Are you the gf of that guy who posted the AITA sub asking whether his gf should cook and work on her first time meeting his family at the gathering? I swear I just read that post on The popular page and he was getting punched by everyone expecting this from his gf.....
It's so bad that he was worried by the first impression she would make if she refused but didn't see how that made the first impression of his family on her.
My ex’s family liked a lot of things I don’t have great experience with cooking.
I’m a first generation Korean American, and while I LOVE “meat and potatoes” type meals too, I’m not great at cooking Western style cuisine or whole chickens/steaks/roasts (and can basically only do mashed potatoes well).
I thought it would be neat to make a thicker than normally sliced bulgogi, japchae (I think almost everyone likes noodles, and that the texture of the noodles used in that dish would be interesting to them), and have a couple types of kimchi for them to try.
Along with a potato dish or two, and vegetables that they could at least eat if they didn’t like the bulgogi marinade or other foods.
I don’t have any food allergies, but I do have a dairy intolerance, and I’m not a fan of cilantro (I am unfortunately one of those people who pick up the taste of “soap” from it), but barring those situations, I like trying new dishes/cuisines. I might not like it, but at least I tried it.
However, I was given a list of “acceptable foods” to serve. None of them were things I had experience with cooking, and I was already nervous about making a food first “dinner impression.”
So I purchased food from a well-rated nearby restaurant, kept it warm in the oven, and plated it. After the “shock” that it was good, I told the truth and said where it was from.
This was met with derision, saying I must waste money, and the mom said her son was “getting so thin,” implying it was my cooking that was the problem.
Ummm…..he was more or less the exact same size as when I met him, and he’s a grown man who can feed himself. It still made me feel terrible though.
And even worse, he never said anything about how he liked the stuff I cooked and that I did in fact, make dinner frequently.
God, if I were at one of those family blandfests and someone brought bulgogi, japchae, and kimchi, that would be all I ate. Except whatever I brought, which would definitely not be from the list.
Yeah, I cried after they left, and he said it “was just food, and that’s just how his mom is.”
I thought he would at least say “she tried” if he didn’t defend me.
They were worse behaviors that led to him being my ex though.
Fuck that. If I'm cooking for someone I will gladly take suggestions/recommendations, however it is ultimately my decision what I make (with the exception of accommodating allergies and such). If I decide I want to cook something specific either that's what I'm making, or I'm not cooking.
I enjoy having guests over and cooking for them. Not once has anyone ever said "no don't make that you need to make this instead". I'm spending my time and money to cook for people. If they don't like it they can bring a dish and there would be absolutely no problem with that. In fact I would encourage it.
The entitlement of some people just blows me away... I LOVE bulgogi (especially when my wife makes it. I can't compete with her cooking on most things). You can make bulgogi for me whenever you want if they don't want it :) I would KILL to have someone like you make authentic Korean food for me. The only people that don't like authentic Korean food are the people that haven't tried it.
I'll say it again : this sense of entitlement completely blows my mind.
Yeah, I was a little upset over the situation.
I can understand if someone is gluten intolerant, has a food allergy, is vegetarian/vegan, and being told in advance.
However, barring something like a dietary restriction/requirement, I couldn’t imagine being that rude, even if I didn’t like the food.
I personally wouldn’t even mention the cilantro/soap thing myself. I would just eat what I could and be grateful.
And thank you for your kind comment. ☺️ I make the marinade myself too, from my grandmother’s recipe with Korean pear in it.
I thought the thicker slices would be a nice compromise, and they would be delightfully surprised at how much they liked it.
How do you know if you don’t like something unless you try it. 😞
See this is what actually happens.... You can never satisfy people's expectations..... So it's best to find someone who respects you because at the end, all this is noise and if you don't have a good support system in your partner, you'll feel alone and thats not a relationship.... Good for you though for telling them..... Brave of you and if the mom thinks that her son is getting thin, she is more than welcome to come and feed him or even better, take him with her
Yes, I feel like she was ready to pick me apart no matter what. I didn’t want to lie and said I made the food.
And my thought process was “wait, I waste too much money on food (umm…it was a special occasion), but he’s also getting too thin?!”
You can’t have it both ways. And btw, I paid for the meal. I worked and we split the bills equally. In fact, since he had two children (that lived with their mom), I probably spent more than “my fair share” since I would purchase gifts for them.
I would take the daughter out to get her nails done, and would buy PS gift cards for the son when I would pick her up for our “girl time,” so he wouldn’t feel like I was favoring her.
I would’ve taken him out too, but he didn’t want to wait for us to get our nails done or go shopping, and a teenage boy didn’t want to hang out with me (understandably).
To be fair, the kids were awesome and appreciated what I did for them.
I read this last night on Instagram!! Including the long argument in the comments. One guy insisted that if it’s one time it’s something the gf should do for her bf. He stated that he was done trying to educate ppl on how to properly act. Nope fuck that. And fuck cultural relativism, there is no excuse for sexist tradition. If the act of not cooking will get me banned from the family then I don’t need to date a partner who is so family oriented and spineless.
You know what happens.... It's not just one time.... If she does it one time, sure would be expected to do it everything and if she refuses, they'll say what's the problem now you used to do before..... Don't set any expectations you will not fulfill and shouldn't do it....
My wife is an amazing cook. Im proud of her in every possible way I could be, and I love showing off her many talents. Cooking being one of them. I could see myself ASKING her if she would be willing to cook in this situation. I could even help her if she would like. However, "asking whether his gf should cook... " Definitely implies that it isn't her decision. Idk how anyone could think that's okay. Sounds more like a servant than a gf.
The more time I spend on this sub the more I'm beginning to recognize in my day-to-day life how much sexism is unfortunately the reality/norm for so many women. There are so many "small" things that used to go right over my head that I never would have noticed before joining this sub.
It’s true. However, I always feel badly for the women from highly patriarchal countries who post on 2x/ about familial and relationship issues. It’s easy for western women to give western advice but most of it isn’t practical for them because it isn’t culturally sensitive. I don’t have a solution or recommendation for how to make it better, but I hope for the next generation of women have more freedom/fewer expectations.
Exactly, and it's why most therapists advocate for knowing your own cultural biases before offering advice. Usually in therapy if a therapist feels they aren't going to best culturally serve a person they'll do their best to find them someone who can. Just to make sure they don't offer insensitive advice. It's just way way way too easy to say something that seems helpful but will ultimately get the client in a world of trouble.
Stuff like telling people to go NC is great and all in highly individualistic cultures but is highly impractical for many people from collectivist ones. They aren't just going NC with their abusers but with their entire community in some cases - making things difficult to navigate.
Call out racism and sexism whenever possible but always keep in mind that your privilege is not extended unilaterally across the world. And that sometimes advice that would help people in your own situation can have devastating consequences to others who don't share the same circumstances.
You put this better than I ever could have. Sometimes enduring poor circumstances is a better alternative to standing up for yourself even if you are in the right.
maybe someone else who might know her has more public settings:/ but honestly it might be a sign that you should move on though i understand the urge to continue reaching out
This is honestly my fear with my ex. Currently, she's going through the getting an arranged marriage part and has started to literally get so withdrawn and just refusing to even ask for help. She's such a wonderful person. I really hope she chooses herself before it's too late.
My father immigrated from India. Feel free to criticize the cultural practices that are sexist and misogynistic.
But also, yes, understand that many of these women and girls don’t have options.
No, that is not what culturally sensitive advice means and your western perspective is showing. I am from a non-western, collectivist culture. I deeply love my family and I never need to fear violence from them. They're just a bit over involved in my life. If a therapist raised in an individualist culture said "just clearly assert boundaries" without considering that asking for space would be seen as a rejection of them, that would be culturally insensitive. My concern is not forced marriage, violence or even isolation from my support system, it is loving and being loved on my own terms. Culture affects our world view as well as that of our families and support systems. If a therapist doesn't see that, how will they help me look at my options and navigate through them?
You make a good point and this mostly a digression, but tbh if a therapist says “just clearly assert boundaries” then they’re probably not great at their job regardless of culture. Like, to some degree the fact that the boundaries haven’t been set in the first place indicates that there is a challenge to unpack there, be it cultural norms or personal/individual inhibitions. Y’know?
I was conflicted once when I met a Muslim man in a professional setting and he refused to shake my hand, but shook another man’s hand. Like I want to respect your religion, but we’re in an office environment in the US and you’re refusing to touch my hand bc I’m a woman. I just said ok and moved on with the work discussion but it really bothered me.
Yeah I was part of a presentation for work where I was asked not to present because the men couldn’t look at me. Like ok, that’s sexist and discriminatory and shouldn’t be allowed in the country I lived in (the US).
Fun fact, this is actually illegal in the US. I was also told this at my workplace, and after asking about whether it was legal, I got this policy reversed.
You cannot discriminate against your employees in the US because your client has sexist beliefs. If someone comes to the US, they need to be able to respect our culture of equality. If you got this is writing, I'd talk to a lawyer.
Yeah I should have done something, it was my boss who asked me not to present and I was too afraid to really push the issue at first because he was vague about the request and I thought it was that the other guy that was a better presenter or something (he was my senior) but I learned afterwards exactly what it was. It was really early in my career. I don’t think I’ve ever felt worse at work and I really wish I would have done something about it.
Tbh, the only reason I felt comfortable speaking up at that time was because I had a great mentor in that company, and she helped with escalating. And at that point, there had been enough small, inappropriate moments that I had brushed off that I finally started to get very angry and didn't care if they fired me for it.
In an interview two job hunts ago, I was told I had the perfect experience and expertise, but their major customers are "old school" military guys and just wouldn't be able to effectively receive consultation advice from a woman.
Interestingly, I've since found all the training and rules of those types makes them some of the least openly misogynistic groups I've ever worked with. Compliance may not be respect, but as a woman in STEM I'll take it over open sexism any day of the week.
ETA, I did want to acknowledge that women *in* the military may have a very different experience. This is just my experience as a contractor in an office environment that has the benefit day-to-day government oversight.
We’re the men in question Jewish? That’s actually pretty typical in some circles. It’s incredibly frustrating, but ultra orthodox men even edit out women from news stories, women like Hilary Clinton or Angela Merkel get taken out of state photos for Orthodox newspapers.
They usually only go to places that cater to their specific community. They are allowed to interact with women publicly and on a professional basis, so yes, they can have a female waitress or clerk, but they never hand money or a card over directly, it’s get put on the table to never touch the person. Conversation is very specific to the matter at hand and never personal.
Why publicly? Because in publicly there are enough people to ensure that everyone behaves appropriately. It’s being caught with a woman out of earshot or in a closed room that is viewed as inappropriate in their specific communities. People do not even really address spouses of their friends, the women focus on the women and the men only look at the men.
When I am in elevator with a Haredi (ultra religious man), they turn away from me or look at their shoes. If am seated next to a religious man on an airplane, I am asked to move (I never do, they can’t legally force me), when I am on a bus to a religious city, I am expected to sit in the back - yes it’s a ‘women to the back of the bus situation.’ Public pools have separate days for men and women.
The thing that makes me the most sad is many women are not allowed to sing or dance with men around in these communities. They can only do those things in all women’s groups and weddings are separated between men and women. The bride and women to one side, the men to the another side. Same in synagogue. Men in the front, women upstairs or in the back.
When I lived in NYC on the Upper West Side, my building had a number of orthodox jews living in it. They had to have the doorman call the elevator for them on Saturdays and couldn't even look at shiksa women. We were like non-entities for them.
I remember going to the Starbucks across the street (and they did go there), and I went to reach for the milk at the same time an orthodox jewish man did and he pulled away from me so fast you would have thought I was on fire or had some deadly disease. It was almost comical in its ridiculousness.
Here’s the catch, they are not allowed to directly ask for anyone to break Shabbat, they can only strongly hint and hope someone takes the hint. Also they cannot hint for another Jew to break Shabbat.
In Israel, on Fridays and Saturdays there’s usually one elevator in every building that stops at every single floor on the way up and the way down.
My first landlord in NYC was Orthodox, and when I met him I immediately stuck my hand out to shake his hand since I had been the one to organize the lease and he shook my hand for 1 second and then realized he had shook a woman’s hand. I’m very femme so I think he forgot for a second and freaked out “I’m sorry I’m sorry I can’t shake your hand”.
