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[Cthulhu]

I think the most likely end of this, aside from Turkey potentually winning, is assad uses the YPG as cannon fodder (they already lost like 10,000 fighting ISIS) and leaves them too weak at the end to actually negotiate with any leverage, breaks his promises and tells them to go to hell.

[Iduno]

Oh, definitely! Hell, the church didn't even acknowledge that female masturbation was a thing until several hundred years later, and as such couldn't condemn it as a sin!

So sure, you should serve your man faithfully and silently and never propose to try and teach something to a man (a quote that got me removed and blocked by a female and very evangelical former contact), but you get to have all the sex due to loopholes. And if you never have a man to begin with, no worries!

I am pretty sure both the cases you mentioned would count as adultery. I wonder now if it is explicitly said anywhere that marriage has to be a heterosexual affair.

Nope. It was written at a time when the people in power owned (that's how it was seen) several wives. Prior to being married off, she belonged to her father. As women were considered to be property, not people, they couldn't commit sins. It's been a few thousand years, but you'll notice that line of "reasoning" is still present to varying degrees.

[Reelya]

However, one big fact that kinda disputes the idea that women were seen as mere possessions in most societies is how dowries work. When the daughter is married off, a chunk of your wealth transfers with her, so it's sort of like the opposite of "selling" your daughter. If girls were seen as a mere commodity it would be weird to give someone resources for obtaining them.

The chunk of wealth that is the dowry is actually the girl's inheritance rights, and it's transferred when they marry due to the way extended families and marriage worked historically. This is also the reason women took on the husband's last name - they actually became members of that 'clan' from that point onward. This is also why women taking on the husbands last name no longer makes sense. It was designed for the situation where the woman was inducted into her new extended family, becoming a member of that clan. For example, it made sense that if you traveled to a new home to join "Clan MacDonell" 400 years ago, your last name changes to MacDonell, but it has zero point once a family is just two people plus kids. The point here is that it was never meant to be the wife adopting the husbands surname, specifically, the point is that everyone in that extended family shares the surname, so everyone must have it. It's the family surname.

[scriver]

Different societies have different rules for dowries, even if the cornerstone of "the dowry is the woman's inheritance" remains. For example, do the dowry remain in the ownership the woman, becoming her safety in case of a deadbeat husband (and thus making it de jure illegal for the husband to claim it and use it as his own, even if it probably de facto happened anyway in lots of cases); or do the woman's piece of the inheritance cake pass to the husband as the responsibility of the woman is passed from father to the husband?

(also this is beside the point but your example of Scottish clans is an unlucky pick, since, if i remember correctly, Scottish society did not practice family-transfer -- a Scottish wife remained of her own family and clan for the rest of her life and never took her husband's surname)

[Reelya]

or do the woman's piece of the inheritance cake pass to the husband as the responsibility of the woman is passed from father to the husband?

I don't really think this is the correct reading of the situation. When you consider the typical age of marriage, and how extended families work, you have to remember that the new husband is living with his mother, aunts, grandmother. The older women are going to be the ones directing the new wife on a day to day basis, not the new husband. If you have had any contact with for example mediterranean families such as Greeks you should know what I mean. There are spheres of influence for both the men and women by tradition, and the men don't micro-manage those things, they're left up to the women in the family to control, and the younger women are educated and given tasks by the older women. The men are definitely not marching around going "cook this, clean that, clear that up" to the women. Unless they want a beat down. Those types of excessively unhealthy relations seem to spawn more from the disruption brought about by industrialization than being a common factor of the historical structure of the extended family.

This idea that traditional families treat women like chattels on a regular basis is insulting to those cultures and not particularly historical.

[scriver]

The "responsibility" in question, if that is what you're unsure about, is the legal responsibility. The same way the bride originally was the responsibility of her father, brother, or other male relative, as she is not her own major person in such customs.

[Dunamisdeos]

Also, why is Cain paranoid of being murdered out there, IF NOBODY LIVES THERE?!

Well, animals are a thing, and many have big teeth and claws

IIRC, Cain specifically mentioned people.

