Psychology of Men's Honour and Women's Sexuality

Re: # 88 hamid sahib,

...as a fellow interactor with a fondness for using....ellipticals....I would beseech you to pay attention to the content of masadi's message and not the tone of it :).

his arguments cannot be discarded outright...he has a lot of valid points...

Re: # 87

anil mian,

.... as usual i agree with you ..... reciting some mumbo jumbo in arabic or walking around a fire does not make a marriage ........ you can have a perfectly happy relationship without having to sit through two hours of speeches by people who have had too much to drink and contributing to your father's bankruptcy ....... it all depends on good sex and how two people handle conversation at the breakfast table (after good sex) .......... and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with the extended family .... as a matter of fact, although i cannot prove it, i am willing to bet that orphans with no living relatives have the best marriages ..... and god forbid, if a girl's in-law's are alive she should move away at least five hundred miles away - if you happen to live in the maldives or maui you should never marry ....

Re: # 82

masadi,

.... will you please shut up! ... this is one subject that you will never now anything about because i doubt any woman would ever let you get within ten feet of her ..... once you have been with a woman that you didn't pay for come back and talk to us ....

Re: # 78

Hamidm Sahib:

Marriage as the institution has been slower to transition from agrigarian times until into 1960s (Khalid Suhail can correct me). Roles and spaces in those times were well defined, especially in the days of family farms, a large family was a necessity. Pro-creation was essential. It provided manpower - Salim sahib may throw imagining himself work lock step and sync with Oxen. This is precisely what changed on the male side.

However, in those days "you must settle down now" reminders from mother were common. Heck they found a bride or a groom in India, and here they "introduced". Procreation remained important.

Recreational sex was a taboo. With Victorian dresses to 50s dresses, Salim Sahib (I am using him to point generational change) would have problem deciding where to start looking at to admire. He sees beauty differently than probably Hamidm Sahib. For me, Nutan and Juhi Chawla were beauty. Bipasa Basu is a passe, Aishwarya is glamourous. Sushmita Sen has elegant beauty. Before anyone accuses me.

This emancipation in women, and freedom in men played very important role. Even though, in industrial society, women started finding jobs in industrial phase. Their role was stereo-typed. I was reading an history of Harvard Business School. Right until late 60s, it had women who will come in to read essays written by students for their class. Professors considered "English" reading to be below them. In those days, it was customary to bring some of these "brighter" to conduct classes. Remember, HBS classes in those days were all men. Many romances started and resulted in marriage this way. Hence the waitlist for "smart women" grew. These stereotyped roles conformed to post-union roles in married phase and family.

The new phase, post 60s (baby boomers / hippies) is when women became empowered and became independent. I do wonder now what the hell did I see in those long hair, drooping moustache and bell - bottoms. Hey my girl friend liked it too, that is all I can say. When my daughter somehow found my student ID card and surprised me with my picture, I was ashamed to look at myself. Point is men-women had different tastes and reasons to be together. I know a couple of American and Australian women who chose not to get married. Now they regret, as their urge for recreational sex went down, and motherhood became more dominant. This is the time when probably divorce rates peeked as well.

Fear of AIDs in 80s put a damper to sex-revolution even further, and a need for "committed" relationship started.

Today'e empowered daughters will create their own social definitions of marriage and family. Pendulam in society is not reversing the direction, that many sociologists say happen from generation to generation.

Evolution in society is still on, as far as I can see. I guess Pendulam Theory may have lived its time.

Clearly, empowered daughters earn as much (the gender gap is closing) as any male. If education is any indicator, female score better than male. Therefore, equality in roles will be very dominant, rather rigid definitions of 50s - 80s. Hence family and marriage will get redefiined. I know my mother was the principal of the school she had founded. She still tended to us , cooked meal, before going
and after coming from the school. I do not see my married elder daughter doing it. They both share it.

So what is holding them? It cannot be economic dependence, it cannot be pro-creation. Can it be love as the glue? What else can it be?

It is very interesting even in as conservative place as Afganistan, it is very interesting, I must share this with you. Recently, I have been associated with a micro-finance NGO. It is world's largest, and micro lends exclusively to women in Sub continent, Africa and Latin America. A few months back they had an Afgan-American woman who went back to Kabul to set up and run micro-finance institution called "Parvaaz".

She told me that now, micro finance institutions are the largest provider of jobs in Kabul. I asked her what is the social impact on Afgan-men and Afgan families of emppowering women to start their businesses and bring income home.

I thought it would hit the "macho" Afgan's ego in the gut and turn more violent. She told me, on the contrary, their men folks accept them even more, and cooperate to sell cheese in the market etc. for them. Parvaaz and other micro financing institutions in Afganistan, according to her, now have financed about 30,000 women. Interestingly, she told me that in these families violence and abuse went down, and boys started going to school. Families became healthier too.

