People get awful quiet when I point out that this kind of violence correlates to men much more closely than it does to any particular culture.
There’s a reason that the fastest way to improve quality of life across all cultures is to empower women legally, financially and educationally. Faster by far than simply making a country richer.
Well specifically, Amartya Sen’s research showed that when it got better for women it got better for kids who then survived to adulthood, were healthier and more likely to be educated.
Of course, ultimately the problem is always men. It’s the same rhetorical argument against gun regulation in the US: “it’s not guns, it’s people.”
But religion, beliefs and culture are very powerful tools to galvanize, enable and justify cruelty and violence. A lot of wars would not have been fought as fiercely and effectively if the soldiers had not been given the motivation of a divine mandate…
A handful of power hungry leaders harnessing the fear of death, existential anguish and the unexplained nature of our existence to control the masses and get them to do their bidding is one of the most terrifying invention in human history.
In NC two male legislators have proposed legislation that would legalize using deadly force on women for abortion, including the use of IUD’s and in vitro.
Yes, men are almost always the problem. It’s a constant. But it’s not like imprisoning or executing every man is the solution. The actual actionable problem is culture and religion. How did these male NC legislators come to power? Through thousands of women voting for them too. The culture and religion of these women have normalized and made it acceptable to support and vote for men like that. Their culture and religion have made it acceptable for many women to support legislation that legalizes deadly force on other women.
In all parts of the world, women perpetuate and commit the very barbaric practices that keep them down because their culture and religion have convinced them this is how things should be.
Religious fanaticism is the real problem. Christianity was the worst at some point. Then enlightenment happened. But Christianity as a political force is making a comeback. Other regions and religions have yet to experience a lasting reckoning. Iran and Egypt regressed. Etc.
Culture and religion are ideas. They change over time. Through discourse, debate, exchange, protests, activism, literature, story telling, horrific events, political elections and campaigning, what we teach to our children especially our sons, etc.
We’re in the “food for thought” sub. What is this place for?
Masculinity and patriarchy are ideas, too, but apparently the only ideas we should debate are everyone else's. More to the point, if debate defeated bad ideas then why am I constantly subjected to bad ideas that were debunked decades ago? How much more discourse before the Burger Reich casts aside their flags and idols and skull calipers?
>What is this place for?
It's for religious fundamentalists to say that their misogyny is better than other religions', apparently.
Broader evidence is that the culture changes if women are empowered (Amartya Sen). But of course the foreign interventions for that purpose have been axed for being too woke.
Do you have actual data for that, or is that a feel good assertion. Worldwide, exactly how common among the 7 billion people on earth is this sort of murder practiced, vs the statistics among various religions and political systems. And don’t conflate ALL violence against women with culturally CELEBRATED violence.
Traditional cultures are fairly well undifferentiated in abusing and disempowering women. And the progressive movement that massively succeeded in empowering them is a global one.
Yeah it’s the beauty of testosterone (+other hormones), more aggression, more risk tolerance, more competitiveness:
Cons
Men commit 80% of crime
Men commit 95% of violent crime
Men commit 99% of sexual crime
Men make of 95% of prison population
Pros
Bigger, stronger, faster
Higher drive to be successful (social hierarchy) which funnily leads to more success and more failure compared to women - think a bell curve distribution more flattened
Two positions were put forward in previous comments relating to the topic at hand:
All cultures are equal (with sarcasm)
Violence correlates to men
My position:
Cultures are not equal. Morality in Iraq seems to be that its a reason for celebration to kill a young girl, other cultures happily mutilate their childrens genitals at birth (fgm and circumcisions), other cultures love their tea boys, other cultures hunt endagered animals for fun, there is a long list of nominees for the terrible people awards
Oh ok yes I agree with you, I couldn't tell exactly what comment you were replying to but now I see and get your point. Well I'm not sure I agree about the success thing as I feel like that could be due to social factors- I guess it's a battle of Paglia's 'There was no female Mozart because there was no female Jack the Ripper' vs Virginia Woolf's imagining of a Judith Shakespeare and the societal factors that would've got in her way.
