Women in Islamist Movements

[120mm]

What you are saying is that you think monogamy and restricting womens sexual contact is normal. What I am sayign is it varies by culture and if you look at the earliest socities (h-g's) it really wasnt an issue. What you are arguing for is a cultural universal. What I am saying is that these roles change over time.

Actually, I'm arguing that cultural dispersion in sexual practices is way overblown by those with political axes to grind.

Unless you can get another man to raise your child.....
Maybe mate with good genes and get the guys with bad genes to support you.
I am not talking about 'risk'..... Clearly there are risks to any sexual practise.

Saying that you are not talking about risk is to avoid the issue entirely. I'm asserting that Monogamy is a LESS risky strategy for child-rearing than promiscuity. To say you are not talking about risk makes me wonder why you bothered to respond at all. Here's a better attack on my theory: Demonstrate how non-monogamy leads to a "buffet-style" strategy for child-rearing. If you could get this to work, it would lead to a larger field of input, which would theoretically be "better". If I believed in this, I'd use it to attack my position. I just cannot see where any man or woman's self-interest would be served by this approach.

What theory of mine is so wrong? I dont think I put forward any theories besides maybe a little marxist femminism.....

There are plenty of people whose income, not to mention their political/social viewpoints depend on nurturing conflict. You may not be a General, but your statements indicate you are at least a soldier in that fight.

I am not in favour of cultural relativism but if you think gender and sex roles are universal and or natural than your just plain wrong.

Actually, gender and sex roles are as close to universal as anything we've seen that is observable within human behavior. It is not my fault that politically-motivated "researchers" have chosen to make grand and sweeping conclusions about things which are, frankly, aberrations. Making grand conclusions about teenaged sexual habits on Somoa is the intellectual equivalent of saying that a car is all about the lugnut next to the air stem on the front right wheel. And while promiscuity is NOT an aberration, one could make the case that it is not a particularly successful strategy for passing along genes and societal order. Unless, of course, you are a member of a society where it is the norm. (Wherever that may be.)

I am not saying that the earliest human gender and sex roles are more natural or correct than later ones, just that early ones were not about monogamy.

It is convenient to ascribe sex roles when the participants are dead and long gone, especially when one has a political axe to grind. I also doubt that "lust", "in love" and "jealousy" feelings have changed much, if at all, throughout the history of mankind.

Read origin of private property and the state.
Read Nisa.

No thank you. I'm doing just fine observing how animals interact, counselling couples and reading a little bit on my own. I don't need a marxist/feminist academic to "educate myself". I did a 4 year stint, back in the '90s as a paid relationship counselor (and continue to do so as a volunteer) and have, frankly, burned out a little bit on the "sexual relativity" folks' point of view. I understand my viewpoint is a little bit "swimming upstream" from "sexual revolution chic," but I haven't met anyone who actually attempts to put some of that crap into use, who isn't horribly unhappy (all the while blaming others), while those who appear to be the happiest are those who ascribe to more traditional Judeo/Christian/Islamic mores.

In addition, I am doing a life-long empirical experiment, myself, vis-a-vis my own family. (I think you'd be surprised at how "out of the norm" my own upbringing was, despite your unsupported and unsubstantiated innuendo to the contrary)

And yes, I have decided that "stated happiness" is a valid metric, despite all it's failures.

(This thread is almost precisely why I am having Second, Third and Fourth thoughts about pursuing Academics as a career.)

[Nat Wilcox]

(This thread is almost precisely why I am having Second, Third and Fourth thoughts about pursuing Academics as a career.)

Hey, my apologies if you feel things have floated off into cloud-cuckoo-land.

For the record, I suspect (like you) that for most people most of the time, monogamy is the best course for each of them, personally, given the culture around them. (That's the same thing, in game-theoretic terms, as saying it is an equilbrium strategy for most agents...or in RJO's terms, saying it has a high equilibrium frequency in the population, in at least one population equilibrium...equilibria are frequently "mixed" by the way, meaning that several strategies coexist in stable population frequencies...so monogamy could be the majority strategy and non-monogamy could co-exist with it as a less frequent one.) There's no contradiction between that view and the other things I said above.

At any rate, when I originally wrote down my list of something like "the four horsemen of modernity" and used the phrase "sexual revolution" to name one of those horsemen, what I really had in mind was not changes in sexual behavior per se but instead changes in the economic and political status of women. Poor choice of words on my part. I really am trying to generate light rather than heat, and I'm sorry if I did the opposite for you. I will try to keep it cool.

