On cultural intolerance

[alias_sqbr]

(A follow on from Speaking about bad ideas...atheism and race! since a lot of the same arguments came up in the comments)

Why I see cultural intolerance as racist: VERY few people in polite modern western society are explicitly racist in the "I hate everyone with dark skin" way. I tend to use "racist" to mean any tendency in society which

Comments

[kadeton]

I mean you can't help but have values and judge other people by them, and since you don't grow up in a vacuum chances are you're going to end up seeing people from your own culture as being (on average) better since they follow your values more closely.

I would say it is essential that you have values and judge other people by them. The way you phrased that makes it sound like having values is an undesirable trait. I also think that societies can, to an extent, be measured by their attitudes towards "basic" or "universal" human rights... while that is perhaps a Western concept, I believe it is based upon sound reasoning. Others might not agree, which is why I think it's important that people realise that there is no such thing as an objective judgement.

On a related note, I find the attitudes towards human rights in American society to be incomprehensible and savage in many areas, including their use of the death penalty. Every society has failings in human rights, and that is inevitable... but at the same time, some societies have more problems in that regard than others, and I have no problem with criticising them for it. The old rebuttal of "You can't criticise my faults because you have faults too" is the stupidest and most logically misguided argument possible (not aimed at anyone in particular, that line of reasoning just bugs the crap out of me because I hear it all the time).

Forced sterilisation can be justified in cases where it improves quality of life (hoo boy, there's a subjective area). However, in cases where it can't be medically justified, it's viewed as being easily as reprehensible as female genital mutilation - the forced sterilisation of Jewish women under the Nazi regime is commonly presented as one of the most monstrous aspects of their campaign. Consent is the issue that separates it and female genital mutilation from labiaplasty; regardless of whether that consent can really be said to be informed, it's still an important distinction, which is why plastic surgery isn't as big an issue. There's a world of difference between choosing to conform and being forced to conform.

And really, shouldn't we be working to fix the injustices we perpetuate before telling off other people for theirs?

I don't see why it's a problem to do both. Your point on the colonialist mindset is very important, though. Change should come from within a society, not without. It's okay to help change, but not to force it.

[alias_sqbr]

EDIT: Forgot to say: I'm still figuring out my stance on the whole "Values are important but everything's subjective so how do you judge stuff?" thing.

Oh, yes, I think there's LOTS of things wrong with american society, from the death penalty to the lack of preferential voting. I'm not saying we can't criticise america, I'm saying that we can do so without forgetting the good points and complexities of their society, and tend to frame it as wanting those parts of America which agree with our values to prevail rather than wanting to take them over and convert them. When we criticise other countries we aren't always so nuanced, and that is what I think is bad.

The thing is, according to an article I read a lot of what's seen here as "female genital mutilation" is consensual, done because the girls feel it's a necessary part of being a "proper woman". So apart from the poorer medical situation it is pretty equivalent to labiaplasty. Which isn't to say I'm in favour of it, just that's it's complicated.

[kadeton]

Hmm. That's essentially the definitional difference between criticism and prejudice, isn't it? Seems a bit self-evident.

I apologise, my understanding of female genital mutilation is limited. I was under the impression that it was generally performed on children, and was intended to make sex more painful. That seems far removed from cosmetic modification (which is not to say that the promotion of labiaplasty is a good thing).

There's an interesting grey area: how informed do you have to be before it's okay to criticise? Also: how many roads must a man walk down? :P

[alias_sqbr]

Well, yes, but that's why this post is against intolerance and not criticism :)

My understanding of FGM is pretty limited too, and I think it varies a LOT depending on region etc.

There's an interesting grey area: how informed do you have to be before it's okay to criticise? Also: how many roads must a man walk down? :P

42 :D

But yes, it's hard. I mean we have to make judgements about all this stuff (foreign policy, the environment, politics in general etc) and if we go by the crappy generalisations of popular culture we'll probably make the wrong decisions, but it's not feasible to get a really detailed understanding of EVERYTHING. This is why I try to identify better crappy generalisations, and good rules of thumb like "it's better to let people within a country create their own change than force it from outside" but then the information I make those judgements based on is itself flawed...