I will leave it to Dr. Khalid Suhail to make sense out of distinctly different phenomenon of empowerment of women in the west and in, shall I say, the east.

Would it be wrong to say in one case empowered women demand independence, in other case they become more equal partner within a family unit?

Our daughters generation will define family and marriage differently for sure.

Re: # 85 dr.sohail and talk of pub

"PUB" is friendlier and doesn't have the "lair" feel to it. And people will let you convert them to any belief if you ply them with liquor.

My love of the almighty was initially inherited. It was supremely fear based in the beginning. My daadi was all into the fire and brimstone.

I grew away from the vengeful God of the yahud and mullahs, and come to find the almighty in every molecule around me through a meditation on subtle energies. God is in the subtle details.

I am a "humans first" type of person too...it is completely compatible with my religion :)

Re: # 80
dear hurricane...if you do not like the word HUB we can call it PUB to welcome you....
how did you develop your love of God? is it inherited or aquired?
sincerely
sohail

Dear akhanusa,

When people have biased opinions and they are obsessed with wealth and "selfish pleasure" then they cannot think objectivily..

In Eastern setup of traditional marriage (except few cases) couples enjoy bounties of life much better than the cheating kind of dating setup where animal instincts have no limits and there is always distrust, fear of disease etc etc..

In arranged marriages love grow naturally with the passage of time..and now a days... parents do arrange pre wedding meetings of boys and girls and give choices to choose,,but opening of jam bottles are not practiced....which we can say is not healthy any way..

In the western world it is noticed that several couples who were "living happily together" and woman was making their own money and working like a donkey..but when ever those working women expressed their desires to have a baby or to get married with that so called sexual partner or "free lover" of several years then he got angry and threatened to leave due to "babies burden" and toleave her...

Where did the love go...??? was it just a selfish sex...??

Not a decent way to satisfy natural cravings...and natural rights to have sex or have babies.. any way..

Industrial world some times can be very cruel,..where women have to work in order to survive..and if they want to have a baby then either they can have them from so called lover found on the street ..who most of the cases ,will leave after the pregnancy...and then she will be running to courts and DNA tests ..in order to get child support...and this happens mostly among troubled people....

It is noticed that healthy and mature western families had healthy traditions and had father figures intact ..and they were the ones who produced better children and better citizens..

You can also read my reply # 26 in this article ..which is long and is not very articulate ..but it can still give you some hints about your questions..??

Bottom line is that if any man is not marrying his sex partner then he is not sincere and he doesnot know what true love is..??

Thanks

yaar masadi,

your message is fantastic.

your rhetoric is way over the top.

I would suggest watching some of the softer appearing evangelists like Pat Robertson, to learn how to coat your bitter pills in the right dose of honey.

Hamid writes "excellent post! ......... the institution of formal marriage is highly overrated and had everything to do with the economic dependence of women and very little to do with relationships"

An idiot comments based on personal experience of 35 years (as if that means anything, it does not because his data regardless of the length of the experience is totally unscientific) and the bigger idiot says its fantastic and we can all go home feeling all good about the tattered family institution in the US and most of the Western world. No, the facts are the most (until the law recently very very recently caught up to them) fathers bailed out without even child support, the women languished in poverty facing a multiple percent drop in their standard of living and the surest predictor of women that will live in poverty is them either getting divorced or having a child outside of wedlock. the happy picture of women in the west maybe represent the less than half of a half percent of women that might share in the lifestyle of the hollywood celebrity. The reality for the rest is very different. There is no happy christmas gift sharing and all the other BS that he came up with, there is distrust, mistrust, property and custody battles and children who are torn apart in the middle. Marriage and a family that stays together is the surest predictor of child health as they grow up, other arrangment thanks to the corporate world that has deliberately dismantled the family have proven to be a disaster and quite inhumane. Apologists and peons of the Corporate West will speak through their A$$ just to worship the shit created by their masters but those that know, and I have done a lot of work on family and marriage sociology in the West, know that family and marriage life in the West is a disaster and ones to suffer MOST are the women and children....

Re: # 80 hurricane

hhahahaha....I meant to say "party pooper" not a "part pooper" ...which misconstrues what I meant to say to something that implies that I am a partial defecator :D

I guess my Godliness gets shaken by your godlessness every time I interact with you, hence the typos ;)

Re: # 73 dr.sohail.

This talk of starting a "hub" makes me nervous.

Also, I believe in the almighty a bit too much, I may be a part pooper were I to attend your next "all hail the atheist God" meeting.

But I do like the fact that you and your colleagues promote peace and love...with or without God, it is still necessary and commendable.

Re: # 77
dear essensaur...i fully agree with you. you have wonderful ideas and have raised the level of discussion. thanks...sohail

Re: # 77

essensaur,

... excellent post! ......... the institution of formal marriage is highly overrated and had everything to do with the economic dependence of women and very little to do with relationships, happiness, family, children and all that other crap that we have been brought up to believe ......... with the emancipation of women, it will find its true place in society - in the gutter, where it belongs with religion and the horse drawn carriage (and used condoms, if i may be so bold).........