I was looking at UK data but these trends are cross-cultural as its biological. Thats why your american sources are close but not exact, epect small variations.
Good job missing the part where it repeatedly said the men in the family. Not saying that to be a disgusting FeMinISt but because that’s what it actually says
I've never heard someone say "all cultures are equal," that is an odd way to frame it. There's plenty of violence against women in western culture. There is no federal minimum age for marriage in the US and in half of its states, girls as young as 10 are being married off. The US has spousal rape loopholes in a dozen states.
Western liberal democracies have a better track record for civil rights in recent decades, but it's been a hard fight against reactionary conservatism even there. A woman couldn't get her own bank account in the US until 1974.
> I've never heard someone say "all cultures are equal," that is an odd way to frame it.
For some reason, every time some awful story comes out of the ME, central Asia, Africa, etc. there's some small % of redditors who think they are the smartest people in the room for not falling for the idea that we should engage in complete cultural moral relativism - a position that almost nobody believes.
I assume some of those people just want to feel superior like "I'm a liberal but not a le reddit liberal who's a delusional idiot." But some of the rest of them are just racists who want you to remember that us white westerners would never do such a thing.
> A woman couldn't get her own bank account in the US until 1974.
It was still a crime to be gay in parts of the US in 2003 lol.
They love bringing up the credit cards. Whenever a barbaric religious practice is rightfully criticized for what they do to people in the present day, it’s always a matter of time before some idiot brings up western women’s credit cards 50 years ago, as if it’s a comparison that even remotely makes for a good argument.
Amber Nicole Thurman: Died from sepsis after hospital treatment was delayed due to the state's abortion ban.
Candi Miller: Died at home after experiencing complications and refraining from seeking hospital care due to the threat of prosecution.
Josseli Barnica: A 28-year-old in Texas whose death was deemed preventable after doctors delayed treating her miscarriage by 40 hours
They love concern-trolling about women's safety whilst simultaneously taking it away. Whenever a barbaric religious practice is rightfully criticized for what they do to people in the present day, it’s always a matter of time before some idiot brings up eastern misogyny, as if it’s a comparison that even remotely makes for a good argument.
"All cultures are equal" is not the irl approach of academia, of human rights organizations, or of informed progressive values.
The actual position is more like:
Understanding other cultures, without aggression toward people who are from them, is the best way to find the most sustainable and effective means to help people escape cruelty, like what happened to this kid.
I’ve had multiple men try to kill me bitter from rejection. Multiple. I’m not a 10. I’m just a pretty unmarried white woman. Your American neighbors? Many of us aren’t reporting.
The Chuds who are saying "repeal the 19th" will do the same thing as soon as they get the chance. Even if miraculously they don't, then their sons or grandsons will. Misogyny has one nature and one purpose, no matter what language or religion carries it.
The feminism the internet loves to rage against is the antidote to this kind of BS.
Yeah, the thread is surprising given that women are literally losing their rights in the US and we have a massive Christofascist movement pushing for the elimination of women's medical and voting rights. And then they act like only one religion in particular is especially misogynist. Nope, as you said, it's the same misogyny wearing a different face for a different location.
It's also nauseatingly unsurprising that the voices of women who disagree in this thread seem to be downplayed and ignored at best.
A Republican House member in North Carolina recently introduced a bill that would authorize the use of deadly force against women they believe are seeking abortions or IUDs (birth control).
u are confusing the cultural eritage of a population with some of his groups that are been indoctrinated with propaganda to be extremists in some way (religious, politics and so on). but they are 2 different things.
American maga are local terrorist and heavily indoctrinated people, but that doesn't means all Americans are the same.
it's the same for every other population on earth.
especially if those books teach to hate specific groups of people and push for heavy brainwashing.
