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Jorge Diaz

Professor McCann

English 1302.203

4 May 2022

The Maliciousness of Forced Marriages

Forced marriages are something that many people still practice as a part of their culture.

On the “good” side of forced marriages, people believe that they are an opportunity for their

participants to increase love towards each other, and to experience moments that cannot be

experienced in other types of marriages. However, forced marriages can have negative impacts

on people, since as the name mentions, they force spouses, mostly women, to marry someone

who most of the time they do not know about. These negative impacts range from psychological

to physical effects, that most women cannot cope with. As a result, there are different

governmental offices that are trying to go against forced marriages, even if they are seen as a

cultural custom. In other words, it is necessary for people to raise awareness regarding forced

marriages so that governments can ban them; lower suicide rates among women and children,

decrease racial, social, and gender injustices, and make slavery disappear completely.

Governmental Actions

To begin with, even though forced marriages can be seen as indestructible, there are

different states from the United States that are trying to defeat them. Knowing the extremely

powerful enemy that they are facing, the states from the mentioned country are not directly

fighting forced marriages. For example, one of the types of forced marriages is known as “bride

capturing” marriages. As the name indicates, in this type of wedlock one of the spouses, mostly

women, tend to be kidnapped and forced to marry someone who they have little knowledge
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about (Steiner and Becker 580). Because of these types of situations, where forced marriages are

seen as “customs,” the states are trying to fight the illegal practices behind forced marriages. For

instance, Maryland considers forced marriages as human trafficking or prostitution (Landau 47).

More than that, there are other states, like California, who are more directly fighting forced

marriages, and removing legal protections from those who practice them (Landau 47). Even

though the actions that are being taken are progressing slowly, it is important for people to

continue to raise awareness of forced marriages in order to get closer to a freer society.

Suicides

In addition, one of the most significant consequences of forced marriages is suicide.

Although suicide rates continue to increase because of different factors like depression and

mental illnesses, it is true that more awareness of forced marriages could decrease suicide rates.

Apart from the harsh conditions spouses are put through, another aspect of forced marriages that

is connected to suicide are relationship aspects. Based on Duggi’s and Kamble’s article,

relationships in forced marriages are not good enough when compared to “love” or “normal”

relationships (176). To provide more details, it is proved that couples from arranged marriages

express less relationship satisfaction when they are compared to normal couples (Duggi and

Kamble 175). Apart from those psychological side effects that spouses have to face, there are

other cases where people can not handle the situations they are put through. To illustrate,

Pridmore and Walter mention in their article about a young girl named Adyru Begum, a 12-year-

old who was forced into an arranged a marriage; she drank poison, at the weeding feast

committing suicide. (49). Supporting the principal claim, another case where a forced marriage

led to suicide was the case of Amina Filali (Pridmore and Walter 49). Filali, who at the time was

15 years old, was raped and forced to marry her rapist, which led to her drinking rat poison as
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her last resort (Pridmore and Walter 49). Even though these cases might sound far from reality, it

is important that people raise awareness of these traumatic traditions, and in doing so, suicide

cases will hopefully decrease

Racial, Social and Gender Injustices

Correlated to people’s beliefs, forced marriages also involve racial and gender injustices.

Racial injustices, even though organizers of forced marriages do not see them as that, tend to

occur because some people see some races as better than others. To illustrate, a second-

generation woman stated that the reason she had to marry a man from her own ethnicity was

because her mother “disowned,” her brothers for marrying Americans (Buunk 101). Even though

this only seems as a “racial preference,” it must be seen as a racial injustice because people are

creating stereotypes of some racial groups, limiting the number of people that their offspring can

relate to, thus supporting forced marriages. On the other hand, one type of injustice that is still

connected to arranged marriages are gender injustices. Simmons and Bum, conclude that forced

marriages are connected to gender injustices because they can “deprive women and men of the

opportunity to fully and freely consent to marriage” (973). It is evident that forced marriages are

a form of gender violence because females are the primary victims in these cultural traditions.

Moreover, another kind of discrimination that occurs in forced marriages is found on

religious inequalities. This does not mean that practicing a certain religion is wrong, or that

believing in their deities is immoral, but people should recognize that religious practices can

sometimes imply inhumane events. For example, Joseph Smith, also known as the “Founder of

the Mormons,” was basically who started the Mormon religion, but how is he related to forced

marriages. Through his religion, Smith used to marry a lot of women and girls. To be more

detailed, most of Smith’s wives ranged from 14 to 20 years old; not even minors were safe from
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those forced marriages (Jones 602). Because Joseph Smith was the founder of an entire religion,

it is safe to mention that other Mormons used to practice forced marriages as well. At the time,

Mormons practiced something known as “polygamy,” which refers to marrying multiple women,

who were sometimes trafficked minors (Banerjea 202). These types of actions not only express

the easy diffusion of forced marriages, but also demonstrate how hard they can be to fight or go

against. The fact that forced marriages can be covered as someone’s religion is something

extremely hard to go against, especially in the United States, where people are given the right to

freely practice any religion through the First Amendment.

