Thing is, statements like the one in the post are just as ignorant as the claimed “enemy”.

You know what else takes 28 days? A moon cycle. We have absolutely no context, what this means. A period tracker bone is a perfectly valid hypothesis, but without any proof or context nothing more than this. It could have been used for moon phases, sheep counting, trade, or simply for testing stone knives.

This specific instance probably.

But the point is soo much of history ignores the female perspective (or the non-european perspective). Sometimes intentionally like all the female scientists that contribute to foundational studies and don’t get their name on the published paper.

And this is really damaging; I have a family member that legitimately believes that european-descent men are the smartest throughout history (when I brought up the Islamic Golden Age as a counter example he accused it of being propaganda).

American schools are so bad at teaching diverse history. So many still struggle with the basic truths about Columbus and the Natives.

Agreed, when speaking of the distant past, I always assume that by “man” they mean “mankind” aka human… Not males.

In the grand scheme, I don’t think it matters whether the thing was done by a male or female, the fact that it happened is the interesting thing about it.

I’m 100% positive that both men (males) and women contributed to these things, and it is impossible to know how much influence each sex had on any given thing, so I’m not sure why the sex of the ancient person who did it, matters.

That’s the correct interpretation of that use of the word, and the quote in the post is meaning to use it in that way before pretending it’s a gotcha.

The term man (from Proto-Germanic *mann- “person”) and words derived from it can designate any or even all of the human race regardless of their sex or age. In traditional usage, man (without an article) itself refers to the species or to humanity (mankind) as a whole.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_(word)

Same here. My native langauge is not gendered and I rarely associate “man” in academic spaces with “gender” category. I usually need more info to tilt to gender in discussions.

I’m pretty sure that was the intent behind the original wording. The interpretation of this being the remnant of a female human makes sense to me, but as this is an anecdotal account of Sandi Toksvig’s time in university, we really have no idea if this is a good example of the lack of a female perspective in anthropology or just a convenient strawman to make a point.

In any case, cool meme.

This and “hey guys”

I don’t know about English, but in French in the 19th century men did enforce the use of homme (men) instead of humain (human) in the déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, and in the language, because they did want to segregate women. It was a purposeful and deliberate decision.

I am convinced it’s exactly the same in English.

But its taken to mean both, so at least lightly attributes it to a man rather than a woman.

I conclude the moon has a vaj

In English common law, a “lunar month” traditionally meant exactly 28 days or four weeks, thus a contract for 12 months ran for exactly 48 weeks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_month

So, depending on the legal framework, a 28 day marker could be very useful. If they were actually tracking the moon, you’d think it would be 29 units even though a lunar month can vary between about 29.1 and 29.9 days. Then again, 28 notches on a stick means 29 sections, so…?

It’s interesting that a woman’s menstrual cycles is approx 28.1 days on average, with a standard deviation of 3.95 days. That means 28 days is a lot closer to the average menstrual cycle than the average lunar month. But, the standard deviation is a lot greater.

Other than tides, why do you need to know when the next full moon is? And can’t you just look at the moon and see how close it is waning to the full moon?

Not saying the calendar is definitely a woman’s, but wanting to know when you’re going to start leaking blood onto everything near you seems like a good reason to track a period.

While I agree with you that the teacher in this post is wrong about what this is, I don’t think labeling “gender bigotry” indiscriminately as something both sexes do under one umbrella is accomplishing anything but minimizing the struggle women have endured for basically all of human existence up until the last few decades.

Personally, I wouldn’t fault this woman for thinking what she does if she’s willing to accept a broader explanation later, given that women have literally been sold as property up until a couple hundred years ago.

Women have the right to at least posit the ways they as a group have been held down, and that includes accepting their indignation and allowing them grace for when they’re wrong, because without those things they won’t actually learn the truth.

Further than that, I think it’s necessary for women learning now to have the same realization this one did that women throughout all of history save for this recent tiny sliver have been oppressed. Even if it’s built on an incidentally faulty premise, that doesn’t mean the realization itself is wrong.

Covering up the discourse by labeling the process of realization as “gender bigotry” is itself an attempt at erasure, and very much puts you on the side of the oppressors, just because you think it’s distasteful to have this realization yourself.

I’m sure gender bigotry exists in the direction of women towards men. This ain’t it.

I doubt the teacher really believed this, and they were likely striving to just open their students’ minds to the idea that most innovations are probably assumed to be made by men

Other than tides, why do you need to know when the next full moon is? And can’t you just look at the moon and see how close it is waning to the full moon?

Not saying the calendar is definitely a woman’s, but wanting to know when you’re going to start leaking blood onto everything near you seems like a good reason to track a period. Plenty of women are regular like clockwork, I was at 26 days almost exactly for years.

So you’re arguing that people would have more use to write moon cycles than women cycles? And you talk about bigotry?!