Christians, Muslim and Jews are full of groups with hands full of blood. and all of those people think they are the good ones while following their religious laws.
No, because I reject your framing — when I was younger, I would have agreed with you, but hear me out.
Cultures are not “better” or “worse” in the broad, general sense because there is no philosophically perfect version of culture we can compare them against. They are different, and all of them contain good things and bad things.
Cultures can absolutely be better at producing specific outcomes.
One culture may be better at technological innovation, another at family cohesion, another at social trust, another at artistic expression, another at individual liberty, another at elder care, and so on.
Some cultures may also be more preferable to more people if everyone were given a free choice of where to live. But as nearly every Western intervention in the developing world has shown us, it is not as simple as declaring one culture superior and trying to copy-paste it somewhere else.
Trying to compare cultures is like trying to compare cooking recipes.
You can give one a gold medal, but some people will still sincerely prefer the alternative.
And even the “best” recipe might fail if you use different ingredients, different tools, different assumptions, or try to serve it to people with different needs.
Think of culture as social computer software.
You cannot cleanly compare one version developed in place A with another developed in place B or C when the conditions, constraints, history, environment, incentives, goals, resources, base hardware, and assumptions are all different.
A system that works beautifully in one context may break horribly in another.
What we can do is judge specific practices, institutions, and outcomes.
We can say, without claiming that one entire culture is superior to another, that some practices are morally indefensible or demonstrably harmful.
So no honor killings. No FGM. No forced circumcision. No caste oppression. No child marriage. No slavery. No religious coercion. No treating women as property. No criminalizing people for being gay. No punishing dissent with violence. No inherited status systems that permanently trap people beneath others.
That is different from saying, “your culture is bad and mine is good.”
It is saying that any culture, including my own, should be challenged where it violates human dignity, bodily autonomy, equal protection, or basic freedom.
The better standard is not “which culture is superior?”
The better standard is: which specific norms and institutions produce less suffering, more freedom, more human flourishing, more fairness, and more room for people to choose their own lives?
That lets us criticize harmful practices without pretending that Western culture, or any other culture, has solved everything.
The West can condemn honor killings while still needing to confront racism, loneliness, consumerism, wealth inequality, incarceration, political corruption, and the collapse of community - while other societies can preserve stronger family bonds, hospitality, spirituality, or communal duty while still needing to abandon practices that crush individual rights.
So my position is not cultural relativism where “anything goes.”
It is also not cultural supremacism where one civilization gets to declare itself the final product of history. It is cultural humility while surviving for moral clarity.
We should actively try to be humble about judging entire cultures.
We should be ruthless about judging specific harms.
And we should be willing to learn from anyone, while still insisting that no tradition gets a free pass when it requires cruelty, coercion, or the destruction of a person’s basic humanity.
So do with that what you will, it's where I'm at and I'm halfway through my existence on this rock and I've been around it a few times as well.
I find it a useful lens to see things through and be more contemplative when evaluating lots of situations.
My (western white) grandma said up to the 70s and maybe later in certain areas, police wouldn't intervene in domestic abuse/battery incidents because it was a "family matter". That is absolutely the cultural tradition certain elements of western society want to return to right now.
People need to stop blindly supporting Muslims on this site. They're not all the same, their values aren't progressive values. Most in fact are like this, it's why they homeschool their kids and live in private neighborhoods. They don't americanize or westernize. There is a big difference with a Muslim family working a job among regular people that put their kids in regular school, we shouldn't pretend all Muslims are like this.
The point of this post is it's a woman shining a light on something terrible that happened to a relative of hers, something people in the west might not be aware still happens. As you can see by reading the comments section, there's been a lot of debate about whether this sort of violence is especially strong in Iraqi/middle Eastern cultures or if this form of male violence is a cultural constant. In other words, the post has provided food for thought.
