NEWS: WHO: FGM Torture

Wow, that didn't take long.

Cultural relativism only goes so far. Infanticide is still practiced in some places. Does it make it right because it's part of their culture? It's a sticky topic, I know, but as wrong as it is to criticize another culture for being different, it's just as wrong to blindly accept differences no matter what.

+1

He wasn't defending it, just saying that they don't like their women to be tigers in the sack over there.

I agree with you…however, I will take it farther. Cultural relativism has simply gotten WAY out of hand.

It is human nature to swing too far to the left after having been too far to the right (I.E. Too far to the right=”Bring civilization to the heathens – and colonize them”, which then swings to=”But honor killings are part of their culture. Who are we to judge?!”)

Cultural relativism is fabulous when it comes to understanding when it is, and is not, OK to fart and whether or not you can show the bottom of your feet to someone. Much beyond that, it is useless.

The instant it encroaches into the territory of stepping on a human being’s needs – and almost without exception - desires (and I don’t just mean FGM…I mean, as little as women suffering from an infected splinter for more than a day because there isn’t a woman doctor available, or having to be covered from head to toe) it falls into the realm of bullshit.

Wow....we really live in a great world. Seriously. Human evolution is just hitting higher and higher peaks everyday!

Indeed, God help us all.

Don't be so quick to point fingers at the "crazy Other" here. Those "warped views" about female sexuality and the marital value of women aren't all that foreign to western society.

And no, societies in the western world don't tend to practice or condone FGM, and I'm not trying to draw a parallel between FGM and any sort of injustice or injury which may or may not be done to women in the west. I just want to throw that out there before someone accuses me of somehow trying to say that "we do the same thing in different ways" or that "we do things that are just as bad." I'm not saying that at all.

But I am saying that the idea that a woman's sexual manageability and her marital worth go hand-in-hand isn't a concept that's unfamiliar to western culture. Don't be so quick to point your finger at the supposed primitives, with their crazy, backward ideas about women. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has heard the old saying about how there are the girls you fuck, and then there are the girls you marry--a small illustration of what I mean, but an illustration nonetheless. A woman who can't be managed sexually, who doesn't keep her sexuality within the proper boundaries, has traditionally been labeled a slut--and no man wanted to marry a slut who'd already been had by men other than himself. Sluts, according to societal convention, do not make respectable wives OR good mothers. Men want pure, respectable girls, not wanton whores who let their sex drives run them all over town from one bed to the next (or even just to one bed, a lot of times). Therefore, the management and containment of a woman's desire bore directly on her value as a potential wife and mother. Keep in mind also that it has been assumed that the primary, if not sole, vocation for a woman is the combined wife/mother vocation.

It really wasn't until the 60s and 70s that these views on the place of woman and the importance of her marital value were challenged on a larger, collective scale (largely through women's entry into the workforce, which changed the marriage dynamic a bit by lessening the automatic economic dependence of a wife on her husband). It wasn't all that long ago that no one would question a man's insistence upon marrying a virgin, or a "good," "respectable" girl at the very least--because who wanted to marry a slut? Who wanted to take as his wife a woman who'd already given herself to another man? She'd been used already; she became damaged goods. She couldn't control her sexual appetites and she was ruined, no good anymore as a potential wife. Particularly when becoming a wife was a much more pressing need for women, both socially and economically, this was a big deal--and so a huge amount of societal and cultural pressure has been exerted upon females to control and repress their sexual desires in order to ensure that those desires won't lead them into action that will destroy their value and "virtue" and prevent them from growing up to lead the kind of lives they're supposed to lead.

So while FGM is obviously a horrible thing, and it's obviously not something that's really practiced or approved of in western culture (as it shouldn't be--it's an atrocity), don't be so quick to assert that these ideas about female sexuality and the need to control it in order for females to remain worthy are somehow entirely foreign to and incomprehensible by "civilized" westerners, culturally speaking. They're not. To act like these statements about a woman's marriageability and the management of her sexual desires are the products of a pure, backward, uncivilized craziness that we, the enlightened, just cannot comprehend--that's bullshit.

[Edited on Jun 05, 2006 2:43AM]

Yeah I was trying to point out to this guy that other cultures have different ideals about there women.

Heh--apparently my response to your earlier statement to the effect that those "other cultures" have weirdo ideas about women that we can't understand was entirely too long to be read. Sorry about that; I'll distill it a bit:

Those ideas about women (female sexuality, control of it, and marriageability) are NOT foreign concepts to western culture. Don't act as though such views are the products of backward, uncivilized, primitive minds and that we enlightened westerners are above that. If you don't think that western culture has placed a premium on the repression and control of female sexuality, and if you don't think that such a repressed and controlled female has long been considered the ideal choice for a wife, then you've missed something huge in the history of western culture (very recent history, I'd like to point out).

True... but we don't go mutilating their vaginas to control there sexuality and such. I guess that is what I was trying to say. If that has happend in our so called civilized society, then wow... we are no different than them.

[Edited on Jun 06, 2006 by OhDaeSu]

I like it when people post their views, but there's no need to be condescending.

I don't think there's anyone here who disagrees that women have been repressed sexually in Western culture. To say, however, that this is even in the same ballpark would be wildly inaccurate. Women are utterly stripped of their sexualities in the cultures we're talking about. There aren't corsets and bustiers and the like, not even in the deviant element. In Western culture, there's always been a fringe element of society that fucks like rabbits. Granted, this country was partially founded by religious nuts like Puritans, but that itself is a fringe sect that was too uptight for England. You're ignoring flappers in the twenties, speakeasies, all of these things that were actually major parts of our culture that got whitewashed over. Yes, a woman was theoretically still supposed to be a virgin on her wedding day, but in practice, that wasn't usually the case. Further, sex in the bedroom could be enjoyable for both parties. Condom use goes way back. It varies by class, of course.

My point being during all these times, there were women who liked to fuck, and there was a place in society for them (pretty much the dregs or within the bonds of holy matrimony). But when you cut off a woman's clit as a matter of course, there is no place in society for it. Period. It's not just a disgusting act of mutilation, it ends even the potential for that element to be present, or at least comes as close as is humanly possible. And while that does not make what Western society has done to women any less of an atrocity, it also places a culture that does that on a whole other level.

What you're saying is like saying that bloodlust is present in every culture, so we're on the same scale as the Aztecs. Fundamentally, you're right, but the difference in the comparison is vast.

And I don't mean to suggest that women weren't killed in Western society for having sex, and that they weren't raped and beaten and all of that. It's horrible what Western society has done to female sexuality, make no mistake.