It’s under the sauce.

No meme, only bait.

They probably did but only the bone survived time

Likely durability. A bone and a stick can both be thrown into a bag and carried with you, but a bone is much more durable than a stick. It’ll be less likely to break or wear down as it rubs against everything else in your bag.

Likely durability and portability. Think of it as something they use month over month and just mark the day with something like a string band. Bone would be light enough to keep with you, strong enough to not break, and common enough to be available for household use.

That’s exactly what is meant, but they have to find something to complain about

Sure, you can say “man” means “mankind”, but when you use gendered language like that, most people picture a couple of caveMEN sitting around a fire carving bones rather than caveHUMANS (edited – I think it would benefit us to picture all genders around this hypothetical fire). Even though we try to use gendered language in a neutral way, listeners will often perceive the language in a gendered way.

Whoosh.

It seems pretty clear that they mean “male” as they follow the mention of “man” up with “woman”.

I don’t see it assuming scientists are all men. Women are just as capable of internalized misogyny and just as capable of being dense as men.

With the willendorf Venus, it wasn’t until a woman who had already had children worked with it, that they suspected it might be a pregnancy self portrait. There had been women already there, but none who knew what a pregnant person looks like from that perspective.

this proves metal has existed since the dawn of man! enter Miocene epoch heavy metal

That’s also where the “were” prefix in werewolf comes from.

just lean all the way in and call us vermin

https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=551

It’s important to note how we got here. In old English man just meant human. Wereman meant male and wifman meant female. Over time that “were” prefix got dropped and man now means male but the ambiguous meaning of humankind stuck around. In fact “human” comes from old french “of man”, again the non-gendered use of the word man.

The point is to fix all these problems we just have to bring back the “were”. The progressive werewolves are way ahead of us on this issue.

I’m not seeing a comment pointing out why 28 days isn’t a moon thing, so I’ll take a shot. If you watch new moon to new moon or full moon to full moon, it’s a 29.5 day cycle. It’s true, the moon’s orbit is only 28 days. However, that’s 360° of travel. We don’t track the moon against the stars for its cycle though, it’s tracked against the sun. A full moon sits opposite the sun, a new moon in line with the sun, etc. So, in that 28 day orbital period, the earth has also orbited about 1/13 of an orbit around the sun, changing the position of the sun against the stars . That means the moon has to travel an extra 28° of orbit to reach the new moon position again - about an extra day an a half.

I hear you but it’s far more likely for a woman to track her own period than for a nearby man to track it. You’re the reason this professor felt the need to give this example. Because men assume all progress and intellectual pursuits were obviously sought by men. You guys think it’s the automatic default, and even the suggestion that a woman might have accomplished something is met with, “hey! It could have been a man!”

As a man living with three menstruating women I learned very quickly how to count to 28 on three different cycles.

It could be both.

A few weeks ago I blew my wife’s mind after she commented that both her and her best friend had started their period and I responded with ‘well, it is a full moon.’

She thought I was being ’boomer humor’ sexist until I brought up the studies about it. (Which are not 100% conclusive, mind you, but there are trends.)

Are you Richard Dawkins?

But since before you were born people knew how long a woman’s menstrual cycle lasts. Most likely the Internet existed when you became an adult and thought about measuring things. The society you lived in had existing calendars that you were aware of if/when you had a menstrual cycle. You’ve never needed to “chart 28 days” but someone who lived long long ago may have wondered and they would have had no frame of reference so they decided to count.

Yeah, I don’t get it either. Weren’t most, if not all, ancient calendars lunar based? Far easier to work out a 28 day cycle than a 365.25 day cycle.

I’m a woman and I have never needed to chart 28 days.

Is this because you don’t care when your next period is? Or because you don’t need to record it to remember it?

I can imagine a modern woman might not care if she always has menstrual products on hand or nearby. But, it might have been more meaningful in ancient times when there might have been more taboos associated with menstruation, plus it might have been more important to know as part of family planning. And, it might have been much less convenient to carry around whatever was needed to handle menstruation.

Also, in a modern world where calendars are everywhere, I can imagine someone might say “ok, so my next period will be in early July”. But, there was a time when days and months were not tracked, or were only tracked by priests, etc. In that kind of situation, I could imagine it might be useful to count the days until the next period was expected. On the other hand, a primitive society probably spends a lot more time outdoors and sees the moon a lot more often, so it might be just as easy to go “ok, so my next period will be when the moon’s 3/4 full”.

28 notches means that the bone had 29 sections, which more closely matches a lunar month than a typical menstrual period. But, I could see it being used either way.

Sandi is a comedian and presenter of UK show QI, not a researcher. She’s literally just talking about an epiphany.

This is a refreshing comment, if any. Especially coming from a woman. Thank you.

Who is responsible though? The historian, or the man who inscribed the bone?

eve-opeher