What are your stances and arguments for, or against?
I am totally for abolishing the prohibition of same clan marriages. Today's modern Hmong needs to revisit this old traditional/cultural practice and remodify or abolish it. Here are my reasons:
1) Because there is no need for the practice. To understand this, we first must go to the root of why such a prohibition was set in place in the begining. We all know that near the genesis, Hmong in the old days of food gathering, hunting, and barbarism were quite small in tribes in disperse regions. These small tribes pose a problem, and that problem arose by observation through the astute elderly that child physical deformation were occuring at an alarming rate within close family marriages. Tracible conclusion can easily be established as to the cause. And to solve this cause of deformation, marriages within the immediate family were banned, and hence the problem was solved. Similar problems still arose within close family lingages; like second and third cousins, etc, but at a smaller rate, hence, anybody marrying within the same clan (last name) was also abolished because they were considered too close and hence incest. Now, one will wonder, how about the aunts, how come it is okay for the uncles sons to marry the aunt's daugther? The answer lies in that although the elders were correct as to the cause of the deformation, they didn't have a clue in how genetics really worked. And with the male dominance ideology in Hmong tradition, it was biasly concluded that the man is the important factor in carrying on the genes, and the women plays little, or no role, which we know today is untrue. However, this lead to the established practice that it is justifiable to marry your aunt's childern, and not siblings from uncles to uncles retaining the last name. We can also see parrallel problems and similar practices in other European countries where deformation and blood hemophilias were most prevalent.
Since the Hmong today are so much more numerous and the genetic pool is more diverse, the deformation issue is not as apparant. Marrying within the same last name who is distant appart will be safe from the problem of deformed childern. However, marrying within the family should still be discourage. We could abolish prohibition of Last name marriages, and still keep prohibition of marriages within the close family. In short, the prohibition was because of deformed childern, and not really rooted in the incest of immediate next of kin brothers and sisters.
2) Secondly, the term incest isn't correctly classified under terminology where the definition of it is considered engagment within the immediate family. It is a term used to scare Hmong into believing they have commited a sin against a brother or sister. A more appropriate usage of the term incest should be within the close family. Those outside even with the last name doesn't appropriately apply. But, one will argue, "those are still your same clan (last name/brothers and sisters) of the same lineage." Then it is clear we will not escape the fact that aren't the entire human specie the same lineage? If this premise continues, then may nobody marry no one.
I think with this current mentality, we can all abolish this old age practice which nolonger serves a viable use for Hmong compared to historic events.
What are your arguments?..........
Topic: Abolishing the prohibition of same clan (last name) marriages. (Read 596 times)