TheArmenianPirate

. Well if our people looked to folks such as you to lead us surely by now we would have been extinct indefinitely. Yes, thank God indeed for Armenians like me. When the Hye heritage is pushed, it’s Armenians like me that will be the action takers and push back, because it’s certainly obvious that the last thing our people want to do is rely on ultra-pessimistic socialites such as you that only know how to write thesis papers on how hopeless everything is and when time comes for action you withdraw into your safe little media inspired cocoon. God forbid you actually take a little bit of the responsibility to inspire and motivate other Hyes upon yourself, it’s much easier to just talk and talk about why we should just “give up” than to actually continue with our effort. While all of the “intellectuals” sit on the sidelines and think of things to analyze while twiddling their thumbs, men and women that ACTUALLY care about the preservation and proliferation of our people’s culture, language, heritage, history, lineage, and genealogy will be actively trying to inspire and motivate others to care and get involved instead of spewing out morbid delusions of how “futile” the effort is or how “inevitable” things are. If you so adamantly feel that it is futile, by all means, just give up, jump in the sack with an odar, and make your millions while accomplishing all the personal aspirations that are being disrupted by your Armenianism efforts or lack there of, but please get out of the way of the people that actually want to inspire the next generation. Just don’t make matters worse by preaching hopelessness, futility, and degenerative social morbidity to our youth and newer generation. Again, stick to the topic at hand. Any attempt to make what I say seem fanatical really acts counter-productively for your side of the debate. You know very well indeed what makes someone Armenian and what does not, if I have to actually go into explaining that to you then you’re definitely a lost cause and farther gone than I imagined, but I’ll digress. Part of what makes someone Hye is his lineage, the native language of his people’s origin, his heritage, his cultural values, his personal values based on those cultural values, his people’s history, and his regional genetic origin. All of these things in conjunction with some other similar variables make folks what they are, whether it’s Spanish, French, Armenian, Persian, etc. One does not equate having ONLY one of these qualities with having 15 or ALL of them. Joe Blow that can speak Armenian is not Armenian simply for the sheer fact that he can speak Armenian as some posters on these boards have ridiculously implied. Nor is he Armenian because he knows what dolma is or whether he knows Armenian history, these trivial singular variables do not make Joe Blow part of the Hye lineage, this is not very hard to understand and is blatantly obvious. I’m beginning to think that some of you have absolutely no sense of what it means to be culturally unique, what the meaning of lineage is, and what differentiates different ethnic groups. Like I said, wake up from your slumber and stop the insistence that in order to achieve the “American Dream” , we must give up who we are as a people and that it is an eventuality that cannot be avoided. Yes, no one said we should preserve ourselves because we’re better than others or because we are “special”, we do it simply because we have to maintain who we are if not for anything else, at least for the reason of having SOME identity and heritage to attach ourselves to. Because I’ll clue you in on something, being “American” is the equivalent of social voidism, that is why descriptive prefixes such as “African”, “Italian”, “Cambodian”, “Japanese”, “Jewish”, and “Armenian” are used along with the word “American”, because saying you’re “American” doesn’t attach you to any distinct heritage except that of Native Americans, and I sure as hell know you’re not one of them. But who knows, with the 2 year old logic used by some people on these boards about what makes a person part of any distinct ethnic group, I can theoretically pluck the feathers off a chicken’s a$$ and put it on your head and BAM, VOILA! INSTANT Native American with all the trimmings! You’re wrong. Sex has A LOT to do with it. Human sexuality is one of the most important factors in any individual’s value system. A sexually repressed society cannot thrive EVER, because as human beings sex is one of the central factors for our day to day behavior, when that sex drive kicks in, you’ll do nearly anything quench it. With that said, it certainly is not easy being a Hye girl while we have all these backward parents preaching to their kids sexually repressive notions. In response Hye women are to some extent socially motivated by their communities to seek out odars to quench themselves just to maintain the illusion of “makur” or later not run into an ex Hye lover with their current beau. The young Hye men are continually preached to persecute, judge, and reject women that do express sexual desire. What this does is drive the 15-25 demographic away from each other and into the out rim of odar relationships. This demographic is not going to stop having sex merely because their parental backward mentality and community sets illusionary stipulations upon them to maintain, instead Hye boys and girls will opt to abandon each other and move onto other circles where it is safe to be young and experiment sexually, there is not denying this, all 1500 of you on these boards know this to be true. Sad thing is we’re not fooling anyone except ourselves here, quick fixes of running with odars is not the solution, changing the community’s outlook and our people’s outlook toward this issue IS the solution, don’t fall under the misunderstanding of thinking otherwise. More on this later folks, have a good night. -The Armenian Pirate

How you believe history is on your side is not very apparent from what you have said so far and what history has shown. We have survived this long as diaspora due to the fact that people have adapted to the ideas I’ve outlined, and only recently when people have begun to let go of those ideas has our situation gotten somewhat worse with respect to preservation. So don’t make any hollow claims of history being on your side, it clearly is not, in fact it shows the exact opposite. If 1000 years ago people adapted your “inevitability” mentality, there would be no diaspora today or even any culture known as “Armenian”. And the reference to common sense being on your side and not mine is ridiculous at best. Everything I’ve said is perfectly rational and not the very least extreme, you’re just so far gone that what was once deemed normal and basic ethnic responsibility is now “irrationality” to you. Since you’ve started replying the crux of your debate has been “it’s inevitable”, you might as well not even bother with the two paragraphs of redundant banter you toss my way, just write “ahh *** it” and be done with it, because frankly, I think you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point. Your guilt coupled with your personal pride