Polygamy without wife's consent legalized!

[_Bach]

Outside of the Mormon Church this is a rather "progressive" movement starting in Kenya.

http://news.yahoo.com/kenya-legalises-p ... EAhk3QtDMD

I suppose they could have given the first wife (wives) a consent privilege under the threat of destruction if used. But that may have violated copyright/trademark laws somewhere.

Wonder where this progressive movement takes root faster here in the US - the gay or hetero communities. Maybe we should just pass the law first to find out all the good things about it later!

[Guest]

The snark is unbecoming to you, and disrespectful to all of those who are brutally affected by this Kenyan law codification.

The women involved are victims: nearly 100% of them are victims of Female Genital Mutilation (something they will feel constant physical agony over for the rest of their lives in most cases)...and they are considered to be property under the law. Once born as females, they have NO chance of a "happy" life...EVER. For you to consider this a proper subject for gloating and levity at their expense renders you exactly on par with the reveling audiences at "the games" in the coliseums of ancient Rome, making wagers and laughing at the people (and animals) being hacked and disemboweled to death, within smelling distance, right in front of you. Have you no empathy for anyone but yourself and your own nearest and dearest?

There is NO relationship between the women-as-property/polygamy law just passed in Kenya and ANYTHING here in the U.S.--let alone among the U.S. "gay or hetero communities."

Thank a moment about how YOU would feel if your external genitalia had been removed (without any anesthesia; people were holding you down by sitting on your chest, and STANDING on your arms and legs, while this was happening!) with a dull, rusty, unwashed knife (or a piece of broken glass) when YOU were eight or so years old...and YOU (presumably) have the very distinct bonus of not ever having to worry (or go through) the physiological process of childbirth, which is taking place through badly-"healed" scar tissue. YOU don't have to deal with uncontrollably dribbling urine over yourself and everything around you during ALL THE REST OF YOUR LIFE because you have been so badly cut and mis-healed that your body will never again function properly. And then, after you "grow up" to adolescence, you are (usually) involuntarily "married" to whoever will pay the best bride price to your father...but your husband (your new owner) can do ANYTHING he wants with you, and you (and your children) will NEVER have any real security unless you accidentally win the marriage lottery and your husband is, at minimum, not a total SOB. This is what is happening to millions of "women" (starting when they are still pre-pubescent GIRLS, in many or most cases) right now, as you read these words. If you could feel for just ONE SECOND what these girls and women are feeling every moment of their post-FGM lives, you would NEVER find this funny again.

Stop gloating about your good fortune to be born into good circumstances and (presumably) as someone who is able to claim male privilege from birth.

Instead of laughing and making jokes at other people's lifelong suffering, you might make the effort to develop some human compassion for those who you don't know personally. Stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.

Not only will it make YOU a better human being (and you will feel better about yourself), but it will help (at least a little bit) to make the WORLD a better place too.

[_bcspace]

Wonder where this progressive movement takes root faster here in the US - the gay or hetero communities. Maybe we should just pass the law first to find out all the good things about it later!

It's already here and is manifested in the numerous multiple sexual partners people take on these days. It's quite unlike LDS plural marriage as that did not seem to be motivated by sex.

[_Nightlion]

The snark is unbecoming to you, and disrespectful to all of those who are brutally affected by this Kenyan law codification.

The women involved are victims: nearly 100% of them are victims of Female Genital Mutilation (something they will feel constant physical agony over for the rest of their lives in most cases)...and they are considered to be property under the law. Once born as females, they have NO chance of a "happy" life...EVER. For you to consider this a proper subject for gloating and levity at their expense renders you exactly on par with the reveling audiences at "the games" in the coliseums of ancient Rome, making wagers and laughing at the people (and animals) being hacked and disemboweled to death, within smelling distance, right in front of you. Have you no empathy for anyone but yourself and your own nearest and dearest?

There is NO relationship between the women-as-property/polygamy law just passed in Kenya and ANYTHING here in the U.S.--let alone among the U.S. "gay or hetero communities."