...... based on my circle of friends and family, i can safely say that half the people are extremely unhappy in their marriages ...... they stay in those relationships because of societal pressures or because they are simply butt ugly and couldn't find another partner if their life depended on it .... and i am sick and tired of listening to them whine!

Re #76

Khan Sahib, I am not qualified like Dr Sohail, but as someone who has raised a family and lived in the West for a long time, I hope you will not mind my sharing my personal observations and opinions. I have no claims as to the scientific validity of what I am about to say, and will be very willing to change my opinion where appropriate.

When you say ""interaction between young boys and girls does not help marriage institutions in the west", I suppose your criterion is the duration of wedlock in the liberal west being shorter when compared to the marriage spans in the subcontinent. It may be a relatively recent phenomenon in the west. Let us assume it is indeed so.

From a western liberal perspective, the success of a marriage is to be measured more in terms of the happiness it brings to the two primary partners and to their offspring, and not in terms of how many years the marriage lasted. The happiness of the offspring often takes second level of importance compared to the spousal happiness. Such a concept would be in stark contrast with what our traditional society has always preached.
• "Marriage means compromise". No emphasis on happiness here ...
• "Weddings bring families together not just a man and woman". Not a bad idea –but it somehow translates in to the idea that the couple - read the wife - must make sacrifices in the larger interest of the two families, and by implication, their honor, their feelings, their concerns, etc. etc. which are nebulous and context dependent ...

I believe these days the couple’s happiness is a better criterion to measure success of the marriage than how long it lasted.
• It focuses on gender equality during these times when the families are getting smaller and smaller with the couple being the only adults in the household
• Gender equality is essential these days in the marriage because two-income families are better off in handling economic pressures
• Unless both spouses are happy, the children will not grow in a harmonious and positive environment

But if the West puts so much emphasis on gender equality and mutual happiness of the spouses, why doesn’t the marriage last long? Why do the couples separate so often??

Please take my thoughts with a largish pinch of salt. I have lived in Western Europe and in North America for some 35 years, but my exposure may not be representative at all.

• Some of the married couples I met were previously married and divorced and maintained cordial relationship with the ex-spouses and their families, exchanging not just the annual Christmas gifts, but also getting together with children, and having fun. “Honey, your children and my children are beating-up our children” was a popular caricature of this brave new society.
• The unmarried couples I came across also thought in terms of commitment to each other, but did not seem to consider wedlock as being necessary to become acceptable socially. In other words, it was the concept of “Miya – Bibi raazi tau kya karega Kaazi” abstracted to a level where society’s approval became irrelevant if the couple was committed to each other. Such cohabitation would be unthinkable in our traditional society, although metropolitan India and Pakistan are probably moving in that direction.
• That “Marriage is after all a piece of paper” was an accepted philosophical statement amidst some young, unmarried couples. My impression was that they did not mean it so much to express a disdain for the institution of marriage, but to suggest that there is something more important than the ritual of getting married.
• Amidst the dating young men and women, the practice of sex was probably common, although it was not considered a big deal. Sex between consenting adults was not illegal, and was looked at as the culmination of a happy relationship - not as something to be reserved with religious sincerity for an eventual would-be spouse.
• The concept of virginity was considered old fashioned, and in the American context pre-marital or post-marital escapades would probably be considered immune from censure since the constitution guarantees individuals freedom to pursue happiness.

Making sense of all that I was coming across has been an ongoing process for me.

In my cynically critical moments, I have attributed the presumed phenomenon of lack of marital longevity in the West sometimes to a youthful tendency to confuse happiness and pleasure, and sometimes to immaturity and need for instant gratification.

I have also wondered about the influence of Christian religious thought on the mind, where you believe you have only one lifetime to live, and yet you are “modern” enough not to believe in the Garden of Eden and the concept of heaven where you will be eternally happy.

Even Ghalib had those doubts – “YuN tau hameN bhi maloom hai Jannat ki haqueeqat lekin, Dil-ke behlane ke liye Ghalib, khayaal achchha hai”!

A logical extension of that thought process is to follow your instincts, and do what your heart, mind or hormones tell you to do. Which wins when, probably depends on age and circumstance. 

It will be great if you and others give your thoughts.

-- Essensaur

#70

This is not the answer to my question. Once again my question is why "interaction between young boys and girls does not help marriage institutions in the west?". Why people in the west can not find right spouse after learning about opposite sex since an early age?

Re: # 34 Thanks UNB for telling what i wanted to write. I do not see good by condition Koritoconus and all mistakes are inadverdent. Also due no better focusing adjucent words are many times interchanged like A may be replaced by s or N by M.
Incidently I was thinking about two bundishes little thing struck me in hindustani Bandishes " Piya" word is used in unisex way.
Again thanks for correcting.