Mosuo

From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.

The Mosuo are a small ethnic culture living in the Yunnan Province in China. Although the Chinese government places them as members of the Naxi, they have distinct cultural and social differences to make them separate from this group. This group of 50,000 individuals living near Lugu Lake bordering the Tibetan Himalayas has a complete matriarchy.

As in many other matriarchal societies this one is both matrilineal and matrilocal. However beyond the lack of property ownership and policy making decisions the men are also placed in a subservient role in sexual matters as well. A woman of the Mosuo selects a partner during a ritualistic dance. Such unions last at the woman’s discretion, lasting as briefly as one night to becoming a lifelong partnership. With such a highly fluid relationship pattern in effect many men are in a marriage system called tisese. They are Tibetan Buddhist by religion.

The word tisese translates as “walking to and fro” and consists of working his mother’s fields and eating with his mother. He will then visit his children and partner at the house of her mother.

Perhaps most telling about this particular social arrangement is that the Mosuo have no words for the concepts murder, war, rape and no jails. This social system appears to be the example of the matriarchal societies that are envisioned by Riane Eisler and many other feminist social thinkers.

de:Mosuo