Female-to-Male Marriage Proposals

But everything you do is part of a culture or tradition. The fact that we wear shirts and pants every day as opposed to, I don't know, kimonos or nothing, is part of our culture. The fact that we eat with forks and knives is tradition. What we eat is tradition. You can't escape traditions. You can't destroy your own cultural identity.

edited 24th Jul '12 11:00:45 AM by wuggles

Traditions and rituals can at times have other uses too; but this alone is enough for me to approve of any longstanding tradition that is not actively harmful.

Considering traditions, they pretty much ARE a culture. In fact, they pretty much are what holds a country together. Treating people with respect could be considered a tradition.

While I don't think Female-to-Male proposals should be discouraged, I don't think a lot of the males being proposed to will find that normal. I wouldn't accept one, just because it would be too weird to me. (BTW: I'm male, in case you couldn't figure that out.)

edited 24th Jul '12 11:12:59 AM by every108minutes

Maybe this is my problem, then. I feel automatically alienated from my living relatives, let alone my ancestors ten generations ago, and no amount of playing along with what they did will change that.

Tradition is a matter of precedent. In the case that it doesn't matter what details you follow, or it's not worth bickering over them, tradition helps you keep consistent details.

But a tradition that forces one-way proposals is one I could do without.

Anti-traditionalism is fine only if you have a better solution on hand. Blanket dismissal of tradition is not likely to be all that useful. It's like court case precedence. You don't just throw it all out because you believe hey, it doesn't matter what previous rulings said. Most people don't put forth that much effort in analysing traditions because most of the time, it doesn't matter.

So something like "female to male" proposals seems like a good change, at the margin, for how marriage proposals work. Why? In modern society with the status of women becoming lifted up closer to be on par with males, it makes more sense that they should be able to initiate marriages as well instead of pointlessly waiting on a male that might be highly unsure whether his proposal will be accepted.

Another change, at the margin, is to have a discussion occur and when the question is actually asked, the male does it, out of tradition, although the actual decision to have a marriage is decided by both.

Another change, at the margin, is that asking for permission is not about being someone's "property" but shift towards looking out for a child's well being and ensuring they have a good marriage. Freedom to get a bad marriage is not really all that useful, and the child still retains last decision power by law if not by tradition.

Another change, at the margin, is to not simply ask the father's permission, but rather that of both parents treating the mother/father as equally responsible for the well-being of a child.

It's like people throwing out traditional cuisine in certain societies because modern society allows them to do so. Then they all die from variously easily preventable health problems that arise from bad diets if they had simply followed tradition.

edited 24th Jul '12 1:31:10 PM by breadloaf

Previous court rulings had to follow various rules in being set up and when they are found to disagree with proper procedure are thrown out. They're not built on what was sufficiently memetic in nature to spread like a virus through superstitions. When a culture lacks all superstition and acknowledges its arbitrary standardization as purely arbitrary, it no longer deserves a worthless until proven otherwise description.

Or, they could do the intelligent thing and base it on statistical evidence of proper diet rather than "my parents did it, so I will too" BS. Tradition is a why, not a what.

In the case of marriage proposals, the destruction of the proposal tradition itself makes society better off as it reduces a source of snap or emotionally laden decision making from an important decision of any kind. In general, any source of drama is something you should avoid, drama is a bad thing after all.

That's not even remotely possible at all. Have you seen the state of our diet science lately? We rely on tradition because we haven't the ability to make these science-based decisions for everything. We don't have this magical knowledge base that we can all rely upon. We use morality, we use tradition and we use all sorts of things because we're not sure of the optimal choice otherwise.

Nobody here advocating a pro-tradition stance here is saying to take tradition over what we've discovered is a superior practice. We're saying that the tradition exists as a fall-back when we haven't any other way to make decisions. Most attempts at wiping out tradition in a revolutionary manner have resulted in negative long term consequences.

For instance, you claim "or they could do the intelligent thing and do what science tells them to eat". Except science doesn't really have a good answer for you. So you're left with a potentially sub-optimal diet, you don't know. And have we ever found a better diet through science yet? Not really.

If you're not improving the situation by moving away from the tradition, it doesn't make sense to move away from a tradition.

edited 24th Jul '12 9:22:55 PM by breadloaf

Like several people said earlier, Deboss, the "snap decision" effect is all but gone, and I'm not really sure it ever existed in the first place. The surprise factor is almost always "you're ready to marry me now?", and not "you want to marry mee?", unless the proposer is doing something massively wrong. Heh, in a good chunk of cases the reaction is "well about time".

As for diets, I firmly believe that a large chunk of health is psychological and another large chunk is genetic, so in that case imitating your parents probably has a lot of merit as long as they weren't too blatantly unhealthy.

