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Courtship in the Caucasus


This video is titled super bride theft. It's a brief glimpse of brideknapping where a woman is grabbed and forced to marry her abductor. It is a significant problem in the Caucasus particularly the republics of Ingushetia and Chechnya.

What bought this to mind was this post about the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton and Ele's disquiet about Prince William seeking Kate Middleton's father's permission to marry his daughter.

The connection to this video? Over the years courtship rituals have developed to protect women from forced marriages (and rape) and I personally find it slightly amusing that in our enlightened age this knowledge has been lost and slightly frightening that some would have us forget it.

Because it wouldn't take too much for us to return to the ways of the past

Comments

  1. I defend marriage against those who criticise it as a partirachal institution. It was designed to protect women.

    Women still aren't equal or safe in some places. But that's not a reason to carry on treating women who are equal and safe as if they aren't.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Men and women are not "equal" Ele despite the reworking of language.

    They are different in that women carry children and no amount of language modification can alter that fact.

    This inequality is no excuse for treating women badly and has no correlation to to merit or otherwise of any particular individual.

    But if enlightened women do not bear children then the future belongs to the unenlightened and that will not be nice for women.

    ReplyDelete

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