Ignorance
Ignorance is bliss, or so they say.
Well I’m getting tired of it. I seem to be all talk as of late. I get all fired up about something, but I don’t actually do anything about it. This changes now. Each week I’m going to highlight a fucked up situation in the world, all over the world, and I’m going to go into all the gory, uncomfortable details, and then I’m going to tell you how you can help.
I’m not just going to tell you how you can help though, I’m going to give you three choices: The lazy option (usually donating money), the committed option (usually donating time), and the life-altering option (huge changes in your lifestyle).
This week’s subject will be arranged marriages in the Middle East:
Arranged marriages have been around for a long, long time. The first book of the Christian Bible, Genesis, talks about a proposed arranged marriage (between a man and a woman whom he had already raped). Now in this case, the Israelites were just trying to trick the rapist into making himself and his fellow men vulnerable by convincing them to get circumsized (a process that hurt a lot more back then) so that they could take advantage of their weakness and murder them all, but the point remains that both parties were talking about marrying off vast groups of women to random, strange men whom they’d never met like it’s no big deal.
This dates back to sometime between 1500 and 500 B.C.
There are a lot of reasons why people got (and still get) into arranged marriages. Sometimes it’s about providing a child with a stable family, as was the case with 10 year old Nujood Ali of Yemen (information courtesy of CNN). Her parents believed they were putting her in the safe, loving arms of an older man who could care for her better than they could. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a scumbag and repeatedly raped and beat her. Nujood was lucky; she managed to get a divorce.
In many Middle Eastern countries, like Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, marriage is about money. The parents of the bride charge what is called a bride fee or dowry for their daughter’s hand in marriage. Often this results in something comparable to selling a pubescent child into sexual slavery. This also results in what is quite possibly the most bizarre and inhumane form of arranged marriage: bride kidnapping. I’m sure many of you reading this out there in internet land have seen the movie Borat, where the main character, who is Khazakstani, tries to throw a burlap sack over Pamela Anderson and kidnap her to be his wife. This is no joke. It is a regular, accepted method of marriage proposal in a number of Middle Eastern countries.
Typically the would-be groom chooses a woman he want to take as his wife and, in an effort to get around those pesky, expensive bride fees, HE KIDNAPS HER. This was traditionally done on horseback, but is now usually done by car, or if the “groom” doesn’t own a car (which is likely, since his broke ass couldn’t afford the bride fee in the first place) he may even HIRE A TAXI FOR THE DAY.
I will repeat that:
Sometimes in countries like Kyrgyzstan, a man will hire a taxi driver to help him kidnap a woman.
Under the best circumstances this is a fucked-up form of dating for the socially retarded, and, once abducted, the woman may protest the capture and the marriage, winning back her freedom by holding out for many hours while the man’s female relatives attempt to put a scarf on her as a symbol of the union.
In the worst cases, this is little more than an excuse to rape the woman and not pay her family for the use of their daughter’s vagina.
And finally, the worst and most pitiful reason (and probably the oldest too) for arranged marriages: to stop two groups of people from killing each other. In some parts of the world, the only way to get two families, villages, or nomadic groups to get along and not murder each other on a daily basis is to force them to be blood related by marrying two or more members of the families.
More often than not this results in a really bad marriage with a lot of yelling and hitting on the part of the man, who gets away with it, since women are often treated as little more than property in a number of Middle Eastern countries, most notably Afghanistan.
So what would you do if you got sold/traded/kidnapped and ended up married to an abusive sixty-year-old who brutally raped you nightly? You’d probably try to run away, right? Unfortunately, when the ENTIRE FUCKING COUNTRY believes you should be treated as property, it makes it pretty difficult to do that.
Take these two Afghan girls for example (information courtesy of the New York Times). At the tender young ages of 13 and 14, these two girls were married to a couple of abusive old men. Naturally they tried to run away. They dressed as boys and made a break for it. They were caught, by a police man, and sent back to their husbands. For their insubordination they were viciously beaten by a Mullah (religious leader) in a circle of no less than three dozen armed men. Many people videotaped it. VIDEOTAPED IT. Thankfully (sorta) the girls were given forty lashes with a leather strap and were promptly divorced by their “husbands.” I put that in quotes because guess what: All of this? These forced arranged marriages? THEY’RE ILLEGAL IN AFGHANISTAN. That’s right, a goddamn policeman – instead of upholding the law – took them back to their criminal, violent “husbands” for an illegal beating.
But enough of the darkness. Here’s the hope.
The lazy option: Donate to the Red Crosss/Red Crescent. This organization operates shelters for runaway brides, providing them with food and medical care. They also help the widows of these men, who are often treated like whores, and have difficulty going out in public without a man. Sometimes they even feel that it’s worth it to remarry another abusive man just so they can go grocery shopping.
The committed option: Do what I’m doing. Spread the word. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Hell, start a Facebook group. Just do something… AND donate.
The life-altering option: Volunteer. Go to these places and see these women. Look at the sadness and fear in their eyes and help them live better, freer lives. Put your own life at risk for the sake of theirs. You might learn something.
And that is that. And it’s now 3:53 a.m. and I have to be up by 10 tomorrow.
Signing off,
- Josh
