I wonder what the Iraqi faith healer would have to say when he sees an American woman who obviously hates her job, isn’t in a strong social support system because of our fragmented families and communities, and is clearly feeling the emptiness that our consumer-based status system has to offer comes in to see a doctor, is diagnosed in minutes with “depression,” and sent home with a pack of pilles that has essentially been chosen at random. Our system looks pretty funny when viewed from the outside, too.
The author did not say he had one and only answer to all the world, but rather that he had a new perspective. It’s not all so black and white.
While it would be nice if all Iraqi women had the right to marry who they like, and I surely support anyone who is actively fighting for that, the truth is that many women don’t have that choice. They are left with a difficult reality (kind of like the difficult reality that many of us have to work soul-destroying jobs to afford our mortgages.) It seems like the traditional healer gave her some tools for dealing with that difficult reality. It’s an imperfect solution, as most solutions are.
Let’s say she sees a Western psychologist, who tells her to avoid the marriage. Let’s say she listens. What will most likely happen is that other men will feel like there is something wrong with her, and she won’t get married at all. In a place with few opportunities for women, this may make her a dependent on her aging parents for the rest of her life. Without status (provided by children) or money, she may feel a deep sense of failure for not achieving the only goals that she knows. She dies penniless and alone without even the small things that women is deeply patriarchal societies can achieve. Well, either that or she at some point becomes a prostitute to support herself, and the whole thing goes faster when she gets AIDS.
But yeah, keep going. Keep believing you have the one true perspective.
The Spirit Catches you and You Fall Down is a superb book that really tackles this subject of culture and medicine further. It involves a Hmong girl in California with epilepsy. In Hmong culture, epilepsy is seen as a sort of gift and is common among shamans. This made for a lot of conflict and misunderstanding with the Western doctors treating her. In the end, their refusal to understand the cultural context led to tragedy. Culture is real. It may not always be good, but it is always important.
Damn. I was totally expecting mullah nailed her to relieve her of her anxieties. Imagine my disappointment when he merely encouraged her to remain within her cultural traditions, horrific as they are to the truly happy people on the other side of the world.
The faith healer/mullah would almost certainly say that it’s our decadent Western system that permits women to have careers (a.k.a. “soul-destroying jobs” :rolleyes:) and make choices that are at odds with what Allah wants, and that she’d be much happier in a nice patriarchal system under strict religious rules that prohibit her from venturing outside the home unless the men allow it.
That’s not exactly “a new perspective”, any more than faith healing is.
Difficult as it is, there are some Iraqi women who have achieved independence and professional success, and who might have an interesting take on your suggestion that failure to marry who your parents want dooms women to a life of prostitution and AIDS. Maybe this doctor would have provided useful alternatives to the “treatment” offered to the troubled woman described in the OP.
Yep, that’s your evil West alright, emphasizing human rights and forgetting the importance of culture. Except that attitude betrays the forces long held down by oppressive “culture” that are striving for change.
And no, faith healing is not a “perspective” that deserves approving platitudes in the Science section of the New York Times.
Dang, sven, just when I think you’re gaining some mature perspective of your own, you churn out this garbage.
Meh, we in the US aren’t too far removed in time from similar practices against anyone who didn’t own a white tallywacker. The US beats more children to death every year, per capita, than honor killings in the ME and SE Asia. There’s something wrong happening here, too. Glass houses and all that.
Cite for the number of children “beaten to death” each year in the U.S., accompanied by cites for the number of children “beaten to death” in “the ME and SE Asia”?
I really don’t think your comparison works. Maybe if local American towns gathered in town squares for beat-a-child day, and if beating that child is considered the honorable cultural thing to do by the community and if the government is not bringing the child beaters to justice then I’d be able to see the analogy.
But, as far as I know, for the most part, people who beat children to death in the U.S. generally face community censure and jail time.
(As a side note, could you post the source of your child beating stat? I’d like to read up on this as it isn’t anything I had heard before.)
The “honor killings” are most likely ON TOP of the regular old run of the mill frustrated/stupid/poor/don’t know any better beatings/killings that bad parents all around the world do.
And even IF there are significant numbers of American children beaten/inslaved/killed/sold into prostitution/mistreated there is one big difference. Our culture and government generally does NOT think these things are A okay or just business as usual.
Oh and I know it’s apples to oranges comparison, just pointing out that it’s hard to justify criticizing one culture’s practices because they are barbaric when we’re not above drinking the same wine from a different bottle.
To a group of people who place a higher value on honoring their god and culture than on the rights of the individual, our tolerance of individual freedoms at the expense of tradition is just as confounding. The discussion can only degrade into both groups looking at each other and saying “You’re different from me, and that’s baaaaad.”
As others have observed, you’re not only comparing apples to oranges–you’re… man, I can’t even come up with a good analogy. Child abuse in the U.S. is not looked at as a good thing, as honor killings and other forms of oppressing women are in the countries where they happen. People are not beating their children to death on the streets while others look on in approval. Government figures are not beating children to death in public. Etc. Yes, we have problems, but to consider these things remotely comparable is fucking retarded and not remotely useful.
Some cultures, or rather, some aspects of some cultures, *are *bad and wrong. Not all differences need to be respected.
Could be in addition to, or there is probably some overlap. After all, “Slap her down Again Pa” came from somewhere.
And many if not all of the ME countries have outlawed honor killings. Granted the sentences do tend to be lighter indicating at least some official acceptance, but the practice does not seem to be A okay or just business as usual. My point was, if it were A okay or just business as usual you’d expect to see a much higher incidence per capita that generally less acceptable child beating deaths in more civilized corners of the globe.
But that’s the thing: there usually are reproducible double blind studies showing that Woo X works. It’s just that there are lots more showing that it doesn’t.
Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean that the law is enforced. How many local authorities turn a blind eye to honor killings, and how many of these go unreported?
That review (of treatment for dysmenorrhea) is not exactly a ringing endorsement of acupuncture. They state that the effect of acupuncture couldn’t even be reliably distinguished from the effect of sham acupuncture (using a device that simulates needling but does not actually penetrate the skin).
This recent review of acupuncture for pain had the following conclusion:
“A small analgesic effect of acupuncture was found, which seems to lack clinical relevance and cannot be clearly distinguished from bias. Whether needling at acupuncture points, or at any site, reduces pain independently of the psychological impact of the treatment ritual is unclear.”
So RNATB is somewhat correct in that for many forms of woo one can locate some study or other that seems to support them. The problem is that good quality research, involving more rigorous study methods and larger patient sample sizes debunks most such claims (homeopathy is another example of woo claiming scientific legitimacy which on closer examination falls apart).
I’m not sure what double-blinded clinical trials have been performed to evaluate faith healing. Would you need a sham shaman?
