Goodness, I'm angry.
My morning starts with reading the on-line version of the paper De Volkskrant. On the front page was an article with the title "Pin-up van 35 duizend jaar oud". The important part being the word pin-up. It referred to this story.
I am very interested in the pre-christian culture of my continent. The info we have is patchy and sketchy. We need to interpret figurines without knowing the stories they figured in. We assume that they had a role to play in maintaining the fertility, the life of the community.
But since this is a naked woman, science editors (you know, the detached, scientific ones, the ones that describe the academic peer-reviewed truth) are terming this religious item a pin-up. A sex toy.
/sarcasm/ Because that's the only reason anyone would ever want to represent a female figure. So that heterosexual men can get off on it. /end sarcasm/
Of course, I e-mailed the editorial board.
I'm just sorry I forgot to mention that this kind of headlining doesn't inform us about 35 thousand years ago. It informs us about our current culture. The most important reason to depict a naked woman in our culture is to stimulate the sexual fantasy of a heterosexual male.
Credit where it's due: the content of the article wasn't all that bad. It's the headline that REALLY pissed me off.
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The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future by Riane Eisler is an AMAZING discussion of this. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in feminism, our cultural past, and the rise of patriarchy (since she argues that men's rule over women is not by any means natural and what not always the norm)
I think its even in the first chapter that she dissects the view on these venus status and the false assumption that they were 'pin ups.
You are barking up the wrong tree.
Headlines are writtne by subeditors, not the authors of the article.
"...science editors [...] are terming this religious item a pin-up."
You owe the scientists an apology, I thinl.
Whomever created this title, this is ridiculous, ahistorical, and a slap in the face of archaelogy as a profession. "Archies" have to do a hell of a lot of meticulous piecing together of clues without stepping across the line into rabid conjecture (of the sort that several prominent sociobiologists have fun doing). It is half art and half science, and the media invariably muck it up whenever reporting on their finds.
There is no reason to believe that the earliest (modern) human societies in EVERY corner of the globe were patriarchies at all, much less patriarchies as we understand them today.
People who view these figurines as masturbatory aids, pin-ups, or any other such artifact are viewing them through the patriarchal lens of male-oriented heteronormativity. In several early socities of which we're aware, men, along with women, worshipped goddesses as the source of life and creation. There were also societies that revered women themselves for their lifegiving potential--in fact, there is a correlation (though not necessarily a causation) between humans' increasing knowledge of men's roles in reproduction and with the decline in women-honoring cultures.
I realize that may be hard for we patriarchalists (whether by choice or involuntarily so) to get a grip on, but, no, it hasn't always been about men and sex as they see it. And no one--not archies themselves and certainly not reporters--has license to dream up whatever cockamamie theory fits today's zeitgest.
"Previous discoveries have included exquisite carvings of animals, and an object that could be a stone "sex toy"."
I think this reference to a "sex toy" is to something other than the female figure, no? I'm assuming it's something vaguely dildo-ish, but that they didn't want to say dildo in a science article. :D
If you were just saying that pin-up = sex toy, then please ignore me. I certainly agree that calling the figurine a pin-up was at the very least trashy. I assume the translated headline is "35,000 year old pin-up"?
Ha! I just found a link to the article for the "sex toy": the Hohle Fels phallus
@Wonderwall: I loved-loved-loved The Chalice and the Blade.
@Smiley: I got a reply from the editorial board, promising to forward my comment. They mentioned a name, but not his/her role in the organisation. You are right of course. Thanks!
@Okra: thanks for GETTING it.
Can't wait to tell my mum tonight. She put me on this track (thanks mum!)
Science writers are almost never qualified, because no-one cares about accurate reporting of science.
And sub-editors never read the articles they're headlining.
I recommend not reading newspapers or watching the news. It's all unsubstantiated shite.
Hey, watch it. I'm a copy editor and I most certainly read the articles I write headlines for. Anyone who doesn't read the article shouldn't be doing the damn job.
It's easy to accept science as infallibly objective, but, like religion, science and the empirical process are culturally constructed. Brava Glauke for staying skeptical.
And 3 guesses as to who makes up the vast majority of peer review boards, particularly on the big journals.
I read an article about this on Yahoo, and one of the scientists involved was quoted as saying that the culture that produced this artifact was, "clearly sex-obsessed." Excuse me? You find one artifact depicting a large-breasted naked woman and suddenly it's completely alright to make some blanket statement about the culture as a whole? Oh wait, I forgot that the only reason women have breasts is for the pleasure of heterosexual men. They serve no other purpose at all -- I know because the scientist man said so!