women's rights vs indigenous rites

When women's rights and cultural prohibitions and rites collide, which one takes precedence for you? For expample take female circumscision. Now, most people on these boards would be against it, even though it is a cultural institution in some places. They site that the rights of the girl or woman in question outweight the rites of that particular society.

But what about other laws? Women may not play the didgeridoo for example, in certain cultures. Would you respect that if you were a woman who wanted to give the didge a go? Or would you respect it? What about menstration? Not all temples allow mentrating women inside them. Lets say.. you are visiting a country, it's a short visit and there is a temple you really, really wanted to visti. You are menstruating. You are unable to come back another day. Would you visit that temple anyway, knowing that no-one will know, or do you observe that prohibition?

Just curious where you all stand.

 

Where I stand is that women are not filth to be treated as such.

Female circ is barbaric, same as male circ. Culture comes from tradition, and some traditions are in desparatre need of updating. It is possible to still have a culture, look at foot binding, they don't do that in China anymore, but they are still Chinese people...

I will do whatever a man is allowed to do, and no, I don't think visiting a temple while menstruating is going to cause the temple to burn up... I don't plan to bleed on anything...

Of, course, if these were things that would get me killed, I probably wouldn't be in those countries anyway....

 

Woman's rights trump cultural ones. A menstruating woman is not dirty, that idea has to just go right out the window. And no, if I was on my period and wanted to visit a temple that doesn't allow menstruating women in I would just go anyway. How are they gonna know, make me pull down my pants? Their god can strike me down if he wants to, but no god made those rules, no women made those rules, MEN did - and the men who made those rules are just stupid and clueless.

As far as circumcision, I think it ought to be a choice. That means no babies getting cut up, but adults making an informed decision on what to do with their own genitalia.

 

Human rights in general will always trump culture. I don't care if little boys have been racing camels in the desert for hundreds of years, kidnapping and enslaving children(to race camels in the UAE) goes against their rights as people.

Same with circumcision and FGM.

 

If it is an important cultural practice, you can't ban it. However, you cannot force a woman to make that decision, and you should educate her about it beforehand.

 

Wanna make a bet you can ban it, FGM is banned in Canada, head scarves are banned in french schools. If you mean to say it shouldn't be banned, well...

Some of those decisions she doesn't make, like honour killings, so educating her will not be enough and must be leglislated against. In the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms the notwithstanding clause was created in part so a woman's rights will trump cultural rights.

 

A woman doesn't choose FGM either. She's taken as a little girl,held down by all the women she trusts, and a shard of glass is used to haphazardly cut off her clitoris and outer labia...then she is usually sewn shut.

Where is the choice in that? You can't educate the little girls..what can they do? Children may have their brave moments but they still our weakest members which is why adults are supposed to take care of them not torture them.

 

This actually gets into the discussion of "where do you draw the line" between your rights and other's rights, this is the paradox of modern democratic society and depends on the context. For instance, if women are not allowed into some areas of the mosque and men into other areas, a woman barging into a men's area in the name of her rights is wrong.

Similarly, if a woman is not allowed to play a certain instrument in a religious session because it may signify a bad omen, then that should not be done, but if she does it in her private home , who cares?

In India, women who menstruate are not allowed into temples, women who are hindu (some of them) will follow these rules. A christian woman who has no religious basis for visiting the temple will not care when she visits for the sake of tourism. However, a hindu woman barging into a temple and declaring to everyone that she is menstruating is not right.

 

Obviously you can ban it. My point was more that you cannot ban it morally.

And apparently you don't know shit about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, because the notwithstanding clause was created to put power with legislators rather than with with the courts.

 

I do know that about the CRF, but insertions were made so women's rights would trump cultural rights and notwithstanding was cited, but not in the notwithstanding clause. A woman lawyer at the time fought to have the insertions of 'women's rights... notwithstanding cultural rights' or something to that effect, but I couldn't find the citing again so I got sloppy in my wording and mentioned the actual clause, oops.

About banning it morally... 'morals' is subjective, one can argue it's immoral to cut off a girl's clit without her consent. Are honour killings moral. Banning these things is no less moral than those cultural activities themselves. If a 10 year old girl does get educated and decides against FGM but her people impose it on her anyways than is it 'morally wrong' to have legislation to protect her.

And there are reports of girls running away when they come of age cos they don't want it done, why should we protect cultural rights over her rights, nope, I feel women's rights should trump cultural rights when it comes to life and limb or quality of life issues.

 

i agree that women's rights trump cultural rights.

However, the example given of the temple is an interesting one. Here in the United States, i believe religious sites are privately owned. Since they are privately owned, the owners can exclude anyone they want for any reason. So yes, they would be well within their rights to exclude menstrating women. That doesn't make it 'right' that they do it, but it is well within their rights to do so. Think of Augusta National not allowing Women here in the United States. I dont believe non muslims are allowed in any islamic mosque. That sucks, but ultimately it is their decision...

