11-year-old girl married to 40-year-old man

[Lars77]

http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/05/11-year-old-girl-married-to-40-year-old-man/

Before their wedding ceremony begins in rural Afghanistan, a 40-year-old man sits to be photographed with his 11-year-old bride. The girl tells the photographer that she is sad to be engaged because she had hoped to become a teacher. Her favorite class was Dari, the local language, before she had to leave her studies to get married.

She is one of the 51 million child brides around the world today. And it's not just Muslims; it happens across many cultures and regions.

Photographer Stephanie Sinclair has traveled the world taking pictures, like the one of the Afghan couple, to document the phenomenon. Christiane Amanpour spoke with Sinclair about a book which features her photographs called, "Questions without Answers: The World in Pictures by the Photographers of VII."

Amanpour asked Sinclair if the 11-year-old Afghan girl married in 2005, and others like her, consummate their marriages at such an early age. Sinclair says while many Afghans told her the men would wait until puberty, women pulled her aside to tell her that indeed the men do have sex with the prepubescent brides.

[MADem]

1. Before I even clicked, I thought, Afghanistan?

Disgraceful. Disgusting. Poor little kids.

What slavery.

[Lars77]

2. He sure is a looker though aint he?

[MADem]

10. He looks 80, the fucking perv. Poor little kid, the look on HER face speaks volumes.

Her family should be shot.

[get the red out]

16. Shooting would be too kind for them

[RebelOne]

22. Yes, she looks terrified. n/t

[pnwmom]

39. He's old, and they're all evil, except for the little girl. nt

[Brickbat]

3. Sick and sad.

Here's a photo of the "couple" described in the beginning of the article.


This photo, of a five-year-old woken up to go to her "wedding," kills me.


Not every cultural institution is worth respect.

[Marengo]

12. I see he wore his best pants!

[get the red out]

15. Sick bastard

Her parents are pieces of shit too.

I hate that culture. I just want our troops out of there. This culture is a shame to the human race.

[XemaSab]

48. That's not quite what's happening in the second photo

It's a 5-year-old girl being taken by her uncle to marry a 10-year-old boy.

It's still really messed up, but at least she's not being married off to a man old enough to be her dad (or grandpa).

[Ilsa]

4. Little girls are sexual slaves.

She wanted to be a teacher, not some old (relatively) dude's sex toy.

[TuxedoKat]

5. 40?

That guy looked closer to 50 or 60.

[snooper2]

6. I knew it, before clicking on the thread

Afghanistan-

Fucking shit hole of a country...I actually used to think if enough of the fundies died over there more "moderate" people would be able to take control of that country. Maybe one generation of girls could get a proper education. Maybe that some people would be elected to local levels in government to effect change. Maybe the talifucks would just stay on the border with Pakistan and live in the mountains. Nope, still a shithole.


We should have just taken every cargo plane we have over there and any child or rational adult that wants to leave the place gets a free ride and 20K to start a new life elsewhere. Then the rest of the World could just write the country off, like that 79' Nova with the rusted out floor-pans you never got restored

[JustAnotherGen]

9. And the saddest part

Is there ARE educated women over there. This total reduction to 'sub human chattel' status happened in the mid 90's. There are women my age (39) - over there - that remember when they went to school. When they could write, read a book, hold a pen, and dream about their future.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

41. Should have let the Soviets take it over

They were good at two things that Afghanistan needed:

1. Universal secular education

2. Enforcing women's rights in their own Islamic areas

[snooper2]

44. Probably...

[randome]

7. We all want to support freedom of religion but we forget...

...most religions treat women as property. Just some more than others.

[seabeyond]

19. escalation of sex slaves bought and sold all over the world, that has nothing to do with religion

we have to get beyond the thought that this is only about religion.

[ChazII]

45. Thank you, seabeyond

for pointing this fact out to our fellow DUers.

[XemaSab]

49. There are Christians in this country

who view women as effectively the property of their husband or father.

Yes, oppression of women goes beyond religion, but religion certainly gives a culture of misogyny a structural framework.

