Re: AUT: Patriarchy

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rakesh reminds us, with a telling quote from Bourdieu, that even under
modern capitalism, marital choice is constrained by social pressures and
considerations. Sure. But there's a difference between feeling that
one's mate choice is limited to a pool of "appropriate" candidates
(other rich twits, other Jews, other Blacks, members of the
academic-professional classes etc) and being married off to a stranger
(or sold off, as in Papua, about which i know more than before, thanks
to this list!) by your parents. Before the bourgeois ideal of love
marriages took hold in the West, daughters  of "good family" were
beaten, imprisoned, starved into marrying according to their parent's
wishes. Sons also were forced into hated marriages. the misery of Young
women being married off to old men to serve some financial interest of
their parents is a major theme in literature, folklore and folksong.
  At least now people get to make their own mistakes!


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