Forced or arranged
There’s that report on Honour-based violence in the UK. It starts off by discussing forced marriage – and right away I got snagged by an obstacle.
According to most definitions, a marriage becomes forced if any coercion, physical or psychological, [is] used against either spouses [sic] in order to force them to consent. A forced marriage is not the same as an arranged marriage which occurs with the full consent of both parties.
No the obstacle isn’t how desperately the report needs copy-editing; it’s full of mistakes and typos, but that’s not the obstacle. The obstacle is that item about the full consent. What is full consent? Under what conditions is it possible? How prevalent are such conditions? All that needs spelling out, and it’s a mistake to declare roundly that all arranged marriages by definition occur with the full consent of both. In other words there are arranged marriages, that are considered and called such by all parties, that are not completely freely consented to.
How could it possibly be otherwise? When children are raised with the idea that they will have marriages arranged for them, and that this is the right way to do things, and that to do things otherwise is risky or stupid or defiant or Western or dirty or all those – how freely do they consent when an arranged marriage is offered to them? Or at least, how freely is it safe to assume they consent? It may well be that many people who enter arranged marriages are entirely happy to do so, but is it safe or reasonable to assume that, given the circumstances? I don’t think it is. That’s not to say the police should be called out for every arranged marriage, just that the distinction between forced and arranged should not be seen as clear-cut and dependable.
>how freely do they consent when an arranged marriage is offered to them? Or at least, how freely is it safe to assume they consent? It may well be that many people who enter arranged marriages are entirely happy to do so, but is it safe or reasonable to assume that, given the circumstances? I don’t think it is.< So you advocate some outside scrutiny of a well-established custom adjudicated by menfolk for countless generations. Really, Ophelia, whatever next?
Ah, I think the arranged marriage scrutiny idea is partly prejudice, OB. We should also insist that such scrutiny applies to ‘voluntary’ non-arranged marriages. Are the parties feeling pressured by their families? Are they really trapped in a consistency bind because she kissed the guy so has to take the next step in a faulty romantic model of the world? Is she locked in by her false ideas of the ticking biological clock? Hey, the other person is a total moron, it can’t be good? And what about Dad’s requirement for someone to take over the farm, and will a daughter-in-law divorce a son and destroy the family heritage in the settlement?
It all is fraught, arranged or not. Our normal romantic model (which I pretty much conform to myself) doesn’t come near covering contingencies.
Arranged marriages in my knowledge of numerous Indian families hindu and christian, seem to include and produce some great people and I am reluctant to condemn the method.
Well, ChrisPer, there’s a whole range possible, isn’t there? Some arranged marriages turn out well for both spouses, some are pure hell and would never been entered into without extraordinary familial pressure. I don’t see that OB’s condemning the method at all – just the assumption that it’s always benign, that there’s no coercion involved in what people typically refer to as “arranged marriages.”
Having said that, though, I don’t know that the authors of the report really are making the assumption/declaration that OB is accusing them of making. When I read the quoted passage, I took these to be essentially STIPULATIVE definitions, albeit not presented in the clearest fashion. Restated clearly, I took it to mean something like this:
An arranged marriage is one where, however much family input is involved in bringing them together for an offer of marriage, both parties to the marriage give full consent freely and without coercion. However, what people may well call an “arranged marriage” is actually a forced marriage when the so-called “consent” of one or both parties is procured by means of physical or psychological coercion. [I might add “fiscal” to the types of coercion, but let’s stick to presentation problems rather than gaps in content.]
If I’m correct, OB, your concern isn’t so much a reflection of hidden assumptions as another manifestation of the piss-poor writing and editing. Then again, I don’t have the time or energy to go read the source document, so in the full context this passage might be smuggling in just the sort of B.S. assumption you suspect.
Looked to me like “A forced marriage is not the same as an arranged marriage which occurs with the full consent of both parties” was the most self-explanatory part of that – without “full consent” an “arranged marriage” can be regarded as “forced”, and should be viewed as such…
There was a series of really naff pro-arranged-marriage propaganda programmes on BBC2 last year in which people volunteered to have a nice young matchmaker find them a potential spouse.
This allowed the matchmaker to explain how wonderful “contemporary” arranged marriages are for six weeks while ignoring two fairly important facts. One, the process was entirely voluntary on the part of its televised subjects. Two, not a single person liked their potential spouse enough to continue a relationship with them, never mind marry them.
Yes, I am sure you are all right – its just that I know a few people who have gone into arranged marriages with full consent and seemed to do OK. I know its a small sample but there you go.
I can’t look at conventional western marriages without finding problems reported for about half of them, so the whol area of marriage does not lend itself to absolutes.
I do LIKE the idea of recognising the human rights of people to include the idea that they are absolutely free to refuse a marriage – arranged or not.