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Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 9:53 pm
by Cabinet
Moving away from the jokes now.

This is a terrible thing. A nine year old shouldnt have to go through this. I just hope the person responsible is caught and punished for his crimes.

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 9:57 pm
by Trygve
I am not going to offend anyone but I have to say that now that she first has given birth, I am glad it was a boy. Thinking over how China looks at the two genders, and how they only allow one kid, or more if twins, then it would be worse if the child had been a girl.

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:33 pm
by Cori
On the topic on how china looks at the different genders, if every couple in China (just in speculation, since some couples do want girls) wants a boy, and they're only allowed to have one child...

Pretty soon there will be no women in China.

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:35 pm
by Tall-Hatted Yanimae
What's a chinese woman

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:36 pm
by Palenque
Ame no Akai wrote:It's already happening, if I'm not mistaken.

I wonder how people in China can't put two and two together like that.
My guess is it's a case of, "I'll just let other people do it, one more boy couldn't hurt".

Edit: Wait, now that I think about it, this makes little sense in the fact that I don't think normally people can choose the gender of their child before it's born.

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:40 pm
by Sammich Monster
Yep. Chinese female infanticide.

The ratio of Chinese males to females is around 3:1 nowadays.

Two out of every three men will stay single.

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:41 pm
by boq
Ame no Akai wrote:It's already happening, if I'm not mistaken.

I wonder how people in China can't put two and two together like that.
MSNBC wrote:The report, carried in the newspaper, said China’s sex ratio for newborn babies in 2005 was 118 boys to 100 girls, a huge jump from 110 to 100 in 2000.

*source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16593301/

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:45 pm
by Miss Starseed
This is from 1993, but...
THE BURDEN OF WOMANHOOD: THIRD WORLD, SECOND CLASS

Washington Post , April 25, 1993

By JOHN WARD ANDERSON AND MOLLY MOORE

When Rani returned home from the hospital cradling her newborn daughter, the men in the family slipped out of her mud hut while she and her mother-in- law mashed poisonous oleander seeds into a dollop of oil and forced it down the infant's throat.

As soon as darkness fell, Rani crept into a nearby field and buried her baby girl in a shallow, unmarked grave next to a small stream.

``I never felt any sorrow,'' Rani, a farm laborer with a weather-beaten face, said through an interpreter. ``There was a lot of bitterness in my heart toward the baby because the gods should have given me a son.''

Each year hundreds and perhaps thousands of newborn girls in India are murdered by their mothers simply because they are female. Some women believe that sacrificing a daughter guarantees a son in the next pregnancy. In other cases, the family cannot afford the dowry that would eventually be demanded for a girl's marriage.

And for many mothers, sentencing a daughter to death is better than condemning her to life as a woman in the Third World, with cradle-to-grave discrimination, poverty, sickness and drudgery...



... A woman's greatest challenge is an elemental one: simply surviving through a normal life cycle. In South Asia and China, the perils begin at birth, with the threat of infanticide.

Like many rural Indian women, Rani, now 31, believed that killing her daughter 3 1/2 years ago would guarantee that her next baby would be a boy. Instead, she had another daughter.

``I wanted to kill this child also,'' she said, brushing strands of hair from the face of the 2-year-old girl she named Asha, or Hope. ``But my husband got scared because all these social workers came and said, `Give us the child.' `` Ultimately, Rani was allowed to keep her.

She paused. ``Now I have killed, and I still haven't had any sons.'' Amravati, who lives in a village near Rani in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, said she killed two of her own day-old daughters by pouring scalding chicken soup down their throats, one of the most widely practiced methods of infanticide in southern India. She showed where she buried their bodies -- under piles of cow dung in the tiny courtyard of her home.

``My mother-in-law and father-in-law are bedridden,'' said Amravati, who has two living daughters. ``I have no land and no salary, and my husband met with an accident and can't work. Of course it was the right decision. I need a boy. Even though I have to buy clothes and food for a son, he will grow on his own and take care of himself. I don't have to buy him jewelry or give him a 10,000-rupee ($350) dowry.''
I remember still hearing about stories like this recently.

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:45 pm
by Indecisive
Image

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:47 pm
by Palenque
Miss StarSeed wrote:This is from 1993, but...
Long, terrible story
I remember still hearing about stories like this recently.
That is truly terrible. who would do such a thing....

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:48 pm
by Sammich Monster
"Scalding chicken soup"








Oh God.

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:49 pm
by Tall-Hatted Yanimae
So they can't have daughters

Because they would be asking for expensive gifts too much


My god the only sane reason they had here was because they didn't want the girls growing up in their dangerous world but even then it's just

augh

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:50 pm
by Palenque
Sandwich Monster wrote:"Scalding chicken soup"Oh God.
I just noticed that.



.....I have no words.

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:52 pm
by MacFluffers
Palenque wrote:That is truly terrible. who would do such a thing....
Societies who have screwed up priorities do that. Infanticide is justified because the society states that a sex has a price label on it...?

I don't know what's worse, the fact that they think that means it's good to kill infants or that it's true that women need need enough cheddar for a dowry to have value.

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:57 pm
by MacFluffers
Tall-Hatted Yanimae wrote:Because they would be asking for expensive gifts too much
It's worse than that. They wear jewelry to show the family's wealth (even if they are poor). They are used as tools to show everyone that the family isn't poor and therefore has to be respected.

@Ame: It's more about carrying the family name than anything else.[/b]