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Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

Or how about a proper dowry... that is the point.

A savings bond, or even a symbolic gold chain... provided that the price is reasonably represented in gold weight.

Dowries are/were a symbolic and real proof of financial fortitude, intent. They often a represent real safety net. In some cases, increase the woman (or man's) ability to leave a marriage, a liberty and power balance function.

So much of our modern culture is a corrupt cargo cult. We are completely removed from the meaning behind our symbolisms, both intellectually and culturally.

China's adoption of Christmas and Christmas-like festivities for retail purposes is my favourite example. A copy of a copy with all meaning distilled to "winter shopping."

Anyway... there's no inherent reason for engagement rings, gifts or donations. If we like the traditional/cultural aspects... use them. Otherwise, why so sheep?

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No longer purchasing women from fathers is a strict improvement over the allegedly pristine culture of the past.

Edit: Got the direction of money transfer wrong but the fundamental “two men agreeing to transact a woman” remains intact and, yes, despicable.

> No longer purchasing women from fathers

That is not how dowry worked. The bride brought the dowry, not the groom. So basically the father/family would pay the husband to be to take the daughter off their hands.

That depends entirely on the culture. Some expect the bride's family to pay the groom (dowry) while others expect the groom to pay the bride's family (bride price). Others are mixed (e.g. in the most common American culture, the groom is expected to pay for an expensive ring, while the bride's parents are expected to pay for an expensive wedding).

Generally, it boils down to economics. If the wife is not expected to be a direct source of family income (as in most of Western society until fairly recently -- it was considered vaguely shameful if the wife had to work outside the home), dowry is more common. If the wife does provide income (as in many African cultures, where the wife or wives do the majority of food production), bride price is more common.

Humans are seemingly infinitely variable in the ways in which they've invented workable cultures (not necessarily what one would call equitable, but workable).

Sure, but the OP was confusing dowry, which is common in western world, Europe, with bride price. People today are too squeamish about this, but in the past, the women were just not setup to be good main providers: it was hard physical labor working the fields, or in the forest, mines, construction etc. just meant the man was the provider, so the women had to be worked into this "workable culture"

As you can see, dowry is a misogynistic practice because women are worthless, whereas bride price is a misogynistic practice because women are valuable.

Yes it’s bad to transact other human beings regardless of how the buyer and seller view the economics of the situation.

I don't think the parent is arguing that financial transactions involving humans aren't bad, he's arguing that labeling the transaction as "misogynistic" regardless of which side receives the value doesn't make sense. It'd be like arguing that consumers paying for a widget is "anti-consumer" (seems reasonable enough) but at the same time consumers getting paid to take a widget is "anti-consumer" (wtf?) and finally if there's no value exchanged then it's magically hunky dory.

1) I didn't say it was misogynistic.

2) It obviously is misogynistic because in either case a woman is being held and transacted as property between men.

The point is that women (and people in general) are not widgets, no matter how you wish to transact them. There's nothing mysterious going on here: it looks like property changing hands because it's property changing hands, and those people were property for the exclusive reason that they were born as women.

In your widget analogy: the widget is absolutely a secondary player in the exchange and is treated as property as compared to both other parties regardless of which way the money flows. Any such transaction would correctly be called "widget-ist" if you wish.

> 1) I didn't say it was misogynistic.

Right, the person you responded to was talking about misogyny but you subtly changed it to "it’s bad to transact other human beings".

>2) It obviously is misogynistic because in either case a woman is being transacted as property between men.

that's basically what I was arguing in the previous comment?

>I don't think the parent is arguing that financial transactions involving humans aren't bad

The person I responded to brought up a "gotcha" about both directions being misogynistic as some sort of contradiction, which it's not.

> consumers getting paid to take a widget is "anti-consumer" (wtf?)

Ironic thing to say post Snowden, Cambridge Analytica and on HN!

Button sorry for the diversion. Back to diamonds…

I mean, both of them are misogynistic because they’re financial transactions in which one is exchanging ownership of a woman.

By that framing the issue seems to be the "exchanging ownership of a woman" part than the "financial" part.

