First published on my Facebook page on Dec 13 2020. Republished here with major additions.

Screenshot Image description: A picture of a painting that shows an outdoor scene on a grassy plain with hills in the distance. In the foreground on the left stands a women in a pink tunic and brown belt, holding several spears or some kind of weapon in her left hand and holding one of them aloft in her right hand as if to throw it at an animal close by. The animal looks to be some kind of mammal, possibly a deer but it’s not clear.

This article from Mic is a super fun article to read and learn from. It's also super patriarchal and problematic. This is the headline: “Ancient remains prove women have been running shit for at least 9000 years.”

screenshot Headline of the article with black text on a green background. Headline reads: "Ancient remains prove women have been running shit for at least 9000 years" — Screenshot Image description: Headline of the article with black text on a green background. Headline reads: "Ancient remains prove women have been running shit for at least 9000 years"

The point of the article is that ancient remains of our ancestors show hunting implements in burials of people they think were women which suggests that women were hunters just like men. The implied meaning of the article headline is that women being hunters means they must have had power in ancient human societies, ie. they must have been “running shit”.

There are several major issues with this analysis that need to be addressed.

Hunting doesn't mean someone is more in charge of their life than someone who's gathering. The idea that women must have been "running shit" because now we have evidence that they were hunters, while as gatherers they must have been weak and useless and "not running shit", is exactly the type of patriarchal gendered and binary thinking that is so wrong with our present day system.

Feminizing labor or putting negative connotations on feminized labor is what leads to the oppression of women and anyone who doesn't fall into the category of "cis male". It’s not only patriarchal to think this way, it’s white feminist. White feminism is a philosophy in which so-called feminists think that by behaving like and achieving the power of toxic white men, women are liberating themselves. It’s racist, sexist, ableist, classist, fatphobic, transphobic, perpetuates misogynoir, and transmisogynoir, and uplifts colonization and imperialism. It defends patriarchy by putting a “feminine” face on it while at the same time supposedly fighting for women but really only fighting for cis white women and women with western and class privilege. It’s the opposite of gender justice and liberation.

From what I have studied, from multiple Indigenous cultures all over the world (although not all Indigenous cultures I have studied), women had a lot more power and respect and control over their lives in pre-colonial times than they did once colonizers took over. That is true in so many places even going back to Druid Britain 2,000 years ago before the patriarchal Romans colonized them. Druid women had power and respect regardless of whether or not they hunted. It had nothing to do with their physical prowess and everything to do with the wisdom they held as women and their inherent worth as people.

It’s only logical that such Indigenous cultures that respected the wisdom of women descended from more ancient hunter-gatherer cultures where women were respected for the wisdom they held regardless of whether or not they hunted or how great their physical ability was.

So please stop this nonsense about how hunting means someone must have been "running shit". If women were hunting, it could mean that they didn’t have anyone to help them access food. It's a possible sign of struggle. It could mean they had to go hunting when they were pregnant and breastfeeding, when it was cold, when everyone was hungry, when all the plants were dead and no one could find food. That wouldn’t be “running shit”, that would be surviving.

Hunting also wasn't about power in many Indigenous cultures. It was about taking care of loved ones and being in relationship with the environment and animals around them. By the way, gathering was also about taking care of loved ones, and being in relationship with the environment and animals around them. It turns out that hunting and gathering are both forms of the same labor.

Gathering may have been considered very important considering how Indigenous cultures saw the sacred in their natural environment, including in plants, trees, and mushrooms. Depending on the Indigenous culture and environment of their land, forests were considered sacred, trees were considered goddesses, and plants were prayed to before anyone even picked a leaf for medicine or food. Do you think that in such cultures the labor of gathering would have been devalued or held up as highly respected labor? Do you think that such labor might have been feminized or masculinized or not gendered at all? If it was feminized and it was also highly respected, what does that suggest about the position of women in that culture?

This idea that hunting means power and gathering means weakness is not only faulty, it creates highly problematic connotations of what it means to be powerful. It suggests that to be powerful you must be a predator. That suggests that to be powerful you must kill. Meanwhile, our patriarchal society pushes the idea that men are the gender who are supposed to be "powerful predators". The extreme logical conclusion of that would be that a man must kill in order to be considered “a man” who is “running shit”.

Is that an extreme logical conclusion? Well, 90% of all murders are committed by men. That’s an actual real life statistic today. Men are also much more likely to commit other violence crimes. They are the predators of our society preying on each other and everyone else who is seen as “weaker”. Do you see how toxic this idea of violence = power = masculinity is? Our little boys don’t have a chance in such a society. Their indoctrination into the idea of violence = power = masculinity begins early and it doesn’t stop no matter how much destruction it causes. The more destruction the more powerful they think they are.

Please learn about patriarchy and dismantle it. We are in mass extinction and climate chaos caused by men because they think preying on others and colonizing makes them powerful. They think they’re “running shit” and instead they have run the planet into the ground.

Here’s an extract from the article itself:

Screenshot Image description: Article extract shows black text on a white background. Text reads: ""Labor practices among recent hunter-gatherer societies are highly gendered, which might lead some to believe that sexist inequalities in things like pay or rank are somehow 'natural,'" Haas explained to Science Focus. "But it's now clear that sexual division of labor was fundamentally different — likely more equitable — in our species' deep hunter-gatherer past."

Screenshot Image description: Article extract shows black text on a white background. Text reads: "In other words, this discovery provides evidence that female hunters might not be as uncommon as some people think. The authors of the study even called out other "scholars" for bias, writing that they "generally accept that projectile points associated with male burials are hunting tools, but have been less willing to concede that projectile points associated with female burials are hunting tools."
It's something that the entire field needs to work on.”

Screenshot Image description: Article extract shows black text on a white background. Text reads: ""The message [of the new finding] is that women have always been able to hunt and have in fact hunted," archaeologist Bonnie Pitblado, who did not take part in the study, told Science Magazine. And, frankly, no one should be taken aback by the discovery."

Notice that while the archaeologists point to possible hunting implements in burials of people they think are women, no one points to possible gathering objects in burials of people they think are men and says: “This bag must mean men gathered! This pot must mean men gathered!” There’s a large amount of archeological silence when it comes to evidence that our male ancestors did what we would deem today “feminized labor”. That’s just as much an example of misogyny and patriarchy as ignoring evidence that showed women may have been hunters.

There is also the key point that just because someone had certain body parts, they may not have identified as male or female. Many Indigenous cultures all over the world had understandings of trans identities and fluid gender roles.

Of course women hunted and gathered. It’s also highly likely that men hunted and gathered just like women did. The reality is that people of all genders very likely did whatever tasks were necessary at any particular time according to their capability because it was about survival and cooperation and humans have survived throughout history by being adaptable and cooperative.

None of this means that for our ancestors, one gender was “running shit” above and beyond other genders. Hunting doesn’t equal power. Gathering doesn’t equal weakness. If our ancestors were to look down on us today, I can’t imagine how disappointed they would be to see this patriarchal toxic masculine white feminist nonsense thinking in so many of their descendants today.

Dismantle these patriarchal ideas so that we can come to a deeper understanding of humans and truly know our ancestors and ourselves.