Reddit liberals and Hasan followers are notorious for blindly supporting Muslims. Its roots was a fuck you to the republican hate of Muslims, but people need to grow up with that type of politics and stop ignoring their eyes, like all old religions Muslims have a lot of old values not compatible with progressives.
Jag- | 3 hours ago
Holy crap. That’s a horrific story. Just pure evil.
reckaband | 3 hours ago
Very sickening, old traditions need to die , not children
aerostriker77 | 6 hours ago
All cultures are equal though amirite, Reddit?
thehappyhobo | 6 hours ago
People get awful quiet when I point out that this kind of violence correlates to men much more closely than it does to any particular culture.
There’s a reason that the fastest way to improve quality of life across all cultures is to empower women legally, financially and educationally. Faster by far than simply making a country richer.
ChornobylChili | 5 hours ago
The fact that people are shocked when things improve for 50% of the population they get better for everyone, is just sad
thehappyhobo | 5 hours ago
Well specifically, Amartya Sen’s research showed that when it got better for women it got better for kids who then survived to adulthood, were healthier and more likely to be educated.
AlDente | 4 hours ago
We’ve known about this for decades. I learned it in school in the 1990s. Educate girls (as well as boys), increase sanitation.
ValyrianBone | an hour ago
Women (esp midwives) were early proponents of hygiene when doctors still refused to wash their hands
diethyl2o | 5 hours ago
Of course, ultimately the problem is always men. It’s the same rhetorical argument against gun regulation in the US: “it’s not guns, it’s people.”
But religion, beliefs and culture are very powerful tools to galvanize, enable and justify cruelty and violence. A lot of wars would not have been fought as fiercely and effectively if the soldiers had not been given the motivation of a divine mandate…
A handful of power hungry leaders harnessing the fear of death, existential anguish and the unexplained nature of our existence to control the masses and get them to do their bidding is one of the most terrifying invention in human history.
kalyco | 3 hours ago
In NC two male legislators have proposed legislation that would legalize using deadly force on women for abortion, including the use of IUD’s and in vitro.
ToastyMustache | 3 hours ago
If you read the law, it could be interpreted as also including condoms.
diethyl2o | 3 hours ago
Yes, men are almost always the problem. It’s a constant. But it’s not like imprisoning or executing every man is the solution. The actual actionable problem is culture and religion. How did these male NC legislators come to power? Through thousands of women voting for them too. The culture and religion of these women have normalized and made it acceptable to support and vote for men like that. Their culture and religion have made it acceptable for many women to support legislation that legalizes deadly force on other women.
In all parts of the world, women perpetuate and commit the very barbaric practices that keep them down because their culture and religion have convinced them this is how things should be.
Religious fanaticism is the real problem. Christianity was the worst at some point. Then enlightenment happened. But Christianity as a political force is making a comeback. Other regions and religions have yet to experience a lasting reckoning. Iran and Egypt regressed. Etc.
DeusExMockinYa | 2 hours ago
How is that any more actionable? What do you plan to do about culture or religion other than posting?
diethyl2o | 2 hours ago
Culture and religion are ideas. They change over time. Through discourse, debate, exchange, protests, activism, literature, story telling, horrific events, political elections and campaigning, what we teach to our children especially our sons, etc.
We’re in the “food for thought” sub. What is this place for?
DeusExMockinYa | 2 hours ago
Masculinity and patriarchy are ideas, too, but apparently the only ideas we should debate are everyone else's. More to the point, if debate defeated bad ideas then why am I constantly subjected to bad ideas that were debunked decades ago? How much more discourse before the Burger Reich casts aside their flags and idols and skull calipers?
>What is this place for?
It's for religious fundamentalists to say that their misogyny is better than other religions', apparently.
