February 12, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:I confess, I didn't really care for Bruce Bawer's book, While Europe Slept. It took an interesting question ("How should a liberal society react when people with illiberal bedrock beliefs begin assembling political power"?) and turned it into a jeremiad against Islam. He doesn't really grapple with the deep question, and such answers as he hints at--abridge their freedom of speech, kick them out, or forcibly reeducate them--tend to make him sound less interested in preserving the liberal order than in staging "Muslims v. gays: celebrity death match". I certainly agree with his point that Europe should change its welfare and other policies to make it difficult to resist assimilation, but I find him troublingly close to saying that Europe should change its criminal law in order to make it impossible to do so.
Nonetheless, I mostly enjoyed his whomping of Dinesh D'souza, who by now is surely old enough to know better. But this caught my eye:
D’Souza (who says he is Catholic) invites us to “imagine how American culture looks and feels to someone who has been raised in a traditional society… where homosexuality is taboo and against the law…. One can only imagine the Muslim reaction to televised scenes of homosexual men exchanging marriage vows in San Francisco and Boston.” Let it be recalled that D’Souza is referring here to a “traditional society” in which girls of 13 or 14 are routinely forced to marry their cousins, and in which the groom, if his conjugal attentions are resisted on the wedding night, is encouraged by his new in-laws to take his bride by force.
This describes, of course, every Western society too, up until 100-200 years ago. So why are we different now? Economic change? Technological change (notably birth control)? Something else? Talk amongst yourselves . . .
Please sure with us how you know that 100-200 years ago men were encouraged to rape their child bride wives in the US? There is no way I can accept this lunacy at least on large scale, anymore than it probably happens today from sick wackos.
I've never seen any evidence of the sort, other than from people who make these ridiculous claims in an attempt to say "traditional" isn't all its cracked up to be.
Posted by: a on February 12, 2007 1:27 PMYeah, not quite sure that I agree with idea that a conservative society is very much like the US in 1907 (or even 1807). I think their are similarities and differences. Besides there are a bunch of things you hit on by using the D'Souza piece which include why are we more accepting of homosexuality and why are we more accepting of women as equals in our society.
As for homosexuality I think that acceptance of it is completely dependant on the society and class level of the person in question. There's a long history of buggary in England 150 years ago, for example, but you didn't discuss it in nice company and you were expected to "grow out" of the phase once you had access to women.
Women are a total different story however. When physical prowess was the key to sucess, men tended to rule the roost and determine the levels of acceptable behavior. In addition, although I hate to admit this, most women experience some ammount of dismenorea(sp?) every month which puts them out of commission for a period of time (no pun intended).
I think the reason there has been such enourmous changes in Western society over the past few centuries has mostly to do with technology. I certainly think that's true for women. Better technology, first in factories and then in the word as well as the urbanism of the United States made physical strength unnecessary. That's my theory on the huge jump for women in the past 200 years or so.
Why the liberalism towards homosexuals then? I think once you start including former outcasts within a set of rules (like women) it is natureal to expand those rules to include more outcasts. In addition, once you include women in the dialog, women who are not threatened nearly as much by homosexuality, you start having people accept it as okay.
In addition, I think the United States with it's plural society makes it easier for us to accept what others do, even if we don't approve.
Posted by: Kate on February 12, 2007 1:49 PMNonetheless, I mostly enjoyed his whomping of Dinesh D'souza, who by now is surely old enough to know better.
I dunno, it seemed to me that I could read the same sort of shrill hysterics from any randomly selected Andrew Sullivan blog post.
His “whomping” didn’t really impress me but that’s largely because it was pretty poorly written and argued. A much better and more rationale critique of D’Souza’s arguments was written by Robert Spencer (click on my name to go to the Front Page Magazine article). I suppose the difference is that Spencer had probably actually read D'souza’s book before taking the time to write his review. ;)
Posted by: Thorley Winston on February 12, 2007 1:53 PMIt's not true that 13-14 year-olds were getting married in the West, despite what you may have read in Shakespeare. Age of first marriage has been around 26/24 for centuries.
