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Valentine News Roundup
Monday, February 14th, 2005 02:08 pmOur first romantic news item is a little out of date (it was gleaned from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
giantlaser's journal): a married Jordanian couple mistakenly dated each other on the Internet. Rather than realising that, contrary to what they had thought, they were ideally suited to each other, they got divorced. I am reminded of the Prophet Muhammed's saying "If a man looks at a woman who is forbidden to him, let him turn to his own wife, and he will see whatever it was that he desired."
Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice have banned red roses from being sold on Valentine's Day. Naturally this only means that the price of under-the-counter roses has soared. I should point out that this is a Saudi peculiarity and not a general Islamic prohibition; here in Turkey Muslims are quite happy to get into the spirit of the day by charging exorbitant amounts for wilting roses and special "Lovers' Day" nights at clubs and restaurants. These usually feature a set (and incredibly high) charge for as much as you can eat and drink, thus ensuring that by the end of the evening, young lovers are too bloated and drunk to get up to any hanky-panky.
In Singapore, a Christian group has chosen Valentine's Day to launch an Abstinence Awareness Campaign. They are selling wristbands with the message "Worth Waiting For" to teenagers as an even tackier version of America's Silver Ring Thing (cue Beavis and Butthead sniggers). Of course in my day, girls who wished to repel amorous advances didn't bother with jewelry, they just wore dungarees and Doc Martins, and sported badges with pithy comments like "How dare you assume I'm heterosexual?"
I've noticed while trawling through articles and blogs (as part of my usual Monday work-avoidance) that this year the mood has moved from cynical anti-Valentine to condescending anti-anti-Valentine, along the lines of "You're having your annual 'V-Day Sucks' party? You and all your other 'punk rock' single friends getting together and trying to ignore the holiday and drinking Diet Coke?". I have also noticed that the term "single" is increasingly being used to mean not merely "unmarried", but "currently unattached", or even "undatable". In the interests of terminological exactitude, can we please agree on the following definitons?
giantlaser's journal): a married Jordanian couple mistakenly dated each other on the Internet. Rather than realising that, contrary to what they had thought, they were ideally suited to each other, they got divorced. I am reminded of the Prophet Muhammed's saying "If a man looks at a woman who is forbidden to him, let him turn to his own wife, and he will see whatever it was that he desired."Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice have banned red roses from being sold on Valentine's Day. Naturally this only means that the price of under-the-counter roses has soared. I should point out that this is a Saudi peculiarity and not a general Islamic prohibition; here in Turkey Muslims are quite happy to get into the spirit of the day by charging exorbitant amounts for wilting roses and special "Lovers' Day" nights at clubs and restaurants. These usually feature a set (and incredibly high) charge for as much as you can eat and drink, thus ensuring that by the end of the evening, young lovers are too bloated and drunk to get up to any hanky-panky.
In Singapore, a Christian group has chosen Valentine's Day to launch an Abstinence Awareness Campaign. They are selling wristbands with the message "Worth Waiting For" to teenagers as an even tackier version of America's Silver Ring Thing (cue Beavis and Butthead sniggers). Of course in my day, girls who wished to repel amorous advances didn't bother with jewelry, they just wore dungarees and Doc Martins, and sported badges with pithy comments like "How dare you assume I'm heterosexual?"
I've noticed while trawling through articles and blogs (as part of my usual Monday work-avoidance) that this year the mood has moved from cynical anti-Valentine to condescending anti-anti-Valentine, along the lines of "You're having your annual 'V-Day Sucks' party? You and all your other 'punk rock' single friends getting together and trying to ignore the holiday and drinking Diet Coke?". I have also noticed that the term "single" is increasingly being used to mean not merely "unmarried", but "currently unattached", or even "undatable". In the interests of terminological exactitude, can we please agree on the following definitons?
- married - legally bound to someone, whether gay, straight or whatever
- single - not married
- unattached - not even dating
- abstinent - not engaging in sexual activity, a condition which is compatible with any of the above
