Sanctifying Misandry: Goddess Ideology and the Fall of Man / Katherine K. Young and Paul Nathanson. McGill-Queen’s University Press, c2010.

The introduction into the academic world of the notion that culture in paleolithic Europe was matristic or goddess centred came in 1974 with the publication of The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe by Marija Gimbutas, a Lithuanian archaeologist. The gist of her argument is that Neolithic cultures across Europe were woman-centred, peaceful, free of homophobia and egalitarian. These inferences were greeted with skepticism from her peers and that probably would have been the end of the story except her arguments were taken up and made popular by Riane Eisler in her publication The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future, 1987. Following the publication of The Chalice and The Blade various forms of goddess worship and spirituality emerged. With this came a yearning for a return to what is believed was the culture of Paleolithic Europe before the ‘Fall.’

In publishing Sanctifying Misandry: Goddess Ideology and the Fall of Man Katherine K. Young, Professor of Religious Studies at McGill University and Paul Nathanson, Researcher of Religious Studies at McGill University, offer a critique of versions of this modern goddess religion they view as antithetical to equality between the sexes and actively promoting misandry, hatred of men in popular culture.

Posted by Geoffrey and Mika