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Afghanistan's Dirty Little Secret

Catz Part Deux

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Afghanistan's dirty little secret

...For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it.

"Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."

Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun.

...Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.

"How can you fall in love if you can't see her face," 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. "We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful."

Even after marriage, many men keep their boys, suggesting a loveless life at home. A favored Afghan expression goes: "Women are for children, boys are for pleasure." Fundamentalist imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are "unclean" and therefore distasteful. One married man even asked Cardinalli's team "how his wife could become pregnant," her report said. When that was explained, he "reacted with disgust" and asked, "How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?"

That helps explain why women are hidden away - and stoned to death if they are perceived to have misbehaved. Islamic law also forbids homosexuality. But the pedophiles explain that away. It's not homosexuality, they aver, because they aren't in love with their boys.

I didn't even know where to post this...it is both cultural and religious.
 
Yes northern Pak has a long history of gay brothels and whatnot.
 
It is a fairly common cultural tradition that spreads from Greece all the way to Persia. In addition to cultural roots, you get similar motivations with Catholic priests or in prison. If you have severe restrictions that prevent men from sleeping with women, they will take what they can get. Ideally it would be possible to convince the Afghans to pick men instead of boys, but there is little anyone could do about it.
 
It is a fairly common cultural tradition that spreads from Greece all the way to Persia. In addition to cultural roots, you get similar motivations with Catholic priests or in prison. If you have severe restrictions that prevent men from sleeping with women, they will take what they can get. Ideally it would be possible to convince the Afghans to pick men sheep instead of boys, but there is little anyone could do about it.

Either way, its pretty messed up.
 
It is a fairly common cultural tradition that spreads from Greece all the way to Persia. In addition to cultural roots, you get similar motivations with Catholic priests or in prison. If you have severe restrictions that prevent men from sleeping with women, they will take what they can get. Ideally it would be possible to convince the Afghans to pick men instead of boys, but there is little anyone could do about it.
Sure there is!

Work with these hardened Islamic countries and help to bring them out of the 15th & 16th centuries. The entire Middle-Eastern Islamic belief system is a contradition where sex and sexuality is concerned.

"We can't look at our own women, but neither can you."

"Keep our lovely women vailed, but all I can see are her eyes and feet. I don't know...is she beautiful or a dog?"

"Give me 72 vigins, but lust is forbidden."

"Homosexuality is wrong and punishable by death...but I'll take the little boy with the large brown eyes and plump butt...Grrrrr...he's 9 yrs old, but so sexy, that Rajehm."

"Women shouldn't have sex until they are married, but damn if she doesn't satisfy me in the bedroom I'm kickin' her to the curb! But wait...aren't you suppose to be a virgin? You did that too damned good!! You tramp!"

So backwards!

I'm all for sexual purity, but the way they go about it in the Middle-East causes far more problems for their people all around than they resolve on the issue of sex and sexuality.
 
I was just reading that article this morning since I visit that site every day to catch up on my teams, and it struck my eye.

I almost posted it, but I almost never initate a post and decided against it.
 
I suggest you go and reread the quote I had in my post.

Already read it...and reread it...still would have made the same joking comment...
 
Already read it...and reread it...still would have made the same joking comment...

In this instance, it is perfectly OK to judge that culture since what they are doing is causing harm.
 
I am sooooo glad you posted this. I thought you'd lost your mind.

Shh, its more fun to act like we are taking him seriously. Dang I blew my cover :mrgreen:
 
Shh, its more fun to act like we are taking him seriously. Dang I blew my cover :mrgreen:

Dang Mega...that there is some good acting...apparently not noticing the rolling eyes thingy and jumping in there with the two follow up comments...I really DID think for a second there you were serious...had me COMPLETELY fooled...

and the Bloggie for best faux outrage goes to...
 
Dang Mega...that there is some good acting...apparently not noticing the rolling eyes thingy and jumping in there with the two follow up comments...I really DID think for a second there you were serious...had me COMPLETELY fooled...

and the Bloggie for best faux outrage goes to...

Meh, I joke, you attack me
I am serious, you attack me,
I joke about joking, you attack me.

No point in paying attention any more. Call me when you can be respectful.
 
Afghanistan's dirty little secret



I didn't even know where to post this...it is both cultural and religious.