[seabeyond]

50. chicken or the egg. my education shows that religion reinforces what was created. nt

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

8. I don't care how old the male is, 11 is too young to marry

Last edited Mon Aug 6, 2012, 03:01 PM - Edit history (2)

even if the boy is 11 and the marriage isn't consummated until adulthood. The age of the male here makes it so much worse but any arranged child marriage is a terrible institution. Children are not property and can't be used to curry favors or gain influence with other clans or family groups. My grandmother was married at 15 and it was her free choice but that is just too young to get saddled with kids and adult responsibilities. She barely had time to to learn to read and write. She came from the wild mountains of Corsica where that was common at the turn of the century but thank God it's become very rare there. Women's education is paramount, not just as an end in itself but because it has such a powerful effect on their children, the next generation and its enlightenment. And keeping women uneducated and ignorant helps to perpetuate these loathsome cultural practices.

[Marrah_G]

11. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[monmouth]

13. He looks much older than 40...n/t

[Quantess]

14. Makes me want to vomit.

This is a human rights abuse issue.

[tallahasseedem]

17. I have an 11 year old daughter...

this literally makes me sick to my stomach.

[xmas74]

56. I have a 12 year old

and anyone that looks at her in an even remotely sexual way will be lucky if all they receive is a punch in the face.

[seabeyond]

18. we have our own, it is just in the form of child sex slaves and sex slaves. the men just have to pay

cash instead of going all out and marrying them.

how are we any better?

[hifiguy]

21. In the US? Apart from the Fundy Polygamist LDSers and

any similar kook/fringe organizations? Really?

Pray, do enlighten us as to who and where they are.

[niyad]

27. the whole child porn industry, for one

[get the red out]

33. That's illegal

This marriage is seemingly just fine and dandy. That's a huge difference. Kiddy porn is NOT acceptable in our culture, not that it is possible to eradicate it, but at least it is considered depraved here.

[FightForMichigan]

28. Please read

It's all too real. It's estimated that at any time, there are 100,000 children in the US forced into sex work. I've known some who were.
[link:http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/overview|
http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/overview]

[seabeyond]

31. thank you for the article to inform. nt

[cali]

36. yes, it's real. it's a different problem and one that numerous agencies and law enforcement

work to stop.

Did you miss the figure in the vid? 51 MILLION underage girls worldwide forced into marriage.

[cali]

24. uh, because it's not a cultural norm. it's illegal. you go to jail for a long time for

it. it's not sanctioned by law or culturally approved of.

big difference. And yes, that's better.

[seabeyond]

29. so the child that is forced to prostitute with no freedom can see the difference? good to know

does that really make a difference to the victim? or just allow our outrage of afghanistan be validated as we dismiss what is going on in this very country?

as long as our children and women are thought of as prey, it does not matter if it comes from a criminal or a religion. it is there.

[cali]

34. no, of course it doesn't make a difference to an individual victim

the difference is cultural and legal. I though I made that clear. If you can't see that it's better to have laws against young girls being married and that it's better that such practices are not culturally acceptable, well, there's nothing more to say. Of course we have problems and commenting on this practice doesn't mean anyone is dismissing those problems.

And men tend to think of women as prey all the wide world over. And to abuse them all the world over. And to rape them wholesale in war. I'd say that's a problem with men more than anything else.

[get the red out]

35. I hate all of it

We should speak out against all of it, no matter where it happens. I got a lot of flack for speaking out against FLDS on some message boards a few years ago. At that point people were telling me FLDS was ok because their child sex slaves weren't fed processed food.

It is always a bait and switch when anyone is disgusted with any culture other than mainstream Western culture. I despise all cultures that harm and enslave women and children, I don't care where they are located. We should be screaming out about all of them.

[hifiguy]

37. Um. It is illegal in the civilized world and people

deservedly go to prison for a long, long time. Furthermore, it's not an accepted part of the dominant culture. What we are seeing in Afghanistan is considered a normal part of the culture, not something that exists at the fringes of society. It is condoned and accepted there. Which is sick and screwed up beyond words, IMO. I won't say it doesn't or can't ever happen here, but there is not one thing culturally normal or acceptable about it in the civilized world.

