Linda Stone –Kinship and Gender – Welcome to the evolution of the patriarchy, and all that stinks about the farce of male dominance, domestic violence, and other fallacies across the globe. Stone’s extensive collection of 15 ethnographic case studies introduces the reader to an inherent conflict that even our own obsession with pronouns cannot repair. Kinship and Gender dives into the history of women’s subordination to men, father and son tensions, marital consummation rites, and the rejection of biology as a determining gender factor. Fertility ideologies are nonetheless intertwined within relationship constructs; divorce and marriage, polygamy, etcetera. But do Stone’s observations allow for us to make a stand in our own relationships (as to what it is WE truly desire), or do these case studies further our anxieties, when we’re already more than weary?
I wonder what Stone might have said if she’d written this book after June of 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, reversing five decades of equality. Five decades. How can we take a deeper look at our past, knowing that surrounding us are the remnants of that very sickness we’ve fought so hard to resist?
As such, the pathetic rise of power against women is continually taking shape, and through Linda Stone’s research, from a pre-pandemic timeframe, still reflects how far we have come, and where our mistakes can be properly mapped out.