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akilou ,

Man just needs to look at the moon to mark 28 days

Zehzin ,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

Sometimes it's cloudy. Sometimes you can't tell if that's were 2 or 3 days away from a full moon.

Random_internet_user ,

Ah yes one of the memes of all time . Also true af.

Kyrgizion ,

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?

Semi-Hemi-Demigod ,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

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

MissJinx ,
@MissJinx@lemmy.world avatar

As a woman I'm offended but also feel seen

Tusser ,

Offended? Start the clock…

Semi-Hemi-Demigod ,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

Menstruation sucks and anything I can do to make their lives easier makes my life easier.

But that’s because I’m the man: The man with a good attitude towards menstruation

Monument ,

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.)

pdnq ,

Derek, halt! Unga unga, no cave cuddles now. Me check bone-calendar, unga bunga, big chance for baby bump. We wait, sky spirits nod-nod. Timing everything, unga!

Sure, that was the way for woman to use a calender…

DessertStorms ,

Lol, mansplain harder! I'm sure it had nothing to do with wanting to know when their next period was due, to, you know, know when their next period was due, and be prepared for that, without it having anything to do with a man.. 🙄🤦‍♀️😂

kambusha ,

https://i.imgflip.com/8ipd6u.jpg

ItsAFake ,
@ItsAFake@lemmus.org avatar

It's under the sauce.

Aquilae , (edited )
@Aquilae@hexbear.net avatar

The comrades we made along the way ✌️😔

OozingPositron ,
@OozingPositron@feddit.cl avatar

No meme, only bait.

xrtxn ,

So they nailed it with the 28 day calendar and we are stuck with this one

Carvex ,

13 months of 28 days with an extra holiday at years end, it works so much cleaner than what we use.

Tar_alcaran ,

Yeah, but then how could we make the important months longer than the rest? That would really piss off Julius and Augustus.

Slightly more sensibly, 12 months is easier to synch to the seasons, and calendars are very important to agriculture. 3 months for each season is convenient.

Semi-Hemi-Demigod ,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

Thirteen also can’t be divided evenly and is widely considered bad luck.

mcqtom ,

That's just what Big February wants you to think.

huf ,

well yes, but 28 day months dont divide nicely into 365/366 days, so it would not have worked well.... uh, hang on. i'm being handed a note. huh. apparently our current calendar also doesnt solve this neatly at all, and is in fact a patched monstrosity more batshit than anything any single malicious person could come up with. well.

fox ,

Anyone working with dates and times was cursed in a past life. Timezones are a pain to work with. Daylight savings sucks. Some countries change daylight savings at different times. Some countries change timezones sometimes. Go further back and some countries had their own leap days. Different calendars don't form neat cycles and must be manually synchronized every few years. Did you know Easter, for about 300 years, needed to be announced by the Pope each year because it was a lunar holiday based on a Jewish calendar but the Christians followed a different one? Also, every now and again we throw a leap second into the computers because the Earth's rotation is gradually slowing down and 365/366 days isn't quite precise enough anyways.

SoyViking ,
@SoyViking@hexbear.net avatar

I once read that when Sweden decided to switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar they didn't do it all at once, disliking the idea of jumping so many days forwards/backwards (I can't remember which way the Julian is out of sync). Instead they opted for a plan to move their calendar one single day every year over several decades. I remember the place I read about it saying that it just confused everyone and the plan was scrapped after a few years.

NuraShiny ,

Let's go with 12 28 day months and the overhead days are universal vacation days during summer. There you go.

huf ,

well yes, the clear answer is to have "days outside the calendar". this is how the hobbits do it too :)

WaterBear ,

What about summer not being at the same time everywhere? Which hemisphere do you wanna favor? What kind of problems do vacation days in summer create in agriculture?

NuraShiny ,

Essential work will always need doing on holidays. Anyone doing essential work gets their free days at other times before of after these holidays.

Good point about hemispheres though. Put half of the days in between December and January and half in between June and July. Since it's an odd number of days (unless it's a leap year), alternate which of these gets one more every year.

Z3k3 ,

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

agressivelyPassive ,

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.

TigrisMorte ,

look how much deeper blade three cut with a single stroke! Are you sure you want to go with brand 4?

bouh ,

Seeing the reactions in this thread, it does seem that a lot of men are indeed enemies of women. Why would it be so hot otherwise to discuss this?

agressivelyPassive ,

And this reaction of yours is a prime example of jumping to conclusions based on political views.

You can argue, that this bone was used for 400 different things. Without context, arguing that it's definitely something about menstruation is just pseudo-feminist circle jerking. They just choose this interpretation because it fits their views and goals. That's unscientific.