LexianAlchemy | 20 minutes ago
Men or patriarchy?
different_option101 | 5 hours ago
Very well said
antonm07 | 5 hours ago
I mean isn't the gender inequality a feature of the culture
thehappyhobo | 5 hours ago
Broader evidence is that the culture changes if women are empowered (Amartya Sen). But of course the foreign interventions for that purpose have been axed for being too woke.
errie_tholluxe | 6 hours ago
/r/burnthepatriarchy
eden-sunset | 3 hours ago
I mean it all goes back to the patriarchy, but some cultures are clearly more patriarchal than others.
Just like some cultures are more collectivist, individualist, secular, religious, etc. We should acknowledge the differences.
intronert | 3 hours ago
Do you have actual data for that, or is that a feel good assertion. Worldwide, exactly how common among the 7 billion people on earth is this sort of murder practiced, vs the statistics among various religions and political systems. And don’t conflate ALL violence against women with culturally CELEBRATED violence.
thehappyhobo | 3 hours ago
Define culturally celebrated violence.
intronert | 2 hours ago
“My family celebrated in the street.”
Chinchiller92 | 5 hours ago
And the empowerement of women obviously doesn't correlate with culture at all! /s
How many hoops do you want to jump through to avoid an inconvenient truth?
thehappyhobo | 4 hours ago
Traditional cultures are fairly well undifferentiated in abusing and disempowering women. And the progressive movement that massively succeeded in empowering them is a global one.
Wide_Emotion_2811 | 4 hours ago
Yeah it’s the beauty of testosterone (+other hormones), more aggression, more risk tolerance, more competitiveness:
Cons
Men commit 80% of crime
Men commit 95% of violent crime
Men commit 99% of sexual crime
Men make of 95% of prison population
Pros
Bigger, stronger, faster
Higher drive to be successful (social hierarchy) which funnily leads to more success and more failure compared to women - think a bell curve distribution more flattened
[OP] stanlana12345 | 3 hours ago
I don't really see what that has to do with the topic at hand
Wide_Emotion_2811 | 2 hours ago
Two positions were put forward in previous comments relating to the topic at hand:
All cultures are equal (with sarcasm)
Violence correlates to men
My position:
Cultures are not equal. Morality in Iraq seems to be that its a reason for celebration to kill a young girl, other cultures happily mutilate their childrens genitals at birth (fgm and circumcisions), other cultures love their tea boys, other cultures hunt endagered animals for fun, there is a long list of nominees for the terrible people awards
Yes
[OP] stanlana12345 | 2 hours ago
Oh ok yes I agree with you, I couldn't tell exactly what comment you were replying to but now I see and get your point. Well I'm not sure I agree about the success thing as I feel like that could be due to social factors- I guess it's a battle of Paglia's 'There was no female Mozart because there was no female Jack the Ripper' vs Virginia Woolf's imagining of a Judith Shakespeare and the societal factors that would've got in her way.
PetFroggy-sleeps | 3 hours ago
You should post links to substantiate any quantifying claims.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv20sst.pdf
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/42tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_42_arrests_by_sex_2012.xls
Data I researched don’t agree exactly with your claims. Curious what source you leveraged.
Valiantay | an hour ago
Yeah cause they're pulling out of their biased ass lol
They "feel" the research, don't ya know?
Wide_Emotion_2811 | an hour ago
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Wide_Emotion_2811 | 3 hours ago
I was looking at UK data but these trends are cross-cultural as its biological. Thats why your american sources are close but not exact, epect small variations.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2023/statistics-on-women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2023-html#:~:text=Females%20were%20the%20victim%20in,police%20in%20England%20and%20Wales.&text=The%20proportion%20of%20PNDs%20issued,%2C%20and%2078%25%20were%20male.
InternationalTwo5255 | 3 hours ago
Judging by the Epstein files, empowered women do the same shit.
Change21 | 5 hours ago
🎯
aerostriker77 | 6 hours ago
Good job intentionally skipping over the part where her own family celebrated this.