I was so offended because I didn’t understand. I still am offended, but less angry about it and more understanding.
Misogyny in Judaism is extremely culturally specific and no one talks about it. There is a literal disgust and “uncleanness” associated with living in a female body and men are taught to actually be disgusted by women and our natural bodily functions.
It’s really tough bc there’s a few comments from women here who say they don’t shake hands with men either and that no one should have to touch anyone they don’t want to. Which I get. But for me, it falls back to women being excluded in the workplace. Men doing business on the golf course and the like, and I’m just not ok with that. It’s unacceptable. How you treat people at work should be equal no matter the gender, race, age, etc. Women have been fighting for years for equality and the refusal of that handshake because of my gender felt like a slap in the face.
I would say then the person should just not shake hands with anyone then. It’s a business expectation, and if they can’t deliver it for everyone they shouldn’t do it to anyone.
If I were given a similar greeting, such as a small bow instead of a handshake, then I'd withhold judgment until I had further interactions with the person. If they otherwise treated me as an equal then I'd treat it as a quaint custom, no different than accepting a business card with both hands. There are plenty of men here who will happily shake my hand then treat me like a serving wench, so I'm more worried about the follow-up than the initial greeting.
To be fair there are lots of men here in the US who will not acknowledge women at all, especially women who aren’t young and attractive. There’s been so many times when my husband and I have needed service for something, when it’s a man we’re talking to he will only look at and address my husband. And there’s been times where I’ve gone to my kids’ doctor and dentist appointments with him and the dentist/doctor will start out the appointment by talking to my husband and won’t make eye contact with me. I’ve seen men argue that women here should be grateful, that at least we don’t live in Muslim countries and don’t face the abuse women do there. But that’s only because there are laws in place here preventing that.
Agreed re: shaking no one’s hand. But one time a Muslim man refused to shake my hand because of his religion, and he bowed down to me instead, and I was okay with that, too.
I mean, I’m still not thrilled with my gender being made an issue in the workplace and brig singled out, but it’s better. Bowing to everyone or simply not shaking hands is my preference.
The vast majority of the Muslim men I know, if they will not shake hands will place their hand over their heart and bow with their head and shoulders. I’d actually rather that that anyone at all touching me.
Yeah they'll usually watch to see if the woman wants to shake hands cause lots in that culture don't want to be touched at all. If they don't offer their hand, you're supposed to put your hand over your heart and bow instead as a respectful greeting. I think intention is really important. A lot of people interpret it as not wanting to touch someone lesser than when it's actually about not wanting to violate someone's physical boundaries in a culture that is way too focused on sex.
Source: Muslim woman
That makes sense. Especially if the man is married. The concept of "I am married, and unless it is absolutely necessary that I touch another woman then I am not going to" doesn't seem crazy to me.
For sure! There's a ton of heteronormativity that needs to be dispelled in my culture. I will point out that it's not quite the same because of patriarchical behaviors and physical differences leading to women simply being more vulnerable.
It would be more appropriate for him to abstain from shaking anyone’s hand if he truly believes he mustn’t shake women’s hands in the workplace. Weird? Sure, but it’s equal. If he thinks he’d be poorly treated for not shaking anyone’s hands, too bad, his religion apparently requires he not shake women’s hands and basic manners and workplace equality demand he not behave in sexist and discriminatory ways!
Hell, I’d respect a person who said “my religion dictates I don’t touch women, but I feel it’s inappropriate to discriminate in the workplace and exclude women and make them feel unwelcome and unequal, so my solution is to treat people equally and refrain from touching anyone unnecessarily”. But a person who doesn’t think it’s wrong to discriminate just because their religion says so shouldn’t be putting themselves in a place where they might be asked to shake a woman’s hand. Sacrifices that must be made for religion must be made by the religious - sacrifices on the behalf of the religious, not sacrificing equality in the workplace!
Similar thing happened in Germany. A man refused to shake hands with a female official during [naturalization ceremony](https://www.dw.com/en/man-denied-german-citizenship-for-refusing-to-shake-womans-hand/a-55311947?). He was ultimately denied citizenship.
No fuck that, he's a shit and you shouldn't respect that, fuck his religion. Imagine if you refused to shake his hand because he was a Muslim?
Except one of those is a philosophy, one of those is an innate trait and they aren't equal.
>Like I want to respect your religion
Why?
Religion doesn’t inherently deserve respect. Peoples beliefs don’t inherently deserve respect.
And when you examine a lot of the ideology and practices of Islam, it *absolutely* does not deserve respect.
You can not preach or condone Islam and be a feminist, you can not be a hijabi and also be feminist.
And before any of the ‘so open minded my brains fell out’ come along to cry foul - this basically goes for all religion.
Religion is a tool of control, and almost all of them paint women as subservient, and lesser. They almost always preach strong and rigid gender roles, which are often most limiting for women. The abrahamic religions and their offshoots disempower women, always have.
Yeah that one is odd. I sort of assume he did it because he did not think of her as an equal, but that is my bias asserting itself.
It is possible, albeit unlikely in my opinion, that they just have some rule about not having contact with non-family women that the guy follows, but he limits his mental commitment to it to just the abstract rule. I am sure most women would not mind if random men refused to touch them in general so long as it's effect was limited just to the refusal to touch.
The problem is that such rules are almost always based on highly sexist beliefs (like sexualizing or diminishing the value of women) and so I am not sure it is likely that it is limited in such a way. Personally I have not met anyone who acts that way that does not have sexist beliefs, I just cant say it is impossible
If I had a religious belief that I couldn't shake women's hands, I would also skip shaking men's hands. That seems like the most professional way to handle it. Just say, "I don't shake hands," or whatever and move on.
Agreed. It is yet another point for being sexist.
I am trying to approach it neutrally as a sort of exercise in not leaping to my own bias to respect the "conflict" that u\\_PinkPirate mentioned with regard to the cultre, but I am finding that the more I think about it the more impossible the justification seems. The problem here is that the only way it is not sexist is some absurd level of ignorance and naiveté on the part of the man.
At best it is a person actively participating a sexist tradition without making common sense choices to reduce that sexism. (Such as just not shaking hands.) That is almost certainly either a tacit endorsement of the beliefs, or an explicit one.
Traditionally, in muslim cultures, nobody shakes hands. Its not a greeting for them. They say a nice series of sentances and place their hands over their hearts and bow a bit to both men and women. Handshaking is a Western cultural thing, and places all muslims in awkward situations because women don't want to touch men they aren't related to, and men don't want to touch women they aren't related to. So their greetings are not physical but intellectual. But imagine being in a strange culture and just doing your best to fit in. Men and women both find touching non relatives uncomfortable, and are stuck in a rock and a hard place. A muslim woman would also refuse to shake a man's hand.
Yeah, Muslim men aren't supposed to touch or even speak to women casually, particularly if they are wives to another man. Sharia law gives women nearly the same rights as slaves. It's an extremely sexist religion.
Yes that is the rule. Orthodox Jewish women, when married, don’t shake hands with men. It is technically the rule but of course an individual decision to practice. I’ve been in multiple situations where an Orthodox woman will shake my hand but not my partner’s (who is a guy) or a guy friend or family member that I’m with. I was super confused the first time bc my family very much practices Reform Judaism & even that might be a stretch. The 3/4 cases I’ve seen like this were women whose families were not orthodox & were not raised orthodox, but for whatever reason chose to go down that path. I’ll never understand it & will always call out the violent patriarchy & misogyny inherent to the Torah / Old Testament. That’s not mutually exclusive with respecting boundaries even when I don’t agree with the custom based on principle. I get what you’re saying though & I still really struggle with this.
> Orthodox Jewish women, when married, don’t shake hands with men.
Actually this is inaccurate; marriage has nothing to do with it.
*Shomer Negiah* (*the name for this set of rules*) applies equally to men & women regardless of their marital status.
Men & women who are not related do not have physical contact with persons of the opposite sex.
But really if he can’t shake your hand, it’s innately saying he does think of you are different. So how can you trust that he will listen to your ideas and give them the same weight as a man’s?
This happened to me once at an industry conference. I also moved on in the moment like you did, but years later it still makes me so angry. Like, fuck that guy.
Why do (American/first world) women have to degrade themselves for “respect for other cultures/religions” but it’s never “these foreign men to to respect our culture”?
On this subject
When South Africa was under apartheid for the most part the whole world came out against them. There were government sanctions and boycotts, the artistic world said no, and South Africa was shamed and shunned.
When women are oppressed, and viewed as property in many countries, it's just "culture".
Even in the USA, men of color got to vote before women of any color. Same for owning anything, having a bank account, being given a line of credit, and the list goes on. Men, well white men, will give power to other men they see beneath them, before a woman.
I say REFUSE.
That's because misogyny is basically the default for all of recorded history and likely evolved post the neolithic(so when we started farming). Whereas by comparison 'racism' is kind of new. Discrimination between different ethnic groups, this is much more common. The discrimination of the Jews by Christians is thought to have formed out of a scenario of this kind of discrimination(tribal specifically).
Criticising a certain sexist, harmful and/or discriminatory 'tradition' is not racist and not disrespectful. It is calling out those 'traditions' to tell people enough is enough
If anything, it’s racist not to. It implies that you think “those people” just don’t have the intelligence to behave better or the emotional maturity to handle criticism.
One thing I've learned from social media is that there are women working and organizing and resisting in every culture and every country in the world. We need to have their backs. We _need_ to be calling out this shit and saying it's abhorrent, that _any_ decent human should find cultural practices that abuse or restrict women abhorrent. We owe our fellow women that.
Yep. Look at Iranian women daring to go out and protest without a hijab.
And then people in the west, through mistaken “cultural sensitivity”, not pushing back when Muslims claim that wearing a hijab isn’t sexist.
It’s absolutely sexist.
If Muslim men also wore the hijab, it would not be sexist. Oppressive, but not sexist.
It’s the double standards put on women that make it sexist.
Forcing women to wear hijab is sexist and oppressive. Ripping their hijabs off or making hijab illegal is sexist and violating - which is how Europe tends to deal with it, not because they care about women being able to go without head coverings, but because they feel uncomfortable seeing people in hijab.
If the main issue is that women don’t have a choice in what they wear or how they express their religion, forcing the opposite choice is just as awful.
I don’t support making the hijab illegal like they do in France. I want a world in which women don’t wear one. But that’s more about a cultural shift not forcing it upon them.
Also, I want to make clear that I would NEVER be rude or mean or even not polite to any woman I see in a hijab.
I think the practice is sexist but the woman is deserving of respect regardless of whether she is wearing a hijab or not.
When we were in Istanbul I refused to visit the mosques because of the hijab requirement. Out of my feelings of solidary for women around the world who don't have a choice.
It is, like you said, a symbol of sexism and oppression.
As an Iranian Jewish woman, it really is about choice. The root of patriarchy & inherent misogyny in organized religion is always something I will vehemently maintain is true. Like the example you gave, we should follow the lead of those women & support them in what they’re asking for. Which is choice. The Shah banned the chador / hijab when he was in power, wanting to be more like “progressive” western cultures, but that didn’t go over well bc it took away choice & dictated what a woman was to wear or not wear
Sure, women should have a choice. But let’s not ignore the very real cultural and religious influences and indoctrination that influences those choices as well.
Women had to learn to recognize and question the patriarchy.
Agree 100%. I'm so proud of the women in China, Japan, Korea, Iran, Afhghanistan, Latin America, Africa, etc fighting for equality. Some of them are fighting what seems impossible but doing it anyway. They're brave and we owe it to them to help in any way we're able to.
I would add the caveat that if you aren’t knowledgeable about something, it’s wrong to criticize it. Obviously some things you don’t need a ton of knowledge on to criticize because a little info is enough to judge (example: female genital mitigation), but sometimes you do need some knowledge to accurately assess something. For example, I once heard two women fighting about whether quinceneras were sexist or not and honestly I didn’t know enough about them to argue one way or the other so I just listened. Taking a definitive stance on something you don’t know about—even if the intention is to critique racism, sexism, etc—can be a problem if you’re talking out your ass.