Posted by: AT on February 12, 2007 1:57 PMIt's not true that 13-14 year-olds were getting married in the West, despite what you may have read in Shakespeare. Age of first marriage has been around 26/24 for centuries.My mother was about 21 when she was married and my maternal grandmother was between 18 and 19 (hers lasted well over 50 years before my grandfather passed away). Both of them grew up in rural Minnesota.
I don’t doubt that you could probably find anecdotal cases of marriages of girls in their mid to even early teens in our country’s history. No doubt that this would be more common on the frontier than in more developed areas where people were fairly isolated. However as territories became States and marriage became more “standardized” through State statutes this was eventually done away with instead of allowing “marriage” to be whatever two or more people decided that they wanted to call it.
One of the benefits of having of having the State standardize what constitutes a “civil marriage” rather than leaving it an entirely private affair as so many socially liberal “libertarians” have called for.
Posted by: Thorley Winston on February 12, 2007 2:19 PMIt's not true that 13-14 year-olds were getting married in the West, despite what you may have read in Shakespeare. Age of first marriage has been around 26/24 for centuries.
A quick look finds an average age of 20 at marriage for women in early 18th century New England and 18 in Maryland.
Posted by: JSinger on February 12, 2007 2:37 PMMegan, you have the most fantastic ideas about American and European history. Before, it was hundreds of witches being executed. Today, it is child brides and forced cousin marriages in the 18th and 19th century. Where do you get these ideas? Is there some TV program that has this stuff? I guess you have never studied any history, that's for sure. Or even read any novels: do Jane Austen or Charles Dickens feature child brides and forced cousin marriages?
BTW, child brides also weren't particularly common in Europe during the middle ages and the early modern period, outside of royalty. And the church very much frowned on cousin marriage; it certainly wasn't the cultural norm.
Posted by: y81 on February 12, 2007 2:45 PMYeah, I don't think that it is fair to say that the Muslim societies are "100-200 years behind," either.
American women didn't wear burquas in 1807. Our culture did not actively discourage female literacy, in fact there were women's colleges. Women were frequently employed -- many early American industries, such as textiles, depended on female labor.
There were no "honor killings," women were not publicly stoned for adultery, etc. (the Salem Witch Trials took place in the 17th century and were widely viewed as an aberration.)
Even 200 years ago, women were treated with more dignity in the West.
Posted by: Joe Schmoe on February 12, 2007 2:47 PMHmm, I was thinking of England, not the colonies, but still, 13-14 year old girls were not getting married among the bottom 99% of the population.
Posted by: AT on February 12, 2007 2:51 PMActually, young marriage was somewhat common, as was cousin marriage, but "infant" marriage was more common among people of property, and cousin marriage was more common among people of property and people who lived in *very* small communities, where meeting non-cousins was difficult. Christianity strongly discouraged cousin marriage, and managed to significantly reduce its incidence in the West.
Posted by: Anthony on February 12, 2007 2:52 PMMegan, did you also read "Crisis in Europe" by Claire Berlinski? Came out at the same time. My impression is it was somewhat less virulent than Bawer's book, though also strong on the need to assimilate rather than "celebrate differences."
Posted by: Mike W on February 12, 2007 3:08 PMAnthony, you are not clear about what time period you are talking about, but you will look long and hard for a 14-year-old girl getting married in the 18th or 19th century in America or England. (I'm not saying you won't find a single one, but it is one in a thousand or less, not something common as Megan implied.)
Posted by: y81 on February 12, 2007 3:13 PMI join everyone else who has posted here thus far in wondering where on earth you got the notion that 200 years or more ago in the West, brides were often 13 or 14, were sometimes forced to marry their cousins, and were discouraged from resisting "conjugal attentions."
As has been stated before, the Catholic Church consistently opposed cousin marriage and did a fair bit to reduce its incidence. And Western culture -- at least Western Catholic culture -- has traditionally honored many women who resisted an unwanted marriage or romantic advance by calling them saints. The list of such saints runs from the early martyrs to Saint Wilgefortis (God helped her grow a beard to repulse her suitor) to Saint Maria Goretti (killed by suitor in rural Italy in 1902).
The Christian West is not and never has been a paradise for women. But it is and always has been a sight better for women than the Islamic East.
