Yes, of course we should be concerned about the treatment of women in girls in such countries - but we should also be concerned about their long term happiness.

Indeed. And that starts with the following words: Opportunities and Choices.

Don't trust the propaganda that tells you how awful such things are in these countries. I have visited many of these places, and it isn't what our media will tell you. Just as our media lies about us, our media lies about these other cultures too.

I cannot rightfully challenge your above statement unless I get the chance to go to one of these nations myself and do the attendant research. I do know better than to trust the common hysteria-mongering of the NGOs and mainstream neoliberal media. However, if choice is not offered to these girls, then things are pretty bad.

This is not to say that these cultures have no problems - they do. This is not to say that women and girls in these cultures never face any discrimination - they do. But the men in these cultures are not monsters. They typically care about the well-being of their wives and daughters.

I do not doubt this is most often the case, Baldur. But the question is, do they care about their wives and daughters as much as they do their own authority? Do they respect their wishes and feelings? If they make all the decisions for them, then I see many very bad outcomes, and all the good ones happen largely by accident or luck. Let's face it, old friend: It's the same situation here, with the difference being that choices are often denied in opposite directions.

And long term, most women are happier when they can express their feminine side, when they can concentrate on being mothers to their children and maintaining a home, than when they must leave their children with strangers in order to go somewhere away from home each day to earn a living.

Women need to be allowed to define for themselves what a feminine side entails, just as we youth liberationists often argue that kids must define what childhood means for themselves rather than having others make the blueprint for them. Let the fathers have the option to stay home and care for the kids, while the women go out and perform one of the many jobs they do well. Provide opportunities for both of them rather than specifically defining what the gender-based roles must be. If the system is failing them, then we need to change the system plain and simple. I sure as hell don't like it when our society tries to impose specific roles and expectations upon me based on my gender and/or age, and then tell me those are the only ways I can truly be "happy." What that usually translates to is the people imposing those roles are the ones who are happy, not me.

Of course some women do prefer to work outside the home, to go to work in a competitive environment, to pursue a career - but these are the exceptions, not the norm. These traditional societies have a culture centered on the human norm, we have a society centered on the exception. What I would like is a society loosely centered on the norm with plenty of room for the exceptions.

Baldur, that is just plain old nonsense. The "norm" is based on the demands of the system in which we live in, not something integrally embedded in our species. Tradition only works for those in power, and there is a good reason why societies that allow the most freedom and flexibility result in people wanting to break out of gender-based or age-based expectations. I know you do not like feminism, but what you truly hate is a reactionary form of misandry that has arisen and ridden on the coattails of the original, which was simply striving for equality and an end to role-based expectations. Insisting on maintaining them and telling people what they should consider "normal" is doing the same thing to other groups that society has done to both us and kids, and I have no choice but to strongly oppose you on this. I'm sorry. Please don't do the same thing the SJWs have done: Use hatred of one thing to stereotype another thing, or group, that is wrongly conflated with the first. You're better than that, man.

And if we do care about the long term happiness of the girls we love, we should make sure that they have the room to pursue the path they want, without pressuring them in one direction or the other, without denigrating those who want to be mothers as "mere" housewives.

I fully agree with this. It seems we are in accord based on what I said above, and what you just said here. What I am talking about is making sure that these child marriages are based on what the girls actually want, as opposed to what the father wants, plain and simple. I want to believe that what you said in the above excerpt is what you really believe, but I have no choice but to have some doubts about that after what you said about "most fathers wanting the best for their wives and daughters." That implies to me that you have no problem leaving the choice in the father's hands, and then equating their choice with his choices. Forgive me if I'm wrong, as I will gladly apologize if I am.

We have taken the traditional gender norms for granted - and now they are in danger of disappearing, and society is in danger of collapsing.

Geez, Baldur. Just when I wanted to have more faith in you. Forget about traditional gender norms, because they led to the age-based norms and expectations that turned kids into property--much as they turned women into property--and then turned us into monsters because we are threaten to undermine that tradition. Tradition only works for those who are at the top of the power hierarchy, within a tradition that insists on having power hierarchies. If society collapses, then I say good, let this damn joke of a society collapse and be replaced by a better one. You should know better than to throw your loyalty into whatever the existing status quo is, Baldur, because that is precisely what the antis do. You can't have it both ways: defend the traditions of this society, and then expect them to bend those traditions to allow us to fit in.

That reeks of the same type of assimilationist agenda that the LGBTQ community resorted to when they turned their back on us. How do gay relationships fit these gender norms, Baldur? Do the partners flip a coin to determine who is expected to work and support the family, and who plays the role of the "housewife"? If gay men or gay women can be both a provider and homemaker, then why can't straight men and women vary the role? The LGBTQ community proves what nonsense the "naturalness" of these gender-based roles actually are. It also shows the Faustian bargains one must make to preserve a system with such narrow, rigid expectations.

I am an opponent of this tradition and this status quo, and collapsing this society and replacing it with a better, more egalitarian one for all groups of people is my goal. Not trying to find a way to assimilate myself and other members of my community into it. And I sure as hell am not going to start supporting it simply because some parts of it are okaying child brides.

Meanwhile, perhaps child marriage is not the ideal - perhaps there are better ways to allow girls (and boys) to be their sexual selves.

Ya think, old friend?

But right now these traditional cultures have the only institutions in the world willing to speak up for girls and for ourselves,

Speak up for girls? Speak up for us? They are doing neither of those things! If the girls have no say, and I saw no indication that they do, then they are speaking up for teleiophile men having the right to marry girls, not us! You are deliberately looking past the forest for the trees simply because this is the only legal way you can see the possibility of having legal romantic access to a girl anywhere in the present world order. Are you truly willing to blind yourself that much without being certain that the girls have any choice in the matter, Baldur? Or would you seriously use the rationalization that father knows best (because that's a traditional role for the man to take), simply because his word would make it legal under that system? If the girl has no choice in the matter, then it's not really romantic access but simple sexual access. Think, Baldur! You have a great mind, and this is not a difficult request for you!

the only institutions to say that the love between a man and a girl is not a crime,

Does the girl have a say in the matter? Or is this papa's word?

the only institutions that do not want to see us eradicated.

It's not about us, dude! Were we even mentioned in that article? Or do you see this benefiting us in a purely "by proxy" manner? Where is the consent? That is what the pro-choice ideology is all about! Not the legalization of child-adult sex period, but the freedom for younger people to choose.

It is hard for me not to be happy to see them standing up for themselves, and for us.

And it's hard for me to stop shaking my head in utter incredulity that you would blind yourself to something like this, and actually believe this is something about us! Have you been beaten down so severely by the brutality of the system against us at this point in time that you have called it quits on the moral high ground entirely? Despite the brilliance of qtns, I expect occasional nonsense like this from him since he is known for strange, periodic lapses in judgment. But you? You are one of the people I have most looked up to here. Think, man! Again, this is not ask too much for you all of all people, old friend. What you read in that article is not about girl's agency, and it's most assuredly not about us.