These people have their way of doing things. The fact that you may find it offensive is immaterial. The assertion that this happens because these people are “black” is simply wrong.
Also, you seem to be confusing “rape” and “statutory rape”.
Finally your comment “WTF? I had always thought Australia was a civilised country.” is just illustrating your ignorance of anything beyond your own sphere of experience.
Whoa. I might question whether this practice is in the best interest of the young woman, but to jump from an observation about a unique culture to making racial comments is a bit perplexing.
Ironically, aboriginal Australians may be non-white, but they also aren’t “black” in the way Blake uses the term either. There are plenty of cultural examples of ‘young’ woman being promised in marriage throughout Western Europe and the Americas, but I don’t think Blake is capable of absorbing this information.
I think female circumcision is a strange practice. That notwithstanding, I would hesitate to judge the sub-saharans who practice this ritual. Although it is most probably not in the best interests of the young girls upon which it is performed, I cannot judge these people and their actions.
Lest we forget, the Christian missionaries that travelled to Africa in the 17th, 18th & 19th centuries thought that they were saving the indiginous population from everlasting damnation by converting them to christianity - all that resulted was the type of cultural vandalism that is so inherent in the Western colonial psyche. The fact that we do not agree with these practices is not a reason to state that they are “wrong” or should be stopped.
Exteremes are never helpful, and maybe I’m too far left of liberal, but one cannot help but feel empathy for this man who was called in front of a judge to explain what has always been normal behaviour for him and his people.
Achilles,
I would be careful not to swing too far in the other direction. Cultural differences are also not excuses. In the case of female circumcision, I would hold the practitioners responsible for understanding exactly what it is they are doing, and there is nothing excusable about it. Not that I think you are an apologist, but to chalk the practice up to cultural issues is to not give the people credit for thinking their selfish motives through.
You make a very good point. I did not mean to excuse or condemn female circumcision or any “foreign” practices. I simply do not feel culturally able to give an impartial judgement. To me, one of the saddest facets of human nature is that we continuously try to judge things that we are, by definition, unable to understand.
Again, without wanting to cast aspersions upon the judgements of others in these fora, as the saying goes “if you’ve gotta ask, you’ll never know.”
Finally, condemning foreign tribal practices as “selfish” is simply another form of bigotry. Unless you (or I) have been born and bred within these cultural confines, I think we are ill equiped to make any type of judgement on these actions.
I gotta disagree here, and I’ll add that I’m not too excited about you calling me a bigot. To not decry a harmful practice, like female circumcision, based on lack of immersion in that particular culture is to not give the practitioners credit for being thinking human beings with the ability to understand their actions. Kinda like a great white hunter complex crossed with Dr. Phil.
We are wise to respect arranged marriages, traditional dances, religions, and lederhosen - not mutilation.
Actually I am not convinced that we are wise to recognise arrasnged marraiges either. A close friend of mine had one arranged. She fled in horror at the thought. her family tried to find her, and …one of her friends…hid her. They never got her married. She is now hapily married to soemone she actually loves.
Overall though, as per the comment by Waverly, do not let culture, traditional or otherwise, blind you to wrongness. If you refuse to make a judgement, becaue of lack of immersion in a culture, then you can excuse any crime, any brutality, any horror.
Hypothetical example: there are two groups of people, call them tribes or whatever. They hate each other. One wipes the other, a wholly unique group, from the face of the planet. Now; do you excuse genocide because you do not understand the culture?
Another: A ‘culture’, in deepest Loserland has a history of gang raping every boy and girl when they reach the age of 8. Do you excuse this based on culture?
A refusal to judge at all, might be seen to represent a remarkable lack of values. Not that I suggest the OP has no values, but it could easily lead there.
Waverly I certainly did not mean to emply that you are a bigot. Rather I meant that the view that you were on the brink of espousing (and have since fully embraced) is a bigoted point of view.
Furthermore, I never emplied that these tribespeople are anything short of fully thinking, properly functioning humans. (Even getting me to refure this claim is an underhanded trick on a par with asking someone “When did you stop beating your wife ?”) These people fully understand their actions. The fact that you don’t is proof positive that you cannot judge these people.
We “westerners” simply cannot fathom the reasons for these peoples actions. This is not to say that there is something less involved than in, say, christian “mass” or jewish “circumcision”. The fact that one group of people does not understand the actions of another, is the proof that they cannot judge them.
You of course may judge. It is simply that your judgement, while valid within your own cultural sphere, is just that - valid within your own cultural sphere. When we get around to judgement or constructive critisism of a cultural practice of which we have no innate experience, craw-thumping is of no value. What you are trying to do (and with the best possible intentions, I have no doubt) is convince these people to amend their cultural habits, to be less offensive to your cultural sensibilities. This is clearly nonsensical.
It is not a cop out, but rather an acceptance that there are events in this world that I am not equipped to judge in any meaningful way.
