Article

2005-06-19 Iraq-Jordan

'Pleasure marriages' regain popularity in Iraq

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Posted by Chomotle Thish3473 2005-06-19 00:47|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 One day, Iraq will have an terrific TV soap-opera industry. It will have an inexhaustible source of material.

Posted by buwaya 2005-06-19 02:26|| 2005-06-19 02:26|| Front Page Top

#2 This is exploitation of Iraqi women.

They need guaranteed human rights, the right to work and the right to equal pay, not the right to be prostitutes.

This isn't a freedom that is going to help them.

Posted by anon1 2005-06-19 08:51|| 2005-06-19 08:51|| Front Page Top

#3 Remember that a widowed or divorced woman is in a terrible way, literally facing starvation. $200 a month in Iraq goes a long way to having a roof and food. Remember also that if she is an official wife, she gets a full cut of everything the first wife gets--few men can afford that. So it impresses that this is a "happy medium" for women who are otherwise un- or under-educated, who really can't fend for themselves having lost the support of both their family and their husband's family. "Intimacy" uses up very little time, so she has a lot left over to improve her condition. Last but not least, Iraq is full of war-widows, most of whom share the same economic rung of the ladder. So the fewer of them in competition for the few jobs, the better.

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-06-19 10:16|| 2005-06-19 10:16|| Front Page Top

#4 Now some Iraqi clerics and women's rights activists are complaining that the contracts have become less a mechanism for taking care of widows than an outlet for male sexual desires.

And how go these folks figure that out? Is it 49% widows and 51% desires? Should we stop the process at that point? Who decides when the "complaint" is valid? And then what? Mandate a social program, with US funds, tell the Iraqis they have to have "social security", or just whine about it?

I, too, would like to see them adopt some western values, but it is their country.

Posted by Bobby 2005-06-19 11:32|| 2005-06-19 11:32|| Front Page Top

#5 I imagine they'll be able to have social security when the Saudis stop blowing up their oil pipelines.

(Gee, you'd almost think they were doing it just to cut down on the competition...)

Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2005-06-19 11:43|| 2005-06-19 11:43|| Front Page Top

#6 Pleasure Marriages?! Good grief, can't these people do anything right? ;)

Posted by BH 2005-06-19 23:30|| 2005-06-19 23:30|| Front Page Top

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