२७ ऑगस्ट, २०२१

"The eldest by a minute, she is the only heterosexual in our family; her twin is a lesbian and so are her two Moms...."

"... Because I grew up in an Irish-Catholic household where sexual feelings were at best contained, at worst annulled, I took particular pleasure in allowing hers to flourish. The boyfriend’s parents... had been raised in other faiths and had converted to Islam. They insisted on strict compliance with religious laws. Meaning: Their boy with the luxurious hair was not allowed to date.... I became complicit in their circumventing his parents’ prohibitions.... [M]y own family’s disapproval of my lesbian desire fueled this indecorous behavior on my part.... Of course, they got caught.... [My daughter's boyfriend's parents] proposed a temporary marriage between my 13-year-old and theirs, although I would not know about this until moments before the ceremony.... The ceremony took place in a local Mexican coffee house.... I thought I was simply coming along to meet the mother. My eldest whispered the relevant details in my ear as they walked through the door.... The boy’s mother was strikingly beautiful and at least a decade younger than me. After we had all gotten our hot chocolates, she took out her Quran and explained that temporary marriage was a way for our children to have some limited physical contact without jeopardizing her son’s soul.... I assented without calling home to consult my partner of 20-something years.... ...I didn’t want my daughter to be prevented from touching the boy she loved. I didn’t want what had been done to me to be done to her. So I assented, and the boy’s parents read the ritual phrases in Arabic, and the children nodded along and, without my understanding a word, they were married.... Their temporary marriage lasted until they broke up a year later...."

1. The parents — all 3 of them — were actively facilitating sexual intercourse between 13-year-olds. Is this not criminal behavior? 

2. Oh, but the boy and his mother were beautiful! Beauty privilege. Step back naysayers! Beautiful people are moving forward, claiming what they want.

3. Chocolate was had. That makes everything more palatable.

4. The mother does not concede that the 2 teenagers ever had sexual intercourse, and lets us know that her daughter regards your curiosity about this as "disturbingly invasive, and, indeed, exoticizing." That is, you are the creep, not these parents who got their kids "temporarily married."

5. Imagine taking a vow that was read to you in a language that you don't understand. Imagine sitting by sipping hot chocolate while your exuberant daughter nods assent to what sounds like gibberish to her but you know is deadly serious to the person who is reading the vows. 

6. Are the vows deeply meaningful or utterly meaningless? What is "temporary marriage" anyway? Maybe it's a debasement of marriage — if marriage means something deep to you. But it's a step up from the cheap vowless love the mother approved of before the boy's parents caught on to the relationship she was eagerly enabling. 

7. The mother sees herself in her daughter, and she's proud of this merged identity. The mother's grudges against her own mother and against society are reenacted through her daughter, whom she touts in the pages of the New York Times.

8. The author has a whole memoir coming out, so the daughter's story is, apparently, thoroughly appropriated by the mother. Talk about "disturbingly invasive."

५० टिप्पण्या:

Misinforminimalism म्हणाले...

Thank you for sharing this. It tempers my disgust at the fall of America that we're all witnessing play out in Washington and Kabul.

David Begley म्हणाले...

Stephanie Grant should be arrested today. But she lives in lawless DC, MD or Northern VA.

Rather remarkable that one can brag about committing a crime in the NYT.

Iman म्हणाले...

Who are these people?!?!

gilbar म्हणाले...

in the "bad old days"
These lesbians and the moslem white slavers wouldn't be allowed to roam the streets in the daytime

See how we've advanced? Now lesbian couples can sell (or rent) their straight daughter (for a cup of chocolate?)

Jake म्हणाले...

Smart people can be so stupid. I can’t wait to read her daughter’s memoir. She’ll recall how her mother allowed her naive thirteen year old self to be sold off into marriage, if briefly, so she could indulge her naive sexual desires.

Temujin म्हणाले...

I think if I had to make up a life story or a family story that would get published as a memoir, and have a preview in the NY Times, it would have to click a number of current hot social boxes or neither the publisher or the Times would pay attention.

1) Numerous lesbians. Check.
2) Lesbian Mothers. Check.
3) Muslims + Lesbians. Check.
4) Child love. Check.
5) Mexican Coffee House. Check. Good. Not a national chain in America.
6) Mexican Chocolate. Extra points for culinary choice. Check.
7) Quran reading. Extra points for using a religious book that is not assailable. Check.
8) Grew up in Irish-Catholic household. Check. Bad, assailable religion, contrasted with unassailable religion.
9) Lesbian yearning. The boy's mother was strikingly beautiful. (hmm...if I could only...). Check.