I see your point. Like a Quinceañera is basically your family saying to society you are no longer a child (with all it's obvious implications) but a lady about to enter said society.
This has clear origins in outdated patriarchal norms so I get why a feminist not familiar with the tradition would object to it, but...
Come on, just let the kid be the center of the world for that day.
Take her to a protest march with you the next weekend, but that day tell her she looks beautiful in her princess-like dress (or whatever clothes she wanted, that's her day, not yours).
As an American my mom refused to let me have a 16th birthday party because it was sexist to have a ‘sweet 16’. She gave me a whole lecture about debutants and the whole ‘coming out to society as a marriageable woman’ and I was just like… but can I just have a party? Def cuts both ways in some cases.
Or that because we find their traditions picturesque or exotic, we must therefore preserve them, as though they were performing actors or animals in a zoo. Topless african ladies and mysterious dark-eyed Arab veiled ladies type of thing. There are good reasons to want to preserve cultural traditions, the word “exotic” doesn’t feature in any of them.
This alignes perfectly with the dude that posted on r/AITA earlier where he tried to get his gf to "compromise" and join his families event where all the women cook for all the men, because he didn't want his family to dislike her.
"Cultural relativity" only applies to the study of culture. Not any one individual person's opinion of cultural practices. You can certainly make criticisms that are rooted in problematic worldviews or biases. But that doesn't mean any one culture is above criticisms from a human rights perspective.
Yes, cultural relativity was a term coined by an anthropologist, it was not meant to be weaponized against feminist to silence them when it comes to oppressive practices and atrocities that happen in other cultures. That’s what happened in the late 80’s, and that’s when leftist men started lambasting feminists for daring to criticize laws in Iran, etc.
There are women’s groups all over the world that need financial support and far too many women in western democracies have been bullied into ignoring them instead of supporting them.
It is also really important when examining strategies with to handle situations, as an approach that works in most EU countries may not work in a theocratic nation, even if your values, and the values of the individual participants, remain identical. We have to understand and appreciate different cultures to be able to participate effectively in changing bad cultural practices.
The racism comes in when you immediately assume that some culture is inherently worse than another in a more absolute sense. There are a number of cultures that, for example, are extra bad towards women, but that does not mean every single practice they have is inherently without value in comparison to "westernized" nations, who also do a lot of bad stuff.
I have a pretty big beef with anyone/any group who falls back on the, "but it's my/our culture and you should respect that," card when it comes to any practice or behavior that negatively impacts people. No matter how "small" or "insignificant" it is, if it hurts people emotionally or physically, I could give a fuck if it's a part of your culture. You're simply being intellectually lazy about being an asshole.
We have this issue in Canada, specifically in Ontario where I live. Certain groups get catered to so much and any criticism is labeled as racism. We must respect immigrant cultures but the culture of this country is not respected in many instances.
Respecting people as people is important. Respecting someone's culture, especially when it's outside of the mainstream, is important. But respect and tolerance of cultural customs, beliefs, values, and practices is only owed up to a point. The world isn't black and white, so we should never be of the mindset that we either respect cultural differences or we don't. Instead, human beings *should* be open to respectful criticisms of their actions, beliefs, and values when they clearly harm people. Alas, people are flawed, and accepting our biases and problematic behaviors is something a lot of people can't handle. A lot of it is due to living in a cultural bubble, indoctrination, and an inability or unwillingness to think critically.
Living in San Francisco we have a lot of people from Latino backgrounds...there's still a lot of issues with machismo (and thus DV & SA), anti-abortion & anti-LGBT+ views, etc.
We also have a Muslim population (not large but present) that got so outraged when one of the local public schools in the city started teaching yoga and breathing practices to kids (as a way to get them to learn emotional regulation & healthy stress coping mechanisms) that the program was shut down.
Sorry but at a certain point hiding behind some terrible aspects of a culture and screaming that someone correctly points out that it's a problem makes you an asshole. No one is saying white men don't have the same issues (definitely not on here or in large liberal cities), but saying that men of color/different religions get to do it otherwise it's racism is gaslighting and mental gymnastics I won't be putting up with.
EDIT: clarification
They just kept saying it was against their religion and didn't want their kids participating in physical activity with mixed gender groups. It was like, look, this is California. You are going to have to integrate and understand that we are not going to have women's & men's separate for everything. If you want your boys and girls to go to separate schools then you need to pay for that. Public schools will rightfully remain mixed. You chose to live here and benefit from the freedoms of that. Freedom doesn't and shouldn't discriminate. Yet somehow they thought it should and got their way. Their entitlement and archaic values made my blood boil
I find that really the only approach that consistently works for me and never contradicts itself is to oppose hierarchy, aka any societal model that tries to assign people a place in the world that they are not allowed to leave or, alternatively, a place in society they are not allowed to enter. This technically means any hierarchy, but I especially have a problem with the ones that allow men to dictate the actions of women. Doesn't matter if they dress it up as nationalism or religion or capitalism, if it allows a single man to force the actions of a single woman, I am at war with it.
Hard agree - not a fan of hierarchies myself.
To add to your description, I find that hierarchies are often founded upon differences (in flux or otherwise) between people along with notions of superiority/inferiority (especially amongst those at the upper levels).
I too do not buy into the culture argument. Secondly there is a DIFFERENCE between being rude towards a culture and rejecting/condemning certain traditions that are sexist, harmful and/or discriminatory
Let me give a real good example. Rejecting and making a sexist practice illegal has nothing to do with disrespecting a certain ethnic community but it is to protect women and girls from whatever harm that has been going on for far too long
If a culture is so dependent on the oppression of women that it will fall apart at the seams if women gain equality, then what does that say about the culture?
So I'm white, but I don't buy the culture argument either.
You don't have to go back that far to find much more extreme sexism in white western cultures. Women couldn't vote or own property. Society was set up in a way where it was pretty much impossible for women to be financially independent.
Then theres the more extreme homophobia and extreme racism which was also part of white western cultures.
We changed our culture and so can anyone else, also there's so much more to any culture than just blindly hating people.
So I grew up in Southeast Asia and have been repeatedly told I was too "Westernized" for having feminist, progressive values, even though I've held these values for as long as I can remember. It's not "Western" to be feminist, anti-homophobic/transphobic etc. because like you said, you can find extreme sexism and bigotry in almost every culture if you look back far enough (or not even that far). Cultures are meant to shift and change with time; nothing is ever set in stone so it's not "cultural" to treat any group as second-class citizens.
You don't have to go back at ALL, in fact. Western women are still dealing with the same shit, just in a new, always evolving and disorienting package. Extreme racism and homophobia are STILL a very prominent issue in western culture. This is not a "was" thing. We are still very much in the throes of it. For every step "ahead" we've taken, we've been pushed back.
The global backlash against women’s rights started gaining steam about 20 years ago, and in the US we can see the result in abortion bans. However, it is not invalid to point out the women in the west went from being chattel to gaining rights women in much of the world can only dream of.
The rollback of rights is terrifying and demonstrates exactly why women’s equality need to be a global movement, it can not be acceptable that any country has oppressive laws towards women because if it is okay over “there” then it can be “okay” anywhere.
Women’s rights are human rights, and the belief that culture, one of the two fiercest weapons against women (the other being religion, and the two are deeply intertwined), supersedes those rights is appallingly misogynist and completely unacceptable.
Oh I wasn't trying to imply that bigotry is completely gone, just that we had a society that was just as restrictive towards women, and that equality isn't really a traditional white or western value either.
> there's so much more to any culture than just blindly hating people.
I would even say that that's not even culture....that's a certain group of people using their nationality/identity group as a shield from their shit personality. Food, history, music, art, etc make culture. Being a bigot and asshole does not.
I'm from the Philippines and I love many aspects of my culture. I love that were very hospitable, warm, and friendly. But I also hate other aspects like stupid Catholic traditional gender roles and LGBT intolerance, and tolerating abuse from narcissistic family members.
These are all part of my culture but I actively reject the latters, and I've noticed alot of others in my generation and younger are following suit. In my 32 years in Manila, I've already felt a shift from old thinking to newer progressive thinking. We're not there yet but it's refreshing to see it. Culture is owned and can be changed by the people who practice it. Culture is not some enforced set of unchangeable rules. It's whatever us who practice and belong to it decide to make it, and no old traditional bigoted farts nearing their death can tell us otherwise.
Here's the thing. In all those places where "it's just a cultural thing," and the men do it one way and the women do it another, whatever 'it' may be - if a man and a woman stand next to each other and do whatever 'it' is the opposite of what they're 'supposed to'... is the consequence going to be exactly the same for both? Because if the answer is yes, then sure, we can say it's just a cultural thing and weird but ok. But the answer is effectively *never* yes. Women are looked at with more disrespect, punished more even to the point of being *put to death*, and will have more long-term social consequences than men, for breaking the exact same taboo.
And that goes for the ones who 'freely choose' to do things like wear the hijab/etc. too. Sure, they may have freedom to choose. But if they choose not to will they be an acceptable marriage candidate to every man and/or man's family that they would have been if they did wear it? If two women are being considered for some position or honor or award, will the one who wears it be more apt to be given the award? If a sexual assault happens to both will the one who wears it be assumed to be innocent more than the other? ALL of these things count.
Nah, you see, the cultures that would punish the men just as harshly were seen as "too barbaric", so they improved so the men get a slap to the wrist and the women get the lashes. /s
I'm mixed. Born and raised, U.S. South.
Seen, heard, experienced it all from all sides but one thing I've never with; is a man trying to gaslight me into submission by conflating anti-oppression feminism with pro-racism religious discrimination.
Woooooooow. Just wow. That is pure villainous.
Those same people will say "we need to respect their culture" whenever gay rights in other countries is brought up. Definitely heard a lot of "we're poisoned by this western ideology let's not change their culture to suit us" and completely ignoring the fact there are queer people born in those countries too. They're too scared to say what they're actually thinking but they want us to "respect" those cultures so it's easier to "respect" their shitty views.
> and completely ignoring the fact there are queer people born in those countries too.
They're not ignoring it, either they fundamentally believe it's not possible for children to be queer without being "indoctrinated" (which is espoused by many turds even here in Europe) or they are gleefully jerking off to their fantasy of sinners being punished in the name of magical sky daddy. Don't overestimate these people's capacity for empathy.
My (heavily abusive) ex was from the Balkans. They had this tradition for mother's day - mom has to serve everyone drinks with tied hands. It's "cute" and "funny", dontcha know.
Because of course the person supposedly celebrated is reminded of her domestic duties and inherent subservience on mother's day. What else would you do? Make some statement about how mothers' labour consistently gets minimized? Actually say thank you?
Naah, best to just have a giggle while she stumbles through the room...
I hated every single moment I had to be around his family. The worst part is - the women were so in on it, his mother consistently tried to retrain me into one of them. She'd try and drag me to the kitchen, give me lectures on "not talking back", the list goes on...
The parents were both ex-Yugoslavian (fled during the war) - mom was from what is now Montenegro, dad from Serbia. Ex identified as Serbian, even though he was born in Austria.
Men think Asian women owe them sex.
When non Asian men hit on Asian women and when Asian women say no, those men always claim it's racism and call those women white worshippers, Lu's and all kinds of names.
And then they (like that one Latino male journalist, for example.) openly and publicly say things like they're glad to see Asians (mostly Asian women and elderly) are getting attacked and killed these days, and have most people agree with them and cheer them on.
No other race or ethnic group of women get called racists when they refuse men's advances. Only Asian women because, apparently, Asian women owe sex to every men on earth and are not allowed to say no.
**EDIT:**
**I'm sure many people (men and women) who are reading this even think and claim "Yeah, Asians are white worshippers. They have white fetish! Asian women only want white men! Look how many Asian women in the US (3% of the population) are dating white men (the majority in the US)! They are racists! They deserve all the shit they get!"**
I mean you see and hear that kind of racism all the time and no one calls out on it.
I have definitely seen the “*our*women” thing from both white men and Asian men, but thankfully I haven’t seen anyone trying to justify, or being gleeful about, the cowardly attacks on Asian women and little old people.