Posted by: Joe Magarac on February 12, 2007 3:16 PMHmm, I was thinking of England, not the colonies, but still, 13-14 year old girls were not getting married among the bottom 99% of the population.
Anyway, the colonies were hardly a representative population of "the West". I'm not arguing with you, just curious what the real answer is.
For that matter, who says Bruce Bawer's description of a "traditional society" is statistically accurate either? My experience in the Muslim world hasn't seen a lot of 13-year-old-looking wives.
Posted by: JSinger on February 12, 2007 3:24 PMJust a few observations. First, I think many of you are reading too much into Megan's remarks. While marriages of 13-14 year old girls weren't common, they weren't uncommon either. For an average married age of 20, there have to be outliers on both sides. And I personally met a young woman, with a child who was less than a year old, who was 14 at the time. We were surprised when we found out, because she didn't look 14, but that certainly explained her shyness.
As for wedding nights, as little as 20 years ago the laws on rape had an exclusion for married couples. It was not possible to criminally rape your wife, no matter what her age. It simply was not a crime. Do you seriously think that if a 20 year old guy married a 14 year old girl a couple of decades ago, that he wouldn't consumate their wedding night no matter what her protestations were?
I suspect that the vast majority of so-called child marriages in this country were because of the 14 year olds getting pregnant. In Virginia, marriage was (20 years ago, and may still be) an absolute defense to the charge of statutory rape. (I'm talking about marriage after the fact.) This sort of law shows what was considered historically important--providing a husband for a pregnant woman, no matter what her age.
Finally, on the cousins point, the Catholic Church proscribes marriages between first cousins only, and a dispensation is available even for that. But I agree that the number of marriages between cousins was reduced by Christianity.
Posted by: Rex on February 12, 2007 3:39 PMThe premise is somewhat of a straw man. In the Western world women generally had fewer rights than men in law. But they had some. These varied more by era - the views of given rulers and the strength of the church - than by locale.
A big problem for the young was that parents (and usually the man) controlled all property and education. As a child approached the age of majority they also approached a time when their parents had utterly no obligation to help them.
Thus opposing the parents who arranged a marriage was very risky. And marriage did provide an ally even if the partner was not as desired.
Entering into service was another escape. Nuns and servants of an important house had some protection from worse.
Posted by: K on February 12, 2007 4:09 PMWhy is it different now?
I'd go to Doug Muder's "Red Family, Blue Family" for a first look at an answer.
In traditional societies, family is your safety net--and "family" means "extended family." People marry younger in those societies--even in the US. Maybe not in their early teens, anymore--but certainly by their early twenties.
Yes, yes, yes, the Moslem world today is somehow "just like us" only a little bit behind. I wonder what work of fiction Jane will cite to "prove" that cutting the clitoris off of little girls was once common in the West?
Posted by: ellipsis on February 12, 2007 9:06 PMIn fact, the historians cited by Palliser are saying that Megan had things backward in her original post, and that a late age at marriage preceded, and perhaps contributed to, modernization.
Posted by: y81 on February 12, 2007 9:42 PMI just did a google search on "famous Muslim women," and visited a couple of the websites.
Then, to compare, I did a search on "famous Western women...." Do it yourself and compare the results found.
Whenever I ask a Muslim about instances of "famous Muslim women," the only women they can name off the top of their heads were those who lived 1500 years ago, before Islam was cemented throughout the Middle East.
Posted by: Zhong Lu on February 12, 2007 11:19 PMIn response to y81's comments, Pride and Prejudice's Lydia Bennet is technically a child-bride, although everyone seems relieved at what seems the best outcome to a highly embarrassing situation: "My Lydia! ... Married at sixteen!" her mother, Mrs. Bennet, crows delightedly, and speculates triumphantly about the envy this will excite among the other mothers of her acquaintance. As for Dickens, "David Copperfield" features the archetypal child-bride, Dora Spenlow, whose naivety, immaturity and complete inability to cope with the basic responsibilities of marriage advertise the liabilities of this choice of bride. "I was too young ... I was not fit to be a wife," Dora says as she lies dying in childbirth while still a teenager.