And there is no child porn "industry" - just a bunch of freaks around the world who produce the sick shit and share it. That is not an "industry."

[zazen]

40. lots of 12-17-year-olds used in porn "industry"

The ones who are trafficked or otherwise pressed into service by gangs.

I've had the misfortune to run across pics that were presumably of of-age young women, but you could tell by their breast shape that they hadn't reached full maturity. There's a lot of that in the international gonzo porn market.

The monstrous crap with 3-year-olds? You're right. That's much more under the rug. I guess we have to be grateful that there's some line the gonzo porn industry hasn't crossed.

[hifiguy]

42. I can't say I know anything about "gonzo porn"

but the mainstream distributors wouldn't touch anything with demonstrably underage performers. The recordkeeping regarding performers is regulated and they follow the rules. A company like, say, Vivid Video has ZERO incentive to risk their businesses by using underage performers.

I remember years ago when it was revealed that Traci Lords was underage when she began her porn career. No one was charged for a simple reason - she presented a legitimate birth certificate (which the producers, smartly, copied and kept) that said she was of legal age. The birth certificate was, however, her older sister's. Even the prosecutors said the producers had done everything that they could do and relied in good faith on the documentation Lords presented.

[zazen]

53. it's mainstream pornmakers who have the most power to improve things

at least for right now.

I feel that these issues need to be addressed on multiple fronts, but when mainstream pornography producers take leadership in demonstrating clearly that the people in their films are 18 and fully consenting (as in, not battered or addicted to heroin in addition to the obvious issues of trafficking and underage teenagers), it will at least educate the majority of pornography users that they should be as disgusted by potentially "uncertified" porn as they would by products made by slave labor.

I'm not crazy about 'mainstream' porn for gobs of reasons, but my first priority is that human beings are not coerced into making it. The rest we can work on through education, but behavior among consenting adults is protected by the first amendment. We need a huge national campaign to educate men to be grossed out physically by the thought that something they're using is actual documentation of a crime, so that they only "consume" material where it's demonstrated that the people there are there by choice. "Transgression" into "barely legal" girls and all the Lolita crap ought not to be a little more sexy, a little more pushing the envelope. It needs to be as viscerally revolting and erection-losing, at least to decent liberal males, as the idea of beating up gay teens or lynching a black person. (Right-wing guys--well, that may be another story. I don't know.)

If the mainstream industry can do that, more power to 'em.

[Motown_Johnny]

20. I suppose this would meet the Biblical definition of marriage. Fundies would approve.

[cali]

23. child rape.

period.

[lpbk2713]

25. Any truth to the rumor Tedophile Nugent is emigrating to Afghanistan?

[Whisp]

26. disgusting beyond words.

vomits on that smug macho fuckface

[Happyhippychick]

30. The author refers to them as a "couple". Are you fucking kidding?

[Nye Bevan]

38. I'd say "a child rapist and his victim".

But that's just me.

[Happyhippychick]

46. I totally agree. I am so disgusted by that description.

[Liberal_in_LA]

32. sick

[Enrique]

43. if anyone tries to reform this

the people fighting to keep the practice will say they are "defending traditional marriage"

[Happyhippychick]

47. There go the homosexuals ruining the sanctity of marriage again! Oh, whoops.

Well Bachmann and crew should be thrilled that it's one man and one female child.

[Speck Tater]

51. That is so beyond sick and twisted it turns my stomach. nt

[HockeyMom]

52. Do these old coots get Viagra?

If this "husband" is as old as they say, this poor CHILD will probably only have to put up with him for a few years.

She WILL get the last laugh on him. Very, very sad she has to go through this, but she has her youth all over him.

[lonestarnot]

54. Talibans, fucking baby rapers.

[Odin2005]

55. Why did I know this would be in Afghanistan?