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LiberalElite

(14,691 posts)
Sat Feb 13, 2016, 01:45 PM Feb 2016

NY Times: The sexual misery of the Arab world

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/the-sexual-misery-of-the-arab-world.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0

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ORAN, Algeria — AFTER Tahrir came Cologne. After the square came sex. The Arab revolutions of 2011 aroused enthusiasm at first, but passions have since waned. Those movements have come to look imperfect, even ugly: For one thing, they have failed to touch ideas, culture, religion or social norms, especially the norms relating to sex. Revolution doesn’t mean modernity.

The attacks on Western women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve evoked the harassment of women in Tahrir Square itself during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution. The reminder has led people in the West to realize that one of the great miseries plaguing much of the so-called Arab world, and the Muslim world more generally, is its sick relationship with women. In some places, women are veiled, stoned and killed; at a minimum, they are blamed for sowing disorder in the ideal society. In response, some European countries have taken to producing guides of good conduct to refugees and migrants.
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NY Times: The sexual misery of the Arab world (Original Post) LiberalElite Feb 2016 OP
There's a flip side to this. Igel Feb 2016 #1
yes there's no doubt the misery is for all involved, including the men. nt uhnope Feb 2016 #3
Half the world's population subjugated by the other half JFKDem62 Feb 2016 #2

Igel

(35,317 posts)
1. There's a flip side to this.
Sat Feb 13, 2016, 04:07 PM
Feb 2016

But most people don't much care because it doesn't play into Western concerns and injustices.

If you're a single male, there's a lot of pressure to demonstrate that you're a man.

For a lot of Americans, sexual maturity = adulthood and even manhood; this simplistic assertion of sexual = full maturity is fairly true of dogs and bovines and snails, but not of humans in most civilized or educated communities. So the goal is to bed some girl, lose your virginity, and voila--you're to be treated as an adult and looked up to. It's insanity, but common enough if the usual ways accepted by other subcultures can't be met or if you have justification for not meeting them. So usually manhood requires some financial independence, establishing a home, living up to agreements and commitments to society and to family. I know a lot of 16 year olds who reject that latter bit, and since they've succeeded in ejaculating into a female of the same species think they're "real men." For some of those, sufficient muscle mass is also a desideratum, because "macho" is a good word to describe them.

But in more archaic, less forward-thinking and liberal cultures, the obligations and meeting them are still important. Yet for many young men in the Arab world, what with a huge youth bulge and limited economic growth, they're stymied. They can't afford marriage. They can't be the bread-winning son that sires lots of offspring. They can't really fulfill all their obligations, and manhood and dignity is denied them. And with manhood, sexual privileges are denied them unless they act shamefully. With one out: If they act "shamefully" with a woman who has no honor, well, it's usually not so bad. The girl's a whore, after all, and there's an unspoken rule that they're fair game.

There's a reason that democracy = economic prosperity = dignity is a common refrain in Arab Spring revolutions, and young men lead the charge. This was predicted a decade before it happened, and it happened on schedule.

You can't solve how women are treated without solving how men are treated. Esp. since much of the economic prosperity that should be buttressing, in traditional terms, the young men's manhood and aspirations is going towards single women (who likewise find the situation a bit difficult, since they are restrained by the same indigenous, authentic culture and find it difficult to secure a mate).

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