This is only a partial list, but clearly checks off enough boxes to make it into the Times. Our paper of record.

David Begley म्हणाले...

Below is her official bio. She’s actually cute.

“Degrees
MA, English/Creative Writing, New York University, New York, NY BA, French Literature, Wesleyan University
Languages Spoken
French
Bio
Stephanie Grant is the author of two novels, The Passion of Alice (Houghton Mifflin 1995) and Map of Ireland (Scribner 2008). Her work has received many grants and awards, including a Rona Jaffee Foundation Award, a Ludwig Vogelstein Award and an NEA fellowship. She is currently at work on Home Equity, a novel about contemporary marriage and debt.”

Ironclad म्हणाले...

In Iran it’s common for “temporary marriages” Nikah Mu’tah are used to make prostitution “legal”. I married her so the “relations” were legal is the logic. You just set the time the “contract” is valid - 1 hour or whatever. It’s the way the pious get away with sin. And you thought indulgences were over the top?

But let’s go to the core - the “pious ones” in this story think their “perfect man great leader” marrying a 9 year old was not only correct but praiseworthy. So it’s no surprise they went along - and besides too - the girl was a kaffir - non Muslim. That makes letting the son have his fun all the more sweet.

Heartless Aztec म्हणाले...

While not the age norm in 2021 the marriage of young teenagers over the scope öf humanities existence is probably closer to the 13-16 year old age bracket than the 28-32 years it appears to be in these modern times. The Irish nuns that chased me around in the 1950's came from a turn of the previous century Ireland where young teenagers got married all the time. We were so much older then, we're younger than that now.

David Begley म्हणाले...

It appears from her first novel that Stephanie Grant is mentally ill.

tolkein म्हणाले...

I read the comment about the marriage between young teenagers being closer to age 13-16 and this is just wrong - at least in England, and I expect most post hunter-gatherer societies. Men didn't get married until they could afford to do so (see, for example, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain, 1470 -1750, a quite brilliant book, written at times almost poetically). This has always been true. And 16 year old men cannot, typically, keep a wife and the children that quickly follow in pre-modern times. Men and women typically married in their twenties until really quite recently. Pre contraception, what would young teenagers do with the inevitable children?
The family in the story are actually quite depraved in encouraging and abetting under age sex.

Donatello Nobody म्हणाले...

Forget it, Jake — it’s Islam.

Tim म्हणाले...

I actually knew about this practice from reading the Centurion by John Ringo, of Oh, John Ringo, No! fame for his Kildar books. It is also how they manage child prostitution in Arabic Koranic countries, and it is all perfectly Koranic. For those who think Sharia law is not an abomination on the face of the earth, investigate it before you form opinions.

And 13 is way to young for children to be doing any serious touching, I do not care how progressive the parents are. The hormonal induced emotional swings and sexual desired produced by 13 and 14 year old children far outpaces their emotional maturity. Being a parent means you have to be involved enough with your children that this can not happen. And if that means that when they go to the mall or the movies that you go as well and suffer in silence, well, you signed up for that when you brought a new life into this world.

Just the ramblings of an old man who with the assistance of a remarkable woman and a little luck managed to raise two beautiful, well adjusted daughters...who are both only three years from celebrating their 20th anniversaries...and have 5 amazing, well adjusted children. It can be done, but like anything worthwhile, it involves sacrifice.

Bob Boyd म्हणाले...

It's never easy, dealing with heterosexuals...especially us beautiful males.

mezzrow म्हणाले...

Are we looking at the past of the Islamic values or the future of Mom's world? I suspect the future will look like neither.

I thank our gracious host for the deconstruction provided. It's helpful to identify the things that are important to our "intellectual superiors".

Interesting times. REALLY interesting times.

Owen म्हणाले...

Sick.

David Begley म्हणाले...

Are there options to renew with these temporary marriage contracts?

Stephanie Grant appears to have had a serious eating disorder that required hospitalization. She’s mentally ill.

Two Americas. The NYT America and the rest of the country.

Ron Winkleheimer म्हणाले...


Quick primer on temporary marriage:

https://islamicmarriage.com/temporary-marriage-in-islam#:~:text=Temporary%20Islamic%20marriage%20allows%20a%20couple%20to%20become,back%20to%20the%20place%20where%20he%20came%20from.

Its not in the Quran and some sects are strictly against it.

