![]() ![]() ![]() Her visionary, passionate scholarship is a revealing psychosexual exploration of love and power relations. Eisner relies on a few archaeologists and a lot. The author presents a conceptual framework for studying social systems with particular attention to how a society constructs roles and relations between the female and male halves of humanity. The premise of The Chalice and the Blade is intriguing: author Riane Eisner posits that there were peaceful, egalitarian, Goddess-worshiping cultures before recorded history, but these exemplary societies were wiped out by cruel, male-dominated hordes that worshiped warlike, masculine gods. Discussing abusive child-rearing practices, genital mutilation, natural childbirth, abortion, sex education, the men's movement, AIDS and much else, Eisler outlines a new sexual ethic that aligns pleasure with our capacity to feel and act empathically. The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future is a 1987 book by Riane Eisler. She emphasizes that Christianity's hostility toward sex and, particularly, women's sexuality has conditioned men and women to accept coercion and repression. Drawing on archaeological evidence and Paleolithic and Neolithic art, Eisler argues that prehistoric societies were relatively free of the domination, exploitation and misogyny that have marked Western societies up to the present. ![]() Patriarchy, she believes, represses sexuality, distorts the natural bonds of erotic pleasure and love between men and women and diminishes women's status. From Sumer to ancient Athens and Rome, medieval Europe, the Islamic world and traditional China, rigidly male-dominated societies, argues feminist historian Eisler (The Chalice and the Blade), relied on pain or the fear of it to maintain hierarchical relations of dominance and submission. ![]()
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