Mosuo_Families

The Mosuo Minority people of Yunnan Province in China have a very interesting way of life. They define it as a matriarchal society. I have some problems with that definition. I will describe a day in the life of a male and a female, talk about marriage and child rearing in this society. Lastly I will expound on my ideas regarding what really makes someone the more dominant in society. I will start with the daily life portion. A woman in the Mosuo tribe will wake up before dawn to work in the fields the older women will prepare food and look after the kids. After a day of toiling in the sun the women return home to have a man over or handle her own household affairs. A man would generally wake up late visit his friends, commonly talking and relaxing. In the night a man may visit a “Friend” at her home the Mosuo people don’t have marriage so the woman is never obligated to stay with one man for and period of time. Men must return to their mother’s home before the morning. Men may not buy property nor may they inherit it. Everything they have is given to them by a female. In some parts of china having a female child is cause for despair but here it is the greatest thing one could hope for. Walking marriage is what is recognized as the standard practice for people in the area. Walking marriage is a union that must be blessed by the matriarchs of both families. The man must bring gifts (much like a dowry) and have friends and family plead his case for desiring the woman’s union. Just because she is in a walking marriage doesn’t mean that she is not free to see other men or entertain other callers, it simply means that they may see one another during the day and they need not sneak around at night to meet. The people in a walking marriage cultures don’t have a unified marital home, men never move out of their mother’s home and women eventually may choose to move out but are never pressured to get out. Couples only meet during the night and there is never an understanding of permanence in relationships. A Mosuo woman named Lamu was interviewed for a web documentary and she when asked about walking marriage she said “marriage is no good, I would lose my freedom, now I can do whatever I want.” Many women don’t know who the father of their children is and children don’t know who the father of the child is, in the local dialect there is not even a word for father. Generally a man will not have a hand in raising his child but instead his sister’s children. Children are born in the maternal home and raised there. Bonfire dances occur most nights in a Mosuo village. The women and men dance together for the purpose of selecting their walking marriage partners. During the dance there are two lines one line of women and one line of men. The all sing songs together in unison. The women will then dance using their skirts to make a billowing effect. The men view this display and make their descision as to whom they will visit that night. The first thing that stands out to me is that it seems like this is the type of society a man might create: 1. He doesn’t have to work. 2. He need not commit to one woman forever in order to not be looked down on. 3. He need not be there for his child. 4. He has as much time as he wants to hang out with the guys. As I thought about it my obvious conclusion was that this society was not female dominated at all. The men had somehow won out as their lives are so much easier than those of the women in that culture. In comparison to our own culture I would note that many of those the things have been historically very present in women but I wouldn’t say that women have been dominating men, so what was the difference' I think that my understanding of what being dominant really is. I realized that in most cases it is the extent to which one is expected and able to sacrifice for others. So while it might seem nice to be a Mosuo man one must recognize that they simply lack the ability to sacrifice in any meaningful way. In our society a man who works overtime to buy his children gifts becomes worthy of some praise. He is worthy of that praise because he chooses to make a sacrifice that he didn’t need to. A woman in the eighteen hundreds just would not have had the opportunity to make that sacrifice. This right to sacrifice I will refer to as praise potential. When a society lays down rules about how duties are assigned they also distribute praise potential. The men in the Mosuo tribe have been severely short-changed when it comes to their praise potential. In a walking marriage social group the men lack the praise potential that would allow them to be a praiseworthy father or husband. As in our culture a turn to modernity is eroding their former way of living. The village was brought to the lime light when Yang Erche Namu wrote a series of autobiographies describing growing up in the mosuo village. Tourism is booming and the roles in society are being challenged because men now can earn as much in one day as a woman does in a week of work in the fields. Since only men have the free time required to entertain tourists they are the ones benefiting from their presence. When people visit a new culture their ideas get passed around and men are feeling as though they should be granted their own praise potential. Cited Best of the rest web documentaries http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xf0jdc_best-of-the-rest-women-rule-our-tri_news