in admitting the reality of the situation has blinded you. You’re far too eager at this point to jump in the sack with an odar for me to change your mind it seems, and if that’s the case, so be it. You go ahead and follow the road that is supposedly “inevitable” and I’ll walk the road less traveled as I always have. When you’re on your death bed and your finances, big house, fast cars, and everything else that is tangible does not matter anymore with your cultural legacy being the only exception, you’ll realize that hindsight is 20/20, and by then it’s always too late. There certainly is an Armenian way of living, and before you were old enough to be an "intellectual" and think otherwise Boghos jan, you were living it. And a good portion of your current values are derived from it and your mentality is as well to a certain extend derived from it, whether you’d like to admit it or not. Diasporans have been living the Armenian way for at least 2000 years, the proof is irrefutable, where as your lack of proof for the converse is completely evident. I’m no nationalist, like I said before, I’m as American as they come but I don’t feel that I cannot be as Armenian as they come as well and do everything in my power to preserve that lineage, and that begin at the basic idea of not inter-marrying then branches off from that. And nationalists are not maladjusted, unless you actually have irrefutable proof or know a good number of nationalists personally, don’t make empty accusations of other people. Especially those that bust their ass daily and give up so much so that we can retain our ethnic lineage, it's downright insulting the way you critique them when you're nowhere near their level of dedication. Nearly every hye nationalists, and I have met 3 in person, could pass off far better than you ever could as “American”, but they just care about their personal identity on such a intimate level and with such sincerity that they dedicate themselves completely to their cultural identity and it’s survival, even though they have much bigger opportunities they could reach for as "Americans". They are not trying to be saints, and like I said before, caring enough about one’s own identity to not resort to inter-marriage is not an irrational attempt to move some grandiose social mountain, or as you so hastily put it, it’s not an attempt to be “a saint”, it’s a very normal baseline acceptance of the responsibility of continuing one’s identity and lineage, nothing more nothing less. Yes they do, I don’t see how you can be serious about Armenia and not think about these very substantial social issues, or about who is Armenian and who is not, and what should or should not be done to keep the Armenian lineage alive. If you don’t do any of these things, then you’re jaded my friend, accept it. What serious Hyes DON’T do, is promote a hopeless “inevitable” outlook the way you and a couple of other folks have been doing. Like I said, you’re just too far gone. And if you truly are such a big proponent of the “inevitability” factor, what are you doing on these boards anyway? It is after, a waste of your time to even attempt any discourse relating to Armenianism, since it’s all going to shit anyway. Or more importantly, some people jump on the “inevitability” bandwagon to quell their own inner guilt for being too far gone and jaded while using the notion of “inevitability” as a veil to hide behind instead of taking up responsibility for lineage propagation. I agree. Some call you an optimist, they obviously have a misconception of what optimism is. I can’t even call your mentality pessimistic, it’s beyond like, it’s sloth like, an inevitable degenerative decay, a pity. This discussion is spent, you’ve made up you’re mind and I’ve made up mine. 1500 registered users and we’ve got a dozen or so people speaking up on this, wake the *** up folks.

The approach of making what I say sound like some sort of “outdated” notion of the past and that now, as “modernized intellectual” Armenians, we should be well “above” or “beyond” the idea of continual hye/hye marriage is another crutch excuse, nothing more, do not try and pass it off as otherwise. Perhaps you say this NOT so much for the sheer fact that it is somehow “inevitable” but merely because you’ve decided that it is not worth your time or effort to try and actually continue with any sort of resiliency toward finding a hye lover. After all, in the land of the free and the home of brave, there are lots of tempting “bangin” odars to choose from. You make it sound like I’m suggesting you move a mountain for me with your bare hands. All of what I say requires so very little effort to accomplish and maintain on a day to day basis that it is laughable how much of a big deal some of you folks make it out to be just so that you can have an excuse for behaving jaded. My ideas are not fanatically “xenophobic” my friend, they are indeed very simple, practical, and very much easy to accomplish. I’ve been doing it all my life and I promise I’m able to do it and still be every bit as “American” as you are, if not more so. I have odar friends and I run in odar circles as well as Hye circles, and yet I’m not “inevitably” lost in their “odarness”; I still remember who I am, where I come from, where my lineage is from, and yes with my dying breath I would in fact die to defend that. The reason being is that without some sort of idenity that stems from my cultural preservation, I’m nothing, I’m just a bag of tissue among 5.5 some odd billion of other “human beings”. I like being unique and my culture, lineage, and heritage is the source of that uniqueness, thus I’m not about to foolishly say that the loss of that uniqueness is an “inevitability” that cannot be prevented simply because I’m not sitting in Yerevan and I’m here in the U.S. Perhaps they have disappeared, but to chalk that off to a factor of “inevitability” is naïve at best. If I stress enough that a lie is the truth, then it will eventually become the truth. Likewise, if “proud” and “resilient” Hyes like you continually spew out this staccato of how “we’re doomed, we’ll never make it, we should just give in it’s unavoidable, etc, etc” then yes, people will in fact start believing that it is “inevitable”, even though it certainly is not inevitable. Maybe in Poland and Hungary there were a lot of preachers like you Boghos jan that continually pushed for “inevitability” and eventually got it. Again, I find it simply amazing how much effort some folks are willing to make just to say things are in a state of “loss cause “ and that we should just assimilate via inter-marriage just because they themselves want an excuse to give in as individuals and dabble in odars. Ironically the effort of actually finding Hye lovers and raising Hye families as diaspora dwarfs in comparison to the effort folks make to convince others of “inevitability”, so once again, I will have to call bullshit on "inevitability". Half the Armenian population on the face of the globe is diaspora and you’re seriously telling me that the diaspora have no bearing on the survival of Armenian culture? Are you living on the same planet as I am Bhogos jan? I