It's Always More Complicated

Iron age men left home to join wives’ families, DNA study suggests. Study highlights role of women in Celtic Britain and challenges assumptions most societies were patrilocal. You know, I'm pretty sure I've read about other societies which were matrilineal/matrilocal? With additional 'husbands having to mind their manners as well as bringing home the bacon'?

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This seems resonant with the above: Engaging with African feminist interpretations of the maternal:

In African feminist literary works, the mother as a metaphor has been used to elevate and celebrate women’s roles in society while deconstructing symbolisms that debase women in masculine-ordered discourses. Similarly, Nortje-Meyer describes mothering as an inherently African way of care that also includes non-maternal care provided to a group or community. African feminists are troubled by the theorized association between motherhood and victimhood, theories that African feminist scholar Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí argues find their origins in Western epistemes that are based on rigid dichotomies such as the mind/body.

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Also on issues around motherhood, childcare, etc: Of church halls and custard creams or, the strange disappearance of community playgroups. I have a sort of recollection that playgroups were one of the grassroots things that sprang up in ?early 60s associated with the National Housewives' Register. I'm not quite sure you can talk about 'feminism' in the early-mid 60s in the way this piece does, the second wave really only got going really at the end of the 60s: although feminism was there (hai Katharine Whitehorn etc) it was not necessarily articulated as such. This movement seems very distinct from the actual childcare element of the 6 Demands of Women's Liberation in the 70s. I wonder how far this playgroup movement intersected with things like natural childbirth.... And how far this is a very specific corner of a much broader phenomenon.

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Euphemising lady-parts: Helen King explores the euphemistic, floral language used to describe and disguise the clitoris, by men and women alike:

Talking about women’s bodies in terms of flowers can be simple euphemism, and it may seem like a way of valuing the “floral parts” – even of acknowledging their beauty – but there’s a less body-positive reading of this imagery. The fleeting nature of the flower’s blooming suggests not only fragility but also that, like fruit, it needs to be picked or plucked at the right moment.

I am alas pretty much certainly not going to get to NYC to see this exhibition: Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian's Legacy. Sigh.