Didgeridoos make girls infertile

I had a female friend growing up who loved the didgeridoo and played it frequently; I never got the hang of it but she actually got pretty good. I wonder if I should tell here the risks she put herself through [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]

I'm not sure what to think of this Dr Rose but the following excerpt should have been included in the OP as well I think:

quote:

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Dr Rose fears the inclusion of the didgeridoo lesson in the book sends out a "tokenistic" message about Aboriginal culture.

"That's the issue that perturbs me the greatest," he said.

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It's hard to tell, from this one article, whether this one guy objecting to it represents the general opinion of most people within his culture, or whether there are activists within who are interested in challenging gender roles.

And of course, it matters whether or not it's coming from within or without. If the person writing the book is someone from outside trying to change people who are quite happy with the way they run things within their own culture, then I agree, that's extremely insensitive. But if there are movements from within that culture that are challenging gender roles (as you see within most cultures and religions), then it gets a little less cut-and-dried.

This reminds me of a story about something that happened when I was working this spring on an aboriginal solidarity campaign. A fabulous woman I worked closely with mentioned that she would have joined in on a ceremony that was happening near us, but that she couldn't because it was her "moon time". Apparently when women have their periods, there are some ceremonies they can't participate in.

Now, of course, my western Christian experience with women and menstruation is the whole "Women on the rag are unclean!" thing from the Old Testament. So to me, this sounded sexist. But I didn't want to be disrespectful, so I said nothing.

But a day or two later, when it came up again, I just had to know why this incredibly outspoken, feminist Mohawk woman was observing what seemed to me like a prohibition. I knew there had to be an explanation that I just didn't know or understand, because if you meet this woman, you know that she's not bending to any man on anything, you know?

By that time we'd worked together long enough for me to be able to ask a dumb question. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img] So I asked her why it is that women can't participate in certain ceremonies when they're having their periods.

She told me that it's because women are considered to be "in ceremony" already during their moon time. And that you cannot perform other ceremonies at the same time, because your spiritual strength is so strong during moon time. Menstruation is a time of reflection and prayer and ceremony.

So, I experienced a total "paradigm shift" (lord, I'm sorry for using that horrid buzz phrase). I went from thinking of periods as annoying inconveniences and an excuse for being labelled "unclean" by patriarchal religions and men, to thinking of them as a time when women's bodies are in sync with nature, with their spirituality, a time of strength and renewal, and a time of power, particularly reproductive power.

Can you imagine how insensitive it would have been for someone like me to, say, insist that my friend join in the other ceremony and "dare" to defy a supposedly sexist cultural tradition? Or to write a book telling teenaged girls or women to do so?

So, I'd like to know, from women within the indigenous cultures of Australia, whether they accept the prohibition against using didgeridoos, what the reasoning is behind it, and whether there is any movement from within to change this rule, before I'll jump on the "oh isn't that stupid, why shouldn't girls be allowed to play" bandwagon.

But I also won't immediately assume that this guy speaks for all men AND women within his culture either, and condemn this book outright. There just isn't enough information in this article to go by.

Fascinating cultural leap forward there, Michelle. Thanks for sharing it.
My own initial reaction upon reading this (ABC News) story was "Arrrggghhh, another Western malestream media nugget designed to give the impression that "Aren't those cultures backward...?" Indeed, even if there are movements challenging that cultural imperative from within an Australian aboriginal culture, isn't this story playing to an outside audience and just coding this under "coy beliefs" (e.g. thread title) and "constraints on freedom of expression"? Or even "fundamentalist primitives trashing women's rights but have no fear, the West is coming to the rescue."

[ 03 September 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

It may be that the instrument was originally meant to be a musical Phallic symbol.

[ 03 September 2008: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[url=http://www.daringbookforgirls.com/]Here it is[/url], the cultural-imperialistic book that is designed to ride roughshod over the sensitivities of religious minorities.

What were they thinking when they published this [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhXFkiQVs34]rubbish[/url]?

quote:

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Originally posted by Michelle:
[b]So, I'd like to know, from women within the indigenous cultures of Australia, whether they accept the prohibition against using didgeridoos, what the reasoning is behind it, and whether there is any movement from within to change this rule, before I'll jump on the "oh isn't that stupid, why shouldn't girls be allowed to play" bandwagon.

