Afghan men can starve wives into sex

[TheDMshouldbeRivened]

here
I see the invasion made fuck all difference then

I am wishing Tony Blair would come out of retirement to show some moral leadership.

monkeytrousers "There has to be some force."

Sorry, I am a bit confused. You are saying that what you believe to be the right way to live is the right way to live and that it is acceptable for there to "be some force" used to implement that? The "bad" guys think the same thing.

Tony Blair's morals are not everyone's morals.

As I said, I don't know what the answers are, but I am pretty sure it isn't force (unless you want to talk about an all out invasion and complete takeover that would probably work, for a while anyway). It never works.

moral leadership? Bliar was the man who invaded Iraq on the basis of a pack of lies. Morals never came into his leadership.

thanks for the rawa website.

really interesting website, dittany. i knew there had to be a middle ground.

Did you see the Panorama programme last night about women in Afganistan. It was brilliant and showed its not as bleak as the media has painted. There were schools still going to school, male parents wanting them too. The women in Govt. As the female monister said, you can make laws but tunil there's a way to enforce them - communications, effective police force, roads, strong central Govt, its going to take a while.
That young girl who wanted to be a doctor and was studying hard. I hope she makes it. She wants to help her people.

dittany "It's not the people, it's the Afhghan men."

Bit of a contradiction there, presumably Afghan men make up roughly half of the people?

I would also be willing to place a rather large bet on a lot of the pressure on women being applied by other (probably older) women.

yup but even that coems down to pleasing men.
But then in a society where unmarried women or widowede women starve you have to please men. Because you need your FIL, husband, brother, son to care for you. Until there is decent welfare and education and jobs for women it will remian the same.

here
god site

You know that's longer the male life expectancy, right? Just because the life expectancy is low, doesn't mean there aren't old people; with the world's second highest birth rate, high infant mortality, and a state of war, it's not really surprising.

I see you've got your usual 'men are all bad' rhetoric on this btw.

The Afghan culture being what it is, there will be pressure from both women and men to conform to gender stereotypes. Choosing to blame 'Afghan men' as a collective of individuals for this is rather pointless.

The majority of Afghan men are also illiterate btw.

PS. Lots of women all over the world are responsible for acts of oppression, including encouraging (rather than merely tolerating) forced marriage, female circumcision, discouraging education, etc.

nah , i blame the Afhgan men.

i'ts like people who have been abused, can go on to abuse. women in forced marriages end up forcing their own daughters to go with the flow. But they themselves are still victims.

My mother-in-law converted to Islam and got her teenage children to follow her, complete with circumcisions for all. Her husband just kept quiet because he doesn't really care about religion either way. Besides which, she is the head of the household as acknowledged by all of her peers. She was the one doing the oppressing. No men involved at all.

Indeed. But there is a difference between your "primarily to blame", and dittany's "women take no part in this, and anyway they are mostly all dead".

'the point that in a society where all political power, economic resources and rights over families are by law and custom concentrated in the hands of men it is men who are primarily to blame for the perpetuation of the status quo which keeps women powerless and in very poor circumstances.'

sounds like everywhere. Even we still have a long way to go sadly enough.

'It is men who are the problem.'
In all countries and all times sadly enough. Makes me sad as I have 2 sons and hope I have raised them right. But what will make men change? Its been forced up till now and could go backwards in a heartbeat.

dittany I never used the word "bitch" - you will not find a post on Mumsnet where I use that sort of language about women, I don't. But are you actually saying that is no pressure from older women to conform?

I am in no way saying that the problem isn't male oppression, but I am saying that some women have a stake in maintaining the status quo.

I don't view women as stupid passive victims all the time. I hate the way we are referred to with children (i.e. women and children first).

Force will not work, it has never worked and I don't believe it ever will. Afghan men have to want to change, why would they? They have everything their own way at the moment.

Trade sanctions are the best idea I can think of, developed countries can refuse to have nothing to do with countries that treat their populations like this. But that isn't going to happen unless the West either finds some significant oil reserves that don't belong to Islamic countries or figure out a new energy source.

The "West" doesn't actually give a damn about repressed women, what we/they are really interested in is the resources present in those countries.

Should be "refuse to have anything to do..."

I don't pretend anything dittany I just don't think it is ever as simple as Women=Good, Men=Bad.

I don't see the world in black and white - this shit is complicated - you have thousands of years of culture and religion that people are going to have to shake off for things to change, that isn't going to happen overnight and it isn't going to be forced on people. You try to force another culture/country into change and you will get resistance. Right now there is no reason for Afghan men to change, force will simply result in retaliatory force. How many soldiers are you willing to send to the meat grinder?

I simply don't know enough about apartheid in South Africa to comment on it.