What you're doing here is also not much better. Instead of actually engaging with the argument I brought, you just assume, that everyone who disagrees with a pseudo-feminist interpretation of a bone, must be the enemy. That is not exactly scientific.

bouh ,

you talked about enemity first, remember? you have this view of a fight, and that anyone who dare say that a woman did something and not a man, is fighting men.

You have a very defensive position. Which means you feal attacked. You say it directly when you talk about "enemy".

You are the problem my friend. Your first comment is aa problem. And the support it receives is concerning and scary.

agressivelyPassive ,

Nope, I just pointed out, that an absolute statement like the one above is not valid. And the "enemy" I brought up, was used as a description of the position shown by the proponents of the menstruation bone absolutism.

And labeling me as a "problem", without even an attempt at telling me where I might be wrong is pretty, well, bold?

Think about it, I write, that absolutism is not good, and your first response is "you are evil because you dare question whatever I happen to believe in".

You don't help feminism like that. And that's pretty sad.

WldFyre ,

Professor: Maybe it was a woman? Just consider it with an open mind.

You: This gender absolutism is the enemy™!

mwalimu ,
@mwalimu@baraza.africa avatar

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.

multifariace ,

Which is your native language? I keep looking for ways to ungender my english if possible. Removing gender from language feels more honest.

robotica ,

English is not a grammatically gendered language. Otherwise, all languages have gender.

Gabu ,

False, English is a gendered language that lost most of its gender usage. Some words still retain gender, such as blond/blonde.

Z3k3 ,

I though yhe blonde spelling was just used for beer

BCsven ,

Male or female beer?

Z3k3 ,

You know I never thought to ask

robotica ,

🤦‍♂️Yes, in that sense, English could be gendered. But what it actually means is that English used to be gendered and retains some gendered words from that time.

Another example, Russian has noun cases, but not the vocative case. However, it does have two words that have a vocative case from when the language as a whole did use to have the vocative case - Бог (Боже) and Господь (Господи) - but that doesn't mean that Russian has it now.

Also, blond/blonde are pronounced the same so the distinction is lost in speech and probably soon in writing as well, and words like fiancé/fiancée (which are also pronounced the same), widow/widower, actor/actress do not signify grammatical gender by itself.

multifariace ,

Why do I have to know the gender of a person in order to talk about them in third person singular? On more days than not, there is conversation about someone I never met where there is an irrelevant sidebar to clarify gender before communication can continue. I find this relic of the language to be inefficient, pointless and annoying. Daily life would be a lot easier with a non-gendered word for referring to a single person in third person. Languages like Spanish, with gendered nouns, is confusing for even native speakers. I am fascinated by how different languages have different ways of being complicated as well as by their phonology and syntax. I asked my question because I was looking into how other languages use gender and came to the conclusion that none were free from that complication. So I agree with you so far. All languages have gender.

firefly ,
@firefly@neon.nightbulb.net avatar

@robotica

'Natural gender' has nothing to do with 'grammatical gender.' The reason we have words for male and female persons and pet animals is because they are male and female. Calling something male or female is not grammatical gender. It's just reality, something the trans supremacist militia hates.

mwalimu ,
@mwalimu@baraza.africa avatar

Swahili.
If you want to translate “she/he went to the river”, you say “Alienda mtoni” which collapses she/he into the subject A- (Alienda) to mean “the person”.
You always need context to use a gendered word (like mwanamke for woman) otherwise general conversation does not foreground it.
There is literally no word for he/she in Swahili, as far as I know.

robotica ,

I love you how specified "as far as I know" even though it's literally your native language lmao

multifariace ,

Thank you for explaining. I will look into this more.

Gabu ,

That shows you have no idea what grammatical gender is. It has no relation to your social behavior or what you have between your legs.

multifariace ,

I'm not sure if you were responding to my question or if you are presumptuous and angry. I hope you have a nice day.

anyhow2503 ,

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.

Wirlocke ,

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.

TigrisMorte ,

So I what you are saying that we should ban all DEI activity, ban a bunch of books, and regulate Women's bodily autonomy? /s

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Everyone loves traditions!

GreyEyedGhost ,

Look at the ancient structures found throughout the world. The only one I know of in non-Mediterranian Europe is Stonehenge which, while impressive, is some stones hauled over a great distance and placed is an astronomically significant manner. Then you have pyramids and ziggurats in just about every other region except Northern Europe, North America, Australia, and Antarctica, ancient cities on every continent except Northern Europe, Australia, and Antarctica, Polynesians developing a means of marine navigation that is effective across the southern hemisphere (the Norse had a system that was effective in the North Atlantic), Australia having an oral history that has evidence of recording events that go back at least 10000 years (while surviving in some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet). When you look at it, significant achievements in ancient Northern Europe were pretty sparse. We do seem to have caught up in the modern era, though.