It's not really a secret. Anyone whose seen or read The Kite Runner knows it.
And you can find information about it all over the net. It's just part of their culture.
Has been part of many other cultures.
If you look at it super-objectively, like a robot instead of a mom, I'm sure the practice has served a useful function in society, in various cultures and at various times throughout history.
Really, it's kind of like the historical practice of men taking half a dozen wives, or marrying girls who are only twelve. Sure, it seems abhorrent to us, from our 21st century perspective (and even from our 20th century one), but the pragmatic among us realize that it simply wasn't abhorrent back then. It was universally (in some cultures) considered moral, acceptable, and right. Victims did not realize they were being victimized; they thought they were just doing what people were supposed to do. If victims don't feel victimized, and society approves, and there's even biblical precedent for a lot of this stuff... is it wrong?
Was it wrong, back then?


:shrug:

I'm not denying Afghans need to get with the times. They act like goddamned primitives too much of the time.
I'm just saying, you know... our culture or the various cultures our ancestors came from weren't much better, until pretty recently.
 
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WGAS. It's their country. It's their issue. I just want our troops home. What another country does within their borders is their business.
 
It is a fairly common cultural tradition that spreads from Greece all the way to Persia. In addition to cultural roots, you get similar motivations with Catholic priests or in prison.

Or on ships (with cabin boys) or in the army (eleven and twelve year old boys used to routinely accompany soldiers on long campaigns in previous centuries).

In a way, I can see the point of it (not the pedophilia, but the boys being sent away with the men). Boys in early adolescence are really too old to be at home acting like children anymore, the way we make them in our culture. Idle and disenfranchised, too many of them get into trouble and come to bad ends. Yet they're too young to marry and start families, or to fully take on the work of a man, although they're old enough to help men and learn a trade.
It seems wise to me that in previous times, pubescent boys were often sent off from their families to be apprentices or to work with groups of men.
The pedophilia was no doubt a natural outgrowth of this custom, as previous posters have mentioned. A ship, for instance, would often be many months at sea, and females were not allowed aboard.
I'm not saying the cultural tradition of sexual relationships between men and pubescent boys is right, nor am I even saying we shouldn't risk our lives to stop it.
I'm just saying it is a tradition and has been one in many cultures throughout the ages, probably one that our own ancestors partook of.
Although what's happening to these kids is no doubt coercive, given the systematic and culturally-accepted nature of this practice, I doubt the effect on them is the same as the effect on one of our children would be, if a bunch of smelly, turbaned individuals suddenly broke into the house and raped him.
I mean, the boys interviewed boast about how they will have their own sex-slave boys when they are grown. It's something they aspire to. This is not something that seems to be shaming and stigmatizing them, they way it does children in our culture. This is something they accept as the normal course of things- right now they are bottoms because they are young, and later, when they are men, they will be tops.
Women seem not even to be part of the equation; I mean, the article points out that men are repulsed by them, and consider them "unclean". it's doubtful any sexual attraction could exist between men and women, under the circumstances. Men in that culture don't even know what women look like.
 
Pederasty has been around since the dawn of recorded history. Not sure why this is surprising to anyone, unless, of course, their paucity of historical knowledge induced their bewilderment.
 
I had to google that. It's disturbing to say the least.

Yep - my thoughts exactly.
I respect cultural differences but I feel we should set standards on certain ting when it comes to who we give our support to and who we don't.
 
Meh, I joke, you attack me
I am serious, you attack me,
I joke about joking, you attack me.

No point in paying attention any more. Call me when you can be respectful.

Doood...at what did I attack you at all??? Geez...chill! The first comment was a joking comment. the second one simply said that the first was a joke and the third comment was a response to how NOT bent out of shape you are. Sorry...I'll coat all comments from now on with bubble wrap!
 
In this instance, it is perfectly OK to judge that culture since what they are doing is causing harm.

It occurs to me that before reoving the mote from another's eye...

Child Brides - Mormon - Polygamy

Of course these fundamentalist Mormons' practices are not state-sanctioned, but then neither are the Pashtun pactices. How could you expect to stamp out a practice in another country, in full-out war mode, when you can't stamp out widespred paedophilia in peaceful Utah and Arizona?
 
It occurs to me that before reoving the mote from another's eye...

Child Brides - Mormon - Polygamy

Of course these fundamentalist Mormons' practices are not state-sanctioned, but then neither are the Pashtun pactices. How could you expect to stamp out a practice in another country, in full-out war mode, when you can't stamp out widespred paedophilia in peaceful Utah and Arizona?

There is a difference!!... the above mentioned are good Christians, and the OP mentioned are evil Muslims... HUGE difference! :roll:
 
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