Posted by: Foose on February 12, 2007 11:22 PMThere would be those who would question the initial question that is asked in the post: how should a liberal society ( the UK) manage its relationships with the illiberal groups within.
Today the issue is how the UK should relate to its Muslims, particularly as the recent polls suggest that among the young there is strong support for the traditional dress symbols and sharia law. Yesterday the argument was about the accommodation of the Irish from the Republic,so many of whom came to London,Liverpool,Glasgow,Manchester and other UK centers in the 30s and especially after 1946 to work on the building sites and to take on those jobs that the others within the UK wouldn't do ( sound familiar?).
The Irish never saw the UK as the liberal culture that its mainstream inhabitants saw. Quite the opposite. They encountered a UK culture that demeaned them,what they did, how they acted and what they believed. There was nothing thought to be more desperate than a pub that had 'gone Irish'. And while many had hoped to stay only for a few years, most never went home. And their customs and their belief systems were quite alien to the mainstream of the UK. And their radicals,in search of justice, also set off bombs in the subways ( in the winter of 1938/1939).
And today? There is much less discussion of the London and Manchester Irish as a fifth column that threatens the very being of the 'liberal culture' of the UK, notwithstanding the behavior of the police in some circumstances in the 80s. Everything has changed.Both Celtic and Rangers have players from the opposite cultures that defined the teams for so many years. Education opportunities have lifted the Irish second- and third-generations into the main stream and out of the Irish ghettos of Kilburn,Camden,Harlesden,and Cricklewood. A controlling and disciplining and encompassing religion has modernized.And the accommodation of the Irish within that 'liberal' culture has been ever more complete each decade.
The experience with the Irish may suggest a way forward for the UK in its management of cultural dissonance with its Muslim population.
Posted by: jimmywalker on February 12, 2007 11:25 PMRex, the Cathollc Church's rules on incest have varied over time. At one time, marriages to within 5 degrees of consanguinuity were forbidden, but that's actually pretty difficult to enforce, especially in a culture where most people lived in one village and only occasionally went to the next village or the nearby town. (Even today, I'm not sure I could trace all my 4th cousins.)
Whatever the rule was at any given time, it was easier to get a dispensation if you were rich or powerful, or lived somewhere small and remote with a lax priest.
Posted by: Anthony on February 12, 2007 11:25 PMThe comments seem to take no account of the average age of menarche (i.e., first menstruation) among American females of European descent in the 19th century. That averaged out to about 18 years of age. This was politely rendered in such euphemistic speech as: Our Abigail is getting old enough to be married. Menarche is determined by climate, light and diet, among other factors. Today's young females are constantly bombarded by powerful light (rarely sunlight but by electric light, TV, computers etc) and that for most of their waking hours, thereby endocrinologically prompting the earlier menarche typical of tropical females. Central heating increases this similarity. They eat a diet rich in proteins and fats but also, alas, loaded with various forms of artificial hormones, so much so that there are medical writers who say the ground waters of North America are entirely polluted by estrogens, prompting a decline in sperm strength and motility. There are, of course, social/cultural reasons involved in the age of marriage, but it is unwise to overlook material aspects.
Posted by: ossian on February 13, 2007 1:13 AMJimmywalker, just out of curiosity, how many of those Irish were carrying signs declaring "Behead those who insult Papism" or something similar?
Posted by: Rob Lyman on February 13, 2007 10:13 PMMegan is wussing out when she writes:
It took an interesting question "How should a liberal society react when people with illiberal bedrock beliefs begin assembling political power"?) and turned it into a jeremiad against Islam.
So what should be done, Megan? You offer no answer. As Steyn puts it, you want to continue with the
...lop-sided valse macabre of our times: the more the Islamists step on our toes, the more we waltz them gaily round the room.
Posted by: Varangy on February 15, 2007 3:29 PMMegan is wussing out when she writes:
It took an interesting question "How should a liberal society react when people with illiberal bedrock beliefs begin assembling political power"?) and turned it into a jeremiad against Islam.
So what should be done, Megan? You offer no answer. As Steyn puts it, you want to continue with the
...lop-sided valse macabre of our times: the more the Islamists step on our toes, the more we waltz them gaily round the room.
Posted by: Varangy on February 15, 2007 3:30 PM