MystikIncarnate ,

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.

krashmo ,

I'm not sure why the sex of the ancient person who did it, matters.

Make that a common sentiment and a good chunk of the division surrounding modern discourse goes away. People care way too much about genitals both in the past and present.

MystikIncarnate ,

Not only what your genitalia is, but what you do with it, seems to be a top priority for far too many people. They're not your genitals, so maybe don't worry about it?

But "God" or something. I don't know.

JungleJim ,

Not sure why you phrased that as correcting them when you were agreeing and adding to it.

krashmo ,

I don't think that's phrased as a correction. It clearly wasn't as you noted

JungleJim ,

"clearly wasn't"

I see now, you just phrase things abruptly in a way that SEEMS rude but clearly isn't. My mistake. Have a nice day.

krashmo ,

You figured out what it meant. That's clear enough for communication purposes imo. You're welcome to your own interpretation though

MystikIncarnate ,

I didn't take it as a correction. More of a clarification. I omitted some extraneous detail that they added. I felt it was implied well enough by context that it didn't need to be said, obviously they wanted to add more clarity to the statement.

In my mind the two statements are identical, except that mine relies on context and theirs is a bit more explicit in what is said.

JungleJim ,

Fair enough.

bouh ,

You are ignorant of recent history then.

Men did do their best to segregate women in the 18th and 19th century. And they succeeded. Even in the language.

Women fighting for women to be recognized in history is an important fight for women to be respected and recognized for their doing, because even now they aren't.

And I'm not saying it's an all men problem. It's a society problem.

MystikIncarnate ,

Oh, wow. Um....

We're talking about bone carvings. And you're well into or after the bronze age.

What I'm referring to is significantly prior to anything you're talking about. The events you're referring to are a few hundred years ago, part of recorded history, while I'm talking about the early days of mankind, well before the printing press, paper, or even writing instruments like the fountain pen or quill.

When you go back, well over 1000 years ago, more like 3000+ years ago, why does it matter if a thing was done by a human person with male genitalia or female genitalia?

That was my statement. Either you vastly misunderstood, or you're so occupied by making a point, you didn't care.

bouh ,

We're talking about history where mysoginy left a big footprint because it was made by men that incapable of thinking that women could be more than what they were in their time.

Exactly like today. You're asking why it matters whether it was a man or a woman, yet this whole conversation sparked because someone said that it could be a woman.

That's conservatism for you.

MystikIncarnate ,

I'm not disputing the fact that misogyny was (and is) and big problem, that women's contributions were either disregarded or coopted by some guy and credit taken away from the actual contributor.

That happened. A lot.

But in the times before the written history books, we should be less concerned about the gender of an individual who we think used a thing in a new/innovative way for the time. I don't think that studies of bone carvings or other ancient artifacts, being referred to as an "achievement of man" should imply, or was ever meant to imply, that it was done by someone with a penis. In that context, in all cases, for all intents and purposes "man" should, and as far as I know, is, thought of as "human" or "mankind".

This isn't a debate about the sociopolitical unfairness towards women, it's a semantic argument about using the term "man" to refer to a human individual or someone who is a part of mankind. Bluntly, I took the statement in the OP as a tongue in cheek joke by the professor. They know that's not what it meant, and used the assumption that "man" = "mankind" as the juxtaposition to subvert expectations, to crack wise about it. The same way someone would say "you know what sucks about twenty six year olds? There's twenty of them" where the premise directs you to think of someone who is 26, and the punchline indicates that your assumption of it being a statement about people who are 26 years old, was wrong. That's what makes it funny. Granted, that's not very funny, but it's the structure of a very common type of joke.

That's what's in the OP.

Instead, here we are talking about women's suffrage for a field where they probably only remark about the gender of someone as a footnote.

ParetoOptimalDev ,

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

Z3k3 ,

In the context of prehistory it's to my knowledge taken to be short for mankind and feck all else. I agree its ambiguous in the modern age which is likely why it's dieing out. Science doesn't like ambiguous wordage

In history where we have names and context I absolutely agree and it is good to see the important women in history finally getting brought to the forefront

KombatWombat ,

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)

cooopsspace ,

This and "hey guys"

bouh ,

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.

FlorianSimon , (edited )

Any source on this claim about the declaration?

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