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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   24015 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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I occasionally pass hijabi women in the street who are clearly ethnically Irish and who I assume converted at their husbands' request

I'm not doubting your lived experience queen, but my mind is being blown.

Like an Irish lady, who went to Irish highschool, who then some time met a Muslim fellow and now voluntarily wears a headdress?

Decent amount of the time in my experience it'll be family pressure from the husband's parents/extended whilst the husband is nominally more moderate.

It isn't a new thing, although greater access by dumb post-Christian women to Muslim men means it is happening more often. At a celebrity level, the most famous example was the failed marriage of Jemima Goldsmith (daughter of Sir James Goldsmith, who needs no introduction to British Motteposters and is probably best-known to US Motteposters as the inspiration for Gordon Gecko's rival Larry Wildman in the OG Wall Street movie) to Pakistani cricketer-politician Imran Khan.

Enough American women were marrying Saudis back in the 1990's that the State Department felt the need to publish some politically incorrect about why this was a bad idea - now unpublished, but the text is available here

Yup. Used to see it at least a few times a year, although off the top of my head I couldn't tell you the most recent time.

I just can't fathom this. What a horrible quality of life penalty, and voluntary!?

"I've spent the first 2X years of my life as a free person with rights and independence and agency. for a fun change, I'd like to join an incredibly sexist and repressive subculture"

I'll never understand people

Being a free person with rights and independence and agency doesn't give your life purpose, particularly wise and self-motivated people manage to find their own, but plenty just wander through life aimlessly. Some never care, but if suddenly you start to care at 2X, you often latch to the first purposeful looking cause/organisation that comes your way; can be a religion, a cult, a social cause. In some tragic cases, a person that doesn't deserve it.

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