Depending on when this happened, they probably did you a favor.
I wonder if someone will give me the name of a culture which cheerfully admits to having forced marriages. I think today that this is considered sexist enough, world wide, so the practice is hidden as an arranged marriage.
As a cite on arranged marriages, I offer you “Fiddler on the Roof.” If you remember one of the daughters, who is to be married to an old rich guy she hates, convinces Tevye to have a convenient dream which causes her arranged partner to be shifted to someone she actually loves. This is shown as one of the ways in which the traditional culture was breaking down.
There is also a continuum. The Mormons I know do not have arranged marriages, but the culture is very strong in encouraging young people to marry within the church. I’m Jewish and this applies to me also. Not me personally, since my grandfather, who was an atheist, considered that back in the '30s it was okay for one of his daughters to marry a Catholic. My uncle being a Dodgers fan was far more important. My wife isn’t Jewish, and the rabbi even at her college wanted no part in marrying us.
Anyhow, you can tell if the culture has arranged marriages by looking to see what happens if a young person goes outside the approved list of candidates. If this is fine, then no arranged marriage as a rule. If it is not, then arranged marriage.
If Dio is just wrong, I don’t want to be right.
ETA: I promised myself I wouldn’t waste time on the boards today, and here I am posting this kind of silliness and getting into debates about “gay horse” analogies.
Somebody stomp my head for me.
Nobody’s going to take this one? Really? Something something burning irony something? No? Damn.
With a post count like his, there ain’t no time for readin’.
How about if they wanted to prevent you from buying anything but classical music CDs?
Or pressured you to buy CDs only from an approved list?
Dio, buddy, whatza deal? We were both here for ever, and you used to get pitted…what?..once, twice a year? Now, seems like every other day, its “Diogenes…”
Can’t be everybody else’s fault. So whats got a burr under your saddle? What happened to the sweet, wimpy guy we could push around a little? Kemosabe, I think it must be time to dial it down a notch.
Yer pal,
e.
You mean like Zappa?
The major difference is that people who meet on Match.com may only be dating casually, and if they are looking for someone to marry, almost certainly expect to fall in love with their partner prior to marriage. People on Match are still looking for a love marriage, they’re just using the internet as a tool to increase the chances of finding someone with whom to fall in love.
I don’t think she hated him. How could you hate a guy with a cool name like Lazar Wolf? It’s like hating a Thundercats character.
I can’t remember…are they allowing pulling up lawn chair posts in the pit these days, or not?
You keep it moving, I’ll give you that. Here you define arranged marriage as provincial and restrictive:
Then coercive
When** Even Sven ** (among others) gives an example of an arranged marriage where the family pre-screen possible mates that is very like the description from Wikipedia, and you say:
Here you’ve excluded the middle and redefined everyone else’s examples away. After this you’ll start to complain about how *you’re *not the one changing definitions. Eventually **Freudian Slit plays **into your hands with:
At which point, you begin asking everyone, regardless of what they’re trying to say to you, regardless of their opinion, whether or not you think dating is the same as arranged marriage.
I anticipate someone will eventually say no, all dates are not the same as arranged marriage, at which point you will declare victory, having semantically travelled from “All arranged marriages are forced” to “Dating is not arranging a marriage” as your…for want of a better word…point.
Well, of course. In ZPG’s world, everything involves death threats.
You wouldn’t know it from watching their ads. But match.com is not arranging marriages, and neither is the stereotypical mother or aunt (but she has a lovely personality.) The important difference is that you going outside the reservation has no adverse consequences.
There are a lot of ways in which pressure is applied. If the culture has no approved means of meeting the opposite ex except through parents of Yentes, that is one. Not having any place where you can go with a member of the opposite sex is another.
A guy who used to work for me came back from India with a wife. He came from a wealthy family, and I got the impression him marrying someone picked for him was just assumed. At a certain point in my life it would have been a lot simpler if this was all done for me, but as it worked out I’m glad it wasn’t.
Or Rick Wakeman. (Not as good as Zappa I know.)
Let’s just say she wasn’t jumping at the prospect of sleeping with him.
Now everyone watch out, or I’ll post some of the lyrics and you’ll get such an earworm.
Mazel tov, mazel tov…
Yep, I was correct in both cases.
No, I just refused to let THEM move the goal posts. Setting up a date is not arranging a marriage. There is no excluded middle. That’s exactly the kind of specious, back-pedaling, definition-changing that people were trying to do.
Both of those statements are correct. Arranged marriage is coercive, and setting up dates is not arranging marriage. You cannot refute the first statement by trying to claim that setting up dates is arranging a marriage.
Then I’d ask my parents how I could get 10 CDs for just a penny!*
[sub]*Just paying separate shipping and handling on each[/sub]
Dating is not the issue, fixing up people is. Providing a list of candidates (even if it is of length one) is necessary for an arranged marriage, do you agree? What Dio is saying, and everyone seems to be missing, is it is not sufficient for an arranged marriage. That requires some level of coercion to prevent or very strongly discourage the person from picking a partner not on the list.
And all you have to do is top agree to buy 537 over the next ten years at our low, low club prices!
(When I did it it was LPs.)
The problem here is that some folks are saying in reality there is a spectrum of possible arranged marriages - they vary between situations which are clearly coercive, to ones which appear more like a matchmaking service run by one’s own relations (shudder!) where the “coercion” is much more tenuous, if it exists at all (for example, the one example I personally know of, described upthread, the “matchmaking” was only done after both parties failed to find mates on their own - hard to describe that as coercive, assuming of course it fits the definition of “arranged”).
The task you face is decribing why there is a hard-line cut-off to the definition, so that only those arrangements which are truly coerceive are ‘arranged marriages’. I’m not saying you are wrong, but so far, you aren’t convincing.