Slavery

Furthermore, forced marriages must be considered a form of slavery, as they involve

many practices that define slavery. In most cases, someone is a slave when they are put through

harsh situations, or when they are forced to do a labor against their will. Slavery in forced

marriages is one that still exists because it is hard for people to go against it, and unfortunately

there are those that support it arguing:

Research on forced marriage faces two powerful obstacles. Firstly, such research

violates a strong and widespread social belief that marriage should be

unquestioned and untouchable, and that inquiry into, and discussion of marriage

threatens social stability. Secondly, such research must confront the rationale that

forced marriage simply reflects valid cultural norms. There is an ideological

undercurrent within most societies that insists that while many aspects of social

life might change, marriage is untouchable. In those countries that have

interlocking systems of state, customary, and tribal law, traditional forms of

marriage have even greater insulation against change (Sarich et.al. 452).
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These views make it conflictive to go against forced marriages because they do not give

governmental offices, or any kind of person the opportunity to fight slavery found in forced

marriages. This statement is negative for the fight against forced marriages because it expresses

the several “positive” arguments that someone who supports forced marriages can use. For

instance, Simmons and Burn in their article “Without Consent: Forced Marriage in Australia,”

argue that it is so difficult for policymakers and politicians to fight against forced marriages

because some people might not perceive them as wrong actions (975). To be more specific, most

participants or arrangers of forced marriages happen to be family members who believe that this

kind of marriage is the best way for their family in order to keep cultural norms, prevent not

functioning marriages, or to deny people’s sexuality (Simmons and Burn 975). How do these

simple thoughts and ideologies make defeating forced marriages so difficult? Simple, forced

marriages are hard to reform because their participants believe that they are doing nothing

wrong, and how could someone change a person’s opinion when they refuse to see other

perspectives, or irrefutably believe that their philosophy is correct? Because of these types of

situations, it is important that people start seeing forced marriages as what they truly are, modern

slavery.

Conclusion

In conclusion, forced marriages, even though they sound like an “old Eastern thing,”

continue to affect many people in current society. While some argue that forced marriages are

“only a custom,” and beneficial for people, as they might give spouses a bigger opportunity to

develop love towards each other, it is true that they offer way more downsides than positive

effects. Females are the ones that most commonly experience the downsides of forced marriages,

which is another clue that shows that they are a way of gender violence. Because the downsides
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are really negative, there are different kinds of people, including governmental offices, trying to

fight forced marriages, but that are struggling as people defend them saying they are only a

custom. All in all, it is important that we raise awareness about forced marriages so governments

go against them; so suicide rates decrease; to end slavery, to decrease gender, racial, and social

injustices to be terminated; and to make the world a better place.

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Works Cited

Buunk, Abraham P. “My Parents Know Best: No Mating With Members From Other Ethnic

Groups.” Interpersona, vol. 9, no. 1, 2015, pp. 100-113. ProQuest,

https://tamiu.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-

journals/myparents-know-best-no-mating-with-members-other/docview/1695721734/se-2

Banerjea, Sreya. "Book Review: 0RW1S34RfeSDcfkexd09rT2Marriage Trafficking: Women in

Forced Wedlock1RW1S34RfeSDcfkexd09rT2 by Kaye Quek

0RW1S34RfeSDcfkexd09rT2Revisiting the Law and Governance of Trafficking, Forced

Labor and Modern Slavery1RW1S34RfeSDcfkexd09rT2 by Prabha

Kotiswaran." Feminist Review, vol. 126, no. 1, 2020, pp. 202-205. ProQuest,

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review-i-marriage-trafficking-women-forced/docview/2453655789/se-2?accountid=7081,

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Couples in Arranged Marriage and Love Marriage.” Indian Journal of Health and

Wellbeing, vol. 6, no. 2, 2015, pp. 174-176. ProQuest,

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Jones, Gerald E. "In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith." Church History,

vol. 67, no. 3, 1998, pp. 602-603. ProQuest,

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loneliness-plural-wives-joseph-smith/docview/217500768/se-2?accountid=7081.
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Landau, Elizabeth M. “Custom or Crime?: Part II of IV: Legal Remedies for Forced Marriage

Victims and Survivors 1.” American Journal of Family Law, vol. 30, no. 1, 2016, pp. 46-

57. ProQuest,

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Sarich, Jody, Michele Olivier, and Kevin Bales. “Forced Marriage, Slavery, and Plural Legal

Systems: An African Example.” Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 2, 2016, pp. 450-

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Simmons, Frances, and Jennifer Burn. "Without Consent: Forced Marriage In

Australia." Melbourne University Law Review, vol. 36, no. 3, 2012, pp. 970-1008.

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Steiner, Susan, and Charles M. Becker. “How Marriages Based on Bride Capture Differ:

Evidence from Kyrgyzstan.” Demographic Research, vol. 41, 2019, pp. 579-

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