One of the comments reads : Actually, we will probably never figure out, was it man or woman. but I thought this comment of the professor was an interesting eye opener. https://mastodonapp.uk/@MarkHoltom/112070436760917344
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I always read this type of statement as man = species.
I know this particular thinking is falling out of fashion but it’s not totally dead yet
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.
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.
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.
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I mean the lunar cycle is roughly 29 days with the argument that it’s 28 if you don’t count the new moon.
I realize this is a neat thought idea but it I think best demonstrates how easy it is to jump to conclusions.
I conclude the moon has a vaj
Well duh, Sokka was trying to get all up in it
I just finished TLA. I’d never seen it, and now I have, and it’s gone, and my life feels empty. Why would you bring this up? Why would you hurt me so?
Korra is good, but it doesn’t hit the same, and 70 years is not enough to fully industrialize a society.
Look up the Meiji Restoration in Japan. They went from a feudal, near-medieval society to an industrial society between 1870 and 1920, by the time they were done they are participating in both world wars.
You actually don’t have to suspend your disbelief so hard here, it’s the most believable part of the story of people who can bend elements with tai chi
I think that most of the criticisms directed at the industrialization and mecha stuff is mostly just a byproduct of the worldbuilding in korra broadly not being very good. Not even necessarily bad a lot of the time, but just not as good as avatar.
Bending styles became more homogenized and choreography is worse, everything became a kind of 1920’s hong kong steampunk, and lots of the city shots, there’s basically nobody walking around. You have things like tasers and huge mechas, but huge mechas and tasers without explanations for how they’re getting such dense energy storage, or circumventing some real world problems with those technologies in a 1920’s context. With various forms of bending, you can kind of get around the energy density problem a little bit, since it’s just straight up magic that seems like it violates conservation of energy, but with korra’s stuff, that doesn’t apply a lot of the time.
Lots of little things like that kinda give the impression that the world is made of paper mache, or that a lot of things are just kind of done because they’re a cool idea, rather than because they’re both a cool idea and make a little bit of sense. I’m not really opposed to the idea of a car in the setting, but it strikes me as quite a bit easier to power a car if you have a mobile human power plant that can produce large amounts of energy. I think it’s also kind of a shame to disconnect the tech from this for a different reason, as well, and that’s because it means that the bending is kind of, less broadly useful and applicable. It takes up less space in the setting, it has less utility, it’s not as cool, and the show doesn’t really end up giving many good replacements for it as time goes on.
That’s really nitpicking, though. I think the broader point is just that there wasn’t much done in the series to really show the continuity between ATLA and korra (do not mistake this for fanservice), and they really feel like different shows. Feels kind of like about a quarter of the reason why people didn’t like the last jedi, but that’s kind of a whole other deal. Anyways, that being the case, korra’s more of a stand alone kind of deal, and I think it kind of falls flat on it’s own, because it just isn’t very good and I don’t like it as much as the OG.
You also get a lot of people that will blame all the problems on the show that it kept getting renewed season after season without any real knowledge of the future viability of the show, but I think I would still just blame the writing, in that respect. You can make a good, contiguous series of media based only on good improv, only on good setup and payoff, external to the idea that the show has multiple locked-in seasons. I don’t think it matters too much, if you’re good enough. Main example there is probably just venture bros, though.
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.
I mean you can look at the moon to get a general sense, but if you want to be more precise then I’d use the new moon as the start and count the days until the next new moon.
As far as why, I mean the seasons generally follow the lunar cycle so it would be a way to count the seasons and time and plan and do literally anything you’d need to do that you’d track time for.
I bet you’d even want to track your menstrual cycle, I just wouldn’t limit it to that.
I think the real “issue” with the OP statement and what my response is meant to say is that it doesn’t have to be either or.
i think they mean ‘man’ as in ‘mankind’. also any ideas why would they carve it into bone and not bark or something more flat?
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.
What about blackthorn wood versus chicken bone? What’s it like being wrong on the internet, champ. Adding this one to my scoreboard (dry-wipe, wall-mounted, magnetic).
Do you mean dry erase?
🎤 💧
Yes I do, the terms are interchangeable here.
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
Whoosh.
It seems pretty clear that they mean “male” as they follow the mention of “man” up with “woman”.
no i mean, by the people ‘who consider it’. i think the speaksr didnt understand that theyre saying it’s mankind others are talkint abkut
nah. it’s a double entendre.
IIRC “Calendar” was one of the proposed solutions, but the bone actually had a lot more than 28 holes. It’s one of the reasons it’s purpose is considered unknown.
I always find this particular strain of antiintellectualism deeply ironic, because it claims to oppose women being forgotten, but the premise assumes the “scientists” are all male.
