Edit: Got the direction of money transfer wrong but the fundamental “two men agreeing to transact a woman” remains intact and, yes, despicable.
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.
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).
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.
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
Ironic thing to say post Snowden, Cambridge Analytica and on HN!
Button sorry for the diversion. Back to diamonds…
>the issue seems to be the "exchanging ownership of a woman" part
In the past, a woman had little chance of making a living of her own. That was the purpose of a dowry.
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.
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.”
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.
> 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.
There’s work to be done on the procreation part, though.