don’t have to physically move to Armenia in order to have an effective way of helping my culture proliferate. You’re saying that “inevitably” inter-marrying but still helping Armenia in some way is a way to still aid our culture, but the much more simpler act of marrying a hye girl and having children with her is not just as good if not better as well as effectual for a “useless” diasporan to peform? Your logic is definitely flawed, you insinuate my ideas are unrealistic but it seems that they are in fact very realistic and your’s are perhaps the extreme ones with your completely culturally morbid outlook toward things. You want “Armenian congregation”? Then next time put your penis in a Hye girl instead of an odar, that will get you congregation really quickly, in fact it is the baseline standard of forming a Hye congregation and it is not as “inevitably” impossible as you claim it to be. If you do this I guarantee that in 5 or 6 generations you lineage will be very healthy and strong, in fact in 50 or 60 generations it still will be healthy and strong. And in the year 4000 an Armenian can introspectively say we still are one of the greatest cultures on the face of the earth instead of a historic scholar reading about us in a book next to the Babylonians or other extinct cultures. There is nothing fairy tale like about maintaining Armenianism outside of Armenia. Like I said before, don’t insinuate that I’ve just asked you to move a mountain for me with your jaded intellectual bravado. Instead make the simple effort of marrying a beautiful Hye girl and pass that idea onto your kids and believe me we’ll be just fine as Armenians as far as survival is concerned. I’m not saddened by any thoughts of “inevitable” diasporan cultural death because it has not happened yet, I know in fact it is not inevitable, and that surviving as a culture is in fact a very sound and relatively easy idea to accomplish, not the “fairy tale” you claim it to be. And yes I do agree with you on the choices being in front of us, so instead of continually pushing for what is supposedly and falsely “inevitable”, make the right choice of marrying a Hye girl, raising a hye family the way your parents raised you and your siblings, and in doing so proliferating or our culture Boghos jan. Of course you won’t throw yourself into a discussion about Monte, anyone saying the things that you’re trying to promote won’t involve Monte either. The reason being is because Monte was a living, breathing, real life rebuttal and irrefutable evidence that one Hye diasporan can and DOES make a difference with his/her effort in our cultural effort. Whatever made a kid in his early 20s from Fresno that has never left its soils give up a full ride to Oxford and give everything up to promote his self-identity must have something do to with the FACT that things are not "inevitable" or "a lost cause". If some diasporans had even 1% of the desire that Monte had, I wouldn't have to be here talking about the ridiculous nature of the notions of "letting go", "asimilating", "giving up to inevitability", "inter-marrying, it's okay we're diaspora and not in Yerevan", or any of the other cowardly excuses made by folks that want to feel good about their lack of effort. And every people DO NOT crave a martyr for just the sake of having one, that's the media's false machinations talking through you. Martyrs exist because a group of people, no matter how bad their plight, are not recognized with mere words about the truth alone on this supposedly "modern political humane world stage". Those in political power screw over those that are not then hide behind politics so then when all other possibilities are exhausted for recognition of a certain issue, the only choice left for those that are oppressed is to strap a bomb to your chest and hope that the shock factor of that act will bring recognition to your cause. As a Hye I feel violated deeply by the fact that 1.5 million of my kinsmen have brutally been slain yet there is not a whisper about it's recognition by this self righteous media machine known as the United States. But 200 people die in Haiti over a political dispute and the U.S sends over 30,000 marines as a "humanitarian" effort. Again, The Armenian Pirate will call bullshit. Every time someone like you says the things you say it just sounds like a cop-out simply because men like Monte existed and by existing they turn all this nonsense about diasporan ineffectualness, lack of effort, and the “inevitability” of cultural loss completely into the joke that it is. I never said someone that refuses to show effort is a traitor, someone that refuses to show effort or believes in an inevitability of cultural effort is a fool, not a traitor. Nothing is “inevitable”, things only become inevitable when an individual feels by believing in inevitability he can appease his own moral consciousness about giving up on a struggle that was important to him and his people. It’s either living with the guilt that you took the cop-out approach via a voluntary choice of refusing to help sustain your heritage OR you can create some intellectual argument for that choice in order to help you deal with your own inner guilt. The reason you feel this guilt is because you know most of the ideals that your parent struggled to keep alive are now gone with the inter-marriage you’ve chosen. Every day you (with “you”, I’m not referring to you specifically Boghos jan) wake up and you look at your family and you know you gave up, your child can’t even say a descent full sentence to you in Armenian because you opted for that hot blonde instead of the Hye girl. And the one certainty that exists in that situation is that EVEN if your mixed child is taught to be as Hye as Hye can be, deep down you know that his child and each consecutive mixed generation after that will care even less because naturally a smaller and smaller part of them is in fact Hye. And THAT my friend is the only inevitability that can truly be attested to. As far as Kirk Kerkorian is concerned, I do think of him, and I pity him. Because that man came to this country in the early 1900s and built a roughly 6 billion dollar empire using old cargo planes but the VERY simple act of keeping his lineage he allowed to slip through his fingers. Several times he forged odar families and they ended up broken. Now in the twilight of his life, with death knocking on his door, he tries desperately to somehow hold onto his identity which he knows will die with him because his kids are mixed. He tries desperately to leave behind a legacy for his people with quarter billion dollar gifts to our homeland yet even with all that money he cannot attain the simple legacy of leaving behind a Hye son or daughter to continue on his hye lineage, which is the greatest legacy any of us can hope to leave on this earth when the reaper comes knocking. What good will the roads that he is funding to build be when there exist no people with a distinct Armenian heritage and lineage to walk upon them? And when he passes on, all that he has built will be controlled by a 30 something that is not even his own son or daughter. Just look at