(March 6, 2015 at 2:01 pm)Surgenator Wrote:(March 6, 2015 at 12:08 pm)Losty Wrote: I wonder if these parents saw the very real danger they may be putting their daughters in by teaching them to be blindly submissive to their husbands, if that would change anything.
My wife's friend got divorced from an arranged marriage. The husband was an abusive fuck. She is pakistani where arranged marriages are a lot more common. I can answer some of the questions with this one anecdotal evidence.
1) Do they take the woman's happiness into question? Yes, but the focus is if the families would be happier if joined. The woman's happiness is secondary.
2) Do they encourage blind submissiveness? Yes. My wife's friend showed bruise marks to her parents only to be repaid with, "what did you do to upset him so much?"
3) What are the repercussions after a divorce? She was forced to move back with her parents with her child. The larger family see her as a tainted and avoid any contact with her. Her parents always encouraged to get back together with her abusive ex-husband.
Thankfully, she moved out of her parents and is doing a lot better.
People think that Muslims are so much worse than Christian fundamentalists. I don't know if I can agree. Let me see if I can compare my situation to your wife's friend.
I wasn't actually in an arranged marriage per say, no one cared about the 2 families joining. I was 16 when a 25 year old youth pastor slowly gently took my virginity in dark church during a teenage lock-in. I kept begging him to stop, but I didn't fight him. I was crying and saying it was wrong, but I didn't fight him. He confessed our sin to my parents and they insisted on marriage.
1) Did they take my happiness into account- they thought that securing my eternal soul was more important than my happiness on earth. They assured me that if I was a faithful wife, god would teach me to be happy in my marriage.
2) Did they encourage blind submissiveness? Yes, not only did I show my parents bruises, but I lost a pregnancy after a particularly harsh beating, and ultimately left my ex after he stabbed me when I was pregnant with our youngest child. I actually very timidly (I was fucking terrified), asked in a meeting with my ex and a marriage counselor (read as church elder posing as a marriage counselor) what I should do if I felt like my husband was raping me (he definitely was but I didn't want to be accusatory). He told me I should do whatever it takes to help my husband avoid adultery and pornography and that it was a shame that I would complain about my duties as a wife when my husband took such good care of me.
3)repercussions after divorce? I eventually had to run away and cut off all contact with everyone I knew because my family wouldn't stop trying to make me get back with my exhusband. They would go as far as threatening and black mailing me.
In America we are trained to believe that Islam is worse than Christianity at any and all levels. Muslims are more in the open and perhaps there are more of them, but Christian fundamentalism is pretty fucked up too. People try to turn a blind eye to it because it's hard to look at and we don't think it's our place to intervene. I disagree. What these people do to their children is wrong and it shouldn't be allowed. Not in any country or under any religious mask.