The issue is "ownership of a woman" or generally "ownership of a person." What on earth is hard to understand here?

That's literally what I said in the comment you replied to?

>the issue seems to be the "exchanging ownership of a woman" part

You’re right, I shouldn’t have specified “financial.”

> dowry is a misogynistic practice because women are worthless

In the past, a woman had little chance of making a living of her own. That was the purpose of a dowry.

> a woman had little chance of making a living of her own

A state of affairs created and maintained by exactly the same people transacting in women…

How odd

A solo man couldn’t create a self-sustaining life either. Ultimately women got transacted around to solve this problem rather than men because men tend to be physically stronger than women, and that’s it. No matter how you dress it up.

Ah yes you’re right. That’s a much better practice /s

Was that a thing though (in the west) as the dowry was usually brought by the womans family? Wasn't it more like the womans family bying the son in order to have someone to support them. Trades was not really a thing for most people throughout history so the ability to toil in the fields were of paramount importance as the only way to support the family.

Women have always worked on farms.

A solo man couldn’t create a self-sustaining farm either, yet somehow they weren’t the ones being bought and sold “for their own benefit.”

> No longer purchasing women from fathers is a strict improvement over the allegedly pristine culture of the past.

Blah. This is pious view, and a pious dismissal... not a thought out or real feminist perspective... imho.

The past (and present) is complicated... and patriarchal. Marriage, dowries, other symbols, customs and language around marriage... they all relate pretty directly to patriarchy because marriage was (and often still is) patriarchal.

Intertwined within that web were all sorts of dowry customs. Money can go either way, be symbolic or actual. It can explicitly represent a prospective divorce settlement... etc.

Diamond engagement rings happen to have very little to do with either patriarchy or liberty. They're just common consumer culture in a void that once housed real cultural content, whether those were patriarchal or otherwise.

What's the "pious view?" That women used to be treated as property (and still are in much of the world), or that that's bad?

> real cultural content

The "realness" of any "cultural content" is circularly defined by its culture. Nothing makes exchanging goats more "real" than exchanging a shiny rock or exchanging nothing at all.

you're right. culture doesn't exist, I suppose.

Fantastic non-response. Tell me which part is pious.

Agreed, and it has been enabled by the expectation that women are perfectly capable of earning a living.

There’s work to be done on the procreation part, though.

> China's adoption of Christmas and Christmas-like festivities for retail purposes is my favourite example

Indeed. Bring back Saturnalia!

Or Yule in the more northern parts.

Or any other winter festival that was practiced before christmas, and christianity superseded it.

Plot twist: Northern Europe happily kept doing several of its pre-Christian activities. Christianity was superficially conformed to, to avoid repression, but it didn't really supersede as much as add to and slightly change things. For example, while you don't see people actually worshiping the old gods[1], the local version of Easter is filled with the old symbols of fertility, witches, and evil spirits.

[1]: If they ever were ever really "worshiped" in the modern sense, in an animistic belief system.

Dowries are the opposite. Paid by the wife's family to the husband's family. Justified because women don't work and are therefore a financial burden. So when a couple leaves their respective family, that's less expense for the wife's family and less income for the husband's family, the dowry is supposed to balance that.

It is not hard to understand why dowries are a thing of the past in western society. But it is still a thing in other parts of the world.

This is pointless semantics, like the perpetual insistence on correcting "monopoly" to "oligopsony" or whenever monopoly is discussed.

No one knows the word "dower," and the term "dowry" is used pretty widely to describe the entire mess of different customs that do and did exist. IRL, these are all symbolically complex and play a role that is usually different to the symbolic one.

Engagement rings are a riff on these.

Dowry is paid by the wife’s family. It’s the precise opposite of (as another commenter wrote) buying a wife.

Yup, a lot of people don't have realize it, but an engagement ring is a collateral to a commitment: you see no other men because we intend to marry and if I waste your time you're compensated for it with something valuable. Why anyone would use a diamond for something like this is beyond me.

Dowries upon marrying is an extension of this: if I abuse you and you have to leave me you can afford to live your life with this thing I gave you.

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