Thank a moment about how YOU would feel if your external genitalia had been removed (without any anesthesia; people were holding you down by STANDING on your arms and legs while this was happening!) with a dull, rusty, unwashed knife (or a piece of broken glass) when YOU were eight or so years old...and YOU (presumably) have the very distinct bonus of not ever having to worry (or go through) the physiological process of childbirth, which is taking place through badly-"healed" scar tissue. YOU don't have to deal with uncontrollably dribbling urine over yourself and everything around you during ALL THE REST OF YOUR LIFE because you have been so badly cut and mis-healed that your body will never again function properly. And then, after you "grow up" to adolescence, you are (usually) involuntarily "married" to whoever will pay the best bride price to your father...but your husband (your new owner) can do ANYTHING he wants with you, and you (and your children) will NEVER have any real security unless you accidentally win the marriage lottery and your husband is, at minimum, not a total SOB. This is what is happening to millions of "women" (starting when they are still pre-pubescent GIRLS, in many or most cases) right now, as you read these words. If you could feel for just ONE SECOND what these girls and women are feeling every moment of their post-FGM lives, you would NEVER find this funny again.

Stop gloating about your good fortune to be born into good circumstances and (presumably) as someone who is able to claim male privilege from birth.

Instead of laughing and making jokes at other people's lifelong suffering, you might make the effort to develop some human compassion for those who you don't know personally. Stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.

Not only will it make YOU a better human being (and you will feel better about yourself), but it will help (at least a little bit) to make the WORLD a better place too.

I have never understood the WHY for this FGM. Is it even written in the Koran? And what is the rationale? To keep women from being promiscuous? Is it because the Muslim mind hates the uncircumcised so much that they figure the women need to be circumcised and so they invented this stupidity? Can you please help me understand it from the Muslim point of view. Thanks

[_EmilyAnn]

I have never understood the WHY for this FGM. Is it even written in the Koran? And what is the rationale? To keep women from being promiscuous? Is it because the Muslim mind hates the uncircumcised so much that they figure the women need to be circumcised and so they invented this stupidity? Can you please help me understand it from the Muslim point of view. Thanks

The easy answers first:

1) No, this is not written in the Koran (to the best of my knowledge; although I actually do own a copy of the Koran, I have never read it--it seemed really boring when I leafed through it many years ago because someone I had to deal with professionally was Muslim). Not all Muslims "do" FGM (for example: there are many European/"white" Muslims in the "stans" and nearby countries who do not--at least usually--do FGM), and not all Muslims in non-Muslim lands "do" FGM, although this is hard to determine because a great deal of it goes on in near-secrecy. (I have heard of apartment complexes in Canada, for example, where a "cutter" will go door-to-door offering her--it is invariably a woman--services for any uncut females in the family; she will sweep through an apartment complex in order, cutting dozens of young girls, against their will, inside their homes, in a day or so. Other females are sent to their ancestral homelands for "vacations," and "visits" to relatives, like grandparents, and do not realize until they get there that the whole PURPOSE for their visit is to get them "cut.")

2) Although many countries in the Middle East and Africa (in particular) do FGM on a customary basis, only SOME of these are "Muslim" countries. However...the chances are that even when FGM victims, their relatives, and their communities are NOT Muslim (they are, for example, of traditional tribal religions which predate Islam back into prehistory), it is probable that Muslim influence had something important to do with the beginnings of FGM in that region/tribe/community.

3) There are multiple reasons given for the "necessity" of FGM which include:

* It is a (now traditional) rite of passage--like male circumcision at about age 17 marking the gigantic divide between "boy" and "man" in many African tribal societies. In many societies, the girls who are about to undergo FGM are given a party where they are the honored guest and [female] relatives, [female] community members, and [female] guests from far away gather to celebrate the girl's transition into "womanhood." Since girls never, or hardly ever, are given such an honor as being the guest of honor at a gathering, this party in their honor is something they look forward to for "years." It is the only time in their lives when they will be celebrated just for being themselves.

* External female genitalia are frequently considered "ugly" or "dirty" in the cultures where FGM is customary. Think of department store mannequins in street-side windows who are in the process of being "dressed," but momentarily have no clothes on so you can clearly see the genital areas. That kind of unbroken smoothness is considered to be ideal in these societies. The phrase "as smooth as a woman's palm" is frequently used to describe what female genitalia "ought" to look like--without shape, without indentations or protrusions--just unbroken smoothness like a department store mannequin. (The after-effects of dull knife/broken glass/rusty razor blade "surgery" are seldom like this, of course, but the "image" persists, nonetheless.)

