Agreed.
This thread reminds me of a college class I once taught in which the students read “The Lottery.” One student remarked later that we had no right to judge the people in the village because stoning people to death once a year was “part of their culture.” He was serious.
Fuck their culture.
Yes, it is incorrect. You are comparing an act committed by a mentally ill person with an act committed by mentally healthy people as part of their culture. It’s not the same thing. Your argument is disingenuous at best.
Please ignore the previous post as the point has already been made.
Isn’t that the same Aryan culture that, relatively, recently made turning millions of human beings into smoke and ashes into a national industry?
But somehow you now find it necessary to make a comparison with the condemnation?
That’s my problem here, it’s not that it’s “politically incorrect” to criticize other cultures, it’s that it’s the height of arrogance to claim that my culture is superior to theirs.
Point me to all the posts that say you shouldn’t be horrified.
The fact that our culture once did shitty evil things does take away our right to proclaim that our culture is superior IMHO.
Is the guy that stopped beating his wife really morally superior to the guy who still does?
CMC fnord!
I recall reading a very sad tale in I think The Emerald City (I could be wrong, I’ve read so many Iraq books that they’re starting to blend together). There was a physician who saw this sort of thing close up, in the months after the occupation started. Families would take their daughters in for hymen inspections to make sure they were “pure” and he would have to report back…naturally, this would sometimes lead to their death, even though girls can lose their hymen and still be a virgin. He didn’t want to leave or speak up becauae it’d be too dangerous and the people really needed his help so he attempted to do secret hymen reconstruction when he could get away with it so the groom would be satisifed on their honeymoon and thus spare her life. That’s just plain fucked up right there…I don’t understand why the men are so scared of female sexuality, because you know no one cares if they have pre-marital sex.
crowmanyclouds: So its never appropriate to judge or criticize another culture? Ever? I go into this line of reasoning upthread if you are interested in commenting on this.
Sure, it’s arrogant to hold one’s culture as superior to another. But in this circumstance, so what?
We are talking about the socially-condoned, barbaric, public execution of a young girl based on religious reasons. Wake up!
When I encounter cultural phenomena like this I think of that wartime concept of “the point of the spear” – the idea that the soldiers on the front line are just the “point of the spear” with the entire support structure of the armed forces and the US industrial infrastructure behind them.
I see the people who stoned that girl as “the point of the spear” but they were far from the only ones. The citizens and police who stood around and condoned the stoning by their inaction, or in some cases their vocal support, are also part of the problem. And all the people in the society who would just think the gal “got what she deserved” are part of the problem, too. That might well be most Yazidi people. Sick culture, if you ask me.
Yes. Unless he’s merely giving his arm a rest. If he’s stopped for good, he is in fact morally superior, having recognized the error of his ways and chosen to amend his conduct.
Mr. Bobbit, for instance, is a born-again feminist.
EC:
Not so. The US suffers from far more school shootings than any other country in the world. Even if we condemn each individual act as being the result of some form of mental illness, we still haven’t explained why such illness is virtually unique to America. Taken together, these acts are an expression of our culture – especially our lenient gun laws. I’m sure the Yazidi would also point to our loose morals and mistaken religious beliefs.
I guess I just find it amazing, and somewhat inexplicable, that a thread allegedly devoting to pitting an atrocity seems to have as, its primary focus, the superiority of American/Western culture over that of the Middle East. When we read about the atrocities committed in Yugoslavia, for example, I don’t seem to remember people reacting in that way.
Here’s another example. In a short post about the history of the American Legion, Rick Perlstein notes :
Hmmm…upstanding American citizens who think a mass murderer should be elevated to the status of a saint…
Back to this particular stoning — an article in the Chicago Tribune said that her Uncle was most likely the ringleader. Her own Uncle!
Her Father tried to protect her by sending her to a priest’s house to hide, but she was abducted by her Uncle and a couple of other men. And then murdered.
Knowing what we’ve seen in American culture with “funny Uncles” (i.e., lotsa molestation), it makes me wonder if that’s a problem in Iraq, too. Does anyone know if it’s possible she was being molested by him?
