I read the article and understand that given how they believe the body physically matures these practices make sense and are normal for them. As an outsider I see these rituals as strange but I can’t condemn them all as deviants.
I just wanted to say though that my mother and father used the same rationale of ‘for my own good’ and ‘I didn’t seem to suffer too much in the long run’ as reasons why my childhood abuse wasn’t really abusive.
Just because someone doesn’t turn into a deviant after suffering molestation does not mean it was good for them.
Beaten or threatened with it, that’s coercive force. Which makes it rape.
Fuck me if I’m unenlightened for not thinking it’s perfectly acceptable behavior because it’s a ‘different culture.’
I tend to condemn things like cutting off a clitoris and ‘honor killing’ the same way. I can live with being the kind of ‘bad person’ who’d like the world to exist without those things.
True, there’s a lot to be considered and I didn’t mean to make an exhaustive list.
I don’t really mean to justify their behavior either, as I don’t completely understand it and I am hardly qualified even if I wanted to. And like I said, I’m generally opposed to coercion in any form.
However, my reaction is not one of immediate indignation and disgust. I see many shades of gray here and an opportunity for people to understand our own cultural norms a little better.
catsix
I don’t think anyone accusing you of being bad. Just playing fast and loose with your language.
The real question is what’s to be done about it. I don’t think anyone should coerce anyone to do anything ever. But that’s not a very practical viewpoint.
Should we start imprisoning all of these 14 year old boys that coerce 9 years old to have sex with them? Basically, that would mean imprisoning the entire population of men over 13 since the older men would have already done the same thing as well. Would that make you feel better?
Giving oral sex to babies and young kids to calm them down? YUCK!!! That’s just not right. And how does it come them down. Stick a bottle in their mouth for goodness sake.
And what if, for instance, there is a “culture” that consists only of a family on a deserted island, and the “majority”, i.e. the powerful adults, think it’s okay for force themselves on the children? Does that make it okay?
Any breach of freedom, even for the very young, is unacceptable in any culture (except in emergencies or breaches of the law.) If it were a mutually acceptable act, and the act didnt contain any unforeseen consequences for the child (for instance, intercourse,) that’s another story.
It is perhaps important to note that moral relativism, specifically from the view of cultures as the dominant determinant of moral behavior, dictates that there is more or less no higher morality than that of the culture. Thus, when making moral pronouncements, one must implicitly or explicitly reference a culture.
Given this, there is no contradiction in saying, “They are right” and “I disagree with them and I am right” because the correct version of the sentences is, “They are right [to them]” and “They are wrong [to us].”
I see no reason why relativism should imply some sort of stasis of judgment or action.
Therefore, erislover, you are of the opinion that there is nothing inherently and necessarily wrong in forcing nine-year-old girls into being sex toys. It is a logical conclusion to your statement. The “wrong” is merely a matter of social convention.
So you’d have no real problem with slavery either. Any repugnance you might feel towards it is mere social convention.
Thanks for that link; every time I saw the title of this thread I had a vague memory of this tribe. I have no idea where I read about them; probably not in my single freshman anthro class in college.
One funny thing I remember about the Sambia that isn’t mentioned in the link (unless I missed it, I skimmed through it kinda quick) is that when it comes time for the young men or boys to be told about how they must have sex with the women, they react in sheer horror at the disgusting thought.
I’m not a cultural relativist personally, I’m a little more extreme, but yes, for cultural relativists that’s true.
Some places that address moral relativism, and some relevant quotes about it:
Why would you say that? I might have a very big problem with slavery. My justifications for this simply stop at the highest moral-epistemological level possible, which may be, in this case, society’s norms or customs.
" And in the long run the younger boys don’t seem to suffer poor consequences in terms of living a happy life within their community."
I see this kind of statement a wee bit too often for my liking with these kinds of issues.
Given how hard it generally is for many people to talk about what we would legally define as sexual abuse even in cultures that have repudiated it, I think its awfully premature to be too confident about these kinds of statements.