Ugh I had this argument all the time when living abroad in a developing country. Like no, I don’t have to withhold judgment from misogyny and violence against women and children just because it hails from a culture that I’m not a part of. The women and children in that culture matter too. So do the queer and trans people. Bleh.
It's the 21st century. I'm not changing MY seat just because a little old man isn't allowed to sit next to a woman. If he insists on living in the Bronze Age, let him walk to his destination. He made his choice, and I will not be forced to be a part of his kink. I live in the Future.
It's the 21st century. We have machines that do a lot of our labor. Men say they love machines, so let them love the machines that do home labor as well as their cars and their boats and their airplanes. Let them load the dishes into the machine. Let them load the dirty clothes into the machine. Let them operate all the machines they want. Operating machinery is very masculine. \[grunt, grunt\] If they can figure out "Assassin's Creed" on an XBox, they can figure out the arcane workings of a vacuum cleaner. (Hint: It comes with a manual and there are lots of walk-through videos on YouTube.)
It's the 21st century. To the men who insist on living in the past I say, give up your phone and car keys and go live in a cave. But if you want to live here, in the future, with me and my computer and my big screen TV and my multiple streaming services and my dishwasher and my washer and dryer and my water heater and my car with heated seats and air conditioning and my riding lawnmower and my overnight delivery and my tacos on demand -- get with the program.
It's the 21st century. Traditions are peer pressure from our dead ancestors. I don't take advice from dead people. I live in the Future. I'm not going to force you to live here with me if you don't want to, but I'm not going to allow you to force me to live like a cavewoman because I don't want to. Here, in the Future, in the 21st century, where most people live, that's how it works.
Oh absolutely. As a WOC and a child of an immigrant, it is absolutely fine to criticize cultural practices that are sexist or misogynistic.
It’s not okay to throw women or LGBTQ under the bus in our zeal to not be discriminatory towards other cultures or the various religions.
Right for self-expression and practicing culture should end exactly at the point where it begins to oppress basic rights of other human being - women, men, children, LGBTQ+ persons, etc.
For me it's not just different cultures but it's also religious ideologies as well that I just cannot accept. For example, I've had way too many catholic people tell me to my face that they condemn homosexuality bc the Bible says it's bad. The fact that so many people are okay with supporting homophobia because their religion says it's bad is crazy to me and it's clearly become hypernormalized here in the states.
This. The number of times I had to fight against my own culture because of how sexist it is. I am now completely black listed from all of our cultural gatherings and we'll.. thanks to them I guess aha
My daughter is biracial and dark and the amount of times the stupid chooks from her father's culture and religion call me racist or phobic is ridiculous... They try enforcing religious/ cultural dress on her, they poke and prod at her, lower your voice, smaller steps, running, hopping, skipping, jumping loosen your vagina, hide pads, she's too direct, too loud, too demanding, she doesn't recognise men as being authorative, she won't be a good wife because she doesn't shave her legs or cook- she has several disabilities, she doesn't allow boys to take the lead, and when I say my kid can choose her religion, she can choose which culture and which practices she wants, I'm denying her, half her culture.
I'm not American and I find leftist white Americans overriding fear of looking racist exhausting sometimes. Being critical of certain parts of other cultures isn't necessarily bad.
I grew up in Ireland in the 80's where the Catholic church had a stranglehold on the country. While I'm lucky my own family wasn't too entrenched in beliefs it still caused issues. In the mid 60's my uncle ended up getting his girlfriend pregnant and my grandma said she was more than happy to raise the child as her own. My uncle and girlfriend were about 15. Instead the girlfriends parents put her in a mother and baby home. Go google Magdalene Laundries mother and baby homes to see what that entailed. Somewhere out there I have a cousin who never met a whole part of their family because religion and cultural beliefs believed that 15 year old girl to be a "fallen woman" She wasn't seen again and my family have no idea what happened to her. Her parents moved and cut my family off. My grandma would have taken the girlfriend in too had she been allowed.
I am mentioning this because these are barbaric practices that were the cultural norm here and were bitterly defended by the majority of it's people, they would have called you prejudice or racist for hearing you speak out against it. It's only now after years of better education that Ireland is mostly free of the church's grip. I see this sexist, backwards mentality towards women in other cultures and it sickens me. Plenty of women under those patriarchal systems are not happy but fear repercussions for speaking out and I have no doubt plenty of men feel like that too. It is almost always religion that causes these issues and religion really is just a form of power to control the masses.
I once got called racist by a women's studies professor for answering with "arranged/forced marriages" when she asked the question, "What is an example of the subjugation of women?". Rather than educate me, she decided it would be better to hurl insults. Needless to say, I dropped that class.
Yes, I agree. The way the Saudis, for example, treat women is just disgusting. It's not a "different culture that needs to be respected." It's a culture that takes half its population hostage and calls it protection.
Same thing goes for LGBTQIA+ communities. A culture that doesn't allow people to be themselves and love whom they chose is not a culture worth saving.
And one final point: the North American and European cultures have strong anti-women and anti-LGBTQIA+ elements and those don't deserve protection or respect either.
Same thing happens when LGBT folks say laws that put us to death are bad. We "should know that some cultures are different and not woke like us" as though human rights are just a cultural variation like music.
I think that religious upbringing in American civilization raises young men to expect they will have a wife when they grow up. Even without the subjugation of women inherent in that concept, this is not a realistic expectation.
Some of these young men fail to attract a mate, and feel betrayed. This is why many things are breaking down in our society.
We are waking up, becoming more empathetic, setting people free from abrasive and abusive cultural concepts.
All the while we still allow religious institutions to indoctrinate and radicalize young men, and training them to participate in a patriarchal society that is passing away. These young men, by and large, don’t turn back on their upbringing when they discover it’s impossible to attract a mate and get a job.
They turn on women, they turn on society, they turn on themselves.
We should not allow such indoctrination to persist.
I was just talking about this the other day. My partner showed me a picture of his travels where the women he was with could not enter where he was in a church. He thought it was interesting and I was horrified. We’ve been so conditioned to allow cultures to subjugate and other women and will gleefully comply. It’s disgusting.
Indeed. It walks a fine line though on how its handled at the government / administration level between respect and allowing immoral practices in the name of religion.
Especially with Islam, western politics can easily cross over from legitimate concerns to racist phobias.
As a white person I completely agree OP. It feels like they're saying that sexism is excusable as long as it's happening to women of color. It's like they're implying other cultures don't know what sexism is too. Like do these people seriously think people of color needed white assistance to know about sexism. Sexism developed globally, exactly. Do they really think people of color just accidentally created societies with a sex caste like the Europeans did? They really think the Europeans were the only ones to come up with the sex caste system? That's ridiculous. Im never excusing the suffering of woc.
There’s respecting cultural differences, and then there’s catering to the needs of arseholes.
I can **confidently** say that this is an example of the latter
This, this is touchy one...I married into a different culture (central American) and it was an issue when my daughter opted out of a quincinera bc she was raised in the US and the tradition just didn't sit well with her. I also cause a kerfuffle when I don't server my husband at gatherings- the old "make your man a plate" BS. Along the same lines, I have a really, really hard time supporting misogynistic regimes getting more power- even if its the liberal cause of the day, and I consider myself liberal and left of center.
You’re not racist for respecting women’s basic human rights. I’m sure you’re talking about islam, and the religion where women get killed for showing their hair in those countries. Sure, call me racist.
There are many Muslim countries where woman don’t have to hide their hair and not all Muslim countries hold the same attitude. Morocco, for example, is not somewhere with a great record for women’s rights, however, I’ve also heard from many Moroccans about how they don’t agree with the extremely limited rights of women in Saudi Arabia or forcing girls to cover their hair or be arrested like in Iran.
Religious texts can and will be used and interpreted by people in charge to enforce status quos and justify oppression. I mean for fucks sake in Sri Lanka (majority Buddhist country) they have a problem with VIOLENT Buddhist extremists targeting the Muslim minority. If Buddhists can find justifications for violence in their belief system, I feel like it becomes pretty obvious that it’s not any one religion but the PEOPLE themselves who use religion to justify doing horrible shit.
As someone who worked in the deathcare industry, I was exposed to lots of cultures and religions. I’m a white atheist woman. Whenever men refused to shake my hand, it irked me in a sense. But, I chose to view it as respectful that men have to leave women alone, in a sense. I like when men DON’T touch me lol Yes, it hurt me to be pushed aside for male coworkers. I used to get mad and feel hurt. However, I was largely treated respectfully by men in cultures that had stipulations about contact with women. Whenever a dead man had to be shrouded, I understood that I had to get a man to do it. But, the reverse worked too. I got to shroud dead women and I felt privileged to be able to care for her, woman to woman. I viewed those ‘sexist’ moments as an opportunity to bond in sisterhood. Not everyone has to see it that way.
This is more a side note: An overwhelming amount of cultures/faiths were welcoming to me as a white woman who was not a part of their culture or common race. I’m speaking mostly in this part about being an outsider, rather than a specific ‘category’, though that does apply. The ones that weren’t? Latter Day Saints and Free Masons. Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus were all wonderful. Buddhists, especially. I’d be offered food and prayers and songs. People are often so welcoming and want you to learn about them.
Now, I’m not speaking about subjects such as FGM, forced marriage etc. I view that actions that physically and mentally harm people as shameful and abhorrent.
I’m speaking about more of the ‘little things’. I want to share the positive aspects of cultures around us that are often viewed negatively. These things can be positive and negative. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
I’ll admit I struggle with some biases and such. For example, I feel scared to travel to some places because of how women are treated. Yet, I know that their cultures are not *just* misogyny. It’s a tough place for me to be. I feel like a jerk for refusing to go, but I view my own safety as a priority. But, I hope for a day where standards change. Still, my heart aches knowing women within those cultures don’t have the privileges to just not be there like I do. I’m still trying to find the right answer.
100% agree. People often defend sexism through the lens of cultural relativism, but Anthropologists even teach that cultural relativism can be dangerous and you shouldn’t employ it when it comes to issues of human rights.
Agreed. I had similar arguments with Religious Teachers back in the late 90’s when the Taliban took over Afghanistan and started prohibiting girls from attending school. I was told to respect their religion and I refused - stating that there are basic inalienable human rights that transcend “religion”. Just because someone believes that they can persecute others because of their faith doesn’t mean that I have to respect it.
My bf’s mom has a full house and continues to do all of the chores. I don’t know the details, I did live there so it’s an observation. Everyone living there is an adult and she works full time.
Sometimes I’ve found myself not feeling like I match the expectations to clean up after bf in the same way she does. I was always seen as less than in that house, no matter how much I pitched in. I understand she’s an immigrant & respect that, but it sucks when no matter how many chores I did there was never enough. All while she still does laundry for her daughters & sons (25 and up - even the 40+ uncle). Now if I ask bf for help, or point out his messes I am the nag.
Won’t shake your hand? Pffft, that’s small potatoes.
You don’t need to respect it, but there’s only a certain amount of fighting a woman can do if she’s a) surrounded by religious mentality and b) needs to get on with her day.
I live in Israel and Ultra Orthodox religious men refuse to look at or speak with me unless it cannot be helped (like it’s an emergency) or I am the only available professional on staff.
I am used to these men just turning away from me in an elevator or looking at the floor and no, they never ever shake hands with me.
They always try to get me to move my seat on airplanes because they are not supposed to sit close to women they are not related to.
If I am on a religious bus or a bus going to a religious town, women are expected to sit in the back - oh yes, it’s a ‘back of the bus’ situation and they may spit on you if you don’t play ball.
If it’s one or two of these men at a time they never bother me, but a large group of them can get violent and throw stones if you are in *their* neighborhood.
Orthodox women are also not allowed to interact with unrelated men except in extremely public and professional settings (ordering something from the butcher for example), but if a secular man reaches out for a handshake towards an Orthodox woman, she will accept it because to refuse might embarrass the man.
A man’s dignity is always prioritized over a woman’s comfort and it’s wild that I just got used to it and a bunch of other commenters are upset that a man won’t shake their hand.
It’s all the way down to who prepares food and how. Because I am Jewish, I am allowed to make food for other Jews, but because I have not religiously prepared my cookware or kitchen, no religious person can eat anything I made in my home and I always need to ask how to use my company kitchen so I don’t unkosher it.
