I always said,"Things could be worse."

[JackLuis]

Saw this about living in India's outback.

Selling wives to payoff the bankers, an old tradition.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Saw this about living in India's outback.

Selling wives to payoff the bankers, an old tradition.

Or abandoning them, or beating them to death.

Yes indeed. Things could be worse.

 

[Handley_Page]

Saw this about living in India's outback.

Selling wives to payoff the bankers, an old tradition.

I have a vision of some Banker's wives. . . . . .

 

[voluptuary_manque]

However abused a middle-class American woman thinks she is, what happens in the Third World will change her mind in heartbeat. I'm working my way through Half the Sky and doing it in small bits. I can't do much more than that because it makes me want to buy a ticket to Ocrapistan and commit mayhem on the men.

 

[lance gt]

They're poor and destitue, facing famine and other horrors of life and this woman says she has a lover? Priorities certainly are different there. I wouldn't believe that in a second. The things people do to each other is incredible in scope. No shame, no conscience, no remorse.

 

[JackLuis]

Considering the geographic limits of Ocrapistan you had better bring plenty of ammo.

 

[Stella_Omega]

However abused a middle-class American woman thinks she is, what happens in the Third World will change her mind in heartbeat. I'm working my way through Half the Sky and doing it in small bits. I can't do much more than that because it makes me want to buy a ticket to Ocrapistan and commit mayhem on the men.

Dude.
There will certainly be women worse off than any middle-class American woman-- or any poor Amercan woman, at that-- even the ones who get battered to death, because of course there are worse ways to die, and some woman is experiencing that right now.

But that's the "starving children in China" argument. It doesn't mean anything in real terms.

 

[TE999]

Saw this about living in India's outback.

Selling wives to payoff the bankers, an old tradition.

That's repellent, no doubt about it. It's nothing more than a form of indentured servitude or forced prostitution.

What I can't comprehend is how an already overpopulated and starving country like India still increases it's population geometrically every year. Animals have less young during times of reduced food supplies, but man seems to have forgotten that instinct.

 

[lance gt]

That's repellent, no doubt about it. It's nothing more than a form of indentured servitude or forced prostitution.

What I can't comprehend is how an already overpopulated and starving country like India still increases it's population geometrically every year. Animals have less young during times of reduced food supplies, but man seems to have forgotten that instinct.

Goes to show what man puts more importance on. Starving, poor, worked to exhaustion and all they can think of is sex. Should show a little more respect for life, no matter what their situation is.

 

[bronzeage]

Or abandoning them, or beating them to death.

Yes indeed. Things could be worse.

This is a little milder than the last I heard about Indian wives. A man can get a good bit of money from a dowry when he marries, but he can only have one wife at a time.

Kerosene is used in cook stoves and kitchen fires are a common hazard. If a good dowry offer was available, the unwanted wife would be taken out in the back, doused with kerosene and set on fire. The police took the husband's account of the incident as fact and he was ready to remarry.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I know, bronzeage. It's kinda hard for me to talk about burning women to death for being women. Forgive me for rather-not-say-ing...

 

[TE999]

Goes to show what man puts more importance on. Starving, poor, worked to exhaustion and all they can think of is sex. Should show a little more respect for life, no matter what their situation is.

I can only assume it's a cultural attribute. If I was starving, poor and exhausted, sex would be the last thing on my mind!

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I know, bronzeage. It's kinda hard for me to talk about burning women to death for being women. Forgive me for rather-not-say-ing...

That's why it's taking me so long to get through Half the Sky! I get so angry . . .

 

[bronzeage]

I know, bronzeage. It's kinda hard for me to talk about burning women to death for being women. Forgive me for rather-not-say-ing...

Lately its been fashionable to lecture people about respect for cultural differences. I think about things like bride burning and tell them to go fuck themselves.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Lately its been fashionable to lecture people about respect for cultural differences. I think about things like bride burning and tell them to go fuck themselves.

Those lectures are based on a profound misunderstanding of what 'cultural relativity' means.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

And on an unwillingness to admit that there are universal standards of good and evil. Different customs are one thing. Institutionalized brutality is quite another.

 

[JackLuis]

It makes you reaccess the meaning of "Developing World," or "The Third World" when you hear of selling you wife or daughter just to buy seed to plant a crop so you don't starve next year!

The rains come late, the locust come, and still the banker in his overstuffed suit comes and wants your money.

"If someone would give me an AK-47 I'd end his predation!"

 

[Le Jacquelope]

However abused a middle-class American woman thinks she is, what happens in the Third World will change her mind in heartbeat. I'm working my way through Half the Sky and doing it in small bits. I can't do much more than that because it makes me want to buy a ticket to Ocrapistan and commit mayhem on the men.

We shouldn't be comparing the *ahem* "plight" of American women to that of Third World women. No abused woman in America should be "thankful" that it's worse elsewhere.

In America we shouldn't have to look back, we should be looking forward, as far as both genders are concerned.

As for the men in the various Ocrapistan's out there, I've nothing to say about them; if someone went Xena on their asses, I'll just say I saw nothing. There is still a such thing as vengeance and justice in my book.