the man’s situation, he so desperately feels he has made the mistake of the odar route that the air to his throne is a Hye not related to him. He tries to make up for his error in the odar route by appointing a Hye as his successor and not having it be his mix children, because he doesn’t want his 80 year empire to fall under the control of odars. But the board will strip his Hye protégé of his status after Kirk’s death the first chance they get by using Kirk’s mix children as puppets to wrangle control from the Hye protégé. And when this happens, the quarter billion that we did get from time to time for Armenia will be gone as well. As you can see, the simple choice of odar marriage did in fact have consequences in the long run and it’s not in fact “the way to go”, it’s identity suicide at best and ultimately prevents a Hye man or woman from leaving behind a Hye child as his or her legacy to perpetuate our lineage in a descent and sustainable manner instead of a progressively degenerate manner with each new mix generation. And while it’s tempting to say that what I’ve just described is “exaggerated” or “paranoia”, you wait, watch, and see bud; the board is just waiting for Kirk to pass on and they will use his mixed child to unseat the Hye protégé that’s helping him run things right now. So no, Kirk is not a traitor, he is in fact a fool, all he has worked for will ultimately belong to someone that is NOT of his lineage, people, culture, or heritage, and with that any interest in using those vast finances for helping Armenia will be gone. You can chalk that up to more ludicrous talk of not showing effort in marrying another Hye, so think twice before you continue to promote your views about the “inevitability” of globalized Armenians and inter-marriage being "inevitable". Instead find a wonderful Hye girl, marry her, and make love to her like a madman without being judgemental about her not being "a virgin" or "makur" so that she won't have to look toward an odar due to sexual need, community pressure, or repression. -The Armenian Pirate

It seems the replies on these boards have the tendency continually make addendums that have not been said. Please do not make the implication that I am some sort of fanatic that persecutes those that have already been mixed into an odar marriage. The children of odar marriages should in fact be accepted and the Armenian side should be emphasized by the Hye parent as much as possible. However, to suggest that the child of an odar/Hye couple is NO different than that of Hye/Hye couple is ridiculous and basically a “quick fix” solution to an ever growing problem. Yes, I agree that odar/hye children should be accepted and nurtured, but the way you actually encourage the odar/hye marriage route as a resolution to Armenian preservation and propagation is not only frighteningly naïve and short sighted, but frankly, it’s insulting when the countless folks that went through hell in the past to maintain Armenians culturally, ethnically, AND GENETICALLY are considered. Yes it is true that NO GROUP of people is completely genetically “pure”, but I doubt that the practice of inter-marriage that you actually seem to ENCOURAGE was something that Hye ancestors did not think of as a solution and instead decided to face certain death instead during all those struggles for lineage survival. No one is “pushing people out the door” Vava jan, they stepped out themselves the day they decided to inter-marry. Now that they are out , their children should be educated about their Armenian half, but ultimately, the next generation will a quarter Armenian, and the next will be 1/8, and the next will be 1/16 my dear. And what are you going to do then, teach that fourth generation 1/16 Hye child 16 different cultural facts, historic backgrounds, and ancestry? That fourth generation child will most likely care only 1/16 as much about that miniscule Armenian part of him/her and should he decide to study “only” half the cultures which make up his genetic lineage then there is a 50% chance that his Armenianism will be dismissed since he’ll only be maintaining 8 out of the 16 “parts” of himself/herself. It’s simple statistics and it does not lie, you get a mix child, it’s inevitable that both his halves will be forgotton down his family tree at some point, most don’t even make it past the second generation. And yet with all this clearly said, you insist that a mix child is just as much Armenian as a Hye/hye child, this is simply not true. The likely hood of a hye/hye child propagating his cultural background is twice as much as a mix, because he only has 1 choice to make, VS 2 for the first generation mix , 4 for the second generation mix, 8 for the third generation mix, 16 for the fourth generation mix, so on and so forth. Do not be so naïve to claim that a mix is “just as good a Hye in quality” as a hye/hye child as far as preservation and propagation are concerned. We celebrate famous people that are part Hye because it’s good to see part of our heritage in the public eye with a “celebrity” like figure. But that person no matter how famous is still PART hye, and because they are part hye, we feel a connection PARTLY with them, but this fact DOES NOT make them Armenian. And to prove my point further, non of the folks mentioned above, being the mix children they are, have propagated their heritage in any manner even closely resembling the level in which a hye/hye child would. When was the last time Agassi won a Wimbledon title and said anything about his Armenianism during a celebration. In fact he likes to avoid the topic all together, he was invited to a Hye gathering I was at and his father showed up embarrassed because Agassi avoided the whole thing. Did Cher mention her Armenianism when she won her academy award or the many other accolades she has received over the years? Last I checked Kasparov doesn’t even willingly admit the fact that he is part Hye. The fact is that the quality of desire for propagating one’s culture becomes less and less important as a child’s lineage mixture increases. That is why the quality of desire for a Hye/Hye child will always be more than that of a mix, and that is why mixes should be avoided if we’re to survive as diaspora. There is no denying this fact, so think again more deeply the next time you encourage inter-marriage and equate a mix child’s ability to propagate our culture with that of a hye/hye child. Yeah nothing is stopping them, well except for that LITTLE issue with a fifth generation mixed child having to choose between his 32 different lineages to propagate. I predict he’ll choose 2 at max and drop the rest, and the likelihood that his Hye heritage will be the one being dropped is roughly 93% with that kind of lineage ratio to deal with. Look, once there is a mixed child, I agree with you, educate him/her about the Hye half as much as possible. But certainly the inter-marriage is not something to be encouraged simply because you are diaspora. Inter-marriage is cultural suicide, even if you don’t care about the genetic implications and aspects of it, EVERY culture that lets itself go and does the inter-marriage route is