In the social sciences, it is important to keep an attitude of cultural relativism when studying people from different backgrounds than you. You have to keep in mind the different attitudes their background has instilled in them and they way they perceive things differently. But just because you take their actions in the context of their lives doesn’t mean that you don’t pass judgement on them. Morally reprehensible behavior is morally reprehensible, even if a person’s culture does encourage it.
I say this because recently, two women and three teenaged girls were wounded by gunshot and buried alive in Pakistan. Their crime? Wanting to marry of their own will. A Pakistani senator, Sardar Israrullah Zehri, defended these actions by saying that burying women alive for independent thinking is part of their “tribal custom”. Many other senators called bullshit on this, saying that there is no tradition of burying people alive, that it’s against the teachings of Islam, and that they people involved should be duly punished. Zehri’s comment had no truth behind it, it was merely a way of diminishing the seriousness of the crime, which it wouldn’t have even if there was truth to it. Murder is murder, no matter what kind of excuses you can dream up.
This is a perfect example of why feminism is needed. Even if you’re an MRA who thinks rape culture is bullshit and men are at a disadvantage in western society, there is no doubt that being a woman is a distinct disadvantage in other societies. As long as heinous violence against women is defended as some kind of quaint tradition, there will be a need for people to fight on behalf of women.
Filed under: feminism, global feminism, misogyny, victim blaming, violence | 3 Comments
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1) Holy friggin’ crap, that is a horrible news story.
2) I love how you discern how cultural relativism still allows a certain amount of judgement, though disallows us (rightfully) from judging based simply on the views of our own culture. You managed to make sense of a complex philosophy -which is more than I can say for the numerous classes I took in college where “cultural relativism”=”a judgement free zone”.
I fortunately had a professor who actually realized you can put things in context and still judge them morally.
I subscribe to the philosophy of amoralism. That’s philosophy. Whether or not I want people to have the right not to be murdered in society is politics. Is is terribly disgusting to me to think that women and girls were brutally murdered especially over something as basic as wanting to marry of their own will. But the problem would even be bring cultural values, morality or religion into the issue at all. I do not care what anyone’s moral beliefs, religious beliefs or culture is; we need to stop murder, especially such brutal and relatively unprovoked murder.