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Woman's Creation
Woman's Elizabeth Woman's Anchor FIRST First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Anchor Press, 1979. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is very good. Dust jacket is very good with edgewear/tears. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.Seller 310255 History We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!
- GenresFeminism
484 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
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October 21, 2020
I only gave this four stars, because I didn’t feel like it pulled me in and that I subsequently couldn’t put it down, which I feel is a prerequisite for five stars. But still, it may be unfair.
The value of this book far exceeds just the “pull you in” factor. This book should really be essential reading for every student. It takes you way back in time and reconsiders history through a feminist lens of thought. And it’s really brilliant.
Reading it is sort of akin to reading Howard Zinn’s book of American History for the first time and being like “what the hell? Why did my education spoon feed my so much palatable bullshit about my own country’s history?” Only in this case the light shines on how our world has gone down this path that shored up dominant “active” men who control submissive “passive” women, the whole Patriarchal conundrum under which we all have to live.
The book covers the massive timeline of human culture, involving critiques of male-female relations, the effects of technology on culture, religion, and just so so much. It took encyclopedic knowledge to write this book, and I can only say that I now believe it should be on every college student’s reading list (because although I’d like to say it should be on every person’s reading list, I am aware this is not a summer on the beach book - but maybe that only further speaks to all that is wrong with the world).
The value of this book far exceeds just the “pull you in” factor. This book should really be essential reading for every student. It takes you way back in time and reconsiders history through a feminist lens of thought. And it’s really brilliant.
Reading it is sort of akin to reading Howard Zinn’s book of American History for the first time and being like “what the hell? Why did my education spoon feed my so much palatable bullshit about my own country’s history?” Only in this case the light shines on how our world has gone down this path that shored up dominant “active” men who control submissive “passive” women, the whole Patriarchal conundrum under which we all have to live.
The book covers the massive timeline of human culture, involving critiques of male-female relations, the effects of technology on culture, religion, and just so so much. It took encyclopedic knowledge to write this book, and I can only say that I now believe it should be on every college student’s reading list (because although I’d like to say it should be on every person’s reading list, I am aware this is not a summer on the beach book - but maybe that only further speaks to all that is wrong with the world).
July 25, 2025
A FEMINIST APPROACH TO ANTHROPOLOGY WITH MANY GENUINE INSIGHTS
Elizabeth Fisher (1924-1982) in 1969 founded APHRA, the first feminist literary magazine. She also taught at Cazenovia College and at New York University. (Sadly, she committed suicide on New Year’s Day 1982; she was married, and had one child.)
She wrote in the Introduction to this 1979 book, “This book began to write itself in 1971. It grew out of an essay for … APHRA… I realized that the book had been … many years in the shaping, though the immediate impetus came from the thinking engendered by those early years of the Women’s Liberation Movement. It did not begin as a women’s liberation book per se… It was, however, an attempt to look with a female perspective at what till now had been seen largely through the male eye.” (Pg. xiii-xiv)
She notes, “Claude Levi-Strauss… described all human relations in terms of men, with women as the medium of exchange between them. He used Radcliffe-Brown’s reports on Australian Aborigines, gathering and hunting peoples who never developed agriculture, to formulate universal rules about marriage and kinship systems, whereby marriage and family were forms of communication for men, based on reciprocal exchanges of women. It was a typically male cosmology: how or whether women communicated or what existence they had beyond serving the purpose of their male relatives was none of his concern… The truth of the matter is that none of these anthropologists really told us how the Australians themselves regarded women, for they interpreted the Aborigines’ actions in light of their own assumptions.” (Pg. 7)
She recounts, “When the male primate approaches the female with sex in mind, zoologists usually describe him in some admiring term of force or activity; when the female does likewise she is ‘soliciting’ him---the same word used to describe a human prostitute… K.R.L. Hall describes the female … monkey’s sexual approach as ‘a CRINGING' half-run with short quick steps toward the adult male.’ One wonders what adjective a male approach would have elicited.” (Pg. 13)