doomed to not surviving. It just blows me away that you folks are so damn blind to this obvious fact, either that or you’re just jaded with idealistic media nonsense about “one world one mind one culture”. The world is a great place because we are all diverse and unique as different cultures, and inter-marriage certainly is the very anti-thesis of uniqueness. Yes they will adopt to some of the surrounding ways of life, but that doesn’t mean that they cannot hold onto their lineage as well and value it just as much as their immigrant parents did. I’m living proof of this, so do not dispute this fact. If you saw me on the street I’d be as American as baseball, most people can’t tell I’m Hye at first glance, yet here I am on these boards trying to wake the Armenian youth wake up from their slumber and lack of hope. If you do your job as a Hye parent and infuse your child with the desire to retain his culture, lineage, and genetic history, then that child will do it willingly and with a lot of motivation as well as desire. But if you say “yeah don’t sweat it son, marry whoever you like, as long as you’re in love it’s all good, if you have time teach your kids some stuff about Hyes” , then yes your child will completely assimilate into his surroundings and won’t even bother with even teaching that mixed child anything at all, thus propagation is lost. Our genetic history is not 100% pure, no ones’ is. Most of the time, it is during times of war when our women were raped or pillaged, that our genetic aspects were manipulated, yet still we persevered as much as possible. Now that we are not under that strain, we should make even a bigger effort to retain our historic roots and lineage by keep marriages within Hyes, not odars. I find that most people that have this completely laid back attitude about integrating with odars being completely alright are those folks that don’t want to put in the extra effort of finding a hye lover. Yet they don’t want to lose face either in their community so they create a nice elaborate intellectual reason for assimilation being okay just to save some face for being a lazy coward, or they use the fact that our conservative community doesn’t allow for open sexual relationships. Yes it is true that we have this conservative problem, but jumping in bed with an odar isn’t the the fix for it, instead we should be sacking up with each other and if our old fashioned parents say otherwise we should educate them or if nothing else works, tell them to give it rest. If you can care about an odar lover enough to lose your whole lineage completely at the roots then you certainly can also care about a hye lover enough to go against conservative social stigmas. Hiding behind a veil of "intellectuality" is just a pathetic excuse for not wanting to put in effort. The power of youth is invincible, ALL OF YOU need to realize this fact. We can shape our culture in any way we want, regardless of how much pressure our parents put on us, their time is coming to an end, ours has just begun. We can either say “*** it” and take the inter-marriage route and dwindle ourselves as a people, or we can fix the social issues of sexuality, parskahye/hyeastantzi/lipanahye stereotyping and segregation, as well as any other social issues that bother us as youth and thrive. I should be able to have an open sexual relationship with my beautiful hye girlfriend and she should not have to worry about it being “safe” socially and thus consider an odar. To accomplish this freedom we have to do it together within our social circles and take a chance. Thank you, Vigil and I are not the same person . I clearly stated that this was in fact a big problem for us Hyes. Hye girls and guys want to get laid with each other bud, believe me! Our men are as handsome as they come and our women, one word, WOW! Simply gorgeous! But parental generations put pressure on the girls to be “makur” and the boys to look for “makur”. The idea of “makur” is ridiculous, sex is a natural discourse of any healthy human being, male or female. As such, we as youth, should be allowed to freely experiment with each other sexually without fear of persecution. As a male in my 20s, I shouldn’t have to convince a hye girl that it’s safe for her to acknowledge the fact that she wants sex from me or that I am socially “safe” to have sex with. I should be able to just project that trust naturally to her and she should not have to worry about me judging her or her community judging her, or her parents judging me for having a sexual relationship with their daughter. These are very prevalent problems that must be addressed, and the way to address them is to educate your parents, go out there and show a hye girl a good time as a hye guy or vice versa, and if parents or some other old fashioned fanatic starts whining, tell them how wrong they are and move on. Like I said before, WE as youth must instigate change, the age of our parents is over, we need to stick together, hang in our hye circles, and do what young folks do all over the world, have wild animalistic sex without reprieve! My views are not as extreme as you claim them to be Sasun. I’m simply being blunt about how things are and where they can lead to if we do not put in more effort as individuals. I would rather be in a concerned state of awareness such as I am here today then be “happy go lucky” without a clue as to how dangerous it is to be completely passive about one’s culture, lineage, and ethnicity. Also, I’m not here to be polite or politically correct, I’m here to talk about important issues and how to solve them without any social filters. Sev-Mard’s situation served as a great example of the points I was making so I used it without reservation, if I must, I’ll do it again. Also, I certainly was not blaming odars for anything. I don’t where you got that from. I was trying to make him understand why it is that I do not like inter-marriage or the insistence of an odar on my acceptance of inter-marriage simply because an odar feels he will “treat her well”. I can treat her well too, in fact, I can treat a lot of odar girls VERY well on a daily basis. But that doesn’t give me any right to expect people of another culture that is already RARE to completely lay down and say enthusiastically “Hi! Welcome to the neighborhood, even though there are very few of us left and now even less left because of your recent inter-marriage, I’ll put on a happy face and greet you with a smile because that is the ‘nice’ thing to do”. For every Hye guy that inter-marries there is Hye girl that potentially will not marry him and produce kids that would propagate my culture, for every hye girl that inter-marries there is hye guy that won’t propose to her and produce kids, on a whole this IS bad for hye culture, and anything bad for hye culture, as a hye, it is my responsibility to help prevent if I can. Perhaps you shouldn’t be so concerned with criticizing those that decide to speak up about issues that cripple, marginalize, and destroy us as a people as well as a culture, but instead take some action and responsibility to help cure our problems as a people. Have a restful Sunday everyone.

