A drastic means of balancing the household budget
Image by Stephanie Sinclair, USA, from UNICEF Photo of the Year 2007
“We needed the money”, said the parents of eleven-year old Ghulam, shown in the photo above. She is seated next to her fiance, a forty year old Afghan man, Mohammed Faiz. The photo, taken by Stephanie Sinclair, has won first place as UNICEF's 2007 Photo of the Year. While in Afghanistan, Sinclair noted how many young girls were married to older men, even though the legal age for marriage is sixteen. Villagers in the couple's province of Ghor predict that Ghulam will be married with a few weeks of her engagement and will begin to bear children for Faiz.
In a comment to Figleaf's post The Ultimate 'No-Sex' Class, A in France of A Changing Life said:
Off-topic in a way, but let's not forget that child marriage is widespread in the developing world *and receives little or no attention*. In some countries 25% of girls are married and give birth by the age of 15.
Not off topic at all, A in France, and thank you for bringing to mind this photo and story.
According to the accompanying story at the UNICEF site:
Early marriages are not only a problem in Afghanistan: worldwide there are about 51 million girls aged between 15 and 19 years who are forced into marriage. The youngest brides live in the Indian state of Rajasthan, where 15% of all wives are not even 10 years old when they are married. Child marriages are a reaction to extreme poverty and mainly take place in Asian and African regions where poor families see their daughters as a burden and as second-class citizens. Already in their younger years, girls are given into the “care” of a husband, a tradition that often leads to exploitation. Many girls become victims of domestic violence. In an Egyptian survey, about one-third of the interviewed child brides stated that they were beaten by their husbands. The young brides are under pressure to prove their fertility as soon as possible. But the risk for girls between the ages of 10 and 14 not to survive pregnancy is five times higher than for adult women. Every year, about 150,000 pregnant teenagers die due to complications – in particular due to a lack of medical care, let alone sex education.
You can read the rest of the story here.
It is a bitter irony the the name of the province of the young Ghulam, Ghor, so closely resembles the adult science fiction fantasy world created by John Norman, the Chronicles of Gor. A world of strict rule, social caste, constant warfare, and female subjugation, in some ways Norman's Gor is not that different from the real world of Ghor. But for Ghulam, the prospect of an early death does not disappear when she closes a book, assuming that she is ever given the opportunity to learn to read. Her story is a chilling reminder that a practice,which we in the West and in developed nations have eroticized and churned into a lucrative fantasy, is a painful and often fatal reality for millions of young people and their families.
I find it deplorable that you would use a coincidence of phonetics to link John Norman to the molestation of children. Whatever you may think about the fantasy world he created, it in no way implies that actions like this are correct, nor would Mr. Norman - who doesn't even think that what most practitioners of actual consensual BDSM activities do is all that healthy - condone this for one moment. Congratulations on your graduation from the Andrea "All Penetration Is Rape" Dworkin School Of Psychotic Agenda-Worship.
M
[St. Marc: Your defense of John Norman is admirable but unnecessary. I cited four characteristics of the fictional world of Gor which can be used to describe modern day Afghanistan: " A world of strict rule, social caste, constant warfare, and female subjugation..." The careful reader will note that child molestation was not mentioned or connected with Mr. Norman.
The bitter irony that I pointed out does not hinge on child molestation. The irony is that we, as adults in Europe and North America, have the luxury to bring those harsh elements of a fictional world into our everyday lives and in effect, play make believe as if we were children, while for the children such as Ghulam such stark reality is their only future.
A careful reading of Andrea Dworkin's work will also reveal that she did not make the statement "All penetration is rape," no matter how ardently her opponents wish she had. I refer you to the page of Snopes.com which includes the following paragraph:
You can read the entire entry by clicking here. -- Kochanie]
"Whatever you may think about the fantasy world he created, it in no way implies that actions like this are correct"
By comparing, briefly, the fantasy world John Norman created with the real world I don't think there is any implication that he condones molestation of children or his fantasy world. Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" describes a world where women are subjugated and is frequently cited without any suggestion that the author condones the world she portrayed.
[John Norman's work is classified under the genre of science fiction and does reflect some of his personal beliefs, such as evolutionary psychology to explain gender differences. Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" is a dystopian novel as is George Orwell's "1984." So I agree that the world portrayed in "The Handmaid's Tale" is not one that Atwood condones, but rather condemns. Thank you, A. -- Kochanie]
I'm sure Kochanie can speak for herself but first of all I too noticed the possibly superficial similarities between names and gender dynamics between real-life Afghanistan and the fictional world Mr. Normal described at length. Second of all before I convinced her to start blogging here Kochanie was a commenter. Her first comments here were to chide me for dismissing the "Taken In Hand" fetish that espouses 24/7 dominant-male BDSM lifestyle. Consequently, while I don't know well enough to be sure, when she closes a John Norman book her emotional state may be far closer to arousal than anger. So whatever her motives for writing this post (they seem pretty clear to me) she probably wasn't agenda worshiping anybody.
The point *I* took from this post is that the similarities in names *reminds* us of the distinction between erotic fiction (however accidentally written) and the nasty, brutal, and generally too short lives of purchased child brides in the real world. And I think it's a great point!
No, fl, I am not a fan of John Norman's fiction or the Gor lifestyle and, I take issue with his acceptance of evolutionary psychology. The fiction writers who have had the greatest influence on me are Angela Carter, A.S. Byatt and Marguerite Youcenar. When I was reading the article on the UNICEF website, I remembered the response by Tamim Ansary , an Afghan-American, to the remarks made about bombing Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks: "You can't bomb us back into the Stone Age. We're already there.." Unfortunately, life in Afghanistan today is still brutal, as you aptly described it. So the image of a barren landscape was what I saw in my mind's eye when I saw the name of the province, Ghor, and that reminded me of some of the starker landscapes of that fictional world. Thanks, fl. -- Kochanie]