I have not been to the country and cannot comment on all aspects of their culture, but to say that ending female genital mutilation would earn them more respect is a no-brainer, at least to me. Do you view this differently? Do you think they should continue with this practice?
Most people, including Somali women (and men), find the practice abhorrent in spite of what the internets may lead you to believe. I do, and I'm sure everyone on this board does too. This is a no brainer. Question is, why so quick to judge another culture that you, and the author by extension have little knowledge of. There's really nothing wrong about being a culture snob, but lets call it what it is.
Good topic. Though I havent read much of this thread, just the 1st page I don't like that lazy type of "tolerance". Its a front for being "open minded". When really its almost being a passive apologist against the facts of something being morally wrong. In being so PC all the time trying to protect people's feelings, we lessen having reasonable discussions about things. We make it where someone that has a strong opinion is "fascist". Or being "militant" is being exactly like the very oppressive forces you speak against. We have to start seeing if the person is RIGHT, and if they have any true ill intentions. There's a good reason for "live and let live" I think. Basically its the acceptance that bad things happen to people in life, and life will always be imperfect. There will be winners and losers even at our best. Not to mention the sensitivities of trying to change people's culture. Thats the start of wars, which runs counter to the message of peace. And fighting wars, most liberals arent equipped to do.
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." We see the solutions faster than people adopt them. Its very upsetting that people just simply don't "get it". We see the final outcome, and get impatient that our diplomacy isnt working. However, in order for people to "get it" swiftly, you must use force to do it. Force is hypocritical to anti-suffering. But if its about getting it to "work", its the element you have to use to attain results. Or, we have to rely on complete science and technology to nanny people away from their own impulses. Using eugenics, DNA coding, electronic surveillance, etc. I find that chilling. I think scientific tampering has its own ethical dilemmas. Hows that not equally tampering? It WILL work, no doubt. Conscious, moral people will come out of it. I just think itd be the end of "organic" humans and into synthesized humans. Culture gives people identity. Good and bad, its uniquely human. Science needs to address ways to give people identity instead of just being "sentient". Science has its own ideas of what is rewarding, which goes against 85% human impulses...anyway... We can only hope that progress, like evolution, is incremental and evolving. On the topic, I used to be against militant atheism. But I understand why they do it now. You have to ***** over ANY belief system that leads to suffering, cut right through the divinity, simple as that.
I think it is the INSTA-FIX mentality Change should be slow and deliberate. I find it funny that the Scientific Approach is not scientific in a sense The Science is slow methodical testing and then seeing results and then doing it over and over again. but Folx want to just step in . . . make a change [a fix] and then figure it is done and walk away They GUESS what the results will be and any unintended consequences. . will . .they were worth it This is not computer where you can swap out a part These are people and change must come slowly . . . You cannot come after the fact and say . . OOPS .. I DIDN'T THINK THAT WOULD HAPPEN!! Rocket River
Afghanistan's dirty little secret Joel Brinkley San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, August 29, 2010 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/28/INF21F2Q9H.DTL Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy's father. Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to "touch and fondle them," military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. "The soldiers didn't understand." All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery. Her report, "Pashtun Sexuality," startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were shocked - and repulsed. For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it. "Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy." Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun. President Hamid Karzai is Pashtun, from a village near Kandahar, and he has six brothers. So the natural question arises: Has anyone in the Karzai family been bacha baz? Two Afghans with close connections to the Karzai family told me they know that at least one family member and perhaps two were bacha baz. Afraid of retribution, both declined to be identified and would not be more specific for publication. As for Karzai, an American who worked in and around his palace in an official capacity for many months told me that homosexual behavior "was rampant" among "soldiers and guys on the security detail. They talked about boys all the time." He added, "I didn't see Karzai with anyone. He was in his palace most of the time." He, too, declined to be identified. In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are a popular, often weekly, pastime. Young boys dress up as girls, wearing makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home. A recent State Department report called "dancing boys" a "widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape." So, why are American and NATO forces fighting and dying to defend tens of thousands of proud pedophiles, certainly more per capita than any other place on Earth? And how did Afghanistan become the pedophilia capital of Asia? Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle. "How can you fall in love if you can't see her face," 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. "We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful." Even after marriage, many men keep their boys, suggesting a loveless life at home. A favored Afghan expression goes: "Women are for children, boys are for pleasure." Fundamentalist imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are "unclean" and therefore distasteful. One married man even asked Cardinalli's team "how his wife could become pregnant," her report said. When that was explained, he "reacted with disgust" and asked, "How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?" That helps explain why women are hidden away - and stoned to death if they are perceived to have misbehaved. Islamic law also forbids homosexuality. But the pedophiles explain that away. It's not homosexuality, they aver, because they aren't in love with their boys. Addressing the loathsome mistreatment of Afghan women remains a primary goal for coalition governments, as it should be. But what about the boys, thousands upon thousands of little boys who are victims of serial rape over many years, destroying their lives - and Afghan society. "There's no issue more horrifying and more deserving of our attention than this," Cardinalli said. "I'm continually haunted by what I saw." As one boy, in tow of a man he called "my lord," told the Reuters reporter: "Once I grow up, I will be an owner, and I will have my own boys." © 2010 Joel Brinkley Joel Brinkley is a professor of journalism at Stanford University and is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times. Contact The Chronicle via our online form: sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1.
I almost had to laugh at the ridiculousness on a whole other level of pouring hundreds of billions into Afghanistan.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to finalsbound again. Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle. "How can you fall in love if you can't see her face," 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. "We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful." You can't fix stupid.
I could have sworn I posted an article about the very same issue in post 55 of this thread. Where's my rep?
I mean serious .. . how could you fall in love with someone you cannot see. . . i mean . .they might be UGLY!!! Rocket River
I would imagine it is very difficult to fall in love with a woman you are never allowed to see or talk to.