As for traditions and cultural identity in general, they are unavoidable in the society we live in. It's just a matter of which ones you will embrace. They mostly become a problem when one subset becomes all-consuming and isn't balanced by others.

Indeed. Tradition's advantage is consistency. "When in doubt, do what worked before."

That in itself is used in science as well. Don't you rely on results working consistently?

This looks like it's worth another thread, if you guys have more to say.

edited 24th Jul '12 9:37:11 PM by abstractematics

From what I can tell, general diet advisement seems to be "varied consumption" more than anything else. Since we've got a good list of diets that will kill you, experimentation has generated proven results, despite several traditions involving. In this case, the digestive system is sufficiently rugged that including sufficient components you need and excluding the toxic is what is needed, how it's prepared is just gravy.

Tradition is "do what you did before, no matter what" otherwise it's not a tradition, it's just doing something you've seen work. It could be both, but there's not much point in calling something you've done before and continue to do all the time like calling a plumber to be a tradition, it's just an action you've seen actually justified.

"Tradition is "do what you did before, no matter what" otherwise it's not a tradition"

No it isn't. That would make the word "traditional" redundant. Traditional approach is a term because there are other approaches.

Make a new topic time?

Um, no. If calling a plumber is considered a tradition in a culture, than it is a tradition.

It's like how we're discovering what chemicals herbs in Chinese medicine have that make them work (when they do work). The fact that they are proven scientifically to work doesn't automatically made them any less "traditional".

Also, while we might have a better idea of good idea via science than before, there's still problems and bits that we don't know. For example, a couple years back when doing pharmacology I was told that the people in the field are just starting to realize that putting the vitamins and chemicals in context with other vitamins and chemicals to determine what they actually do when you eat the food because they do interact with each other, and there's always this "too much of a good thing" going on in dietary science (from memory didn't the scientists advocate eating soy beans or something and then change their tune when they found out people are eating too much?). Science is the best means that we have to know things but the results might not be correct all the time (and they get corrected, because it is science).

Edit: Ninjaed!

edited 24th Jul '12 10:41:07 PM by IraTheSquire

Guys, I think you've derailed. The topic is "Female-to-Male Marriage Proposals", not "Tradition: What Is It and Is It a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?". You can talk about tradition in the context of the topic, but this is looking to quickly become a full-blown tradition derail.

I agree. This topic is the closest I've found, but you can make a new topic if you desire.

Yeah, steering away from the derail, does the tradition of male asking female offer any benefits at all?

Outside of most people being more comfortable with it, I don't think so.

Well to rerail, as far as I can tell, the best substitute that is emerging is the "marriage discussion" idea. There's several versions of it, depending on which background you are from, which mostly vary on who you involve in such a discussion.

On the discussion of rings. I want a ring that will turn me invisible with a huge horking indian Sapphire surrounded by smaller rubies on a gold 18+ karat ring.

Aww yeah. I may decide to have tiny diamonds on the ring, but they would only be there to make the other gems look prettier.

Though, a Black Opal and Gold necklace with matching earrings would be sufficient enough.

On the topic of tradition, it was more traditional to receive any kind of jewellery but mostly with gemstones that fit your birth month. Which is also cheaper than today's "only new diamond ring" faux tradition.

I agree that the specific tradition "only males should propose to females" is a bad idea and best avoided.

In my homecountry, engagement rings are not really a thing to begin with, I think. You exchange rings in the marriage ceremony, obviously; but no one I know gave the other a ring in order to formalize a marriage proposal.

Actually, no, historically speaking most court rulings are just based on tradition. For a long time most of the US didn't even have any formal statutes against murder. Everyone just knew murder was bad and threw convicted murderers in jail and/or hung them, based implicitly on previous rulings. Because that was tradition. It didn't come from any process other than "that's what we've always done" and no one ever questioned it because what else are we supposed to do with murderers? "Murder is illegal" just happens to be one of the oldest memes in the book. "Proper procedure" usually ends up overturning tradition rather than the other way around, as either new laws are passed or old laws are reinterpreted.

On the topic of rings, I have no particular plans to get married, but I'm rather fond of synthetic diamonds, mostly as a Take That! to the diamond companies. ...diamonds themselves are pretty ugly though. A plain ring would probably be more aesthetically pleasing.

edited 25th Jul '12 1:33:29 AM by Clarste

I personally don't think expensive engagement rings are necessary. I would rather buy other jewelry for the spouse, unrelated to the proposal, or some other more useful things.

On the topic of rings, I rather like the symbolism of a steel ring. Gold shines and diamonds sparkle, but steel does not break.

edited 25th Jul '12 1:38:42 AM by Carciofus

Steel corrodes though. Gold doesn't.