But I also won't immediately assume that this guy speaks for all men AND women within his culture either, and condemn this book outright. There just isn't enough information in this article to go by.[/b]

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The [i]Independent[/i] article that M. Spector links to suggests that he doesn't, though I wish they'd given a bit more detail than this:

quote:

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While most Aboriginal cultures consider it a man’s instrument, not all believe that women should never touch or play it.

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Doh... The issue is not how few Aboriginals there are but how few of those Aboriginals Dr. Rose is speaking for.

MS, no and yes.

In response to Michelle:
I've gone a-hunting in Australian dailies and, lo and behold, [url=http://blogs.news.com.au/images/uploads/Rose.jpg]Mark Rose[/url] seems to be winging it:

From « The Age » :

« Shona Martyn, the publishing director of HarperCollins Australia, said she was unaware of any taboos on women playing the didgeridoo.
She said she apologised if the publisher had "inadvertently offended anyone" but believed it had acted responsibly.
She said there was probably a "divergence of views" on the issue among Aboriginal people.
There were no plans to pulp the book, she said.
"We would only ever pulp a book if it was a very genuine reason, and I'm not convinced that we've offended all Australian Aborigines," she said.
She said her own daughter had been encouraged to play the instrument by local indigenous people during trip to Uluru, as had African-American singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman during her visits here. » (« Girls' didge-playing guide 'offensive' », September 2)

And this bit of investigative reporting by the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt:

"Does Rose seriously believe his daughter will turn barren at the touch of a didgeridoo, or does he think even the most backward superstitions should be honored, as long as they are black? And why, as someone barely black himself, does he assume those superstitions apply to him, anyway?
In fact, is Rose simply reinventing Aboriginal mythology? I ask because ethnomusicologist Linda Barwick writes this:
[i]It is true that traditionally women have not played the Didgeridoo in ceremony. However let us review the evidence for Aboriginal women playing Didgeridoo in informal situations. In discussions with women in the Belyuen community near Darwin in 1995. I was told that there was no prohibition on women playing and in fact several of the older women mentioned a women in the Daly River area who used to play the Didgeridoo. In a discussion with men from Groote Eylandt, Numbulwar and Gunbalanya it was agreed that there was no explicit Dreaming Law that women should not play Didgeridoo, it was more that women did not know how to. [/i]

Didgfest Australia, an Aboriginal-backed festival of the didgeridoo, agrees:
[i]There is a myth that women should not play the Didge. While it is true that women do not play in public ceremony, there appears to be few restrictions on women playing in an informal capacity. It is not taboo for Aboriginal women to play the didge in most parts of Australia, and there are occasions where women role play and take hold of the instrument in comical mimicry of men. In rare cases, some Aboriginal women in ‘Top End’ communities have become proficient at playing the didjeridu, though they never perform in ceremonial contexts. [/i]

[ 03 September 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

[img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

[img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]

(Back-edited for clarity) Doesn't it matter if and when women are speaking in their own voice, in the face of male pressures to conform to either spiritual doxa or secular liquidation of culture? This seems to be what is happening in Australia around this musical instrtument, and in the experience related by Michelle. Who are we to prejudge from the outside that women couldn't be doing that?

[ 04 September 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

On the one hand, Mark Rose is arguing no Aboriginal woman should touch a dgideridoo (when a number of Aboriginal women are apparently saying and doing different). On the other, this whole media nugget is based on ridiculing Aboriginal women for holding a foolish belief presented as standing in the way of a great, liberating book.

And I look forward to your head pulling out of that sand... OTOH maybe not.

I was in Halifax with a friend of mine from Kashmir. One day he spent an entire afternoon sitting on the stoop doing statistics. He discovered that:

97% of drivers were male.
100% of all cab drivers were male.
50% of all women were wearing sunglasses even when there is no sun.

That is Halifax.

Anyway what is this tabloid muckraking piece, with sly racist overtones and all kinds of factual errors in it doing in the International News and Politics forum. Can't Babble open up a tid-bits forum so that people can titilate white peoples racial superiority complex with left field stories about white supremacy over the backward?

Who the fuck is Dr. Rose, anyway?

"Victorian Aboriginal Education Association."

Like what the fuck? Who are we listening to, and why are we listening to them?

[ 04 September 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]