was a very large Neolithic and... Incest is sexual activity or marriage between very close family members. ... The menstrual cycle is the periodic change in a womans body that occurs every month between puberty and menopause and that relates to reproduction. ...

"The Patriarchal Revolution"

In this section of the book Gould Davis studied how mythology and society changed as a result of the switch from matriarchy to patriarchy. She argued that the patriarchal revolution resulted from the invasion of settled, argricultural, gynarchic queendoms by pastoral nomads who were warlike and destructive. These nomads (Semites from the Arabian Peninsula) are argued to never have achieved a civilization of their own, but only to have destroyed or taken over older ones. Davis believed that most familiar tales in the Old Testament were actually rewritings by Semitic priests of older stories - except that villains turn into heroes and heroes into villains in accordance with the new patriarchal order. This was part, in the view of The First Sex, of a desire to wipe out all evidence of female superiority and the right of women to sexual pleasure — hence the idealization of virginity in Christian culture. As well, Davis discusses female circumcision as a means to protect the virginity of women. This practice is much more painful than its male counterpart. Semitic is an adjective which in common parlance mistakenly refers specifically to Jewish things, while the term actually refers to things originating among speakers of Semitic languages or people descended from them, and in a linguistic context to the northeastern subfamily of Afro-Asiatic. ... The Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula is a mainly desert peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia and an important part of the greater Middle East. ... Note: Judaism uses the term Tanakh instead of Old Testament, because it does not recognize the New Testament as being part of the Biblical canon. ... Female circumcision (including excision) refers to a number of procedures performed on the female genitalia and which are generally of a cultural, rather than medical nature. ... Circumcision is the removal of some or all of the foreskin (prepuce). ...

"Pre-Christian Women In The Celto-Ionian World"

In this part of the book Gould Davis focused on the role of women in the ancient civilizations of Crete and Mycenae. Davis' research suggested that, as in her model of prehistoric civilization, that women were the dominant powers and were able to punish men who were "derelict" in their duties. The book sees the Cretan and Mycenaean civilizations as prototypes of the ancient pre-Christian Celtic culture, which Davis also believes to have granted women a great deal of power. For instance, she says that the monarchy was hereditary in the female line and the most of the tribal "chiefs" were women rather than men. Greece and Crete Crete (Greek Κρήτη / Kriti) is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean Sea. ... Mycenae (ancient Greek: , IPA , in modern Greek: Μυκήνες ; see also List of traditional Greek place names), is an archaeological site in Greece, located about 90km south-west of Athens, in the north-eastern Peloponnese. ...

Davis claimed that Greek women possessed rights that are still denied by the Catholic, Orthodox and conservative Protestant churches, such as the rights to abortion and divorce. She cites many well-known historians to support these claims. She also argued that women participated in almost all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman society, notably learning and sport. In the next chapter, "The Celts", she argued that similar rights prevailed until the collapse of the Roman Empire, for a matrilineal system of monarchical descent, and for Celtic women being the major preservers of learning during the early Middle Ages. The Vladimir Icon, one of the most venerated of Orthodox Christian icons of Mary. ... Protestantism is a movement within Christianity, representing a split from within the Roman Catholic Church during the mid-to-late Renaissance in Europe —a period known as the Protestant Reformation. ... Divorce or dissolution of marriage is the ending of a marriage before the death of either spouse, which can be contrasted with an annulment which is a declaration that a marriage is void, though the effects of marriage may be recognized in such unions, such as spousal support, child custody... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ...

"The Tragedy of Western Women"

This last part of The First Sex focuses on the period since Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in 313 A.D. Davis aimed with this part of the book to show how Semitic "myths" of male supremacy were preached by the early Church Fathers to a pagan people who could not believe them and did not take them seriously until Constantine became emperor. Davis believes the writings of Paul in the New Testament were used by the Church after Constantine to justify the most extreme violence against women, leading throughout the Middle Ages, as she sees it, to a level of cruelty and barbarity simply unheard of in previous ages. Davis believed that once Christianity had attained civil power, the demotion of women and the "terrible materialism that marks and mars our present civilization" were inevitable. She believes that the influence of Mary as a "goddess" allowed Christianity to replace the ancient goddess religion. Davis saw the male gods of Greece and Rome as "rootless" and "artificial" and this allowed Mary's cult, in her view, to triumph. For other uses, see Roman Empire (disambiguation) The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Ancient Roman polity in the centuries following its reorganization under the leadership of Octavian (better known as Augustus), until its radical reformation in what was later to be known as the Byzantine... For other uses, see 313 (number). ... The (Early) Church Fathers or Fathers of the Church are the early and influential theologians and writers in the Christian Church, particularly those of the first five centuries of Christian history. ... Contemporary bronze head of Constantine. ... An early portrait of the Apostle Paul. ... // What is the New Testament? The New Testament, sometimes called the Greek Testament or Greek Scriptures, is the name given to the part of the Christian Bible that was written after the birth of Jesus. ... Saint Mary and Saint Mary the Virgin both redirect here. ...