How do you feel about African (or South American) tribal scarring?
I totally get what Achilles is saying. I take it one step back, though: I have my personal moral sphere, with which I judge the world, and which I use from day to day. But I acknowledge that my personal moral standards are entirely a product of my culture, upbringing, and personality.
The problem starts when people start asserting that their moral opinion is an absolute truth. It’s an absolute truth relative to you (and relative probably to most other people in your culture).
As such therefore, I peronally think female genital mutilation is absolutely dreadful. I condemn the practise. But I am not in a position to label it fundamentally wrong. Clearly there are several hundreds of thousands of people in the world who would think me wrong for thinking the practise is wrong.
If you feel unequipped to judge meaningfully, do you then see scenes of torture, genocide, murder, in other cultures, smile sweetly and say something along the lines of ‘aw, how nice, thsese people are treating each other in a way that reflects their cultural values’
If you feel unequipped to judge meaningfully, do you lack an ethical or moral compass - or are you simply a hater of western culture (I have to ask this as I have met so many, no offense intended) .
As to your comment on "valid within a cultural sphere’ I simply do not buy it. I said earlier, and will say again, in different terms.
There are things about us as human beings, that relate to us as human beings, that over-ride culture, that over-ride differences in opinion.
Please, address that thought. Else one must be left with the impression that, were you placed in a situation where you see on of thwe situations I described above (perhaps the attacks on children), and I mean actually physically there, you would do nothing.
Well, Achilles, so I’m not a bigot, just one possessed of bigoted views? What a relief.
You do imply that these tribespeople have no cognition of their actions. You know it as an act of mutilation, but reserve any judgment because you aren’t a cultural insider. You don’t need to be. The origins of the practice are not a mystery, and are not exclusively understood by those who practice female excision, which is the more appropriate term – the procedure has little in common with what we understand to be circumcision.
As far back as Herodotus and as recently as the WHO, it has been known that the purpose is to destroy any impulse the woman may have towards sex, and thereby grant an added assurance of fidelity and preservation of the patriarchal lineage. Maybe you can share with us the extenuating circumstances that the rest of us aren’t understanding.
There’s a difference between acknowledging that one practice as abhorrent and deriding an entire culture as backward.
UnwrittenNocturne - however unintentionally, you are sailing very close to calling these tribal peoples sub-human. Your assertion that here are things about us as human beings, that relate to us as human beings, that over-ride culture, that over-ride differences in opinion is clearly wrong. Are you suggesting that these millions of people are sub-human ? You may consider that thought addressed.
I am certainly not a hater of western civilization, but as someone that was brought up within its confines, I feel more empowered to vociferously attack the parts of it that I find distasteful. But we digress from the Op.
Penultimately, your refusal to “buy” my comment about the validity of your judgement within certain speheres counts for nothing. What you must realise is that you are (unbeknownst to yourself) falling foul of the same problems that plagued the early western explorers. You must remember - this is their culture. It exists in its own beauty. It is not for you to accept or reject.
Finally, there are occasions when I would intervene in a situation that patently did not involve me - e.g, a lynching by the KKK, a stoning under sharia law or perhaps on behalf of child faced with a machete wielding enemy. This does not make my actions correct - it simply makes me human.
Firstly, I think we shall leave classical greek views of female sexuality out of any contemporary discussion of female excision.
The fact the the WHO “knows” why this takes place is really irrelevan, and simply stokes the misguided fires of piety that flame from all corners of the “civilized” world. When a tribe that actively participates in female ritual excision decides to forego the practice, I will welcome it as a wise move by traditional tribe making a difficult transition to the 21st century.
Once more, the fact that you think you can judge these actions, only serves to illustrate that you know little about that upon which you expound.
jjimm, I’m a firm believer that morality is subjective. I’m even on record somewhere here on boards stating that we, sadly, do not possess god-given, inborn rights.
But rather than excuse any culturally motivated practice, this fact makes it imperative that we set down and protect rights. There isn’t going to be any stone tablet which provides them universally to all people.
There’s volumes written on how we codify rights in the absence of any universally recognized morality, but for the sake of simplicity here in the pit, we can at least make room for possibility that cutting off a young woman’s clit is a needless intrusion on her freedom, eh?
So now you also suggest that I am a bigot, however ‘unintentional’?
I can only restate something Waverly said in another post here. I decry the some practises of some cultures. Not the people involved. At no time did I suggest, in any way shape or form, that any person was sub-human. Where the fuck did you infer that from?
your posts come across like a first year sociology major.
I do, however, and I am unashamed by this, suggest that some practises (for example female gential mutilation) are less than human. They are a betrayal of humanity, a betrayal of any sense of the worth of human beings.
Now, as to your statement that there are circumstances under which you would interfere. Which way are you going to have it? Trying to both have your cake and eat it too?