marriage is historically a union based on slavery, one man makes a gift of his property to another man. a daughter will work domestically without pay for one man, and when she is old enough she will be 'given away' to another for domestic use and child bearing, again without pay.
whoa there, you unruley bunch of horses.... marriage is historically a union based on slavery. I think we need to start being a bit more precise with termonology here. If were talking histroically here then lets name periods of time, cultures, and developments of those cultures rather than making sweaping generalisations about a whole myrid of institutions that can be lumped together as marriage. Lets also think what we talking about with slavery (does arawack insitiution of slavery have all that much it common with ancient greek slavery or transatlanctic slavery?). I asume by a historic union based on slavery you don't mean that marriage as a political instituion developed out of that of the (or rather a) insitution of slavery? Or is it that marriage and slavery contain some common features and are both forms of domonation?
Without going into some historical or cultural context its hard to say why i'd disagree with what you've said, but then without being applicable to any context what use is any theory? But i think alot of what your saying about 'bride exchange' is based on outdated and misinterpreted anthropology. For a start brides aren't exhcnage as property from man to man, but from kinship group to kinship group.
If where talking levi-struass's ideas of bride exhcnage then women aren't 'exchanged' like a commodity (the gift sure as hell ain't an calculating exchange- try reading some mauss) but represent the principal of exchange. i.e. that women aren't passive victims pushed about by men but there active movement through society makes society possible in the first place. I might not actually agree with levi-struass's ideas but its some subsiquent critique of that (which what your saying has some resemblance too) that have misinterpreted this idea, in part due to levi-struass's dodgey chose of termonology, and ended up representing women as passive victims or commodities. Doing this ignores the how women understand and play with this exchange themselves- instead of viewing women from the point of view of western anthropology (a prodomanately male deiscipline btw). So Surely the imporant question is that how women 'exchanged' understand themselves? (as many recent feminist antropolgoist have focused on). Do they view themselves as slaves or not? If so is there view point still valid?
lthough things have changed a lot, there are still hundreds of arranged and enforced marriages in this country
are you equating arranged marriages with enfroced marriages there? If some one is force to do something against their will then of course it bad. But are all arranged marriages against the womens will?
Maybe you should have waited until I had repeated my argument before jumping to attack.
<-------- confused bystander talking about something else entirely sez "you haven't checked out the anarchist dating service then?? its lovely"
s'ok sabotabby