None of us are condoning human rights violations or misogyny. None of us are saying that we should not do anything about them, or that we should not take a stand against them.
Ann, your example about Afghanistan quite proved the point I was trying to make. You had such a severe reaction to the notion of sexually assaulted Afghan girls being driven to commit suicide that you decided to condemn the whole of Afghan society. Moreover, you then stopped contributing to a fund that was supposed to help that society. This is exactly the kind of reaction that Alycone and I are trying to caution against.
I don't know all that much about Afghan culture, so let's shift focus to a culture I do know about. In India, which is equal parts Hindu and Muslim, this same thing happens to girls who are victims of sexual assault. They are driven from their homes so that they shall not taint their families, or they are asked to commit suicide. Under the law in some parts of India, if the rapist is convicted, the rapist is given the option of marrying the girl they raped in exchange for a pardon. This is because the girl's marriage prospects would have been ruined by the notoriety she had gained from the crime, and no man would marry a woman 'sullied' by another man's touch.
This is what gets reported by the news, and this is the aspect of Indian culture that the world will instantly identify it by. Indian culture will instantly become synonymous with misogyny and MISOGYNY ONLY. They don't get to see the respect of the young towards their elders, they don't see a society who treats their teachers with respect bordering on reverence, they don't see families who hold their matriarchs in worship, they don't see siblings have been taught to "cut an olive in eight pieces, and share it equally amongst themselves, setting aside a share for their parents". They don't know that once upon a time, 'a woman could travel safely alone and from one end of the country to the other with a ruby on her open palm'. All the richness and the worthwhile values it has been imbued with over a period of five thousand years, the nuances and the traditions that make up these people's daily lives - they will all be waved aside and demeaned because of one warped aspect of their society.
Let's compare and contrast these two situations, shall we? On one hand, we have a society who's girls have been "sullied" and "dishonoured". Dishonour is the thing above all else that they have been conditioned to avoid. Threat of dishonour is the thing which provokes the most visceral of reactions in an Afghan family. Do they push their emotional reaction aside to examine whether the girl has truly behaved badly? No. Do they set their all-encompassing fear of society aside to try and help and heal these poor girls? No. Do they try and see past the notoriety these girls have unwittingly gained, and see that there is still worth and value left in them? No. So they disown them, wash their hands of them and will them to destroy themselves.
And so these poor girls end their lives in droves, preferring to do it themselves rather than face the long-drawn out death that an uncaring society will surely afford them. And the rapists, the ones that are truly to blame, will continue to ruin other young lives, unchecked and unpunished.
On the other hand, we have you, Ann. You hear reports of young girls being driven to suicide. Misogyny is the one thing above all that life has conditioned you not to tolerate. It is the thing that evokes the most visceral reaction from you, the most extreme emotional response. Do you push your emotional reaction aside to examine whether the all the values, ethics and practices of Afghan society really do conspire together to drive girls to suicide? No. And even if the culture is really misogynist, do you research and review this society to see whether there is anything of worth inherent in its traditions worth salvaging? No. Do you set your all-encompassing hatred of societal misogyny aside to try and help and heal this society? No. So you wash their hands of the entire country, because a society who makes their girls kill themselves deserves to be left unaided by the right-thinking world to go to hell in their own way, right?
So a little Afghan child freezes to death for the lack of an extra blanket, or woman doesn't have enough food rations to feed her baby or, most ironically, an outcast Afghan girl is driven to die in the street because the women's organizations that might have helped her don't have enough sponsors or financial aid to accommodate her. And Afghan society sneers at the values of the West, who will condemn their people and is content to see them destroyed. And they will continue to treat their daughters as badly as ever.
I'm not EQUATING their ACTIONS with yours, Ann. That would be criminally stupid of me. I'm drawing paralells between their REACTIONS and yours. Both are emotional rather than intellectual judgments which end up punishing the innocent unjustly. THIS is what Alycone and I are warning against.
Of course, the cases aren't exactly the same. At most, you might be guilty of negligence while Afghan society is certainly directly culpable of active persecution of those girls. You had the right to withdraw your own monetary contributions (as opposed to the rightness of doing it, mind). They had no right to harass those poor girls to commit suicide. Whatever wrong you did was certainly not at all on the same level as the one they committed.
But ultimately, (from my point of view) you'd still have made a wrong decision because of a knee-jerk emotional reaction and someone innocent would still be punished unjustly because of it.
Cultures aren't made up of just one aspect. There are a myriad of factors in the make-up of a society, different aspects, different values and ethics, different customs and traditions. Some are good, some are bad, some are admirable and some are tragically warped, tragic or downright insane. They're just like people. Condemning the people and customs of an entire country, lock, stock and barrel, because of ONE aspect that it is most notorious for, makes you quite as bad as the ones you are condemning.
Help these people. Take a stand. But make sure that you really ARE helping them first.