As for Irish-Catholic attitudes towards sex, going by family size in the past, they're for it.

Achilles म्हणाले...

That is probably the longest list of daddy issues I have seen in a while.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"Thank you for sharing this. It tempers my disgust...."

Interestingly, the name of Grant's memoir is "Disgust: A Memoir."

Assistant Village Idiot म्हणाले...

It was all the fault of being Irish Catholic, of course. Everyone reading understands immediately how oppressive that was, denying sexuality and all, causing an otherwise reasonable person to have flawed judgement forever about sexual matters. And she still thinks her view that encouraging and allowing sexual expression at any age is basically the right one, it just went kinda wrong in this instance.

She spends a lot of time noticing the age and appearance of the other mother, but can't find the time or work up the social courage to say "this is insane, you shall not do this evil thing" even to protect her own daughter. She has no concept of responsibility and is not an adult.

The New York Times likes to print National Enquirer stuff when it's got a modern cultural kick, don't they? So elevated.

R C Belaire म्हणाले...

I'll wager this "temporary marriage" concept would be a most popular addition to many religions. Wonder why the Catholics have never considered it?

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

Married at 13? That's Taliban material...maybe a bit long in the tooth....

Wince म्हणाले...

She uses the word "I" an awful lot.

"Where’s us in all that? Where is our journey? I don’t hear it. And it’s because it’s not there."

Assistant Village Idiot म्हणाले...

Acch, I should have mentioned. Women who have these permeable boundaries between themselves and their mothers or daughters are very likely to have Boderline Personality Disorder. I shudder at the number of times I would listen to a patient say quite explicitly "My mother and I are like twins. We completely understand each other." Or the mother I called as family contact would say the same thing about her hospitalised daughter. For some reason I don't recall this with males with BPD. That may simply be because there are fewer of them and the sample size is too low.

Jamie म्हणाले...

Well, this is weird ...

But. When I graduated from high school (at a DOD school in England), I had a boyfriend whose mom was Spanish and whose dad was Mexican-American. The boy was going to Madrid for the summer to stay with an aunt and uncle, and he invited me. Imagine my surprise - I also the product of a, what did she say, sexually repressive Irish-American family? - when I was shown to my bedroom, and it had two twin beds, the second of which was to be occupied by my boyfriend! He told me this was traditional in Spain - teen couples would share a room but not a bed (until the lights went out, anyway) as some kind of exercise in self-discipline. (The boyfriend was toying with the idea of the priesthood, which meant that all the self-discipline was on his end...)

And then there's bundling.

But I doubt that 13 has been considered the appropriate age for these things in several centuries, at least.

I'd like to know what the limits on the "limited physical contact" were. But the thing that mostly strikes me as weird here is that the parents were so deeply involved in the kids' going steady. In every culture, kids' games and rituals are passed BY kids TO kids; so obviously this temporary marriage idea is NOT a kids' game or ritual.

Tom T. म्हणाले...

She's using her child to carry out her own rebellion against her parents. It's not that different from what her parents did -- living her life through her kid.

Also, the mother and daughter are both lucky that this "temporary marriage" didn't have consequences that they didn't know about it. What if the temporary husband demanded that his temporary wife have intercourse; in this culture, is she free to refuse if she doesn't want to, or does she have to submit?

Mark O म्हणाले...

Just as Nietzsche foresaw.

Curious George म्हणाले...

"Who are these people?!?!"

Democrats.

Patrick म्हणाले...

I find it odd that this woman describes the 13 year old boy "with luxurious hair." She must be in her 40s. That is weird. I anticipate her daughter writing a memoir at some point in the future about her own mother's malign influence in her life. Am I wrong to suggest that both mothers were well intentioned but misguided in their beliefs about what is right?

Robert Marshall म्हणाले...

This behavior (which arguably is a criminal conspiracy) is shielded by certain currently-fashionable privileges:

(a) Islamic practices cannot be questioned; that would be Islamophobia.

(b) LGBTQ parents cannot be questioned; that would be homophobia.

What really matters to me is that external (state) interference with questionable parental practices is often worse for all concerned than the state turning a blind eye to that bad judgment. Which doesn't mean that society can't criticize what they did; just that no one should be prosecuted, no one should be placed in foster care. Parents aren't perfect, but neither is the state.

Birches म्हणाले...

I don't think Stephanie Grant would have been so "cool" with everything if the boy's parents were Baptists from Mississippi.

I think that's the worst part for me.

