Friday 31 August 2007

Cultural sensitivity

According to this article, the "fixation on cultural sensitivity is changing the debate around female genital mutilation, with a growing number of professors and women's rights activists becoming hesitant to condemn the practice".

My response to this has to be, would they have been, are they still, equally hesitant to condemn slavery? (it still exists, it is a well established tradition in some areas). Would they have had difficulty in condemning foot-binding in Chinese culture?

There is an interesting post on Global Voices about the tradition of over-feeding women in Mauritania where it is sexy for women to be fat. A commenter on an earlier post had said "but it is not their fault, this is how they were educated". Similar arguments apply.

Being aware of cultural issues and sensitivities cannot mean that harmful practices should be condoned. And I notice that the majority of these issues are harm caused to women.

3 comments:

  1. There is simply no excuse ever for harming women, not kids or men either for that matter. Or animals. Why hurt any living creature if it can be avoided? I've never understood that, as little as I can understand war acts in general. People who does this need help to get away from that behavior and feel good by themselves in other ways, more human ways...

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  2. "Being aware of cultural issues and sensitivities cannot mean that harmful practices should be condoned. And I notice that the majority of these issues are harm caused to women."

    Good and thought-provoking point. FWIW, I used to teach anthropology and offer clitoridectomy as a case study in being an issue that different people feel very strongly about. For the "pro" side, I'd offer up an argument by Jomo Kenyatta, the anthropology-trained first president of Kenya who -- of course -- also happened to be male...

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  3. I've been looking up Jomo Kenyatta's arguments today. He seems to say, from what I can find, that abolition would abolish the whole Kikiyu institution. I understand that some of the efforts are trying to replace it with alternative rites of passage, of purification, which can similarly give identity etc. It's a long process and one which needs to be conducted on several fronts.

    So that's what you are saying too Captain Lifecruiser, they need otherways to feel good.

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Forethoughts, afterthoughts, any thoughts. Tell me.

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