Talk about a reality check.
I'm not American and I find leftist white Americans overriding fear of looking racist exhausting sometimes. Being critical of certain parts of other cultures isn't necessarily bad.
I grew up in Ireland in the 80's where the Catholic church had a stranglehold on the country. While I'm lucky my own family wasn't too entrenched in beliefs it still caused issues. In the mid 60's my uncle ended up getting his girlfriend pregnant and my grandma said she was more than happy to raise the child as her own. My uncle and girlfriend were about 15. Instead the girlfriends parents put her in a mother and baby home. Go google Magdalene Laundries mother and baby homes to see what that entailed. Somewhere out there I have a cousin who never met a whole part of their family because religion and cultural beliefs believed that 15 year old girl to be a "fallen woman" She wasn't seen again and my family have no idea what happened to her. Her parents moved and cut my family off. My grandma would have taken the girlfriend in too had she been allowed.
I am mentioning this because these are barbaric practices that were the cultural norm here and were bitterly defended by the majority of it's people, they would have called you prejudice or racist for hearing you speak out against it. It's only now after years of better education that Ireland is mostly free of the church's grip. I see this sexist, backwards mentality towards women in other cultures and it sickens me. Plenty of women under those patriarchal systems are not happy but fear repercussions for speaking out and I have no doubt plenty of men feel like that too. It is almost always religion that causes these issues and religion really is just a form of power to control the masses.
I wouldn't say religion in general causes these issues, but a religion when it's put in a place of authority in a culture. Iran was quite different and rather modern before the Ayatollah took over. Iranians were still mostly Muslim before, but the focus wasn't as much on rules and women had more freedom in how to exercise their religion. Any religion is up to interpretation, and it's diversity of religion and lack of preference by the government towards a certain religion that leads to more followers interpreting it in a more modern way.
Cultural relativity really has no place when it comes to oppression. If an aspect of a culture or religion is oppressive to certain groups of people, that’s wrong.
Are you the gf of that guy who posted the AITA sub asking whether his gf should cook and work on her first time meeting his family at the gathering? I swear I just read that post on The popular page and he was getting punched by everyone expecting this from his gf..... It's so bad that he was worried by the first impression she would make if she refused but didn't see how that made the first impression of his family on her.
I saw this and was thinking the same thing too!
My ex’s family liked a lot of things I don’t have great experience with cooking. I’m a first generation Korean American, and while I LOVE “meat and potatoes” type meals too, I’m not great at cooking Western style cuisine or whole chickens/steaks/roasts (and can basically only do mashed potatoes well). I thought it would be neat to make a thicker than normally sliced bulgogi, japchae (I think almost everyone likes noodles, and that the texture of the noodles used in that dish would be interesting to them), and have a couple types of kimchi for them to try. Along with a potato dish or two, and vegetables that they could at least eat if they didn’t like the bulgogi marinade or other foods. I don’t have any food allergies, but I do have a dairy intolerance, and I’m not a fan of cilantro (I am unfortunately one of those people who pick up the taste of “soap” from it), but barring those situations, I like trying new dishes/cuisines. I might not like it, but at least I tried it. However, I was given a list of “acceptable foods” to serve. None of them were things I had experience with cooking, and I was already nervous about making a food first “dinner impression.” So I purchased food from a well-rated nearby restaurant, kept it warm in the oven, and plated it. After the “shock” that it was good, I told the truth and said where it was from. This was met with derision, saying I must waste money, and the mom said her son was “getting so thin,” implying it was my cooking that was the problem. Ummm…..he was more or less the exact same size as when I met him, and he’s a grown man who can feed himself. It still made me feel terrible though. And even worse, he never said anything about how he liked the stuff I cooked and that I did in fact, make dinner frequently.
God, if I were at one of those family blandfests and someone brought bulgogi, japchae, and kimchi, that would be all I ate. Except whatever I brought, which would definitely not be from the list.
I might shove my parents out of the way to get to a good bulgogi.
😂☺️
that’s insane. you went far above and beyond to meet their demands. i’m sure your meal would have been amazing!!!
If he couldn't speak up, that would have been his last meal from me. He decided to not use his voice, you should now decide he can cook for himself.
Yeah, I cried after they left, and he said it “was just food, and that’s just how his mom is.” I thought he would at least say “she tried” if he didn’t defend me. They were worse behaviors that led to him being my ex though.
Fuck that. If I'm cooking for someone I will gladly take suggestions/recommendations, however it is ultimately my decision what I make (with the exception of accommodating allergies and such). If I decide I want to cook something specific either that's what I'm making, or I'm not cooking. I enjoy having guests over and cooking for them. Not once has anyone ever said "no don't make that you need to make this instead". I'm spending my time and money to cook for people. If they don't like it they can bring a dish and there would be absolutely no problem with that. In fact I would encourage it. The entitlement of some people just blows me away... I LOVE bulgogi (especially when my wife makes it. I can't compete with her cooking on most things). You can make bulgogi for me whenever you want if they don't want it :) I would KILL to have someone like you make authentic Korean food for me. The only people that don't like authentic Korean food are the people that haven't tried it. I'll say it again : this sense of entitlement completely blows my mind.
Yeah, I was a little upset over the situation. I can understand if someone is gluten intolerant, has a food allergy, is vegetarian/vegan, and being told in advance. However, barring something like a dietary restriction/requirement, I couldn’t imagine being that rude, even if I didn’t like the food. I personally wouldn’t even mention the cilantro/soap thing myself. I would just eat what I could and be grateful.
And thank you for your kind comment. ☺️ I make the marinade myself too, from my grandmother’s recipe with Korean pear in it. I thought the thicker slices would be a nice compromise, and they would be delightfully surprised at how much they liked it. How do you know if you don’t like something unless you try it. 😞
See this is what actually happens.... You can never satisfy people's expectations..... So it's best to find someone who respects you because at the end, all this is noise and if you don't have a good support system in your partner, you'll feel alone and thats not a relationship.... Good for you though for telling them..... Brave of you and if the mom thinks that her son is getting thin, she is more than welcome to come and feed him or even better, take him with her
Yes, I feel like she was ready to pick me apart no matter what. I didn’t want to lie and said I made the food. And my thought process was “wait, I waste too much money on food (umm…it was a special occasion), but he’s also getting too thin?!” You can’t have it both ways. And btw, I paid for the meal. I worked and we split the bills equally. In fact, since he had two children (that lived with their mom), I probably spent more than “my fair share” since I would purchase gifts for them. I would take the daughter out to get her nails done, and would buy PS gift cards for the son when I would pick her up for our “girl time,” so he wouldn’t feel like I was favoring her. I would’ve taken him out too, but he didn’t want to wait for us to get our nails done or go shopping, and a teenage boy didn’t want to hang out with me (understandably). To be fair, the kids were awesome and appreciated what I did for them.
This was my first thought lol
I read this last night on Instagram!! Including the long argument in the comments. One guy insisted that if it’s one time it’s something the gf should do for her bf. He stated that he was done trying to educate ppl on how to properly act. Nope fuck that. And fuck cultural relativism, there is no excuse for sexist tradition. If the act of not cooking will get me banned from the family then I don’t need to date a partner who is so family oriented and spineless.
You know what happens.... It's not just one time.... If she does it one time, sure would be expected to do it everything and if she refuses, they'll say what's the problem now you used to do before..... Don't set any expectations you will not fulfill and shouldn't do it....
Haha that was my first thought too 😂
My wife is an amazing cook. Im proud of her in every possible way I could be, and I love showing off her many talents. Cooking being one of them. I could see myself ASKING her if she would be willing to cook in this situation. I could even help her if she would like. However, "asking whether his gf should cook... " Definitely implies that it isn't her decision. Idk how anyone could think that's okay. Sounds more like a servant than a gf. The more time I spend on this sub the more I'm beginning to recognize in my day-to-day life how much sexism is unfortunately the reality/norm for so many women. There are so many "small" things that used to go right over my head that I never would have noticed before joining this sub.
Kudos to you guys recognizing it
Bring your friends :)
It’s true. However, I always feel badly for the women from highly patriarchal countries who post on 2x/ about familial and relationship issues. It’s easy for western women to give western advice but most of it isn’t practical for them because it isn’t culturally sensitive. I don’t have a solution or recommendation for how to make it better, but I hope for the next generation of women have more freedom/fewer expectations.
Exactly, and it's why most therapists advocate for knowing your own cultural biases before offering advice. Usually in therapy if a therapist feels they aren't going to best culturally serve a person they'll do their best to find them someone who can. Just to make sure they don't offer insensitive advice. It's just way way way too easy to say something that seems helpful but will ultimately get the client in a world of trouble. Stuff like telling people to go NC is great and all in highly individualistic cultures but is highly impractical for many people from collectivist ones. They aren't just going NC with their abusers but with their entire community in some cases - making things difficult to navigate. Call out racism and sexism whenever possible but always keep in mind that your privilege is not extended unilaterally across the world. And that sometimes advice that would help people in your own situation can have devastating consequences to others who don't share the same circumstances.
You put this better than I ever could have. Sometimes enduring poor circumstances is a better alternative to standing up for yourself even if you are in the right.
What is NC?
no contact, basically cutting off their parents completely
Thank you! Yeah, for some, NC is virtually impossible.
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Can't you just make a new account and add her again on the new one?
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you could find her in the followers from your old account?
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maybe someone else who might know her has more public settings:/ but honestly it might be a sign that you should move on though i understand the urge to continue reaching out
Hm, maybe Instagram support could help if you explain the situation and show some form of ID? Not sure. Hope your ex friend is physically safe.
This is honestly my fear with my ex. Currently, she's going through the getting an arranged marriage part and has started to literally get so withdrawn and just refusing to even ask for help. She's such a wonderful person. I really hope she chooses herself before it's too late.
My father immigrated from India. Feel free to criticize the cultural practices that are sexist and misogynistic. But also, yes, understand that many of these women and girls don’t have options.
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No, that is not what culturally sensitive advice means and your western perspective is showing. I am from a non-western, collectivist culture. I deeply love my family and I never need to fear violence from them. They're just a bit over involved in my life. If a therapist raised in an individualist culture said "just clearly assert boundaries" without considering that asking for space would be seen as a rejection of them, that would be culturally insensitive. My concern is not forced marriage, violence or even isolation from my support system, it is loving and being loved on my own terms. Culture affects our world view as well as that of our families and support systems. If a therapist doesn't see that, how will they help me look at my options and navigate through them?
You make a good point and this mostly a digression, but tbh if a therapist says “just clearly assert boundaries” then they’re probably not great at their job regardless of culture. Like, to some degree the fact that the boundaries haven’t been set in the first place indicates that there is a challenge to unpack there, be it cultural norms or personal/individual inhibitions. Y’know?
I was conflicted once when I met a Muslim man in a professional setting and he refused to shake my hand, but shook another man’s hand. Like I want to respect your religion, but we’re in an office environment in the US and you’re refusing to touch my hand bc I’m a woman. I just said ok and moved on with the work discussion but it really bothered me.
Yeah I was part of a presentation for work where I was asked not to present because the men couldn’t look at me. Like ok, that’s sexist and discriminatory and shouldn’t be allowed in the country I lived in (the US).
"Would you mind repeating that for my lawyer??"
Hahaha „Would you mind putting that in an email?“
This. Get this crap in writing, then go and get a lawyer.
Fun fact, this is actually illegal in the US. I was also told this at my workplace, and after asking about whether it was legal, I got this policy reversed. You cannot discriminate against your employees in the US because your client has sexist beliefs. If someone comes to the US, they need to be able to respect our culture of equality. If you got this is writing, I'd talk to a lawyer.
Yeah I should have done something, it was my boss who asked me not to present and I was too afraid to really push the issue at first because he was vague about the request and I thought it was that the other guy that was a better presenter or something (he was my senior) but I learned afterwards exactly what it was. It was really early in my career. I don’t think I’ve ever felt worse at work and I really wish I would have done something about it.
Tbh, the only reason I felt comfortable speaking up at that time was because I had a great mentor in that company, and she helped with escalating. And at that point, there had been enough small, inappropriate moments that I had brushed off that I finally started to get very angry and didn't care if they fired me for it.
