from me, but arranged marriages aren't as terrible as people seem to think they are. :\
People choose to marry people who are not good for them all the time. I think the defining conflict is "choice," though-- the idea of giving someone a choice, and especially giving a woman a choice, is so bound up to current Western ideas of freedom and personal rights that it's a pretty quick jump from "parents/grandma/matchmaker made the choice for you" to "OPPRESSION!!111" It's hard for a lot of people to get past the idea that making your own bad decisions is not necessarily superior to someone making a less-bad decision for you.
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Date: 2011-09-28 11:44 am (UTC)People choose to marry people who are not good for them all the time. I think the defining conflict is "choice," though-- the idea of giving someone a choice, and especially giving a woman a choice, is so bound up to current Western ideas of freedom and personal rights that it's a pretty quick jump from "parents/grandma/matchmaker made the choice for you" to "OPPRESSION!!111" It's hard for a lot of people to get past the idea that making your own bad decisions is not necessarily superior to someone making a less-bad decision for you.