I can’t tell whether it’s crazy, because it’s still a slogan and still vague as a proposal for action.
A lot depends on the definition of rape you are using. The one that seems to be being tossed around here is the emotionally charged button pushing quasi-religious definition that any sex between a person of a certain age with a person of a certain older age regardless of consent of the younger person and/or of that person’s family is rape.
According to that definition, my grandfather was a rapist. He, at the age of 40, gave some goats and geese to my grandmother’s parents in exchange for her; she was 12 when they married. That was the way things were done by foreigners in the tiny villages in the far away strange land of the mountains of Pennsylvania.
Personally, I resent the implications your definition inescapably leads to … and I am stunned by the closed-mindedness and the willingness to attempt to bomb the damn foreigners into submission being exhibited in this thread.
It’s a little lacking in detail. How many Americans coming home in body bags are you willing to accept? If necessary, would you favor bringing back the draft? Do we also need to go to war against Thailand?
Yep.
I dunno, how many children are you willing to let be raped?
Heck yes, it is the fairest way to provide the soldiers we need. Do you prefer the poor to fight the wars decided on by the rich? Why?
==eta==
But of course you wish to lure me off the topic at hand. I suppose you have no other argument to make?
I’m still trying to understand what the topic at hand is. I don’t funk we should be using military force to solve other countries’ social or crime problems.
So you are willing to allow millions, an unlimited number, of children to be raped?
So we get the farmers to grow crocus, have the nubile children pick the stamen to make expensive saffron? Sounds good to me.
Do you have a cite that 12 years was the typical age of marriage for girls in Pennsylvania from 1880-1940? Was this a phenomenon limited to one county? I’m genuinely curious. I used to work at public library helping people with their genealogy and most of the women in the late 19th century got married when they were in their late teens through their early twenties and their husbands were typically just a few years older than them. A twelve year old marrying a man 28 years her senior is not only atypical for the United States in the past century but would have prompted some outrage I think.
Yeah, maybe granddad and your grandmother’s parents weren’t the best of people.
Odesio
Man, that’s cold.
Slavery practices aside I don’t think bartering or selling off 12 year old girls for marriage has ever been the norm in the US, even in colonial times much less the late 1800’s or early 20th century. Was this practice part of some local sub-culture or religious sect he belonged to?
[quote=“Odesio, post:88, topic:552556”]
They were immigrants newly arrived from Russia, seeking a better life for their children and their descendants than they felt communism would provide. They followed the customs they had known all their lives.
I just asked my mother what she thought of your post. She says she thinks only an asshole would say something like about people they didn’t know. I suspect all of my aunts and uncles (her brothers and sisters), as well as all my cousins, and all of their children and grandchildren would say the same.
Me, I just think my grandfather and my great-grandparents were far better people than you think you are.
Following customs they knew all their life doesn’t make it magically okay. Lynching blacks in the United States was as American as mom, apple pie, and baseball but just because that’s how it was back in the day doesn’t make it okay. I’m going to take a bold moral stance here. It’s wrong for grown men to fuck little boys or little girls no matter the cultural context.
Let’s ignore this for now because we’re slipping into dangerous mod warning territory here. If you wish to berate me I suggest you take it to the Pit.
Well you really burned me good there.
I just saw the documentary tonight. It didn’t go into the angle of men not feeling like women were accessible, which I had read about elsewhere. They did make mention of the boys wearing girls’ clothing as they danced. It just seems interesting…like, are these guys really that aroused by the boys? If these people really wanted women, couldn’t they bend the rules for themselves and just acquire female prostitutes? Or is the cultural prohibition against that sort of thing just that strange? I mean, if these guys were in a venue where they could have access to women or young boys, without any repercussion, would they be choosing the young boys? It’s fascinating to me to know what makes them tick. They’re not going after other men, but younger, poor, and powerless boys. So clearly it’s not about having sex with anything. It seems to be anything they have access to and can have some amount of power over…
You know, I’m not exactly having any luck with women at the moment - and yet, I somehow manage to refrain from molesting children. I approve wholeheartedly of the expansion of women’s rights in Afghanistan, but let’s not embrace the foolish idea that when dudes can’t have consensual sex, we’ll turn into child molestors or rapists. It isn’t so, and it’s insulting to the vast majority of dudes.
I imagine that it’s mostly due to cultural inertia. The men don’t think, “Well gee, I can’t have sex with women. What else is available? Men?” Rather they think, “Woo, I have enough money for a status object!” And then they go buy a status object. Culture and history have defined what that is. Back in the past, it may have been that it was started by men dealing with frustration, but now it’s just a vector of society like Ferrari ownership is among wealthy men in Italy and France.
Mr. Daud was not asking the reporters to actually answer the question. Mr. Daud was making a statement in the form of a question. “Told” is correct.
But men who like Ferraris can use their status to make themselves look more attractive to women. A guy who can afford the best cars and has lots of money/power/status can attract lots of women. The boys seem to be a means in and of themselves for these men in Afghanistan.
I guess I’m also just wondering what’s going through their heads. I’m sure some of them are genuinely attracted to young/teen boys because that does happen. Do they genuinely enjoy the boys, though?
You don’t need to attract women in Afghani culture if you’re in the upper class. You probably purchase a wife, not woo her. <- Assumptions
Assuming those assumptions are true, your status object is there to show off to other men of your class. They’re bling, like slave girls or giant gold necklaces. They essentially are slave girls. I suspect that wealthy men hope that the person they are talking with is attracted to their boy, so that a trade of favors can be done.
Do they enjoy the boys? I presume so. So long as you aren’t turned off by men, there’s still more satisfaction by having someone else get you off than by doing it yourself. If you can cloth the boy to look like a woman, then even if men turn you off, you can still fool yourself into thinking it’s the real thing.