Sandbats | 5 hours ago
Good job missing the part where it repeatedly said the men in the family. Not saying that to be a disgusting FeMinISt but because that’s what it actually says
thehappyhobo | 5 hours ago
The women risked their lives to report it!
Vryl | 5 hours ago
Good job missing his point.
victorsmonster | 5 hours ago
I've never heard someone say "all cultures are equal," that is an odd way to frame it. There's plenty of violence against women in western culture. There is no federal minimum age for marriage in the US and in half of its states, girls as young as 10 are being married off. The US has spousal rape loopholes in a dozen states.
Western liberal democracies have a better track record for civil rights in recent decades, but it's been a hard fight against reactionary conservatism even there. A woman couldn't get her own bank account in the US until 1974.
frotc914 | 38 minutes ago
> I've never heard someone say "all cultures are equal," that is an odd way to frame it.
For some reason, every time some awful story comes out of the ME, central Asia, Africa, etc. there's some small % of redditors who think they are the smartest people in the room for not falling for the idea that we should engage in complete cultural moral relativism - a position that almost nobody believes.
I assume some of those people just want to feel superior like "I'm a liberal but not a le reddit liberal who's a delusional idiot." But some of the rest of them are just racists who want you to remember that us white westerners would never do such a thing.
> A woman couldn't get her own bank account in the US until 1974.
It was still a crime to be gay in parts of the US in 2003 lol.
zach4000 | 3 hours ago
Meet a strawman
adam__nicholas | an hour ago
They love bringing up the credit cards. Whenever a barbaric religious practice is rightfully criticized for what they do to people in the present day, it’s always a matter of time before some idiot brings up western women’s credit cards 50 years ago, as if it’s a comparison that even remotely makes for a good argument.
click-monster | 14 minutes ago
Amber Nicole Thurman: Died from sepsis after hospital treatment was delayed due to the state's abortion ban.
Candi Miller: Died at home after experiencing complications and refraining from seeking hospital care due to the threat of prosecution.
Josseli Barnica: A 28-year-old in Texas whose death was deemed preventable after doctors delayed treating her miscarriage by 40 hours
They love concern-trolling about women's safety whilst simultaneously taking it away. Whenever a barbaric religious practice is rightfully criticized for what they do to people in the present day, it’s always a matter of time before some idiot brings up eastern misogyny, as if it’s a comparison that even remotely makes for a good argument.
Old_Gimlet_Eye | 4 hours ago
Gotta love religious fundamentalists shitting on other religious fundamentalists and acting like that's somehow an indictment of the left, lol.
xyl4 | 3 hours ago
💯 spot on lmao
pundemic | 5 hours ago
That’s your only takeaway? Some kinda gotcha?
lonehappycamper | 4 hours ago
As if men don't kill their wives every single day in the West.
phenomenomnom | 2 hours ago
I studied anthropology in college.
"All cultures are equal" is not the irl approach of academia, of human rights organizations, or of informed progressive values.
The actual position is more like:
Understanding other cultures, without aggression toward people who are from them, is the best way to find the most sustainable and effective means to help people escape cruelty, like what happened to this kid.
In a long term, effective way.
GreenEyedTreeHugger | 4 hours ago
I’ve had multiple men try to kill me bitter from rejection. Multiple. I’m not a 10. I’m just a pretty unmarried white woman. Your American neighbors? Many of us aren’t reporting.
flakemasterflake | 5 hours ago
This is male culture.
Horvo | 5 hours ago
Which is why it happens the same way in all cultures where men are, right?
DataCassette | 5 hours ago
Yes?
The Chuds who are saying "repeal the 19th" will do the same thing as soon as they get the chance. Even if miraculously they don't, then their sons or grandsons will. Misogyny has one nature and one purpose, no matter what language or religion carries it.
The feminism the internet loves to rage against is the antidote to this kind of BS.