Quoting Jules Michelet, Davis argued that women by the fifteenth century were treated so badly by men of all social classes that they were seen as "worse than beasts". Davis said that the Church approved of this domestic violence, and shows that brutality to women extended beyond families to the priesthood, who cited the Bible to justify the most extreme brutality. Jules Michelet (August 21, 1798–February 9, 1874) was a French historian. ...

In Gould Davis's view, the status of women was only improved briefly by the Reformation and a brief flowering of learned women during the sixteenth century. Afterwards Puritanism's witch-hunts and a strengthened papacy placed women back in the same level of submission, and women were studied in the most prurient manner for "witchcraft marks". In Davis' view, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries marked the first time Western women accepted their own inferiority, and until Mary Wollstonescraft nobody spoke up for them, especially given that, as Gould Davis sees it, women were much more liable to severe punishment than men for breaches of the law. David especially focuses on how the minds of women were subjugated during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Protestant Reformation was a movement which began in the 16th century as a series of attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church, but ended in division and the establishment of new institutions, most importantly Lutheranism, Reformed churches, and Anabaptists. ... The Puritans were members of a group of radical Protestants which developed in England after the Reformation. ... The Pope is the Catholic Bishop and patriarch of Rome, and head of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches. ...

In the last part of The First Sex Gould Davis aimed to show the beliefs used to subordinate women to be myths, with the contention that in reality women are stronger and physically, mentally, and morally superior to men, and that the survival of humanity depends on the restoration of women to their former position as rulers of society. Davis argued that the patriarchal civilisation is destroying itself and that only the values of the "matriarchates" can save humanity because a society modelled after the biology of the human male inevitably leads to a focus on technology and gadgetry rather than on loving human relationships.

Influence and criticism

The First Sex has undoubtedly had a major influence on the development of radical feminism and feminist spirituality. Its evidence for the existence of a female monotheism in prehistory was critical to the development of such books as Merlin Stone's When God Was A Woman, Marija Gimbutas' theories of a goddess-worshipping culture in Old Europe, and the neo-pagan goddess spirituality of such writers as Starhawk and Carol Christ. For these people, the belief that patriarchy is not inevitable but a recent development in human history shows the possibility of a much more equitable, just and equal society than that of Judaeo-Christian culture. Riane Eisler's The Chalice And The Blade follows very strongly from Davis in its location of a pre-patriarchal society in Crete. Radical feminism is a branch of feminism that views womens oppression (or patriarchy) as the basic and pervasive evil upon which human relationships in society are arranged. ... Feminist spirituality is a class of religious beliefs in which certain feminist ideas play an important role. ... Merlin Stone is a sculptor and professor of art and art history who became interested, in adulthood, in archaeology and ancient religions from her study of ancient art. ... Marija Gimbutas (Vilnius, Lithuania January 23, 1921 – Los Angeles February 2, 1994) researched the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of Old Europe, a term she introduced, in works published between 1946 and 1971, that opened new views by combining traditional spadework, linguistics and mythology. ... Starhawk (born Miriam Samos in 1951) is a American writer, activist and Witch. ... Carol T. Christ is a scholar of Victorian Literature and English Literature in general. ... Dr. Riane Tennenhaus Eisler was born in Vienna and fled from the Nazis with her parents to Cuba as a child. ... Greece and Crete Crete (Greek Κρήτη / Kriti) is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean Sea. ...

However, almost since its publication, there has been a great deal of criticism of The First Sex. Some writers, have asserted that the book merely revives fictions that later archaeology has already refuted, whilst from the start many people experienced in human biology were aware that her claim human males were "mutants" was completely wrong, as was her claim that Antarctica has historically been far from the South Pole. In Goddess Unmasked, Phillip Davis suggests very strongly that the arguments of Gould Davis and Marija Gimbutas are severely distorted at best, that serious study of artifacts in Europe and Anatolia does not support the idea of a peaceful matriarchy, and that there is no evidence for a female monotheism of the type advocated by Gould Davis. Others, such as Steven Goldberg in his mid-1970s Why Men Rule have used primatology to hypothesise that a matriarchal society is not compatible with the roles that biology has assigned the human sexes. Main articles: Life The most salient example of biological universality is that all living things share a common carbon-based biochemistry and in particular pass on their characteristics via genetic material, which is based on nucleic acids such as DNA and which uses a common genetic code with only minor... Location of the South Pole in the Antarctic continent. ... A satellite composite image of Europe // Etymology Picture of Europa, carried away by bull-shaped Zeus. ... Asia Minor lies east of the Bosporus, between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. ... Primatology is the study of primates. ...

Similarly, in her 2000 book The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, Cynthia Eller aims to show that, not only is Gould Davis' theory of a prehistoric matriarchal queendoms unsupported by more modern archaeological evidence, but that, even if it were true, it would not give women any more hope for a just and equal future simply because replicating the ancient past in today's world is not feasible. This article is about the year 2000. ... The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Wont Give Women A Future is a 2000 book by Cynthia Eller, a professor at Montclair State University. ...

External links

• A selection of reviews