{"id":5287,"date":"2010-09-08T12:25:50","date_gmt":"2010-09-08T16:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=5287"},"modified":"2010-09-08T12:08:41","modified_gmt":"2010-09-08T16:08:41","slug":"another-side-effect-of-afghan-cultural-preferences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/09\/08\/another-side-effect-of-afghan-cultural-preferences\/","title":{"rendered":"Another side effect of Afghan cultural preferences"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rural Afghans (especially Pushtuns) have very unusual views on the role of women (mentioned here<\/a> last week). Human nature being what it is, there are substitutes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

It’s after midnight. I’m at a wedding party in a remote village in northern Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

There is no sign of the bride or groom, or any women, only men. Some of them are armed, some of them are taking drugs.<\/p>\n

Almost everyone’s attention is focused on a 15-year-old boy. He’s dancing for the crowd in a long and shiny woman’s dress, his face covered by a red scarf.<\/p>\n

He is wearing fake breasts and bells around his ankles. Someone offers him some US dollars and he grabs them with his teeth.<\/p>\n

This is an ancient tradition. People call it bachabaze<\/em> which literally means “playing with boys”.<\/p>\n

The most disturbing thing is what happens after the parties. Often the boys are taken to hotels and sexually abused.<\/p>\n

The men behind the practice are often wealthy and powerful. Some of them keep several bachas<\/em> (boys) and use them as status symbols — a display of their riches. The boys, who can be as young as 12, are usually orphans or from very poor families. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rural Afghans (especially Pushtuns) have very unusual views on the role of women (mentioned here last week). Human nature being what it is, there are substitutes: It’s after midnight. I’m at a wedding party in a remote village in northern Afghanistan. There is no sign of the bride or groom, or any women, only men. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,370],"tags":[218,374,504,43],"class_list":["post-5287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia","category-middle-east","tag-afghanistan","tag-children","tag-teenagers","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1nh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5287"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5289,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287\/revisions\/5289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}