It's natural that I reiterate it twice bud. Because instead of actually focusing on everything else I wrote and actually addressing the issues I brought up, you and Seaphan pulled the race card. I really cannot make it any more clear that I definitely am not prejudice toward any single ethnic group. I couldn't care less that you happen to be African-American Sev, I do ABSOLUTELY care that you're not Hye and on top of that you feel that in some way I should just accept the fact that you waltz into my lineage and disrupt it by dabbling in the idea of "inter-marriage". Where were your people when my great grandfather was being driven out of land that has been his for 3000+ years? Where were you when Armenian children were being sliced at their lower thighs by Turks so that they would be crippled for life? Where have you been when for nearly 100 years now, the killing of over a million of my brothers and sisters has been blatantly ignored due to political agendas? Where were you when my people built the churches and mosks that exist near eastern Turkey only to have it all be taken away from them? And now the most precious part of my culture, our beautiful and wonderful Hye women which happen to be my only link to my unborn Hye children, are being diverted toward odars by outdated social sexual stigmas and I'm supposed to act like a liberal child of globalization and sit back and let it happen? Think again my friend. The fact is neither you nor anyone else that is not a young Armenian can possibly even fathom the dissapointment and anguish that I, as an Armenian male, feel when I see some Hye girl being diverted to an odar due to proposterous social stigmas about sexuality. Regardless what anyone else says, the truth is the truth, and the truth is that given some ultra conservative community stigmas about sexuality, it is MUCH more easy, socially safe, as well as convenient for a female Hye to basically have a sexual relationship with an Odar. I guarantee every Hye girl reading this right now will agree. To me this is pitiful, it is killing MY ethnic identity and lineage, I will not allow it to happen. When we as a people needed to survive, it was Hye men and women that fought and died to allow for that survival, and now that things are getting better, an odar will never be allowed to reap the fruits of my fallen ancestors that bled so that I can say words like "barev", have my Hye children with a wonderful hye girl, and to plant my Hye seed for the next generation. Sev, you're a good guy, I absolutely have nothing personally against you or your people. But do not ever approach any Hye community and somehow justify your disruption of our lineage by stating that "I'll treat her well", because frankly, that insults me and any self respecting hye male. Believe me, as much as you think that hye girl is precious, I promise you that without actually being a hye yourself, it's not possible to feel how precious I as a hye male believe she is. To me she is the future beyond my mortal life, she is the path for my people to continue to prosper, to you she can never be more than just your wife that you love because your kids will not be part of my lineage and eventually their own kids will not remember what a Hye is. THIS is the truth everyone, realize it and stop this madness about inter-marriage or how things are not worth it, because they are worth it. Sev, if you still cannot comprehend why it is that I so despise the idea of my lineage being disrupted, let me make a comparison to your own culture. To me when I see a Hye with a non-hye with mixed children, I feel a part of me is lost and will never come back. I also feel that my culture has become less existent on the face of this Earth, and it is ALREADY so RARE that the single loss of one Hye to a non-Hye DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE. The pain and disapointment is difficult to understand by an odar. But imagine if you will , that for every non African-American that married and had kids with an African-American, in Africa a native black man is enslaved. And while during that moment your only comforting thought about that singular enslavement may be that there still are SO many free black men on other continents, I as an Armenian, cannot say the same thing about having "so many" Hyes to rely on to perpetuate my lineage when a Hye is lost to a non-hye. The pain you would feel seeing a fellow black man enslaved is the same pain I feel when I see the loss of a Hye to a non-Hye through marriage. I hope you can understand what I'm trying to depict here emotionally for you. Instead of us Hyes dabbling in ideas of intermarriage or some other nonsense that LITERALLY chops our culture out of existence at the roots. We should look inside communities and educate parents that repress our youth sexually and drive young hye girls and guys apart, leading them to odars. Hye men/boys should know better than to ridicule a hye girl with things like "makur ches" or persecute hye women that share their bodies with their hye lovers. Likewise, Hye women should not be so quick to look at a hye male and say "if I sleep with him or make love to him like a wild banshee, he will judge me negatively", the truth is ladies, we're not all like that, and those that are can be changed. If there exist one constant in the universe it is that nothing is constant, change is always possible and we as a people should never lose hope and abandon each other. Instead of hye fathers telling their sons that a non virgin is a "bozz", he should teach his son the Eibuben, our history, and folklore of our people. And instead of hye mothers telling their daughters, "if you decide to sleep with a boy, be sure he is an odar or from another hye community, other wise our pativ will be gone", these mothers should teach them about giving a sincere hye boy a chance and they should promote the pursuit of hye lovers for their daughters not odars. THIS is the social problem we face today ladies and gentlemen, and resorting to inter-marriage, ideas of mixed children being considered Hye simply because they can speak Armenian, or secretive sexual escapades is not the solution if we're to survive as a people, AND WE WILL SURVIVE, never ever lose hope for our people, it is the most powerful force in the universe. Instead make an effort to instigate these changes I have spoken of, talk to each other, stop with this "ahmot" nonsense about taboo topics, fix the social problems and we will prosper like we've never prospered before. Have a great weekend everyone! -The Armenian Pirate