Here's something that happened to us in egypt. We had been walking around all day and we got a soda. We were passing it around and my little brother was whining. Well, my mom goes to take a sip and the vendor snatches it from my mom and hands it to my little brother and yells at my mother that she had no right to drink before all the men drink and he honestly looked like he was going to hit her. That's culture going too far...

 

Now see, my dumb ass would have been on the news because I would have punched the shit out of that vendor for snatching MY SODA from my hand and telling me that I'm not allowed to drink it until all the males did so.

His jaw would have been broken and it would have been worth it. Bastards.

 

No, HUMAN rights outweigh societies mores. Slavery was once considered "OK" this is against humanity, of course, I don't give a shit if it is "someone's culture" it is WRONG. So is mutilating little girls. So is molesting children. So is genocide. So is kidnapping little boys to use as slave armies. SO is thowing acid on a girl's face, because she "looked at a man the wrong way." So is killing people for sport, YET all of these things are "part of someone's culture." Makes no difference. If it degrades, harms or kills people, it is wrong, and no amount of "culture" will make it OK.

You can morally ban behaviors which degrade harm or kill people. Why would you think otherwise?

 

Gaah you people are bad for putting words in people's mouths. I'm not justifying forcing girls into FGM. I'm saying it is immoral to ban a procedure if it is part of her cultural heritage and she (making an educated and informed decision) decides she wants to do it.

 

how often do women choose FGM? or other cultural practices that often times leave women shafted?

My guess is not often.

It is not immoral to 'ban' those practices. Their culture is immoral if they have something like that.

 

I see some very important problems with the logic of this argument in this setting (women's rights vs. cultural practices). You're focusing solely on the one female being cut. What you're missing here is the fact that it is WOMEN who insist on the practice! It is the mother, grandmother, aunt, elder sister who supports this practice. So we're pitting one woman's right to groom her child against another woman's right to choose her prefered body modification. We're not discussing male-imposed cultural restrictions against women's rights. You can argue all you want about how this must be male imposed at the root, but the ethnographic evidence argues that it is the elder females who impose this (even to the point of not allowing her son to marry an uncircumcised woman), not men.

And, you've got faulty facts. Infibulation, the version in which they sew the vagina mostly shut, is the rarest form of female circumcision. It is far more common to only remove parts (ranging from just a nip off the tip of the clit to the clit and outer lips). In Saudi Arabia, women practice the nip-off-the-tip version, which they generally have performed in a sanitary hospital by doctors.

 

I think it depends on how you read that. As I see it, you cannot legislate morality -- look at the drug war, look at how many women had abortions before Roe V. Wade, etc.

I do think it is incredibly irresponsible to attempt to ban female circumcision. It will continue to be practiced, but, as with back-alley abortions, it will be more dangerous that way. Harm reduction campaigns, which focus on providing sanitary instruments and local anasthetic, have done a lot of good. Increasing numbers of those performing the procedures are medically trained RNs at least -- which again reduces the potential harm. If it is criminalized, then providing sanitary instruments will become criminalized, leaving people who choose to continue to practice in secrecy with only unsanitary, perhaps dulled, instruments. What good does that do? Legislation will do no good -- only educational types of interventions will change anything.

In slavery issues, it is important to consider that slavery does not everywhere have the same connotations. A friend of mine recently did a presentation in a seminar we have together. He discussed slavery in Morocco -- the slave status just means that you are the first to be sent away in hard economic times, but otherwise you are treated as a member of the family you were sold to. Comparing that to the brutal slavery practiced in the US is like apples to oranges. As measures have been put into place to abolish slavery there, many former slaves have experienced a significant DECREASE in their real standard of living, since they no longer had the traditional social networks to rely on in hard times. So did abolition really do any good?

 

I just hope that everyone who finds it so easy to condemn other cultures as "immoral" passes the same judgment on our own culture on a daily basis. This type of simplistic condemnation really saddens me. It does, though, help me understand how we got a second term with Bush.

 

Amen to that! Westerners are very quick and very good at judging the practices of other cultural groups as wrong or immoral while holding their own up as the 'right' way of doing things. Giving your opinion on a topic such as this is fine, simply stating that something is bad or wrong because you do not do is simply insensitive. Fascinating question Kiz, I'm going to go away and think about this one because theres a lot that needs to be considered.

 

I just hope that everyone who finds it so easy to justify crimes through 'culture' would be willing to accept what they doom others to. This type of simplistic justification really saddens me. It does, though, help me understand how human rights are continually ignored throughout the world.


Look, i believe in equality. I think anything less is immoral. Simplistic? Fine. You say it like its a slur.