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by PhasmaFelis 3129 days ago
I don't understand what you're trying to express here. You agree that all of the things the author describes do happen, and pretty much for the same reasons the author describes, but you...still think he's wrong, somehow? Possibly because you don't like him using the word "honor," even though he went to great lengths to not do that?
2 comments

While he mentions that to him, it seems that deemed honour is a proxy for social status in some cultures, in none it is. Egregious manifestations of social status, do come a mile apart from what even moderately enlightened person considers an honour in cultures he listed. His finding went only a finger poke length in the issue.

No sane Sikh or Bengali will publicly admit that men who killed their wives in anticipation of Pakistani army coming, rather than to defend them with their lives did an honorable thing. These historical episodes are publicly denounced as the most shameful in history of Sikh and Bangla communities, with only few fringe, marginal religious fanatics coming forward with opposing opinions.

Nor will any normal person from Balkans accept exceptional vengefulness as something to be proud of.

He picked word Thar, but even that semantic loading that he devised, reinvents the bicycle. He want to put that to "wage feud" as he puts is different from simple fight over social status, while it is, and later he effectively says that.
Most people don't kill over social status. If we're going to communicate about this effectively, we need to find a word that means "social status except you're willing to kill over it." Which he did. Is there a word you would have preferred?