She summarizes, “The most salient observation to come out of primate studies … [is that] Every kind of ‘family’ organization can be found… the only consistent relationship in all the primate groupings is the one between mother and child… We can suppose that there is no one way in which we evolved and no one position for the human female, save when certain societies become so strong that they tried to impose their ways on other societies, as happened in the past four hundred years with the expansion of Western European culture.” (Pg. 31)
She observes, “We are told that injecting testosterone makes a female more aggressive; we are not usually told that injecting estrogen is also likely to make her more aggressive. Estrogen increases mounting and fighting behavior in female and male rats. And large doses of testosterone into animals of both sexes make them so passive that they neither feed nor fight.” (Pg. 34)
She argues, “Robert Briffaut’s three-volume ‘The Mothers’ is on the surface a great glorification of women, in actuality [is] a not-so-subtle put-down. He speaks of sex as a nasty business made beautiful by the tenderness and love transferred from the maternal relationship, and ‘maternal love is a sacrifice.’ From this premise comes the sadomasochistic foundation of male-dominated sex: one person is the tender, sacrificing giver, another the receiver; one the instrument, the other the player, and so forth.” (Pg. 40)
She states, “And it is through love-making only that the mature male can … partake of a universality of experience so that in the most playful and fanciful way, man becomes woman and woman becomes man, exchanging and recapturing roles, in the caressing, say, of his nipples, vestigial organs which are biologically useless but not sensually so.” (Pg. 40)
She suggests, “The previous explanation … gave hunting as the master behavior pattern for the human species, claiming that [through] this activity… men learned to cooperate, and thus the human nervous system developed… [As] an alternative, I submit women’s invention of the carrier bag as the take-off point for the quantum advance which created the multiplier effect that led to humanity.” (Pg. 56)
She points out, “There was probably little differentiation by sex… among human ancestors of some millions of years ago. Even today, in societies where men hunt animals and women gather plants, as among the African San… the division of labor is not hard and fast: men will stop to gather vegetable food for themselves, if… the hunting is unproductive… The division of labor that exists is related to mobility: women with infants to protect and carry cannot move fast enough and far enough to hunt efficiently.” (Pg. 70)
She asks, “If hunting really were (a) a male thing and (b) the one syndrome which was responsible for the evolution of hominids into humans, how is it that women are so close to men physically and intellectually, in manipulativeness and ingenuity?” (Pg. 116)
She laments, “Most history has been written as if women did not exist, save as passive spectators, and accounts of the Eurasian Upper Paleolithic are no exception… Only a few faint voices have been raised to question the confident myths which often masquerade as science or history. There is no reason to attribute Paleolithic art exclusively to male painters and sculptors, yet scholars have been doing so for generations.” (Pg. 135) Later, she adds, “In all the Paleolithic art found in European Russia and Siberia, not a single indubitably male figure was identified, though many small statues of females … exist.” (Pg. 150)
She summarizes, “Cave art shows that the woman was more important than the male and that her body was connected with fulness and plenty… Though there is much that is mysterious, there is no positive evidence for male domination, nor for certain aggressive syndromes which appear later in the human story.” (Pg. 152)
She proposes, “Mother-child relationships would be the most enduring, and brothers and sisters would often retain their affinities. Over time, the sexual pull between a given woman and man might also develop, through shared experience and emotion, into a specifically human creation, the very deep communion and friendship that can be created by long-term intimacy.” (Pg. 174)
She asserts, “The argument that a matriarchal society preceded patriarchy is often based on a hypothesis of mother-goddess worship in the Neolithic period. Yet in historical times clear reference to fertility goddesses accompanies a progressive decline in the status of women. Emphasis on fertility was an opening wedge in the debasement of the female… Fertility worship led to the forced breeding of women…” (Pg. 215)
She contends, “The return to the mother is a return to the mother-centered family of matriliny. I would theorize that it refers to a folk memory of a time when there was a preclass, prepatriarchal society—a golden age with no slavery, no kings, no … forced labor or forced military service, no heavy … (taxes) by temple or king…” (Pg. 275)
This book is a ‘classic’ of feminist approaches to anthropology, and will be ‘must reading’ for anyone studying the subject.
Elizabeth Fisher (1924-1982) in 1969 founded APHRA, the first feminist literary magazine. She also taught at Cazenovia College and at New York University. (Sadly, she committed suicide on New Year’s Day 1982; she was married, and had one child.)