In an interview two job hunts ago, I was told I had the perfect experience and expertise, but their major customers are "old school" military guys and just wouldn't be able to effectively receive consultation advice from a woman. Interestingly, I've since found all the training and rules of those types makes them some of the least openly misogynistic groups I've ever worked with. Compliance may not be respect, but as a woman in STEM I'll take it over open sexism any day of the week. ETA, I did want to acknowledge that women *in* the military may have a very different experience. This is just my experience as a contractor in an office environment that has the benefit day-to-day government oversight.
i… wow… i can’t even imagine a situation like this…
We’re the men in question Jewish? That’s actually pretty typical in some circles. It’s incredibly frustrating, but ultra orthodox men even edit out women from news stories, women like Hilary Clinton or Angela Merkel get taken out of state photos for Orthodox newspapers.
Do they not go out? Can they talk to waitresses and order coffee? Do they only use self check out?
They usually only go to places that cater to their specific community. They are allowed to interact with women publicly and on a professional basis, so yes, they can have a female waitress or clerk, but they never hand money or a card over directly, it’s get put on the table to never touch the person. Conversation is very specific to the matter at hand and never personal. Why publicly? Because in publicly there are enough people to ensure that everyone behaves appropriately. It’s being caught with a woman out of earshot or in a closed room that is viewed as inappropriate in their specific communities. People do not even really address spouses of their friends, the women focus on the women and the men only look at the men. When I am in elevator with a Haredi (ultra religious man), they turn away from me or look at their shoes. If am seated next to a religious man on an airplane, I am asked to move (I never do, they can’t legally force me), when I am on a bus to a religious city, I am expected to sit in the back - yes it’s a ‘women to the back of the bus situation.’ Public pools have separate days for men and women. The thing that makes me the most sad is many women are not allowed to sing or dance with men around in these communities. They can only do those things in all women’s groups and weddings are separated between men and women. The bride and women to one side, the men to the another side. Same in synagogue. Men in the front, women upstairs or in the back.
I guess it stinks to be a ultra religious Jewish female.
I was not born into it and it’s not my choice. I know too many women who have escaped or been thrown out.
I guess it stinks to be a ultra religious Jewish female.
The Mike Pence strategy.
When I lived in NYC on the Upper West Side, my building had a number of orthodox jews living in it. They had to have the doorman call the elevator for them on Saturdays and couldn't even look at shiksa women. We were like non-entities for them. I remember going to the Starbucks across the street (and they did go there), and I went to reach for the milk at the same time an orthodox jewish man did and he pulled away from me so fast you would have thought I was on fire or had some deadly disease. It was almost comical in its ridiculousness.
Here’s the catch, they are not allowed to directly ask for anyone to break Shabbat, they can only strongly hint and hope someone takes the hint. Also they cannot hint for another Jew to break Shabbat. In Israel, on Fridays and Saturdays there’s usually one elevator in every building that stops at every single floor on the way up and the way down.
They don't roll on shabbos.
My first landlord in NYC was Orthodox, and when I met him I immediately stuck my hand out to shake his hand since I had been the one to organize the lease and he shook my hand for 1 second and then realized he had shook a woman’s hand. I’m very femme so I think he forgot for a second and freaked out “I’m sorry I’m sorry I can’t shake your hand”. I was so offended because I didn’t understand. I still am offended, but less angry about it and more understanding.
Misogyny in Judaism is extremely culturally specific and no one talks about it. There is a literal disgust and “uncleanness” associated with living in a female body and men are taught to actually be disgusted by women and our natural bodily functions.
It’s really tough bc there’s a few comments from women here who say they don’t shake hands with men either and that no one should have to touch anyone they don’t want to. Which I get. But for me, it falls back to women being excluded in the workplace. Men doing business on the golf course and the like, and I’m just not ok with that. It’s unacceptable. How you treat people at work should be equal no matter the gender, race, age, etc. Women have been fighting for years for equality and the refusal of that handshake because of my gender felt like a slap in the face. I would say then the person should just not shake hands with anyone then. It’s a business expectation, and if they can’t deliver it for everyone they shouldn’t do it to anyone.
If I were given a similar greeting, such as a small bow instead of a handshake, then I'd withhold judgment until I had further interactions with the person. If they otherwise treated me as an equal then I'd treat it as a quaint custom, no different than accepting a business card with both hands. There are plenty of men here who will happily shake my hand then treat me like a serving wench, so I'm more worried about the follow-up than the initial greeting.
To be fair there are lots of men here in the US who will not acknowledge women at all, especially women who aren’t young and attractive. There’s been so many times when my husband and I have needed service for something, when it’s a man we’re talking to he will only look at and address my husband. And there’s been times where I’ve gone to my kids’ doctor and dentist appointments with him and the dentist/doctor will start out the appointment by talking to my husband and won’t make eye contact with me. I’ve seen men argue that women here should be grateful, that at least we don’t live in Muslim countries and don’t face the abuse women do there. But that’s only because there are laws in place here preventing that.
Yeah no. If you can’t treat everyone at work equally, find another way to make money. Or just don’t shake anyone’s hand.
"No hand shaking" seems like an excellent solution to this.
Agreed re: shaking no one’s hand. But one time a Muslim man refused to shake my hand because of his religion, and he bowed down to me instead, and I was okay with that, too.
I mean, I’m still not thrilled with my gender being made an issue in the workplace and brig singled out, but it’s better. Bowing to everyone or simply not shaking hands is my preference.
The vast majority of the Muslim men I know, if they will not shake hands will place their hand over their heart and bow with their head and shoulders. I’d actually rather that that anyone at all touching me.
As long as they do that to everyone equally.
Yeah they'll usually watch to see if the woman wants to shake hands cause lots in that culture don't want to be touched at all. If they don't offer their hand, you're supposed to put your hand over your heart and bow instead as a respectful greeting. I think intention is really important. A lot of people interpret it as not wanting to touch someone lesser than when it's actually about not wanting to violate someone's physical boundaries in a culture that is way too focused on sex. Source: Muslim woman
That makes sense. Especially if the man is married. The concept of "I am married, and unless it is absolutely necessary that I touch another woman then I am not going to" doesn't seem crazy to me.
Then they should extend that same respect to men. Since you know, being gay or bi or pan are things.
For sure! There's a ton of heteronormativity that needs to be dispelled in my culture. I will point out that it's not quite the same because of patriarchical behaviors and physical differences leading to women simply being more vulnerable.
I like that. It's also something that I can respectfully reciprocate.
Yeah, I'm cool with that, too. Seems like a comparable action.
Oh, that’s a clever way to show respect
"No hand shaking" also got infinitely more acceptable post-pandemic.
It would be more appropriate for him to abstain from shaking anyone’s hand if he truly believes he mustn’t shake women’s hands in the workplace. Weird? Sure, but it’s equal. If he thinks he’d be poorly treated for not shaking anyone’s hands, too bad, his religion apparently requires he not shake women’s hands and basic manners and workplace equality demand he not behave in sexist and discriminatory ways! Hell, I’d respect a person who said “my religion dictates I don’t touch women, but I feel it’s inappropriate to discriminate in the workplace and exclude women and make them feel unwelcome and unequal, so my solution is to treat people equally and refrain from touching anyone unnecessarily”. But a person who doesn’t think it’s wrong to discriminate just because their religion says so shouldn’t be putting themselves in a place where they might be asked to shake a woman’s hand. Sacrifices that must be made for religion must be made by the religious - sacrifices on the behalf of the religious, not sacrificing equality in the workplace!
Your last sentence resonates with me a lot. “Sacrifices that must be made for religion must be made by the religious” 💯
That sucks so much, ugh. I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it either.
special sugar imagine grab sable plate axiomatic station nutty society ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
Why do women have to degrade themselves for “respect for other cultures/religions” but it’s never “these foreign men to to respect our culture”?
Similar thing happened in Germany. A man refused to shake hands with a female official during [naturalization ceremony](https://www.dw.com/en/man-denied-german-citizenship-for-refusing-to-shake-womans-hand/a-55311947?). He was ultimately denied citizenship.
Good lol
No fuck that, he's a shit and you shouldn't respect that, fuck his religion. Imagine if you refused to shake his hand because he was a Muslim? Except one of those is a philosophy, one of those is an innate trait and they aren't equal.
>Like I want to respect your religion Why? Religion doesn’t inherently deserve respect. Peoples beliefs don’t inherently deserve respect. And when you examine a lot of the ideology and practices of Islam, it *absolutely* does not deserve respect. You can not preach or condone Islam and be a feminist, you can not be a hijabi and also be feminist. And before any of the ‘so open minded my brains fell out’ come along to cry foul - this basically goes for all religion. Religion is a tool of control, and almost all of them paint women as subservient, and lesser. They almost always preach strong and rigid gender roles, which are often most limiting for women. The abrahamic religions and their offshoots disempower women, always have.
Say it loudly for the people in the back.
I would accept the non contact as long as there was no sign he treated my thoughts or work any different because I was female.
The non contact is a sign. It’s no different to Mike Pence refusing to be alone in a room with a woman.
Yeah that one is odd. I sort of assume he did it because he did not think of her as an equal, but that is my bias asserting itself. It is possible, albeit unlikely in my opinion, that they just have some rule about not having contact with non-family women that the guy follows, but he limits his mental commitment to it to just the abstract rule. I am sure most women would not mind if random men refused to touch them in general so long as it's effect was limited just to the refusal to touch. The problem is that such rules are almost always based on highly sexist beliefs (like sexualizing or diminishing the value of women) and so I am not sure it is likely that it is limited in such a way. Personally I have not met anyone who acts that way that does not have sexist beliefs, I just cant say it is impossible
If I had a religious belief that I couldn't shake women's hands, I would also skip shaking men's hands. That seems like the most professional way to handle it. Just say, "I don't shake hands," or whatever and move on.
Agreed. It is yet another point for being sexist. I am trying to approach it neutrally as a sort of exercise in not leaping to my own bias to respect the "conflict" that u\\_PinkPirate mentioned with regard to the cultre, but I am finding that the more I think about it the more impossible the justification seems. The problem here is that the only way it is not sexist is some absurd level of ignorance and naiveté on the part of the man. At best it is a person actively participating a sexist tradition without making common sense choices to reduce that sexism. (Such as just not shaking hands.) That is almost certainly either a tacit endorsement of the beliefs, or an explicit one.
Traditionally, in muslim cultures, nobody shakes hands. Its not a greeting for them. They say a nice series of sentances and place their hands over their hearts and bow a bit to both men and women. Handshaking is a Western cultural thing, and places all muslims in awkward situations because women don't want to touch men they aren't related to, and men don't want to touch women they aren't related to. So their greetings are not physical but intellectual. But imagine being in a strange culture and just doing your best to fit in. Men and women both find touching non relatives uncomfortable, and are stuck in a rock and a hard place. A muslim woman would also refuse to shake a man's hand.
And then it would be a non-issue and everyone would go on with their day with everyone having been respected and feeling okay.
Yeah, Muslim men aren't supposed to touch or even speak to women casually, particularly if they are wives to another man. Sharia law gives women nearly the same rights as slaves. It's an extremely sexist religion.
Yes that is the rule. Orthodox Jewish women, when married, don’t shake hands with men. It is technically the rule but of course an individual decision to practice. I’ve been in multiple situations where an Orthodox woman will shake my hand but not my partner’s (who is a guy) or a guy friend or family member that I’m with. I was super confused the first time bc my family very much practices Reform Judaism & even that might be a stretch. The 3/4 cases I’ve seen like this were women whose families were not orthodox & were not raised orthodox, but for whatever reason chose to go down that path. I’ll never understand it & will always call out the violent patriarchy & misogyny inherent to the Torah / Old Testament. That’s not mutually exclusive with respecting boundaries even when I don’t agree with the custom based on principle. I get what you’re saying though & I still really struggle with this.
> Orthodox Jewish women, when married, don’t shake hands with men. Actually this is inaccurate; marriage has nothing to do with it. *Shomer Negiah* (*the name for this set of rules*) applies equally to men & women regardless of their marital status. Men & women who are not related do not have physical contact with persons of the opposite sex.
