This goes inline with your "women as things" thread but I thought it should be a separate topic.

I could never be some man's "playtoy." I could be in a partnership, hopefully where we would take on the world together, but not, as many 18th and early 19th century women said, be "merely a vessel to fulfill a man's desires".


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https://msmagazine.com/2024/12/23/tradwife-child-marriage-women-equality-education/


‘When Power Curdles Into Violence’: Escaping the Tradwife Lifestyle

by Dr. Samra Zafar

As someone forced into a life I never chose, I am appalled that women, who are more empowered than ever, are choosing a life without choice—putting themselves in a prison of their own making.


Brides shouldn’t be thinking about homework just before their wedding day. But when I entered into an arranged marriage with a 28-year-old stranger, I was still just a 17-year-old girl who loved her private British school and her books and cricket. As such, I found myself thinking about a recent creative writing assignment: I’d written a story about a young woman who wore jewelry in the shapes of snakes. I wrote that they suddenly came to life and they slithered up to her throat, strangling her.

That story would be a grim foreshadowing for the next 12 years of my life.

Shortly after our ceremony in the Middle East, my new husband and I moved to a suburb in Canada. I was excited about the North American education that he had promised me—maybe, I thought, I could even become a doctor. But everything changed when I became unexpectedly pregnant. I couldn’t go to school anymore, and over time, in nefarious and subtle ways, I lost more and more of my freedoms: I couldn’t leave the house, have my own money or own a cellphone. When I voiced concerns about my marriage, I was told it was a woman’s destiny, the will of our god. Slowly, my dreams were poisoned, and I was consumed by the belief that if I didn’t serve my husband—ironing his shirts, making his lunch, doing the dishes—I would be a failure as a wife and mother.

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I’ve seen the world these people want, where the man is the provider, masculinity is muscular, and power lies in control. It’s a world where women are submissive and in need of protection XXX and where feminism is a threat to the family unit. It’s a world that drags women slowly backward.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/26/2024 06:55PM by anybody.