SeasonPositive6771 | an hour ago
Yeah, the thread is surprising given that women are literally losing their rights in the US and we have a massive Christofascist movement pushing for the elimination of women's medical and voting rights. And then they act like only one religion in particular is especially misogynist. Nope, as you said, it's the same misogyny wearing a different face for a different location.
It's also nauseatingly unsurprising that the voices of women who disagree in this thread seem to be downplayed and ignored at best.
chocolatestealth | 4 hours ago
A Republican House member in North Carolina recently introduced a bill that would authorize the use of deadly force against women they believe are seeking abortions or IUDs (birth control).
They would do it here if they could. 110%.
Horvo | an hour ago
That’s absolutely fucked up, to be expected from that population.
OldSchoolAJ | 21 minutes ago
What population? Men.
nyokarose | 4 hours ago
I mean, the US allows child marriage and spousal rape in a lot of states.
Dismal-Alfalfa-7613 | 5 hours ago
Honestly, yeah, it’s very similar in cultures where women are oppressed.
son_et_lumiere | 5 hours ago
I mean we don't see this type of behavior in female dominated cultures.
slide_into_my_BM | 3 hours ago
Spousal rape was still legal in the US like 30 years ago.
Women are still routinely assaulted and murdered by men in every single culture on earth.
So to answer your dumbass question, yes…
Horvo | an hour ago
TIL the only male cultures in the world are in the shithole country of the US.
slide_into_my_BM | 18 minutes ago
> Women are still routinely assaulted and murdered by men in every single culture on earth.
Awww it’s ok. Reading more than 1 sentence is hard. I believe in you! Hopefully you can get through all 5 of these.
ArticulateRhinoceros | 5 hours ago
Yeah, people like Ann Boleyn lived long, happy lives full of choice in the Western world… (and she was a fucking Queen).
Kysu_88 | 5 hours ago
u are confusing the cultural eritage of a population with some of his groups that are been indoctrinated with propaganda to be extremists in some way (religious, politics and so on). but they are 2 different things.
American maga are local terrorist and heavily indoctrinated people, but that doesn't means all Americans are the same.
it's the same for every other population on earth.
adam__nicholas | an hour ago
Are “extremist” members of any religion actually extremist, though, when they’re the ones who are following their holy book’s actual instructions?
Kysu_88 | 50 minutes ago
yes.
there's no hate like religious love.
especially if those books teach to hate specific groups of people and push for heavy brainwashing.
Christians, Muslim and Jews are full of groups with hands full of blood. and all of those people think they are the good ones while following their religious laws.
ninety6days | 4 hours ago
No? Who said they were?
Shadowlady | an hour ago
+Feminism has served it's purpose though amirite, Reddit?
martin0641 | an hour ago
No, because I reject your framing — when I was younger, I would have agreed with you, but hear me out.
Cultures are not “better” or “worse” in the broad, general sense because there is no philosophically perfect version of culture we can compare them against. They are different, and all of them contain good things and bad things.
Cultures can absolutely be better at producing specific outcomes.
One culture may be better at technological innovation, another at family cohesion, another at social trust, another at artistic expression, another at individual liberty, another at elder care, and so on.
Some cultures may also be more preferable to more people if everyone were given a free choice of where to live. But as nearly every Western intervention in the developing world has shown us, it is not as simple as declaring one culture superior and trying to copy-paste it somewhere else.
Trying to compare cultures is like trying to compare cooking recipes.
You can give one a gold medal, but some people will still sincerely prefer the alternative.
And even the “best” recipe might fail if you use different ingredients, different tools, different assumptions, or try to serve it to people with different needs.
Think of culture as social computer software.
You cannot cleanly compare one version developed in place A with another developed in place B or C when the conditions, constraints, history, environment, incentives, goals, resources, base hardware, and assumptions are all different.
A system that works beautifully in one context may break horribly in another.
What we can do is judge specific practices, institutions, and outcomes.
We can say, without claiming that one entire culture is superior to another, that some practices are morally indefensible or demonstrably harmful.