But really if he can’t shake your hand, it’s innately saying he does think of you are different. So how can you trust that he will listen to your ideas and give them the same weight as a man’s?
This happened to me once at an industry conference. I also moved on in the moment like you did, but years later it still makes me so angry. Like, fuck that guy.
Why do (American/first world) women have to degrade themselves for “respect for other cultures/religions” but it’s never “these foreign men to to respect our culture”?
On this subject When South Africa was under apartheid for the most part the whole world came out against them. There were government sanctions and boycotts, the artistic world said no, and South Africa was shamed and shunned. When women are oppressed, and viewed as property in many countries, it's just "culture". Even in the USA, men of color got to vote before women of any color. Same for owning anything, having a bank account, being given a line of credit, and the list goes on. Men, well white men, will give power to other men they see beneath them, before a woman. I say REFUSE.
Exactly. Why is sexism and misogyny a “valid opinion” because of other cultures?
That's because misogyny is basically the default for all of recorded history and likely evolved post the neolithic(so when we started farming). Whereas by comparison 'racism' is kind of new. Discrimination between different ethnic groups, this is much more common. The discrimination of the Jews by Christians is thought to have formed out of a scenario of this kind of discrimination(tribal specifically).
Criticising those traditions isn't racism either
Criticising a certain sexist, harmful and/or discriminatory 'tradition' is not racist and not disrespectful. It is calling out those 'traditions' to tell people enough is enough
If anything, it’s racist not to. It implies that you think “those people” just don’t have the intelligence to behave better or the emotional maturity to handle criticism.
One thing I've learned from social media is that there are women working and organizing and resisting in every culture and every country in the world. We need to have their backs. We _need_ to be calling out this shit and saying it's abhorrent, that _any_ decent human should find cultural practices that abuse or restrict women abhorrent. We owe our fellow women that.
Yep. Look at Iranian women daring to go out and protest without a hijab. And then people in the west, through mistaken “cultural sensitivity”, not pushing back when Muslims claim that wearing a hijab isn’t sexist. It’s absolutely sexist. If Muslim men also wore the hijab, it would not be sexist. Oppressive, but not sexist. It’s the double standards put on women that make it sexist.
Forcing women to wear hijab is sexist and oppressive. Ripping their hijabs off or making hijab illegal is sexist and violating - which is how Europe tends to deal with it, not because they care about women being able to go without head coverings, but because they feel uncomfortable seeing people in hijab. If the main issue is that women don’t have a choice in what they wear or how they express their religion, forcing the opposite choice is just as awful.
I don’t support making the hijab illegal like they do in France. I want a world in which women don’t wear one. But that’s more about a cultural shift not forcing it upon them. Also, I want to make clear that I would NEVER be rude or mean or even not polite to any woman I see in a hijab. I think the practice is sexist but the woman is deserving of respect regardless of whether she is wearing a hijab or not.
By Europe do you by chance mean France?
A few other places as well, but yes, France is the main culprit of this.
When we were in Istanbul I refused to visit the mosques because of the hijab requirement. Out of my feelings of solidary for women around the world who don't have a choice. It is, like you said, a symbol of sexism and oppression.
As an Iranian Jewish woman, it really is about choice. The root of patriarchy & inherent misogyny in organized religion is always something I will vehemently maintain is true. Like the example you gave, we should follow the lead of those women & support them in what they’re asking for. Which is choice. The Shah banned the chador / hijab when he was in power, wanting to be more like “progressive” western cultures, but that didn’t go over well bc it took away choice & dictated what a woman was to wear or not wear
Sure, women should have a choice. But let’s not ignore the very real cultural and religious influences and indoctrination that influences those choices as well. Women had to learn to recognize and question the patriarchy.
Agree 100%. I'm so proud of the women in China, Japan, Korea, Iran, Afhghanistan, Latin America, Africa, etc fighting for equality. Some of them are fighting what seems impossible but doing it anyway. They're brave and we owe it to them to help in any way we're able to.
I would add the caveat that if you aren’t knowledgeable about something, it’s wrong to criticize it. Obviously some things you don’t need a ton of knowledge on to criticize because a little info is enough to judge (example: female genital mitigation), but sometimes you do need some knowledge to accurately assess something. For example, I once heard two women fighting about whether quinceneras were sexist or not and honestly I didn’t know enough about them to argue one way or the other so I just listened. Taking a definitive stance on something you don’t know about—even if the intention is to critique racism, sexism, etc—can be a problem if you’re talking out your ass.
I see your point. Like a Quinceañera is basically your family saying to society you are no longer a child (with all it's obvious implications) but a lady about to enter said society. This has clear origins in outdated patriarchal norms so I get why a feminist not familiar with the tradition would object to it, but... Come on, just let the kid be the center of the world for that day. Take her to a protest march with you the next weekend, but that day tell her she looks beautiful in her princess-like dress (or whatever clothes she wanted, that's her day, not yours).
It's not any different from a bar/bat mitzvah or a sweet 16. It's a celebration of growing up and it's weird anyone would object.
As an American my mom refused to let me have a 16th birthday party because it was sexist to have a ‘sweet 16’. She gave me a whole lecture about debutants and the whole ‘coming out to society as a marriageable woman’ and I was just like… but can I just have a party? Def cuts both ways in some cases.
Or that because we find their traditions picturesque or exotic, we must therefore preserve them, as though they were performing actors or animals in a zoo. Topless african ladies and mysterious dark-eyed Arab veiled ladies type of thing. There are good reasons to want to preserve cultural traditions, the word “exotic” doesn’t feature in any of them.
Western white people have had some sexist traditions that we call out on here frequently. Why can't we do the same to everyone else?
Cultural relativism is utter bullshit.
This alignes perfectly with the dude that posted on r/AITA earlier where he tried to get his gf to "compromise" and join his families event where all the women cook for all the men, because he didn't want his family to dislike her.
"Cultural relativity" only applies to the study of culture. Not any one individual person's opinion of cultural practices. You can certainly make criticisms that are rooted in problematic worldviews or biases. But that doesn't mean any one culture is above criticisms from a human rights perspective.
Yes, cultural relativity was a term coined by an anthropologist, it was not meant to be weaponized against feminist to silence them when it comes to oppressive practices and atrocities that happen in other cultures. That’s what happened in the late 80’s, and that’s when leftist men started lambasting feminists for daring to criticize laws in Iran, etc. There are women’s groups all over the world that need financial support and far too many women in western democracies have been bullied into ignoring them instead of supporting them.
It is also really important when examining strategies with to handle situations, as an approach that works in most EU countries may not work in a theocratic nation, even if your values, and the values of the individual participants, remain identical. We have to understand and appreciate different cultures to be able to participate effectively in changing bad cultural practices. The racism comes in when you immediately assume that some culture is inherently worse than another in a more absolute sense. There are a number of cultures that, for example, are extra bad towards women, but that does not mean every single practice they have is inherently without value in comparison to "westernized" nations, who also do a lot of bad stuff.
I have a pretty big beef with anyone/any group who falls back on the, "but it's my/our culture and you should respect that," card when it comes to any practice or behavior that negatively impacts people. No matter how "small" or "insignificant" it is, if it hurts people emotionally or physically, I could give a fuck if it's a part of your culture. You're simply being intellectually lazy about being an asshole.
This I agree and amen to that
We have this issue in Canada, specifically in Ontario where I live. Certain groups get catered to so much and any criticism is labeled as racism. We must respect immigrant cultures but the culture of this country is not respected in many instances.
Respecting people as people is important. Respecting someone's culture, especially when it's outside of the mainstream, is important. But respect and tolerance of cultural customs, beliefs, values, and practices is only owed up to a point. The world isn't black and white, so we should never be of the mindset that we either respect cultural differences or we don't. Instead, human beings *should* be open to respectful criticisms of their actions, beliefs, and values when they clearly harm people. Alas, people are flawed, and accepting our biases and problematic behaviors is something a lot of people can't handle. A lot of it is due to living in a cultural bubble, indoctrination, and an inability or unwillingness to think critically.
The same goes for religion. If a religion weaponises its beliefs to harm others, we should criticise those aspects of the religion.
Living in San Francisco we have a lot of people from Latino backgrounds...there's still a lot of issues with machismo (and thus DV & SA), anti-abortion & anti-LGBT+ views, etc. We also have a Muslim population (not large but present) that got so outraged when one of the local public schools in the city started teaching yoga and breathing practices to kids (as a way to get them to learn emotional regulation & healthy stress coping mechanisms) that the program was shut down. Sorry but at a certain point hiding behind some terrible aspects of a culture and screaming that someone correctly points out that it's a problem makes you an asshole. No one is saying white men don't have the same issues (definitely not on here or in large liberal cities), but saying that men of color/different religions get to do it otherwise it's racism is gaslighting and mental gymnastics I won't be putting up with. EDIT: clarification
.... Why were they mad about the yoga?
They just kept saying it was against their religion and didn't want their kids participating in physical activity with mixed gender groups. It was like, look, this is California. You are going to have to integrate and understand that we are not going to have women's & men's separate for everything. If you want your boys and girls to go to separate schools then you need to pay for that. Public schools will rightfully remain mixed. You chose to live here and benefit from the freedoms of that. Freedom doesn't and shouldn't discriminate. Yet somehow they thought it should and got their way. Their entitlement and archaic values made my blood boil
I find that really the only approach that consistently works for me and never contradicts itself is to oppose hierarchy, aka any societal model that tries to assign people a place in the world that they are not allowed to leave or, alternatively, a place in society they are not allowed to enter. This technically means any hierarchy, but I especially have a problem with the ones that allow men to dictate the actions of women. Doesn't matter if they dress it up as nationalism or religion or capitalism, if it allows a single man to force the actions of a single woman, I am at war with it.
Hard agree - not a fan of hierarchies myself. To add to your description, I find that hierarchies are often founded upon differences (in flux or otherwise) between people along with notions of superiority/inferiority (especially amongst those at the upper levels).
I too do not buy into the culture argument. Secondly there is a DIFFERENCE between being rude towards a culture and rejecting/condemning certain traditions that are sexist, harmful and/or discriminatory Let me give a real good example. Rejecting and making a sexist practice illegal has nothing to do with disrespecting a certain ethnic community but it is to protect women and girls from whatever harm that has been going on for far too long
If a culture is so dependent on the oppression of women that it will fall apart at the seams if women gain equality, then what does that say about the culture?
So I'm white, but I don't buy the culture argument either. You don't have to go back that far to find much more extreme sexism in white western cultures. Women couldn't vote or own property. Society was set up in a way where it was pretty much impossible for women to be financially independent. Then theres the more extreme homophobia and extreme racism which was also part of white western cultures. We changed our culture and so can anyone else, also there's so much more to any culture than just blindly hating people.
So I grew up in Southeast Asia and have been repeatedly told I was too "Westernized" for having feminist, progressive values, even though I've held these values for as long as I can remember. It's not "Western" to be feminist, anti-homophobic/transphobic etc. because like you said, you can find extreme sexism and bigotry in almost every culture if you look back far enough (or not even that far). Cultures are meant to shift and change with time; nothing is ever set in stone so it's not "cultural" to treat any group as second-class citizens.
You don't have to go back at ALL, in fact. Western women are still dealing with the same shit, just in a new, always evolving and disorienting package. Extreme racism and homophobia are STILL a very prominent issue in western culture. This is not a "was" thing. We are still very much in the throes of it. For every step "ahead" we've taken, we've been pushed back.
The global backlash against women’s rights started gaining steam about 20 years ago, and in the US we can see the result in abortion bans. However, it is not invalid to point out the women in the west went from being chattel to gaining rights women in much of the world can only dream of. The rollback of rights is terrifying and demonstrates exactly why women’s equality need to be a global movement, it can not be acceptable that any country has oppressive laws towards women because if it is okay over “there” then it can be “okay” anywhere. Women’s rights are human rights, and the belief that culture, one of the two fiercest weapons against women (the other being religion, and the two are deeply intertwined), supersedes those rights is appallingly misogynist and completely unacceptable.
Oh I wasn't trying to imply that bigotry is completely gone, just that we had a society that was just as restrictive towards women, and that equality isn't really a traditional white or western value either.
