Douglas Coupland Quotes
People are pretty forgiving when it comes to other people's families. The only family that ever horrifies you is your own.
Coupland, Douglas. All Families Are Psychotic. Vintage Canada, 2001.
This is another proverb that has the de facto force of law. “Cutting her braid” means the honor killing of a girl who has been morally transgressed, usually sexually by a close relative. Even in earlier times fathers or even brother might have a love for a daughter or sister that would transcend this obligation to protect the family honor. The society to get around this human emotion which might produce total licentiousness if girls were not so disciplined came up with the idea of extending the right and obligation even to the paternal cousins. So if the father would not kill the girl, and the brothers would not, and the paternal uncles would not—or were unable to by reason of age or infirmity—any of the cousins could and should do dispatch the young lady and preserve the family’s honor—hence the term “honor killing.” In many Muslim societies, even today, this proverb is a legal defense against murder.
Douglas Coupland OC OBC (born 1961) is a Canadian novelist and artist. His fiction is complemented by recognized works in design and visual art arising from his early formal training. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized the term such as McJob. He has published thirteen novels, two collections of short stories, seven non-fiction books, and a number of dramatic works and screenplays for film and television. He is a columnist for Financial Times. He is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times, e-flux journal, Dis, and Vice. His art exhibits include Everywhere Is Anywhere Is Anything Is Everything which was exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, (now the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto) and Bit Rot at Rotterdam's Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and the Villa Stuck.
