Despite your miraculous resurrection, BrightStar, you are still incomprehensible. How can you possible look at a society in which women who attempt to marry - yes, "marry," not, as in your fantasy version, "rut with who they please to produce fatherless children" - men they are in love with are brutally killed by men, and say that in that society women are the sexual gatekeepers?

The sexual gatekeeper role never goes away. The women choose. PERIOD. In the case of rural, stone-age Pakistan, it is the mothers and aunts who agree that this is the way things are done. The choice is to have society (fellow women) decide. The men submit to the deed of maintaining the culture by being the policy enacters, by force if necessary. This is true be it Pakistan or modern day America (as in chasing down men who never wanted to be dads in the first place).

You can try to hide the reality, but the truth is that when women marry for 'luv', it means the guy lights their fire, meaning he is HOT. In a wise society, with wise women (heh heh, sure) women would be clever in choosing a man that they are attracted to who is ALSO a good man. But from 4 billion years of evolution, many societies have become quite clever at parsing out that when a woman demands her way with who she can be paired with, that primarily she chooses badly (with occasional exceptions, of course, but the exception proves the rule: women choose men BADLY because their libido DEMANDS IT)

By reducing them to slutty baby machines - on the basis of no evidence whatsoever - I suppose you can feel better about their fate. You also elevate the men, suggesting that, in such a society, the deal is the women do as their told and the men don't sleep around (although you're unsure as to whether all the men keep this bargain). Do you know how unlikely that is in a society that devalues women to this extent?

I cannot comment on this as I do not know the finer points of rural Pakistani culture. To say women are devalued though is mightily disingenuous. Women are valued tothe extent that other women value them for unholding the culture. men play along to get along. Prove to me otherwise if you know better how the culture runs.

Somebody else asked, hey, what about the men, doesn't anybody care that they can't marry who they love? Yes, I care, and it is probable that, for each woman who wanted to marry a man she loved, there was a man who loved and wanted to marry that woman. They suffer the loss of their beloved. But there is no indication that they are shot and buried alive for their marriage choices.

'luv' is a peculiarly western notion. Of course men are not shot, THEY DO NOT DECIDE WHO THEY CAN MARRY, their 'beloved' woman decides if he is fit for her. With choices and power comes responsiblity. Women have the power of selection in that society as they do in ALL societies (and again, other women THWART that power, considering it a bad thing to the society).

I, of course, feel sorry for everybody in such a society. That's no reason not to see this particular even as horrific.

I said, I think there is a third way between wanton lust choosing a husband badly (America) and the demented honor system of Pakistan, but that is the $64 million question, isn't it?

He looks just like Satan in his 'goat' incarnation.

Fair enough since Bush is dictatorial head of the mightiest military/industrial beast in recorded history.

The irony is Bush just invaded Russia via his incursion into Ossetia (by Georgian proxy). The THIRD beast, after Napoleon and Hitler attempting to subsume Mother Russia.

Hope he loves Hell.