She wrote in the Introduction to this 1979 book, “This book began to write itself in 1971. It grew out of an essay for … APHRA… I realized that the book had been … many years in the shaping, though the immediate impetus came from the thinking engendered by those early years of the Women’s Liberation Movement. It did not begin as a women’s liberation book per se… It was, however, an attempt to look with a female perspective at what till now had been seen largely through the male eye.” (Pg. xiii-xiv)
She notes, “Claude Levi-Strauss… described all human relations in terms of men, with women as the medium of exchange between them. He used Radcliffe-Brown’s reports on Australian Aborigines, gathering and hunting peoples who never developed agriculture, to formulate universal rules about marriage and kinship systems, whereby marriage and family were forms of communication for men, based on reciprocal exchanges of women. It was a typically male cosmology: how or whether women communicated or what existence they had beyond serving the purpose of their male relatives was none of his concern… The truth of the matter is that none of these anthropologists really told us how the Australians themselves regarded women, for they interpreted the Aborigines’ actions in light of their own assumptions.” (Pg. 7)
She recounts, “When the male primate approaches the female with sex in mind, zoologists usually describe him in some admiring term of force or activity; when the female does likewise she is ‘soliciting’ him---the same word used to describe a human prostitute… K.R.L. Hall describes the female … monkey’s sexual approach as ‘a CRINGING' half-run with short quick steps toward the adult male.’ One wonders what adjective a male approach would have elicited.” (Pg. 13)
She summarizes, “The most salient observation to come out of primate studies … [is that] Every kind of ‘family’ organization can be found… the only consistent relationship in all the primate groupings is the one between mother and child… We can suppose that there is no one way in which we evolved and no one position for the human female, save when certain societies become so strong that they tried to impose their ways on other societies, as happened in the past four hundred years with the expansion of Western European culture.” (Pg. 31)
She observes, “We are told that injecting testosterone makes a female more aggressive; we are not usually told that injecting estrogen is also likely to make her more aggressive. Estrogen increases mounting and fighting behavior in female and male rats. And large doses of testosterone into animals of both sexes make them so passive that they neither feed nor fight.” (Pg. 34)
She argues, “Robert Briffaut’s three-volume ‘The Mothers’ is on the surface a great glorification of women, in actuality [is] a not-so-subtle put-down. He speaks of sex as a nasty business made beautiful by the tenderness and love transferred from the maternal relationship, and ‘maternal love is a sacrifice.’ From this premise comes the sadomasochistic foundation of male-dominated sex: one person is the tender, sacrificing giver, another the receiver; one the instrument, the other the player, and so forth.” (Pg. 40)
She states, “And it is through love-making only that the mature male can … partake of a universality of experience so that in the most playful and fanciful way, man becomes woman and woman becomes man, exchanging and recapturing roles, in the caressing, say, of his nipples, vestigial organs which are biologically useless but not sensually so.” (Pg. 40)
She suggests, “The previous explanation … gave hunting as the master behavior pattern for the human species, claiming that [through] this activity… men learned to cooperate, and thus the human nervous system developed… [As] an alternative, I submit women’s invention of the carrier bag as the take-off point for the quantum advance which created the multiplier effect that led to humanity.” (Pg. 56)
She points out, “There was probably little differentiation by sex… among human ancestors of some millions of years ago. Even today, in societies where men hunt animals and women gather plants, as among the African San… the division of labor is not hard and fast: men will stop to gather vegetable food for themselves, if… the hunting is unproductive… The division of labor that exists is related to mobility: women with infants to protect and carry cannot move fast enough and far enough to hunt efficiently.” (Pg. 70)
She asks, “If hunting really were (a) a male thing and (b) the one syndrome which was responsible for the evolution of hominids into humans, how is it that women are so close to men physically and intellectually, in manipulativeness and ingenuity?” (Pg. 116)
She laments, “Most history has been written as if women did not exist, save as passive spectators, and accounts of the Eurasian Upper Paleolithic are no exception… Only a few faint voices have been raised to question the confident myths which often masquerade as science or history. There is no reason to attribute Paleolithic art exclusively to male painters and sculptors, yet scholars have been doing so for generations.” (Pg. 135) Later, she adds, “In all the Paleolithic art found in European Russia and Siberia, not a single indubitably male figure was identified, though many small statues of females … exist.” (Pg. 150)
She summarizes, “Cave art shows that the woman was more important than the male and that her body was connected with fulness and plenty… Though there is much that is mysterious, there is no positive evidence for male domination, nor for certain aggressive syndromes which appear later in the human story.” (Pg. 152)
She proposes, “Mother-child relationships would be the most enduring, and brothers and sisters would often retain their affinities. Over time, the sexual pull between a given woman and man might also develop, through shared experience and emotion, into a specifically human creation, the very deep communion and friendship that can be created by long-term intimacy.” (Pg. 174)
She asserts, “The argument that a matriarchal society preceded patriarchy is often based on a hypothesis of mother-goddess worship in the Neolithic period. Yet in historical times clear reference to fertility goddesses accompanies a progressive decline in the status of women. Emphasis on fertility was an opening wedge in the debasement of the female… Fertility worship led to the forced breeding of women…” (Pg. 215)
She contends, “The return to the mother is a return to the mother-centered family of matriliny. I would theorize that it refers to a folk memory of a time when there was a preclass, prepatriarchal society—a golden age with no slavery, no kings, no … forced labor or forced military service, no heavy … (taxes) by temple or king…” (Pg. 275)
This book is a ‘classic’ of feminist approaches to anthropology, and will be ‘must reading’ for anyone studying the subject.
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