* Females are considered to be sexually weak, and everyone, in most any culture, comes to know at some point that the clitoris is a source of good physical feelings to a female. Cutting off the clitoris means that women will not be motivated by sexual feelings themselves, which is therefore good for men, who can then use the women like inflatable dolls as the men wish, without caring about the woman's/girl's feelings. In many societies, having a clitoris means that a female IS, effectively, a "loose woman" (or would be in a split-second if she was EVER allowed to control her own body).

* Many females, in addition to having their external genitalia cut off, are THEN, in addition, "sewed up" with some kind of binding device (like thorns, or cord, or thick thread, or thongs), with only a very tiny opening left for the evacuation of urine and menstrual blood, etc. Frequently, the newly-cut vaginal lips then merge together in a healed, or heal-ing "whole." When access to the woman's/girl's vagina is desired (for intercourse, or for childbirth), the binding cords, or the actual vaginal lips, then have to be removed or (with a knife or razor blade) cut apart. When intercourse or childbirth is over, the woman/girl's vaginal lips are then sewn up again until they need to be opened again for intercourse or another childbirth. This is considered by many of the cultures who do this to be most beneficial because the fathers or husbands KNOW that the woman/girl has NOT had intercourse with any "unauthorized" male. Even in societies where this is not done all the time, it is still done when "the man of the family" (the man who controls the girl's or the woman's body) goes away on a trip, or to work elsewhere--even though he can have sex with anyone he wants at any time, and he frequently returns from trips or away-work with new wives and new children.

* FGM="clean" to many in these cultures. Natural female genitalia="dirty." When people are raised from infancy to believe this, it then takes on a life of its own and has nothing to do with common sense or facts.

* In many families and cultures, having all of "your" females (whether wives, other female relatives, or offspring) "cut" is a badge of honor, and "says" that you (the "head male") are honorable and a trustworthy because you guard your females so well. In other words, in many situations, this is a matter of desirable social status for the man amongst his peers and social superiors.

None of these girls or women ever had a chance. From the moment they were born, they were destined for a lifetime of constant, constant pain and suffering that no one other than someone who has been "cut" will ever be able to really comprehend.

[_ludwigm]

It's quite unlike LDS plural marriage as that did not seem to be motivated by sex.

Apparently Joseph F. Smith's forty-eight children by his six wives sprang up by asexual reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization. See parthenogenesis...

[#img] http://www.gapages.com/smithjf1f.jpg[/img]
.

[_Nightlion]

I have never understood the WHY for this FGM. Is it even written in the Koran? And what is the rationale? To keep women from being promiscuous? Is it because the Muslim mind hates the uncircumcised so much that they figure the women need to be circumcised and so they invented this stupidity? Can you please help me understand it from the Muslim point of view. Thanks

The easy answers first:

1) No, this is not written in the Koran (to the best of my knowledge; although I actually do own a copy of the Koran, I have never read it--it seemed really boring when I leafed through it many years ago because someone I had to deal with professionally was Muslim). Not all Muslims "do" FGM (for example: there are many European/"white" Muslims in the "stans" and nearby countries who do not--at least usually--do FGM), and not all Muslims in non-Muslim lands "do" FGM, although this is hard to determine because a great deal of it goes on in near-secrecy. (I have heard of apartment complexes in Canada, for example, where a "cutter" will go door-to-door offering her--it is invariably a woman--services for any uncut females in the family; she will sweep through an apartment complex in order, cutting dozens of young girls, against their will, inside their homes, in a day or so. Other females are sent to their ancestral homelands for "vacations," and "visits" to relatives, like grandparents, and do not realize until they get there that the whole PURPOSE for their visit is to get them "cut.")

2) Although many countries in the Middle East and Africa (in particular) do FGM on a customary basis, only SOME of these are "Muslim" countries. However...the chances are that even when FGM victims, their relatives, and their communities are NOT Muslim (they are, for example, of traditional tribal religions which predate Islam back into prehistory), it is probable that Muslim influence had something important to do with the beginnings of FGM in that region/tribe/community.

