Libya's Sexual Revolution: Young Rebel Fighters Become Marriageable Heroes

Foreign Policy:

JANZOUR, Libya - When it comes to love, Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya was unlucky for unmarried 33-year-old truck driver Ahmed Nori Faqiar. His looks would have benefited if his parents could ever have sprung for a dentist. Lack of means forced him to live unhappily at his childhood home well into adulthood. Marriage, a home of his own, kids -- all are dreams that the wiry Libyan had long ago steeled himself to stop hoping for.

Read the whole story: Foreign Policy

Comments

[DAE]

11:33 AM on 10/30/2011

The Libyan Revolution is so Primate. Hanuman langurs are organized into single male troops in which an alpha-male has total control over a sisterhood of females and their young all sired by the autocrat. Once the male offspring reach maturity they leave the troop and form a gang on the troops periphery. Periodically the male gang will invade the troop and try to oust the troop leader. During the chaos the bachelor males rape the females until one of their number succeeds in asserting control and driving the others out assuming the alpha-male position. In extremis human behavior is not much different.

[Viva Blanca]

07:56 PM on 11/03/2011

And we continue to suppress our women just as we criticize other countries. We are no better. American males are made to believe in their superiority. Women, in the American culture, are here to have children and then have children. And yet all that you hear from our media is crap like how other countries treat their women badly. You never hear that about our own country. I fear for us, our ignorance, our arrogance, and our barbarism.

[Little Princess]

05:42 AM on 10/30/2011

From the linked artcle:
"Young Libyans had it especially bad. Qaddafi didn't just fail to develop well-paying jobs for the young -- he destroyed jobs with erratic socialist schemes that warped Libya's economy. So much so, in fact, that the Libyan government officially estimated unemployment in recent years at 20 percent, twice that of the already high regional rate."

Regional unemployment rate is about right. That's Spain after the housing bubble burst. For young people in Spain unemployment rate is 45%. So what kind of erratic capitalistic schemes did Aznar's conservative government employ?

From the linked article:
"... that the new Libya would reinstate polygamy, which Qaddafi had limited. But because, according to Islam, only those with the means to support all wives equally can take more than one, easing the way for polygamy would seem likely to make it worse for Libya's unmarried young men of modest means."

What logic or calculating skills is that on the part of the author? If polygamy demands support of each wife and sufficient means, and if people are so badly off they don't have the means -- leaves more women available for monogamy for young, less well-off guys.

Propaganda piece, that. IMO.

[KIVPossum]

09:11 AM on 10/29/2011

Kids living at home far into adulthood is not unique to Muslim nations. In most of East Europe rents are high and salaries are low. It is not uncommon for kids to live with parents into their 30s, or even later. Many marry and bring their spouse into the family home.

[Little Princess]

05:42 AM on 10/30/2011

Sounds like Italy in the decade or so, actually.

[Little Princess]

05:45 AM on 10/30/2011

"... in the last decade..." sorry

[9MILLIONVOICES]

07:17 AM on 10/29/2011

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. the rights of the women flushed down the drain as Gadhafi was sodomized with a knife for the world to see. Who takes NATO to court? Let the cry of the innocents ring in their ears - what of the killing of blacks and Africans, what of the Christians - what of the old? what of the feeble? NATO and all those who destroyed Africa will not wait long because they have just destroyed the generations to come. They are not done with the fathers, they are now after the children. Please enough of this bloodshed! Let Africa begin to HEAL.
MM Kirschbaum, nurse/writer, writing 4 9millionvoices

[Kappa51]

10:01 PM on 10/28/2011

And this is probably the reason these countries have laws for marriage and sexual relations like these in the first place.

They will always have an available army cuz young men with Way to much testosterone keeps 'em FIGHTING mad.

[Artos]

08:52 PM on 10/28/2011

It's no wonder so many men throughout history have loved war. No wonder we have so many wars.

[ghostgirl21]

08:31 PM on 10/28/2011

Fall in Love! Have babies.
Let's be a happy world.

[Candide33]

08:23 PM on 10/28/2011

Ya'll laughing but it really is a big problem in Muslim countries.

Many of the same complaints coming from Iran and from Saudi Arabia and Egypt that I know of.

No sex before marriage and no marriage until you can afford a place of your own.

No place of your own unless you are a relative of the uber rich, who control everything, and they give you a job.

Those countries work on nothing but bribes to politicians too, just like in America.

My Egyptian friends and I have been talking about it for years, how much our government was like Mubarak's government. Graft and corruption and the uber rich greasing the palms of crooked politicians to get an unfair advantage in the market place.

[ceti]

08:15 PM on 10/28/2011

This has to be the worst article ever. In the new Libya, someone like this will be able to have multiple wives and maybe he'll be able to afford it after looting and pillaging his way to Tripoli. And mass rape of African Libyans held in detention camps hardly counts as sexual liberation.

And in the old Libya, women were the best off in all of North Africa. I only see their status going downhill, just as it did in Iraq and Syria if its secular regime is overthrown by the Saudi-supported Islamists who will also turn that country into a backwards hell fit for plundering by the West.

[9MILLIONVOICES]

07:09 AM on 10/29/2011

Good post!

[Morrisfactor]

08:04 PM on 10/28/2011

Yet another sterling example that women are not interested in nice Beta boys.

But if those same boys carry guns and become dangerous bad boys, the girls can't help themselves.

[Maverickpower]

07:52 PM on 10/28/2011

Wow , what a beautiful man !!!

[martha high]

07:03 PM on 10/28/2011

I don't care about their sexual revolution , with all the raping their were doing during the overturn of Qaddafi.

[NCOak]

06:55 PM on 10/28/2011

hear that fellas? if you want to get the girl, kill your neighbor. they love that!

what a terrible article.

[Artos]

08:57 PM on 10/28/2011

We may think that this only happens in places like Libya, but on some very real levels many American Males are the same way. You come from North Carolina I take it. If so then you must be very aware of the martial culture of the south. Think about it. It's not that different. Watch a few movies about the Civil War and even though some are more or less given to liberal does of Hollywoodism, they still have much truth to them. How many young Southern boys went off to wars cheered on by their Southern Belles. I'm pretty sure that it stirred up some juice in those boys on the sidelines to want to go to. It isn't until they come home minus limbs that that attitude changes.

[O K Ali]

06:43 PM on 10/28/2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk9xTTww-JE&ob=av2e
Go Libya!

[No-name-plz]

05:23 PM on 10/28/2011

I love the comment section at the FP site for this article. Seriously, if this is what H.P links to while readers over there are calling it complete trash... It says alot about the journalism here.