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Comment by Fuxy | Hacker News Reader

Some people let themselves be force into things. I find it quite sad that they lack the strength to just say no.

Edit: Peer pressure is a bitch especially when it's from your own family but don't let yourself be manipulated by it.

Edit2: Some people have pointed out that it's not easy and in certain cultures be enough to kill a person.

Now it's amazing that this in this day and age that is acceptable but i guess you can get away with anything if you say the magic word: "It's my religion/culture".

However ask yourself this: I have 1 life am i willing to spend it all in a cage with some people i barely know making the rules?

If the answer is yes the the give up already you don't have a choice if the answer is no do whatever it takes.

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It's not only about personal strength, no one is strong enough to change deep cultural heritage and go alone against 1000 year long culture in which woman has no say. From the comments, it's obvious it's a forced marriage and that the OP couldn't do anything about it. It's not about her husbands family, it's also her family that first "sold" or forced her to marry, and then they want her to live with that guy. Who knows, may be some blood is in danger to be spilled if she plainly refuse to go.

That all being said, I wish her good look to find a way to do it without putting herself in any kind of danger.

Why do you assume that? Just because she's from Pakistan?

Regardless my culture isn't that rosy either I just choose to reject it and was lucky that my family didn't really care.

Regardless if you're life is in danger that's the equivalent of slavery and their not your family anymore their your masters.

If you're OK with living that kind of life fine and just give up and go to the US otherwise you need to disappear and break contact with everybody you ever met.

Either fight or give up it can't be both.

>Regardless if you're life is in danger that's the equivalent of slavery and their not your family anymore their your masters.

Yes, women were historic (in many places) and currently (in some places) property of men. Why don't you get this?

You even see history of it in the current western marriage ceremony. A father "gives away" her daughter at the alter. This horrible "tradition" represents the exchange of property from father to husband.

Anyways, marriage for love is a recent invention. Previously in time marriage was more of a business transaction.

"you need to disappear and break contact with everybody you ever met"

Wow, that is some advice! I bet she is thankful for that! [IRONY]

Well, what are the other alternatives? Also, she seems to hate everyone she knows, so is the advice really that bad?

Maybe he is taking her at her word? From the article:

I have said "No" but being a Pakistani girl there's nothing I can do. I was even forced to marry that guy who is 15 years older than me. And I would say goodbye to everything but I have to wait for the right time. I'm being mean though, I need my family right now to support me until I finish my school. And then it will be up to me. I know I sound selfish but it's nothing compared to what they've done to me and my life. – user11743 25 mins ago

In Pakistan and other such nations, a woman disappearing and breaking contact with everybody is not as easy as it sounds. In the US a woman can do that with a very high probability of finding a job, not living in dire poverty [1] and not being raped. In Pakistan it's not remotely that easy.

[1] I'm talking about actual poverty, not US style relative poverty.

She's not in pakistan though, she's in Spain, where they have concepts like asylum for people that may be murdered if they return to their home country.

Asylum does exist, but some countries in Europe are making it harder and harder to avail oneself of the option, due to rising anti-immigrant sentiment. Spain grants only a small number of asylum requests, e.g. 230 people in 2012. Some of it is official policy, and some unofficial policy of just making it as difficult as possible to actually claim asylum and get a proper hearing. If she were in Sweden, the odds would be better.

Besides that, if she requests and receives asylum in Sweden, Norway, Finland, or Denmark, she can likely continue studying for her university degree there, even without any family support. I think Sweden might have recently restricted non-European foreigners, though--I can't recall.

All of them except Norway have restricted the free education to EU/EEA citizens, I believe. University is still free in Norway for anyone of any citizenship, although even there there is some kind of requirement to prove ability to sustain yourself (might be possible through part-time jobs). Denmark, Finland, and Sweden have all introduced tuition fees for non-EU citizens, about €8k/yr in Denmark.

However I don't know what the situation is if you receive asylum. You might be treated as domestic for education purposes in that case, since it would be in the state's interest for people granted asylum to get an education and increase their employability.

Scandinavia and Iceland are pretty much the world leaders with respect to women's rights now, and have a keen interest in their public welfare, so if I were a woman without any form of family support, in fear for my life thanks to a tradition of honor murders in my native culture, I'd rather be there than anywhere else in the world. Even if people frown at you because you're a stranger, at least they aren't killing you because they know you too well.