Also: PAGING DUNAMISDEOS

*Walks by with a donut*
*double take*
*scarfs donut, sprints for forum*

I AMFH HERF TO HULP. God actually confirms the existence of multitudes of other people on the earth. He "marks" Cain so noone who finds him will kill him, implying that there were enough people that signage was required. It's not really addressed specifically, but I don't think it's implied that he created Adam and Eve and zero other humans, just that they were the first.

To join the current discussion, I am pretty unfamiliar with most of the old-school marriage stuff. Only things I recall about those laws in regards to the benefits to/rights of the wife is that if a man failed to provide for his wife or wives to a specific legal standard she can just outright divorce the guy, no questions asked. This included requiring him to seek any and all possible avenues for medical care. I also recall something about an amusing passage where if the man fails sexually she has the right to up and leave him too. I remember that if you cheat on your spouse they'd kill both parties involved, which was the impending situation in that famous "he who is without sin cast the first stone" thing. That bit is also used as a regular reference for Jesus indicating the old testament laws as defunct.

Basically I've always been told that the husband was indeed the designated leader of the household and had the 51% vote, but he was meant by no means to be the utter monarch. That's always how I've heard it described. Hell, my old man graduated from traditional seminary after four years, went home, and promptly handed control over the finances to my mother on account of her skill with them. Instances of abuse have been treated as such within my family. I remember one time where a family member was in a violently abusive relationship, and not to go into detail but we put the boot to the guy. Nothing really different from how I'd expect a non-religious family would handle it.

The men are definitely not marching around going "cook this, clean that, clear that up" to the women. Unless they want a beat down.

Yeah I have never known any traditional/orthodox family in which anyone offers disrespect to the lady or ladies of the house with impunity. Like you can, but it's a matter of time until you regret both your actions and the fact of your very existence. Usually not very much time. My experience would be with some friends who were Orthodox + Ethnic Jewish.

TLDR: Dammit I wrote a wall of text again.

[thompson]

I'd imagine an extended family situation would skew the balance of power away from the husband significantly as you would also have grandparents and their other adult children (who may not be present but would likely intervene if required) to contend with. Add the broader community as well, I suppose. It's certainly not foolproof, but certainly would have moderated things relative to the alternate.

[Reelya]

The wikipedia page on dowry is actually pretty enlightening. I recommend to read the whole thing for an idea of the basis. Most cultures had codified laws protecting dowries as the property of the women, directly addressing some of the objections brought up here. Who would have known that thousands of years of culture would have already sorted out how to deal with problems we just think up off the top of our heads on a forum thread?

 One important aspect is which types of societies had dowry vs which had "bride price". dowry was common in societies where the men do the farming labor, whereas "bride price" is common in societies where women do the farming labor (Sub-Saharan Africa is one area, as was China - due to the highly labor-intensive nature of rice cultivation). This seems like historical materialism at work here: culture follows economic reality.

[smjjames]

And so it begins, the fourth Democratic debate....

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Sanders recently released a policy plan for enacting worker ownership of major companies, and they've had some flirtation with adding a four-day workweek to the platform. Power levels are like never before seen.

[Naturegirl1999]

Sanders recently released a policy plan for enacting worker ownership of major companies, and they've had some flirtation with adding a four-day workweek to the platform. Power levels are like never before seen.

I like these ideas

[Telgin]

These ideas sound great on paper.  I'd like for people to at least seriously consider how they'd work in practice, since they do genuinely sound good.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

How they'd work in practice is that major sources of employment would be unable to just shut down to fill the next finance scam since the workers would get a vote, and we'd have resistance to both automation and wage collapse through increasing the amount of overtime paid and people needed for work coverage.

[sluissa]

Automation is good in the long run.

Overtime is not a solution to anything except the company's shortfall's in management and as a loophole to increase profits at employee expense.

The idea of "we need more jobs" is outdated and needs to be killed.

We will always have jobs for people who want to work. We'll always have people who don't want to work. Forcing a square peg into a round hole hurts both the peg and the hole and we're on the verge of a post scarcity society that can support that sort of thinking, if we simply let automation move forward and not try to fight it.