The reason this kind of thing is unique to America is because our culture, a very young one as compared to the rest of the world, is one built on a veritable mountain of spent shell casings. Nothing in America would be what it is today without our love affair with the gun. That said, our culture does NOT condone, and has NEVER in my memory condoned shooting school children. Yet certain parts of Middle Eastern culture not only condone, but in fact support, the outright public murder of an INNOCENT FEMALE CHILD, in the streets, in FRONT of the POLICE! A culture that would not just allow, but condone and/or support that is INFERIOR to cultures that do, or would not.
Say my statement is not true, and Middle Eastern cultures are in fact superior to cultures that do NOT engage in “honor killings” (the irony is painful) then the crime of murder, more specifically homocide, becomes hardly a crime above, say, petty theft, which we all know is a GIANT load of crap.
The fact is that “honor killings” are committed by insecure, insignificant men, needing, because they have nothing else, the power to impose their will on smaller, weaker women in the name of some horridly arcane religious rules and laws, and as the men make the rules, they decide that killing in the name of these rules is accepted, and by so doing they devalue human life to the point of humans as property. We’ve been there, done that, we know better.
As far as Yugoslavia; NATO made their point. The entire world commented.
You’re being disingenous Mr. Svinlesha. Society (more specifically a military court) has spoken about his actions, and he is locked away. Stating by action that we as a country will not tolerate those types of atrocities. You know good and well an American Legion post does not speak for an entire society. Stop it.
Just because we yell loud about how good we are don’t make us actually that great, you know. You’re right, though, once the horses are gone we often make sure nobody’ll get the barn door open again.
If you haven’t read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” do so. The story was written back in 1948 and shows the universality of this kind of thinking – it happens, for superficially differing “reasons,” again and again, across many (perhaps all) cultures and ethnicities.
Those of us in America who would condemn all Iraqis or all Kurds or all Muslims for this stoning had better be prepared, ourselves, to pay the same penalty for the death of Matthew Shepard. Don’t argue that you personally are innocent – our society “is capable of” that kind of killing just as much as “their society” “is capable of” honor killings.
I do not condone or excuse either case. It’s hideous, the perpetrators should be brought to justice, and the practice should be stamped out.
But if we’re building a gallows for “a culture that allows x,” we’re gonna need a pretty big gallows.
Sailboat
No, I’m not being disingenuous. I might be wrong, but please believe me when I tell you that I’m making my arguments in good faith.
Yes, Calley was eventually sentenced. But that doesn’t in itself mean that the American Legion does not speak, at the very least, for a large portion of our society. I mean, we see in the case of the Iraq stoning several of the men have already been jailed, and, according to Tamerlaine, prominent members of Yaziki society have condemned the act. Yet people here are still condemning Yaziki society for it. And rightly so, since there undoubtedly exists a large portion of that society which condones this hateful act.
I’m not against condemning this horror, of course, but like CMC, I’m much less comfortable with the assertions of cultural superiority that seem to accompany it.
He was paroled in 1974.
Not that his case is terribly relevant to whether one may express disgust over support for stoning women.
Nor is that comment relevant to this thread. The question is not whether one may express disgust at the cultural support of stoning women, but whether one may express the feeling that any given human being is inherently morally superior to any other because of where he was born. The question is about people who seem to assume that if they were raised in a stoning culture, they would magically just know it was wrong and fight it from birth. The implication is that they weren’t born into a less brutal (debatable) culture accidentally – it was because they are inherently more decent human beings, or something.
If you were not being disingenuous, I do apologize. The sentencing of Calley though means PRECISELY that the American Legion does NOT speak for a large portion of society. If they did, Calley would be a free man
(which, on a side note Jackmannii It wasn’t immediately clear according to the wiki article on him that he was locked up or not, but I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that if the AL was trying to raise a legal defense fund, that he was in fact still in the can)
But as far as I can tell, he ain’t.
As far as Yakizi society, of course the prominent people condemn it, it’s in their interest to do so, the people who need to truly condemn it are the average people who must decide that the public murder of an innocent child is unacceptable. I hope for it, but do not see it happening.
Your lack of comfort with assertions of cultural superiority does not negate the existance of superiority. As a person, I am the very same as the man who threw the first stone (her uncle, according to fessie. Yikes!) As a member of Western Society, I can say that the culture in which I live, while flawed in many ways, is superior to that of the culture that allows, and condones this horrible activity.