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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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I think you could sell the idea to some of them (particularly those that have children), as long as the elder family member is a woman too.

Is that not the default for arranged marriages? Certainly ultra-orthodox Jewish matchmakers are women, and most Muslims I’ve spoken to mention that arranged marriages are really arranged by the mother even if in theory men make the decisions.

So they'd probably say "based" to the Jewish matchmakers, but be skeptical of the Muslim setup because formally the power is still with the man (we are still talking about feminists, rather than trad women). Not saying they're a majority, in fact it's probably a fringe of a fringe, but there's a strain of feminism feels like they've been taken for a ride by the powers that be.

Yep, generally it's women who do the heavy lifting in the arranging of marriages for us too. The father generally defers to his wife in like 95+% of cases, and it's widely agreed that it's a good thing (regardless of what the soap operas may display, they are designed to be interesting stories for viewers, and do not reflect real life statistics at all).

Yeah, realistically that’s about what I’d expect. It just seems like a job that winds up being women doing it because they want to do it more than men do.

Yeah. Male role is more of a rubber stamp/final approval in most matchmaking-driven cultures. Indian & Chinese, from what I can see, vast majority of the matchmakers are women.