3) There are multiple reasons given for the "necessity" of FGM which include:

* It is a (now traditional) rite of passage--like male circumcision at about age 17 marking the gigantic divide between "boy" and "man" in many African tribal societies. In many societies, the girls who are about to undergo FGM are given a party where they are the honored guest and [female] relatives, [female] community members, and [female] guests from far away gather to celebrate the girl's transition into "womanhood." Since girls never, or hardly ever, are given such an honor as being the guest of honor at a gathering, this party in their honor is something they look forward to for "years." It is the only time in their lives when they will be celebrated just for being themselves.

* External female genitalia are frequently considered "ugly" or "dirty" in the cultures where FGM is customary. Think of department store mannequins in street-side windows who are in the process of being "dressed," but momentarily have no clothes on so you can clearly see the genital areas. That kind of unbroken smoothness is considered to be ideal in these societies. The phrase "as smooth as a woman's palm" is frequently used to describe what female genitalia "ought" to look like--without shape, without indentations or protrusions--just unbroken smoothness like a department store mannequin. (The after-effects of dull knife/broken glass/rusty razor blade "surgery" are seldom like this, of course, but the "image" persists, nonetheless.)

* Females are considered to be sexually weak, and everyone, in most any culture, comes to know at some point that the clitoris is a source of good physical feelings to a female. Cutting off the clitoris means that women will not be motivated by sexual feelings themselves, which is therefore good for men, who can then use the women like inflatable dolls as the men wish, without caring about the woman's/girl's feelings. In many societies, having a clitoris means that a female IS, effectively, a "loose woman" (or would be in a split-second if she was EVER allowed to control her own body).

* Many females, in addition to having their external genitalia cut off, are THEN, in addition, "sewed up" with some kind of binding device (like thorns, or cord, or thick thread, or thongs), with only a very tiny opening left for the evacuation of urine and menstrual blood, etc. Frequently, the newly-cut vaginal lips then merge together in a healed, or heal-ing "whole." When access to the woman's/girl's vagina is desired (for intercourse, or for childbirth), the binding cords, or the actual vaginal lips, then have to be removed or (with a knife or razor blade) cut apart. When intercourse or childbirth is over, the woman/girl's vaginal lips are then sewn up again until they need to be opened again for intercourse or another childbirth. This is considered by many of the cultures who do this to be most beneficial because the fathers or husbands KNOW that the woman/girl has NOT had intercourse with any "unauthorized" male. Even in societies where this is not done all the time, it is still done when "the man of the family" (the man who controls the girl's or the woman's body) goes away on a trip, or to work elsewhere--even though he can have sex with anyone he wants at any time, and he frequently returns from trips or away-work with new wives and new children.

* FGM="clean" to many in these cultures. Natural female genitalia="dirty." When people are raised from infancy to believe this, it then takes on a life of its own and has nothing to do with common sense or facts.

* In many families and cultures, having all of "your" females (whether wives, other female relatives, or offspring) "cut" is a badge of honor, and "says" that you (the "head male") are honorable and a trustworthy because you guard your females so well. In other words, in many situations, this is a matter of desirable social status for the man amongst his peers and social superiors.

None of these girls or women ever had a chance. From the moment they were born, they were destined for a lifetime of constant, constant pain and suffering that no one other than someone who has been "cut" will ever be able to really comprehend.

Where in the hell is Muslim outrage against this? Is there no imam with the balls to write a fatwa or whatever they call it to condemn this abomination?

Thanks for your reply.

[_Kevin Graham]

You are wasting your breath emily. No tragedy in this world is too tragic for spinning some Right Wing political point, in bach's world. Plus, there is no evidence that he will read anything more than three sentences, let alone paragraphs, that doesn't originate with the right wing media machine.

[_Servant]

Wonder where this progressive movement takes root faster here in the US - the gay or hetero communities. Maybe we should just pass the law first to find out all the good things about it later!

It's already here and is manifested in the numerous multiple sexual partners people take on these days. It's quite unlike LDS plural marriage as that did not seem to be motivated by sex.

Mormon plural marriages weren't motivated by sex? Oh, I see, Joe Smith was just starting a Young Females Society when he told Helen Mar Kimball that she'd be exalted to goddesshood if she simply married him (without Emma's permission of course)!

[_Kevin Graham]

What "right wing" political point would that be? I'm thinking in a political debate this is a subject you will lose on badly. It can be argued liberals are responsible for protecting and encouraging the continuation of the practice of FGM in Islamic cultures.

Right. Let's pretend his scare quotes around "progressive" movement had no intended political overtones.