Like I said before, do not use the crutch retort of taking my words and twisted them to be stereotypical in some way. The word "legion" does in fact equate to a "very large group", and yes, there exist a VERY large group of African Americans on the continent of Africa, thus the word legion is very appropriate. Do not make the mistake of turning my articulation into a "racist" focal point. With words like "chocolatey" you've just made the first stereotypical comment here, not me. Next, I may not know where Sev-Mart's roots are exactly from, but if he is in fact African-American , than I'm certain it originated from one of the sub sect of African culture at some point. And yes, he CAN in fact fall back on his people because if he decides to procreate with a non African American, statistically there will be MANY more black men that WILL keep his genetic lineage going. The same cannot be said of an Armenian which decides to move outside our cultural circle. In fact the plain truth is, we barely have a net gain in population because it is nearly at a steady state as far as births and deaths go worldwide. This terrifies me, and frankly, I'm surprised you can sit there with your smug little "intellectual" dribble and promote further decline in what already is a critical situation without thinking about the catastrophic effects your viewpoint has on us as a people. What I say is not ridiculous, it is in fact the truth. What IS ridiculous is that you pulled the "racist/prejudice" card on me even before Sev-Mart did. But like I said before, I probably have more black friends than the two of you put together and this issue has nothing to do with WHAT Sev-Mart is. If Sev-Mart was in fact Spitak-Mart with blond hair, blue eyes, with the smile of swedish male model, I would still say the same thing. I don't care if someone is black, white, pink, or purple, I do not want inter-marriage of any kind because that is what will lead to the destruction of my identity, my lineage, and yes eventually my culture. I find it proposterous to read things like this. The culture , people, lifestyle, religion, and way of life should in fact be dictated by yourself, you're right there Seaphan jan. But if you so adamantly have decided that non of those things will include the Armenian culture, the Armenian people, Armenian lifestyle, and the preservation of all aspects of Armenianism which includes genetic lineage, lifestyle, culture, and values, then frankly you have no business here on these boards. If you like, I can recommend some nice Mandarin Budist message boards you can post on to your heart's content. Lastly, Armenianism is not an "elite club", please do not ever make addenums to things that I've written on your own and claim them to be my statements. I never said we're elite or any better than Sev-Mart's culture, but we are RARE and unless we want it to become even more scarce, we should be a bit more serious about preserving that lineage. Again that means, a hye guy having sex with a hye girl and producing beautiful HYE children. I wish I had the luxury of being as idealistic as you with your intellectual bravado about how we can afford to lose Hyes to inter-marriage or about how as human beings it is our choice to choose to inter-marry. But I'm a realist, and the reality of the situation is that yes we do in fact have that choice, but having that choice doesn't necessarily mean that we should just go ahead and make it without a single thought toward the fact that if we DO make that choice, we compromise our entire lineage which MY ancestors have shed blood for, died for , and fought for. And if you do think about that choice and still decide it's not important enough to marry a hye girl/guy , then I pity you. Because the greatest loss anyone can go through is that of one's upbringing, values, and behavioural norms which stem from culture and lineage. One final point I'd like to make. Anyone that decides to reply to me, please do not make accusations of racism or prejudice at a whim. Yes I am ethnocentric, I love my culture and think it's great, and sadly the media these days has made ethnocentrism the equavalent of prejudice/racism, which it certainly is not. With so few of us left, if we're to have any hope of survival, we as hyes have to have a degree of ethnocentrism in order to motivate us to preserve our heritage. That may sound a bit sinical, but it is the reality of our situation. When someone comes at me with the "he's black, you're racist" card or the "you're an anti-semite" card, it only tells me that the person has fallen prey to the machinations of today's media. Believe me if I was racist in any way I would not take the time writing any of this in an acceptable manner when I can just write a couple brutal sentences with negative racial comments. So if you're going to make a point then by all means make a point, but DON'T do it with a "racist" or "anti-semite" counterpoint as the crux of your arguement, if anything, it just makes you look like a manipulated neo-socialite or worse, an "intellectual" that can talk all day but couldn't take one step toward any real action. And by the way, Vigil and I are not one in the same, trust me on that one. -The Armenian Pirate

I have been following these boards for quite some time now. It's good to monitor some of the consensus of youth in our culture. But I have to admit, after reading this little gem above from "Vava", I was in sheer awe of just how screwed up things have become in certain Armenian circles. I'm not sure what's worse, placing my hope of the preservation of my identity as an Armenian in the hands of folks like Vava, or simply taking a time warp back to 1915 and just putting my head under a Turkish scimitar. Yes Vava, lets talk about this "cultural preservation" you're refering to and how it's "enough" to simply pass on language and teach kids of mixed marriages Armenian then dubb them as "Hye". So basically by your logic, if I learn everything about feudal Japan, learn to read and write in Japanese, and toss in a bit of its history into my personal knowledge base, I can be Japanese! Wow, I never knew it was that easy to become Japanese or even Armenian for that matter! You're wonderful optimism about this delusion that you're having almost passes it as the reality of our situation, ALMOST but not quite. First off, being anything, whether it's Armenian, Pakistani, Martian, etc, etc, starts at the genetic level, then branches off into phenotipic features, and lastly encompasses a unique mindset and behavioural values which we call "culture". Being Armenian is ALL of that, not just a fragment such as "hey Joe Blow, you know Armenian and some of our history, thus you're Hye"! I do not care how actively you participate in Armenian culture, or whether someone's Armenian/Odar mix children know the Eibuben inside out and can recite them backwards, or even if you're a Nobel Laureate historian on Hye culture. If the sperm and the egg that made up that child were not from Hye parents, that child is not Hye, he is a mix that knows a lot about one half of his genetic make-up, period. Armenianism is MORE than just values, historical knowledge, and linguistic "know-how". Armenianism is about a LINEAGE of people that genetically have travelled a 3000+ year journey, during which many have tried to end that genetic lineage permenantly. Armenianism is about Hye's mounting the front lines of the battles in the Crusades, in which the very survival of Christianity depended on. Armenianism is about taking the chance of making Christianity our official religion when no one else would dare to do so. Being Hye is about a cultural AND genetic line of people that predates the humanoid religious form of "God" by nearly 1000 years. I'm just in sheer shock that this kind of mentality and assinine commentary is coming from someone that is calling himself/herself "Hye" and furthermore on a site that hopes to create the preservation of Armenianism. Sadly most people on this forum use the fact of being "Armenian" as nothing more than a mantle or title, some even have the audacity to just refer to being Hye as a nice punchline to enhance some sort of twisted self-image during intellectual topics about politics and socio-economic strife. I'm willing to bet that you Vava jan, are involved with an odar and you spew out all this garbage of your's in an attempt to feel some sort of justification for either present or past guilt. And if you don't feel guilty for thinking the way you do, I truly pity you. