It's called 'culture', Suse :)

Amazing, I fully expected the usual Left suspects to charge out in defence of reactionaries around the world, and attack the writer of this article, and thereby implicitly support pre-teen marriage, genital mutilation, honour killing and the whole kit and kaboodle, on those grounds of 'culture'.

But no, some of the usual RIGHT-wing suspects trot out reactionary arguments in favour of child-brides etc.

Gosh, it's so hard to know these days what is Right and what is Left, their paths cross more and more. Perhaps they could share placards at the next demo.

Joe

Suse if she is talking about prepubescent children she should say so, rather than try to mix some ideological waffle in there.

If she really wants to make a difference, there is plenty to do at home. She could try doing something about 8 year old girls with venereal diseases in some aboriginal communities. Not nice, & these girls don't even get to be married.

I suppose it is too much to ask a do gooder to castigate aboriginal behavior when another branch of the do gooder industry depends on them for their livelihood. If they want their name up there in print, better to attack someone far far away, so you don't tread on any toes.

Hi Hasbeen,

Good point, about a scandal far too common. Tiny 'communities' are strange places, where not only does everybody know each other up, down and sideways, and going back one or more generations, but most of the blokes have beaten the crap out of each other at some time, and most of the girls have been had by most of the blokes. And most likely, they will have to marry each other. Ghastly lives.

Usually in tiny 'communities', there have never been any police to oversee anything, so it's open slather. Yes, it may take an entire healthy community to raise a child, if one can ever be found, but it takes only a few rapes and beatings to destroy any of that potential: trust, solidarity and dedication tend to get knocked around somewhat.

You can get away with a hell of a lot more abuse in a small 'community' - Indian villages and Aboriginal communities are cases in point - than in any city.

Joe

Joe,
It's not a Left vs Right issue, it's Left & Right vs the truth
Feminism is all about female supremacy, Traditionalism is based on female superiority, the views expressed in this article by a right wing author are just "the other feminism".
I'm defending culture and race and pointing out the inherently White supremacist and orientalist underpinnings of this misguided "child bride" thesis.
It's a fact that teenage girls the world over fall in love with men in their twenties and thirties and that under the circumstances in which most third world families live an older man is a usually a more responsible choice of husband for parents trying to arrange a marriage.There's a cycle of poverty, a poor couple gets married and they can survive OK, even live relatively well until the first child comes along, from then until the first child starts working the family dips back into poverty, when the last child leaves home or is earning their keep the couple lives relatively comfortably until they cannot work anymore then they fall back into poverty and die poor.
Face reality, as fathers we all want the best for our girls but imagine that your options are keeping your daughter at home and impoverishing the whole family for life or sending her off to be supported by the groom's household?

Loudmouth:
There's clearly no left or right, just an up or down, or a right way or a wrong way!
Nor is there a white way or a black way, just a right way or a wrong way.
And those whose only remaining resort, is to play the race card, are not only a significant part of the ongoing problem; but, are going the wrong way, or trying to play the race card, to somehow justify the unjustifiable!
I agree mostly with Susan, in as much as, a preference for prepubescent child brides, is just another version of pedophilia!
Your point about very small and entirely unpoliced small communities is very well made.
Little wonder the suicide rate is where it is, in many small Aboriginal communities!
Rhrosty.

Sorry Jay, I don't think you know what you are talking about.

Rhosty,

Yes, the suicide rate in Indigenous communities, remote and not so remote, is appalling and covered over by lumping all the Indigenous figures together. So across Australia, lumping urban and rural and remote communities together, the rate of Indigenous suicides, usually young people, is many times higher than in the non-indigenous population.

BUT if you differentiate the urban, especially the urban WORKING population, from the 'community' populations, it is a very different picture - the urban working population has probably a similar rate to the rest of non-Indigenous Australia, but the rate in 'communities' is perhaps twenty times higher.

Not four or five times higher, but twenty times higher.

Traditional-oriented and non-industrial societies tend to deal with young women in similar ways, to use them to build relations between families by marrying them off as soon as they reach puberty, and as cheap labour once they are married off.

So in many countries, they have to endure genital mutilation, and we see the horrific rates of young girls in Ethiopia and other countries with difficult births and burst birth canals, fistulas, holes, which break through the bladder and bowel walls. Traditionally, in Australia, it was not unknown for a girl to have her passage enlarged - 'make hole bigger' - to suit their mature husbands' needs.

In a very real way, the improvement of universal human rights means the improvement of women's rights, especially their right to marry when, and whom, they choose.

Surely the feminist agenda has barely begun, when the rights of young women around the world continue to be ignored ? This is surely an issue for all of us ?

Joe