It is interesting that the presumed breakdown of sexual mores in the West is very heterogenous, and highly related to education. If you look at the least educated women in the U.S. today, you see all of the phenomena that the media have taught us to expect: High teenage and out-of-wedlock births, single-parent families, high divorce rates, etc. But among the most educated women, the trend toward such things has actually reversed in almost every respect: Divorce rates are falling, etc. There is a recent story about this here:

http://www.economist.com/world/na/di...ory_id=9218127

This suggests to me that the "pathologies" normally associated with the sexual revolution in the West may be more pathologies of (lack of) education and prospective lifetime wealth...or at the very least, whatever pathologies may have been unleashed by the sexual revolution, they may also be mitigated by good economic oppportunities for young women.

I don't think cultural subversion has to disturb mating norms. Nor did I ever mean to argue in favor of disturbing them in some massive way.

I did mean to argue that some intuitions about what constitutes "moral" intercultural contact seem flimsy to me...that they aren't as clear as some folks seem to believe. Obviously it pays guests to have good manners, and in order to do that, you have to know something about your hosts. If this is all we mean by being culturally sensitive, my grandmothers knew that and I endorse it. But when I have dinner company, I expect that sometimes sparks will fly. Also, as a guest I am not above subterfuge in trying to get my host to see my viewpoint, or to try the tasty but perhaps strange-looking Muhammara I have brought over for an appetizer. Is such subterfuge immoral?

[FascistLibertarian]

Actually, your immature, smarmy sarcasm you implied when you said "And we all know that sex before marriage is wrong!" is what I'm keying on. Frankly, it is not something that belongs on SWC.

Fine, you can take people who think they will go to hell for sex before marriage but go to heaven for killing other people by killing themseleves seriously. To me these people are so stupid that sarcasm is the best response.

Actually, I'm arguing that cultural dispersion in sexual practices is way overblown by those with political axes to grind.

How so? Ever read kinsey? If anything it is the reverse, you try and fit the human sexual experince into a nice little box. You should read some ethnographies or history.

Are you suggesting that sexual reproduction is "un-natural"\

No of course not. I just deal with a lot of people who are ignorant enough to think that monogamy and hetrosexuality are natural.

I'm doing just fine observing how animals interact

Besides the fact that large numbers of animals are bisexual and not monogamous what in the world do animals have to do with human sexuality?

while those who appear to be the happiest are those who ascribe to more traditional Judeo/Christian/Islamic mores.

In addition, I am doing a life-long empirical experiment

Okay, so you did sex councilling or whatever, and you dealt with people who were either non-monogamous and non-hetrosexual and were unhappy. And from that you drew empirical evidence?

Yeah the mores of the monotheist religion make people happy......

Im sure the friends and family of christian people who killed themselves because they are attracted to the same sex are really happy.....

but then he shouldnt have killed himself right? just not had sex?

[Nat Wilcox]

Interesting article at The Economist titled The Verdict of Qom, with some illustrations of differing clerical opinion within Shia Islam about women and other things as well.

Khomeini's central idea, the doctrine of velayat-e faqih, gives the Islamic Republic its theological underpinning. This holds that until the appearance of the Shias' “hidden imam” (of which more below) society should be governed by a supreme leader, the clerical judge best qualified to interpret God's will and the meaning of Islamic law. It is this doctrine that makes Ayatollah Khamenei supreme leader and all others subordinate to him. But Qom itself has never felt completely at ease either with Ayatollah Khomeini's idea or Ayatollah Khamenei's succession. Indeed, many of the most revered clerical minds in Qom see this doctrine, and especially the way it has been implemented since Khomeini's death, as negating their tradition.

Full article here:

http://www.economist.com/specialrepo...ory_id=9466854

[davidbfpo]

After a search the right thread to re-activate with this Saudi story and yes I am mindful it relies on official sources.

Sub-titled:

Saudi Arabia is reviewing its terrorism strategy after the detection of a female run network that was fund raising for al-Qaeda.

Note:

Shehri, a former Guantanamo Bay inmate who returned to Saudi Arabia and then fled to Yemen, specifically demanded the release of Heila al-Qusayyer, who had been arrested in February.

Saudi justices moves slowly and sometimes with press coverage. I wonder if his demand made the Saudis realise the value of the arrest?