Those countries are not alike. Norway, Finland and Denmark are all very restrictive in immigration matters.

If she went to Sweden she would be sent back to Spain for asylum processing, there is a treaty that a refugee in EU is the responsibility of the arrival country. One of the reasons that Sweden can be generous, it's hard to get here directly.

Yeah that's true. I meant she'd be in a better situation if she had been a student at a Swedish university, rather than a student at Spanish university, not that she can move to Sweden now. Sweden gives about 15x as many asylum offers each year as Spain (~3500 people/yr vs. 230 people/yr), despite having a much smaller population, though admittedly a wealthier one. It also tends to actually follow the rules on processing applications, rather than inventing bureaucratic technicalities to prevent them from being recorded as formally filed in the first place. Spain receives a lot more immigrants than Sweden, as you note, but somehow records very few asylum applications as even submitted.

I'm going to try to explain this; but words really won't do it justice. I cannot convey the strength of "cultural bonds" with text on a computer screen.

As someone from a Nigerian family, we too normally have very strong family bonds. You can't just do whatever you want. The closest thing I could compare it to is kinda of like, all your family is considered immediate-family. In the same way you must balance decisions with your spouse you also must consider everyone's feelings & wants - Even people who are not logically impacted by your decisions and live 1,000+ miles away.

Just throwing away the family network brings you great shame. Yes, pure logic says "Why should I care what a bunch of elders 3,000 miles away think? They know nothing of what I'm going through." ...but somehow... you can't just do that. It's a major part of who you are and breaking those bonds will you empty inside and dishonored by your family(maybe friends too). This is even more the case with women of the culture. It's much easier to create an external reason to defy your family like this lady is trying to do - so it looks like "Hey, I tried to do what you told me. Something else got in the way! Sorry! But you still love me, right?"

This will probably sound like nonsense to anyone not part of this type of cultural system.

Thank you for saying this. Seems a lot of people here can't get out of their own cultural viewpoint. This type of disobeying of family (especially from a women) is looked down upon like, say, raping someone is in the US or Europe.

I have seen a bare fragment of this in my wife's family. It's the crab bucket culture, and is highly destructive to individual growth.

There may be valid reasons for such a culture to exist, but for the most part, they do not apply in rich industrial nations. China, for instance, is about to feel some cultural growing pains thanks to its generation under the One Child Policy and its increasing urban industrialization.

Once a strong family network is no longer necessary for individual prosperity, it tends to collapse back down to a smaller, more manageable size. You don't have to carry your creepy uncle, and your layabout second cousin, and your overbearing great aunt on your back any more, because they can all get factory jobs and/or welfare payments.

This lady, between Spain and the US, has a better opportunity to escape the crab bucket than she will ever have in Pakistan. If she does not take it soon, even without the degree, she may be condemning herself to a life without freedom by her own choice.

You're probably right i don't understand it. That's a lot of energy and effort put into pleasing people whom can and probably do have ulterior motives just so you can belong to a group.

Is that group really wort all that effort?

Does belonging to that group get you where you want to go?

The answer for me was a resounding no but it could be different for you.

There's very few people worth my respect and consideration but I certainly wouldn't bother to please and entire village.

If you're not pissing people off you're doing something wrong.

Well, ya know the saying "It takes a village to raise a child.". That same mindset assumes the entire village is the family. So if you grow up in that world, you don't want to disappoint that community.

>>If you're not pissing people off you're doing something wrong.

I definitely try to run my life as opposite from this as reasonably possible. "Reasonably" being the word that's very debatable.

> Now it's amazing that this in this day and age that is acceptable but i guess you can get away with anything if you say the magic word: "It's my religion/culture".

I don't think anyone here is saying it's acceptable. But maybe there's a easier way than instantly rebelling, losing her funding for living expenses/college, and possibly getting a headhunter after her. Perhaps she can keep up the "denied entry into the US" lie long enough to make it finish college and become more independent, and then have the strength to fight?

Being pragmatic instead of idealistic isn't always wrong. Especially when your future life is on the line.

Remember that in certain circumstances and parts of the world "peer pressure" can mean honor killing.

It's hard to have the strength to say no in certain situations. Not everyone is in the same position as you to say no.

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