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In Kyrgyzstan it’s common to kidnap your future wife
- ur-whale 4y agohttps://archive.ph/kzGPf https://archive.ph/kzGPf
- booleandilemma 4y agoI can't help but wonder if people post things to HN as a semi-automated way of getting an archive link :)
- mjklin 4y agoInteresting Vice documentary on the subject: https://youtu.be/DKAusMNTNnk https://youtu.be/DKAusMNTNnk
- 29athrowaway 4y agoThere's an important part in that documentary https://youtu.be/DKAusMNTNnk?t=1597 https://youtu.be/DKAusMNTNnk?t=1597
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- tmpacct19834 4y agoIf you’re interested, I would recommend checking out the short film “Ala Kachuu - Take and Run”. Can’t say if the film is an accurate portrayal, but it really angered me to imagine people having to experience this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ala_Kachuu_–_Take_and_Run https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ala_Kachuu_–_Take_and_Run
- meitham 4y agoI wonder if that's where Sacha Baron Cohen got his idea for Borat when kidnapping Pamela Anderson! He probably confused Kyrgyzstan with Kazakhstan!
- AbrahamParangi 4y agoYou know, I gotta say that time has not been kind to Borat. The casual racism in the service of satire feels pretty dated today and not in a good way.
- meitham 4y agoI fully agree! My comment wasn't to endorse his movie but merely to suggest an origin for the main plot.
- codetrotter 4y agoThe point of the Borat movie was to make fun of western peoples beliefs about foreign people and foreign cultures. In order to capture the audience, it uses satire. It takes ideas about foreign people, exaggerates these ideas even further, and investigates how people react to these exaggerated ideas. It turned out that even when taken to ridiculous extremes, many people (as seen in the movie) were willing to buy the idea that Borat was a real person from a foreign country. Borat does feel dated now. But perhaps that also means, the movie was effective on some level, in highlighting these beliefs? And perhaps even to help combat said beliefs?
- zozbot234 4y agoWhat Borat did in his film was purposefully ridicule dirt poor people from Eastern Europe, making them look like bigoted idiots who might live in a makeshift barn with their cow and playing the whole thing for laughs. There was a lot about it that really was kinda despicable.
- ipaddr 4y agoWait until you hear about early sesame street
- kevingadd 4y agoThis is also a tradition of sorts in some Hmong communities. Was shocking to learn about it, especially to learn that it's not a thing of the past.
- nonrandomstring 4y agoNot just "the past" but the idea it happens only in far away places like Kyrgyzstan. In London, Bradford and some other UK cities there is an underground problem around arranged marriages that sometimes escalates into kidnap, violence and even "honour killings". There's a shroud of silence around it because Britain is a "modern multi-cultural" country.
- Joker_vD 4y agoIt's an ancient and noble tradition! And it's not like cultures should or even can change with times to adapt to new circumstances, should they? Get outta here with your cultural insensitivity! Speaking seriously, cultural tolerance can only exist to a certain extent because each culture has some things it absolutely (or almost absolutely) prohibits and disdains, so when two incompatible in such a way cultures meet, something has to give.
- bennyelv 4y agoForgive me but that sounds rather sensationalist. If you have any evidence of this phenomenon I would be interested to see it. Not that arranged marriages sometimes happen and honour killings too (albeit extremely rarely), but that there’s a “shroud of silence” around such things when they do happen.
- nonrandomstring 4y agoA film to give you an insight is Banaz: An Honor Killing [1]. It's based around a real case. It's often hard for police or social workers to penetrate communities that close ranks to cover up cases like this. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn-VhFHkUoY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn-VhFHkUoY
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- honkler 4y ago
- prettyStandard 4y agoSo I dated Kazakh woman for a while. This is true, but the title is misleading. In a nutshell, when two people elope, it's officially considered a kidnapping, to save face for the family. But no one get prosecuted and everyone knows what's going on. She said the only realistic thing, in the movie Borat, was the kidnapping scene, and even that was outlandish. Gonna go read the article now and see if I need to make any updates.