So no honor killings. No FGM. No forced circumcision. No caste oppression. No child marriage. No slavery. No religious coercion. No treating women as property. No criminalizing people for being gay. No punishing dissent with violence. No inherited status systems that permanently trap people beneath others.
That is different from saying, “your culture is bad and mine is good.”
It is saying that any culture, including my own, should be challenged where it violates human dignity, bodily autonomy, equal protection, or basic freedom.
The better standard is not “which culture is superior?”
The better standard is: which specific norms and institutions produce less suffering, more freedom, more human flourishing, more fairness, and more room for people to choose their own lives?
That lets us criticize harmful practices without pretending that Western culture, or any other culture, has solved everything.
The West can condemn honor killings while still needing to confront racism, loneliness, consumerism, wealth inequality, incarceration, political corruption, and the collapse of community - while other societies can preserve stronger family bonds, hospitality, spirituality, or communal duty while still needing to abandon practices that crush individual rights.
So my position is not cultural relativism where “anything goes.”
It is also not cultural supremacism where one civilization gets to declare itself the final product of history. It is cultural humility while surviving for moral clarity.
We should actively try to be humble about judging entire cultures.
We should be ruthless about judging specific harms.
And we should be willing to learn from anyone, while still insisting that no tradition gets a free pass when it requires cruelty, coercion, or the destruction of a person’s basic humanity.
So do with that what you will, it's where I'm at and I'm halfway through my existence on this rock and I've been around it a few times as well.
I find it a useful lens to see things through and be more contemplative when evaluating lots of situations.
leoberto1 | 5 hours ago
Equal at what metric?
click-monster | 35 minutes ago
My (western white) grandma said up to the 70s and maybe later in certain areas, police wouldn't intervene in domestic abuse/battery incidents because it was a "family matter". That is absolutely the cultural tradition certain elements of western society want to return to right now.
slide_into_my_BM | 3 hours ago
Then, are all genders equal?
RexDraco | 2 hours ago
People need to stop blindly supporting Muslims on this site. They're not all the same, their values aren't progressive values. Most in fact are like this, it's why they homeschool their kids and live in private neighborhoods. They don't americanize or westernize. There is a big difference with a Muslim family working a job among regular people that put their kids in regular school, we shouldn't pretend all Muslims are like this.
OldSchoolAJ | 19 minutes ago
What about the Christians to do all that same stuff? Do you criticize them?
thewabberjocky | 3 hours ago
Blue hairs will blame anything possible aside from “traditional” Muslim culture
MarvinTraveler | an hour ago
What a sickening description of savagery.
It is an extreme example, but it really highlights what a stupid idea is to oppress half of your population.
tejana948 | 5 hours ago
Did like your relatives are Republicans. Do they live in Oklahoma?
[OP] stanlana12345 | 3 hours ago
In this story it was actually Iraq
keket_ing_Dvipantara | 3 hours ago
Iraq and Afghanistan are left broken, after american aggression. And they'll get far worse, before maybe getting better.
aerostriker77 | an hour ago
Are you dense? This has been happening here since before the country of America was even a thought.
hypocalypto | 2 hours ago
What’s the point of this post? Bad thing is bad?
[OP] stanlana12345 | 2 hours ago
The point of this post is it's a woman shining a light on something terrible that happened to a relative of hers, something people in the west might not be aware still happens. As you can see by reading the comments section, there's been a lot of debate about whether this sort of violence is especially strong in Iraqi/middle Eastern cultures or if this form of male violence is a cultural constant. In other words, the post has provided food for thought.
RexDraco | 2 hours ago
Reddit liberals and Hasan followers are notorious for blindly supporting Muslims. Its roots was a fuck you to the republican hate of Muslims, but people need to grow up with that type of politics and stop ignoring their eyes, like all old religions Muslims have a lot of old values not compatible with progressives.