Misinforminimalism म्हणाले...

Re: her disgust v. my disgust, again I have to ask, why are we gobbling up the supposed nostrums of the demonstrably mentally ill? I'm not suggesting we shame people for being insane, not by a long shot, but it seems wrong that Grant would believe, correctly it turns out, that there would be an audience eager to hear, and approve, her story as if it were just an interesting facet of our "diverse" society.

Foose म्हणाले...

Luxuriant. Not luxurious.

Mary Beth म्हणाले...

The irony of facilitating a marriage for your child but not informing her other parent, the mother's partner of 20 years, about it. Or maybe it's not ironic. Maybe it's just two ways of illustrating her disregard for the values of commitment.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

@Foose Good catch!

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

Three lesbians walk into a mosque.

Hilarity and stones fill the air.

But mostly stones.

AlbertAnonymous म्हणाले...

Temujin at 7:50 for the win…

How many “All hail diversity” boxes can we check off?

Were any of these characters physically disabled? No? See the author is a bigot.

I know they’re ALL mentally disabled. That much is clear.

holdfast म्हणाले...

This “parent” would have had no clue if the ceremony also involved her daughter converting to Islam.

Foreign language and all.

Readering म्हणाले...

I got zero sense this ceremony, as applied to the two middle schoolers, was about sex, but admittedly I found the article rather dull, and so did not read carefully.

gilbar म्हणाले...

okay, i've had some time to Really think about this one....

Why wasn't her 'son' on purberty blockers?
As she says, EVERYONE in the family are homosexual...
So, Of Course; her 'son' is attracked to other boys...
BUT! because Stephanie Grant is a sicko TRANSPHOBE; she Insists on calling her 'son', a Girl.
Just because her 'son' has a front hole!!!
TRANSPHOBE!!!!

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

This woman basically turned her daughter into a whore.

Richard Dolan म्हणाले...

A fisking as of old chez Althouse. Bravo. Oops, given the topic, I should have asked your pronoun - do your prefer brava?

Zev म्हणाले...

I recall reading in a book by Aayan Hirsi Ali that "temporary marriage" is the loophole used by Muslims when they visit prostitutes.
This clueless twit was consigning her daughter to prostitution, or its equivalent.

Wince म्हणाले...

"Thick, lustrous hair is very important to me."

Ralph L म्हणाले...

"temporary marriage" is the loophole used by Muslims when they visit prostitutes.

And others. Wasn't there a ceremony in "South Pacific" between the Lootellan and the younger than springtime girl? See 15 y.o. Madame Butterfly for when they forget to tell the girl the truth.

Greg The Class Traitor म्हणाले...

Are the vows deeply meaningful or utterly meaningless? What is "temporary marriage" anyway?

To quote from John Ringo's The Last Centurion, Book 2, Chapter 3:

But one of the things with Shia is that they have this . . . tradition called "temporary marriage." A mullah can "temporarily marry" a Shia female to a guy and for the time that the temporary marriage lasts, say one hour and that will be two hundred bucks, she is legally married and thus does not suffer "dishonor." The "mullah" gets four and you get one, go find another sucker with two hundred bucks, bitch.

Use "pimp" as a translation for "mullah" and you're getting a very accurate picture.


So, to answer your questions
1:The vows are "deeply meaningful" in that they keep the woman from being murdered for dishonoring her family.
2: The vows are utterly meaningless as a form of commitment
3: A Shia Muslim tool for religiously honorable prostitution.

I thought this part was really telling:
(She said that) temporary marriage was a way for our children to have some limited physical contact without jeopardizing her son’s soul


Your daughter's soul? That has no value. The point here was to save her son's soul

This is a horrible parent

PeterK म्हणाले...

"What is "temporary marriage" anyway?"
ah yes one of the wonders of Islam.
"he temporary marriage, or nikah mut'ah, is an ancient Islamic practice that unites man and woman as husband and wife for a limited time. Historically it was used so that a man could have a wife for a short while when travelling long distances."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikah_mut%27ah
here is another strange Islamic marriage custom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misyar_marriage

Greg The Class Traitor म्हणाले...

An adult is someone who has figured out that, occasionally, his / her parents were right, and he / she was wrong.

Stephanie Grant's main problem is that emotionally she's still a child

Tom Grey म्हणाले...

GREAT Temujin comment, even better than usual.

Tho Ann's "Chocolate ... makes everything more palatable" made me laugh so much I had to explain the post to my 16 year old son.