> I would probably have found it all quite weird ...
I'm interested by that - and totally unoffended. I suppose I'm so used to it
after 20 years and more that I can't imagine what would look weird. So what
might have looked weird to you? - or anyone else reading?
> series by Jean Auel. ... How do you, and others who may have
> read her, feel about her?
Her series was very popular and still figures on lists of books with Pagan
content. I loved the first one on the Neanderthals, esp the women's stuff.
The theme of female as founding technologist was already familiar to me from
research. It was nice to see it in a novel though I thought it was a trifle
over-done. Certainly journeying was far more a part of stone-age culture esp
by water, than we think, and it would have stimulated the circulation of
ideas. But so many innovations by one person went a bit over the top.
I also liked very much the male narrative in the middle where Jon had served
as an initiator assistant to his shaman to teach virgin girls sex and found
the experience highly anxious re his need to give careful service on such an
important matter. The feelings of men as highly sensitive and fearful
sexually are so overwhelmingly overlooked, as is their natural fear around
offering up a very vulnerable part of their body to a massively powerful
female organ, and to female pleasure usage. We are socialised to assume that
males instantly enjoy sex and are 'naturally' the authoritative partner,
whereas in fact matters work so much better in the reverse - see Saiving's
material on the gendered applicability of humility to the doctrine of sin.
Shan Jayran
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