For some reason I thought they meant they carved the calendar on their own bone and thought “damn that’s metal af”.
Anyway, don’t farmers also need to tell the date? Was this bone from before we started doing that?
this proves metal has existed since the dawn of man! enter Miocene epoch heavy metal
First off: Everyone who played the historical documentary Brutal Legend knows that metal was a gift from the gods.
Second: Miocene epoch heavy metal is my favorite genre!
It occurs to me that the solution might be to start referring to men as “wermen” again, and revert “men” to it’s gender neutral roots. That also means we can have a bunch of other prefixes for other genders.
Languages are fun.
That’s also where the “were” prefix in werewolf comes from.
just lean all the way in and call us vermin
“man” as in human kind.
I agree the linguistics here are unfortunate, but here we are, and that word, in that context, is normally gender neutral.
Also, 28 day calendar probably means it’s the moon.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.
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Hunter, werehunter, wifhunter. fun!
the real question is how are we going to refer to male wolves?
It would be interesting to see what in an alternate timeline, English would have looked like today if the Norman invasion never happened.
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’m not seeing a comment pointing out why 28 days isn’t a moon thing,
Hm, that’s odd! it’s right there
Odd indeed since the link works fine in my mobile app (connect) but doesn’t show on the native comment thread. I kinds figured it was something like that with a different source instance. At least I can feel good knowing I explained where 28 does occur
Why wouldn’t a male have figured out a lunar cycle and tried to track the moon? Not that the female explanation is lesser in any regard, but why exclude all possibilities?
I’m a woman and I have never needed to chart 28 days.
that screenshot up there reads like some academic person with too much time on their hands trying too hard to congratulate themselves for solving some anthropological mystery.
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.
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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.
“When I was a student at Cambridge…”
Believe it or not, in civilized countries it’s common for people to get higher education for the sake of education.
Her predecessor on QI, mr. Stephen Fry, was also an OxBridge fellow – known as one of Britain’s greatest comedians.
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This is a refreshing comment, if any. Especially coming from a woman. Thank you.
This isn’t a meme…
Are you Richard Dawkins?
Some guy tracking the moon.
I’m confused by this quote - no sane person would assume a male did something just because we say man did it. In this instance, man would simply be referencing humanity
The want to define whether a male or female did it without any evidence is simply sexist
I am sure the comments on this meme community post in a niche social media site will not be filled with butthurt men’s rights activists.
You could have at least used the term “misogynist” so as to not imply that men’s rights are a bad thing.
Hey, we found one!
Not seriously, “men’s rights activists” are a specific group of people that only exist to complain about and hate women. They don’t care about men’s rights, they are anti-feminists.
If you genuinely didn’t know this, then I’d love to know what Internet rock You’ve been hiding under. If you’re trying to concern troll, fuck off, MRAs are fucking scum.
-signed, a man.
Feels good to go with the flow, doesn’t it? And going for the audience’s applause? And while we’re at it, what are “women’s rights activists”, then? The undisputed incarnation of everything that is right and good in the world, I suppose?
-signed, a man, like you.
signed, a man
You could have left this part off, it was perfectly clear you’re a man
Have my upvote!
I’ve definitely heard of misogynists, and of misogynists disguising themselves as legitimate men’s advocates, but I’d never heard of “men’s rights activists” as a specific group of misogynists before this.
Without this explanation, had someone said “men’s rights activists are misogynists,” I would have thought they were a misandrist, because it sounds like a general descriptor and not a specific group.
So what do you call it when someone who’s not a misogynist advocates for equal treatment in the areas where men get the short end of the stick?
Generally, they’re described as part of the men’s liberation movement. The men’s movement split decades ago into men’s rights movement, which often comes at the issue from a more conservative premise that views feminism as going to far and eroding men’s rights, and the men’s liberation movement which generally is more liberal and wants to critically look at traditional masculinity and how those expectations may harm men.
Hmm, intuition implies the inverse. I would have guessed men’s liberation means “liberation from women” and thus misogyny. I guess unintuitive terminology is just the way things go.
Never mind anything, making the abstract connection between one event and the number of marks you scratch on a wall was probably the equivalent of genius of the time, the first mathematician.
a man with a wife.
it’s good to know when it’s time to spend couple of days hunting the sabre tooth tiger.
Wife bad amirite
PMS deniers 🤣
Oh no my loved one is about to experience terrible pain that comes every few weeks, better complain about how this affects me and go do my own thing for awhile
More like he needs to know when to take a break when she’s most fertile so they can procreate. He’s already gone by the time she’s having “her time of the month”
Tell me you’ve never found the man in the boat without telling me you’ve never found the man in the boat.