- charlangas 4y agoIn Mexico it is common to say that a woman was stolen or kidnapped ("Se la robó") when a couple elopes. Curious that the same face-saving mechanism is common in other parts of the world. As a boy whenever I heard a woman had been "stolen" I couldn't help but picture a man carrying her off on his shoulders in the middle of the night while she helplessly tried to get away. Took me a while to understand it was usually consensual.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Curious that the same face-saving mechanism is common in other parts of the world. In many cases, it is just preserving language describing the act given the prior assumption that the woman was property of the male head of household until disposed of by them in marriage, devoid of her own agency, while the man attempting to marry her without that consent was fully possessed of moral agency and thus had stolen her from her appropriate custodian.
- emodendroket 4y agoIn the case of Kyrgyzstan that doesn't seem to be a "prior" assumption.
- dragonwriter 4y agoI meant that as why it would be common where the current use is primarily “face saving”, but even in those cases it is still bowing to the continued social relevance of the same attitude, because it only saves face if you assume that abduction is less of an affront to norms than a woman exercising agency with regard to marriage, so “prior” is something of an exaggeration in any case.
- einpoklum 4y agoI don't know Kyrgyzstan. But the story itself says: > In response, the Kyrgyz parliament raised the maximum sentence for bride kidnapping from three to seven years. and the tale at the beginning of the story is rare and extreme enough to spark a national campaign of outrage. I'm not saying that this phenomenon does not exist, but I do wonder if the Economist is not up-playing this for curiosity/shock value.
- int_19h 4y agoThe story cites statistics from the government itself: "In a Kyrgyz government survey conducted in 2016 and funded by the UN, some 22% of the country’s women reported that their marriage had begun with an abduction, known as ala-kachuu, or “grab and run”. The researchers broke this figure down into those abducted “without consent” (6%) and those “with consent” (16%)." 6% is not routine, but I don't think it would be fair to call it "rare and extreme", either.
- emodendroket 4y agoIt also says that seven years penalty was less than the penalty for kidnapping for any other reason and that this law has seen weak enforcement because police don't really take it seriously.
- lern_too_spel 4y agoIt sounds like what was rare and extreme was the murder, not the kidnapping.
- pydry 4y ago>The researchers broke this figure down into those abducted “without consent” (6%) and those “with consent” (16%). Yet the idea of consent is difficult to parse in a country I knew some Kyrgz who talked about this and they said the real thing was rare, illegal and still happened (almost exclusively in remote villages) but mostly it was a performative ritual done by couples who were dating. I think the Economist is being intentionally obtuse here. 6% / 16% is about right.
- ummonk 4y ago6% is hardly what I'd call "rare".
- emodendroket 4y agoMaybe read further into the story before committing to that opinion or at least to the end of that sentence.
- standardUser 4y agoThis appears to be the crux of the problem... "if you’re unwed at 25, you’re thought to be on the verge of spinsterhood, pretty much the worst failure imaginable" This sentiment seems to be near-universal in all but the most "progressive" societies (and even in some parts of those). And it results in all manner of grotesque and absurd behavior that robs people - mostly women but also men - of their humanity and autonomy. I applaud every young person with the courage to buck this trend in their own societies. The cost of doing so is often very high, but the pattern can only be broken by people brave enough to face those consequences and help craft a less restrictive world for the next generation.
- jjcon 4y agoI don’t think it is 100% society as much as it is biology that has shaped that ideology
- vanviegen 4y agoSo? Does that make it right?
- jjcon 4y agoReproducing is biologically hardwired into us. That doesn’t make it alright to judge people who either can’t or choose not to but I also don’t think we are going to change something so core to our biology any time soon, and yes a part of that is the judgement that may come along with it. Doesn’t hurt to try though.
- AmericanChopper 4y agoYou’re talking as if this was just some social construct, when it’s absolutely not. If a woman doesn’t have children by a certain age, then she will never have children. The idea that it will become impossible to have children is an intimidating thought for many women, even if they don’t necessarily have immediate plans to have them, and the appeal of committing to a relationship with a women who cannot have children is reduced for men (again, even if they don’t have any immediate plans for children). Women get left behind by biological realities. Pretending this is just some form of social tyranny is clearly nonsense.
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- vjulian 4y agoNot to make light of issues presented in this article, there’s a delightful comedy from the 1990s called Black Cat, White Cat about a Roma community. I’m reminded of some scenes from that film. Serbian director, Emir Kusturica
- petodo 4y agoFor context - bride "kidnapping" on wedding day is also wedding tradition in many European countries, though it's just pretend of course. And the "real" kidnapping is not just Kyrgyzstan thing, but plenty other countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_kidnapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_kidnapping