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if you are in fact Sev-Mart's significant other! But I digress. Just please do not idealistically fool yourself into thinking that once the genetic line has been cut off via inter-ethnic marriage that you can still be "hye" through charitable actions and cultural knowledge. Once you're done genetically, you're DONE, that's it, you've cut off Armenianism at it's most basic and essential level, which is genetically. The fact of the matter is this. Anyone that does feel the way Vava does, does so because there exists a very prevalent problem in a good portion of Armenian communities. The Armenian Pirate likes to call this, "The Sexual Repression Factor". This factor is most apparent in our females due to the social pressure of staying "makur". Odds are Sev-Mart's girlfriend is from a very sexually conservative family in which the expectations of her sexual state are unrealistic for any female to endure. Thus the obvious outlet is to have sexual relations with the Odar, and of course Sev-Mart enters the scene, BAM one Hye girl lost due to this social disease. The solution to this problem is not stating "hey it's okay for us to turn our backs to our 3000+ year old genetic lineage and just make sure the mix kids can speak hye and know some hye history". Instead, the Hye youth needs to change the train of thought regarding sexuality so that Hye guys and girls can have sexual relations with each other without worrying about being dubbed as "outcasts" from their Hye community. That ladies and gentlemen is the solution and will also allow us to maintain Armenianism on cultural, historic, AND genetic levels, which is the way any ethnic group can maintain their identity. Now I'd like to address this issue about Sev-Mart's "input" about how Armenians "should" resolve our cultural issues. Let me do a little bit of a reality check here for all you "intellectuals" that love to jump the gun on these boards with your grandiose globalization ideas and liberal media child views. Before I go on, I don't want anyone here tossing the crutch excuse or accusation of "racist" my way, I probably have more African-American friends than Sev-Mart himself, so let us begin. I love the idea of an odar learning about Armenians, our history, so on and so forth. What I do not like, in fact, what I despise, is any odar that feels they can do a romantic social waltz into any Armenian related forum, debate, etc, and preach about how certain hye issues should or should not be dealt with or what courses of action are good for us as a people. Sev-Mart, while his intentions perhaps noble, has absolutely no idea about the critical state of our people's identity. It's easy for him to sit there and talk about why we do not like odars mixing in with us because he has a legion of his own people to fall back on, on the entire continent of Africa. Who do I have as a Hye? 6.XX million of us , that's it. And as Vigil said, EVERY SINGLE LOSS counts for us. Furthermore, to be frank, Sev-Mart can keep to himself when it comes to critical issues of our culture, it does not concern him, it concerns me, the Armenian. The reason being is because if I, as an Armenian and as a white man, went on an African American forum and spoke out about how the 200 years of slavery were justified or commented on some other civil right sensitive topic, I guarantee you this everyone, within 5 posts, my ass would be banned and I would get death threats. And that is why I hate the fact that Sev Mart feels he can just come in with his whines and declarations of "why is it I cannot date and marry a hye girl", to me as an Armenian , this is MY sensitive topic just like slavery and civil rights is his for him. Mixed marriages kill MY identity the way slavery was cultural death for his identity and basic human rights. Vigil is right, the kids of any mixed marriage will gradually dwindle in identity until there really is no definitive identity left several generations later in that family. So stop this nonsense about why mixed marriages are "win/win" situations , they are not, at best they are a loss, nothing more. I sit here right now, in disbelief about how jaded most of you are and how quick you buy into this idea of the "cultural" melting pot. In the 1970s there were Hyes in Beirut that literally had to defend their identity with guns and here most of you are in the U.S. willing to say "hey it's okay to inter-marry as long as we just teach our kids the Eibuben, some hye history, etc". Some of you don't even know the Eibuben, how are you going to teach your mixed children the Eibuben? If you're willing to give up your genetic lineage on the drop of a dime the way Vava is preaching on, how the hell do you propose to even care about the cultural aspect of it all?! Another crutch excuse is of course what was said earlier with "why would you show-effort/die for a country you gain no benefit from in any form" in reference to Armenia. For the genius that made this comment, you're hye aren't you? Your whole mindset is collectively that very same "benefit" you are arrogant enough to assume is non-existent. And how dare ANY of us say such things in the first place when men like Monte Melkonian that were BORN AND RAISED in the U.S. , with a college degree from a top rated U.S. university along with a full ride to Oxford decided to give it all up and die for his country. Most of you folks on this board are immigrants that should at the very least have more of a spirit behind your Armenianism, but there was Monte, a kid that never set foot outside of the United States and was as "american" as apple pie but decided to fly to the shithole of the world in the middle east to fight for his people. How dare any of you come on these boards and say things like "lets intermarry, it's okay", or "why should I show effort", or any other ridiculous cowardly notion. Those ideas are all easy fixes for folks that like to call themselves "intellectuals" and all they do is act as analysts on boards such as this one. God forbid any real sort of effort is required of them, they would soon intermarry and stay jaded rather than show some effort in changing social stigmas such as sexual repression in our culture by HELPING EACH OTHER and keeping our lineage strong. I'd like to close by saying that some folks here need to really look within themselves and realize how wonderful it is to be Armenian. Yes it can be difficult due to some of the social vises that exist, especially for our wonderful, intelligent, and beautiful hye women. But we are the youth, and we are the future, and the future is our's to shape. The blood that runs in our vains is ancient and on the world stage carries seniority in nearly every aspect. Perhaps this is the very notion Monte Melkonian realized and decided to give up his whole life to help preserve us as a people. You think one man cannot make a difference? Ask the battalion of troops that would die for him, or better yet, ask the governments that feared him, and look at the lands near Karabagh that he returned to their rightful owners, us Armenians. That was all one man's effort, a kid from Fresno California that had never been outside of U.S. soil. To preserve Armenianism, it must be done culturally AND gentically via the continuation of the Hye lineage. Think about Monte and these notions then look at yourself in the mirror and still say "it's okay to inter-marry" , "it's not worth that much effort", or "I wouldn't fight for a country that doesn't give me benefits". -The Armenian Pirate