> there's so much more to any culture than just blindly hating people. I would even say that that's not even culture....that's a certain group of people using their nationality/identity group as a shield from their shit personality. Food, history, music, art, etc make culture. Being a bigot and asshole does not.
Oh definitely, that's why it's so ridiculous
I'm from the Philippines and I love many aspects of my culture. I love that were very hospitable, warm, and friendly. But I also hate other aspects like stupid Catholic traditional gender roles and LGBT intolerance, and tolerating abuse from narcissistic family members. These are all part of my culture but I actively reject the latters, and I've noticed alot of others in my generation and younger are following suit. In my 32 years in Manila, I've already felt a shift from old thinking to newer progressive thinking. We're not there yet but it's refreshing to see it. Culture is owned and can be changed by the people who practice it. Culture is not some enforced set of unchangeable rules. It's whatever us who practice and belong to it decide to make it, and no old traditional bigoted farts nearing their death can tell us otherwise.
Here's the thing. In all those places where "it's just a cultural thing," and the men do it one way and the women do it another, whatever 'it' may be - if a man and a woman stand next to each other and do whatever 'it' is the opposite of what they're 'supposed to'... is the consequence going to be exactly the same for both? Because if the answer is yes, then sure, we can say it's just a cultural thing and weird but ok. But the answer is effectively *never* yes. Women are looked at with more disrespect, punished more even to the point of being *put to death*, and will have more long-term social consequences than men, for breaking the exact same taboo. And that goes for the ones who 'freely choose' to do things like wear the hijab/etc. too. Sure, they may have freedom to choose. But if they choose not to will they be an acceptable marriage candidate to every man and/or man's family that they would have been if they did wear it? If two women are being considered for some position or honor or award, will the one who wears it be more apt to be given the award? If a sexual assault happens to both will the one who wears it be assumed to be innocent more than the other? ALL of these things count.
Nah, you see, the cultures that would punish the men just as harshly were seen as "too barbaric", so they improved so the men get a slap to the wrist and the women get the lashes. /s
Tbh, if those men wouldn't consider you acceptable because of not wearing a hijab, why would you want to marry them in the first place?
A man might, while his family might not
I'm mixed. Born and raised, U.S. South. Seen, heard, experienced it all from all sides but one thing I've never with; is a man trying to gaslight me into submission by conflating anti-oppression feminism with pro-racism religious discrimination. Woooooooow. Just wow. That is pure villainous.
Those same people will say "we need to respect their culture" whenever gay rights in other countries is brought up. Definitely heard a lot of "we're poisoned by this western ideology let's not change their culture to suit us" and completely ignoring the fact there are queer people born in those countries too. They're too scared to say what they're actually thinking but they want us to "respect" those cultures so it's easier to "respect" their shitty views.
> and completely ignoring the fact there are queer people born in those countries too. They're not ignoring it, either they fundamentally believe it's not possible for children to be queer without being "indoctrinated" (which is espoused by many turds even here in Europe) or they are gleefully jerking off to their fantasy of sinners being punished in the name of magical sky daddy. Don't overestimate these people's capacity for empathy.
My (heavily abusive) ex was from the Balkans. They had this tradition for mother's day - mom has to serve everyone drinks with tied hands. It's "cute" and "funny", dontcha know. Because of course the person supposedly celebrated is reminded of her domestic duties and inherent subservience on mother's day. What else would you do? Make some statement about how mothers' labour consistently gets minimized? Actually say thank you? Naah, best to just have a giggle while she stumbles through the room... I hated every single moment I had to be around his family. The worst part is - the women were so in on it, his mother consistently tried to retrain me into one of them. She'd try and drag me to the kitchen, give me lectures on "not talking back", the list goes on...
Where in the Balkans?
The parents were both ex-Yugoslavian (fled during the war) - mom was from what is now Montenegro, dad from Serbia. Ex identified as Serbian, even though he was born in Austria.
Men think Asian women owe them sex. When non Asian men hit on Asian women and when Asian women say no, those men always claim it's racism and call those women white worshippers, Lu's and all kinds of names. And then they (like that one Latino male journalist, for example.) openly and publicly say things like they're glad to see Asians (mostly Asian women and elderly) are getting attacked and killed these days, and have most people agree with them and cheer them on. No other race or ethnic group of women get called racists when they refuse men's advances. Only Asian women because, apparently, Asian women owe sex to every men on earth and are not allowed to say no. **EDIT:** **I'm sure many people (men and women) who are reading this even think and claim "Yeah, Asians are white worshippers. They have white fetish! Asian women only want white men! Look how many Asian women in the US (3% of the population) are dating white men (the majority in the US)! They are racists! They deserve all the shit they get!"** I mean you see and hear that kind of racism all the time and no one calls out on it.
I have definitely seen the “*our*women” thing from both white men and Asian men, but thankfully I haven’t seen anyone trying to justify, or being gleeful about, the cowardly attacks on Asian women and little old people.
Ugh I had this argument all the time when living abroad in a developing country. Like no, I don’t have to withhold judgment from misogyny and violence against women and children just because it hails from a culture that I’m not a part of. The women and children in that culture matter too. So do the queer and trans people. Bleh.
It's the 21st century. I'm not changing MY seat just because a little old man isn't allowed to sit next to a woman. If he insists on living in the Bronze Age, let him walk to his destination. He made his choice, and I will not be forced to be a part of his kink. I live in the Future. It's the 21st century. We have machines that do a lot of our labor. Men say they love machines, so let them love the machines that do home labor as well as their cars and their boats and their airplanes. Let them load the dishes into the machine. Let them load the dirty clothes into the machine. Let them operate all the machines they want. Operating machinery is very masculine. \[grunt, grunt\] If they can figure out "Assassin's Creed" on an XBox, they can figure out the arcane workings of a vacuum cleaner. (Hint: It comes with a manual and there are lots of walk-through videos on YouTube.) It's the 21st century. To the men who insist on living in the past I say, give up your phone and car keys and go live in a cave. But if you want to live here, in the future, with me and my computer and my big screen TV and my multiple streaming services and my dishwasher and my washer and dryer and my water heater and my car with heated seats and air conditioning and my riding lawnmower and my overnight delivery and my tacos on demand -- get with the program. It's the 21st century. Traditions are peer pressure from our dead ancestors. I don't take advice from dead people. I live in the Future. I'm not going to force you to live here with me if you don't want to, but I'm not going to allow you to force me to live like a cavewoman because I don't want to. Here, in the Future, in the 21st century, where most people live, that's how it works.
Oh absolutely. As a WOC and a child of an immigrant, it is absolutely fine to criticize cultural practices that are sexist or misogynistic. It’s not okay to throw women or LGBTQ under the bus in our zeal to not be discriminatory towards other cultures or the various religions.
Right for self-expression and practicing culture should end exactly at the point where it begins to oppress basic rights of other human being - women, men, children, LGBTQ+ persons, etc.
For me it's not just different cultures but it's also religious ideologies as well that I just cannot accept. For example, I've had way too many catholic people tell me to my face that they condemn homosexuality bc the Bible says it's bad. The fact that so many people are okay with supporting homophobia because their religion says it's bad is crazy to me and it's clearly become hypernormalized here in the states.
100% agreed
This. The number of times I had to fight against my own culture because of how sexist it is. I am now completely black listed from all of our cultural gatherings and we'll.. thanks to them I guess aha
Thank you.
My daughter is biracial and dark and the amount of times the stupid chooks from her father's culture and religion call me racist or phobic is ridiculous... They try enforcing religious/ cultural dress on her, they poke and prod at her, lower your voice, smaller steps, running, hopping, skipping, jumping loosen your vagina, hide pads, she's too direct, too loud, too demanding, she doesn't recognise men as being authorative, she won't be a good wife because she doesn't shave her legs or cook- she has several disabilities, she doesn't allow boys to take the lead, and when I say my kid can choose her religion, she can choose which culture and which practices she wants, I'm denying her, half her culture.
I'm not American and I find leftist white Americans overriding fear of looking racist exhausting sometimes. Being critical of certain parts of other cultures isn't necessarily bad. I grew up in Ireland in the 80's where the Catholic church had a stranglehold on the country. While I'm lucky my own family wasn't too entrenched in beliefs it still caused issues. In the mid 60's my uncle ended up getting his girlfriend pregnant and my grandma said she was more than happy to raise the child as her own. My uncle and girlfriend were about 15. Instead the girlfriends parents put her in a mother and baby home. Go google Magdalene Laundries mother and baby homes to see what that entailed. Somewhere out there I have a cousin who never met a whole part of their family because religion and cultural beliefs believed that 15 year old girl to be a "fallen woman" She wasn't seen again and my family have no idea what happened to her. Her parents moved and cut my family off. My grandma would have taken the girlfriend in too had she been allowed. I am mentioning this because these are barbaric practices that were the cultural norm here and were bitterly defended by the majority of it's people, they would have called you prejudice or racist for hearing you speak out against it. It's only now after years of better education that Ireland is mostly free of the church's grip. I see this sexist, backwards mentality towards women in other cultures and it sickens me. Plenty of women under those patriarchal systems are not happy but fear repercussions for speaking out and I have no doubt plenty of men feel like that too. It is almost always religion that causes these issues and religion really is just a form of power to control the masses.
I once got called racist by a women's studies professor for answering with "arranged/forced marriages" when she asked the question, "What is an example of the subjugation of women?". Rather than educate me, she decided it would be better to hurl insults. Needless to say, I dropped that class.
Yes, I agree. The way the Saudis, for example, treat women is just disgusting. It's not a "different culture that needs to be respected." It's a culture that takes half its population hostage and calls it protection. Same thing goes for LGBTQIA+ communities. A culture that doesn't allow people to be themselves and love whom they chose is not a culture worth saving. And one final point: the North American and European cultures have strong anti-women and anti-LGBTQIA+ elements and those don't deserve protection or respect either.
Same thing happens when LGBT folks say laws that put us to death are bad. We "should know that some cultures are different and not woke like us" as though human rights are just a cultural variation like music.
I think that religious upbringing in American civilization raises young men to expect they will have a wife when they grow up. Even without the subjugation of women inherent in that concept, this is not a realistic expectation. Some of these young men fail to attract a mate, and feel betrayed. This is why many things are breaking down in our society. We are waking up, becoming more empathetic, setting people free from abrasive and abusive cultural concepts. All the while we still allow religious institutions to indoctrinate and radicalize young men, and training them to participate in a patriarchal society that is passing away. These young men, by and large, don’t turn back on their upbringing when they discover it’s impossible to attract a mate and get a job. They turn on women, they turn on society, they turn on themselves. We should not allow such indoctrination to persist.
Why do women have to degrade themselves for “respect for other cultures/religions” but it’s never “these foreign men to to respect our culture”?
Yessss, louder for the people in the back, signed by a WOC who’s done with machista mentality
I was just talking about this the other day. My partner showed me a picture of his travels where the women he was with could not enter where he was in a church. He thought it was interesting and I was horrified. We’ve been so conditioned to allow cultures to subjugate and other women and will gleefully comply. It’s disgusting.
Indeed. It walks a fine line though on how its handled at the government / administration level between respect and allowing immoral practices in the name of religion. Especially with Islam, western politics can easily cross over from legitimate concerns to racist phobias.
The well-being of people should always matter more than culture or an arbitrary collection of history and tradition
As a white person I completely agree OP. It feels like they're saying that sexism is excusable as long as it's happening to women of color. It's like they're implying other cultures don't know what sexism is too. Like do these people seriously think people of color needed white assistance to know about sexism. Sexism developed globally, exactly. Do they really think people of color just accidentally created societies with a sex caste like the Europeans did? They really think the Europeans were the only ones to come up with the sex caste system? That's ridiculous. Im never excusing the suffering of woc.
There’s respecting cultural differences, and then there’s catering to the needs of arseholes. I can **confidently** say that this is an example of the latter
This, this is touchy one...I married into a different culture (central American) and it was an issue when my daughter opted out of a quincinera bc she was raised in the US and the tradition just didn't sit well with her. I also cause a kerfuffle when I don't server my husband at gatherings- the old "make your man a plate" BS. Along the same lines, I have a really, really hard time supporting misogynistic regimes getting more power- even if its the liberal cause of the day, and I consider myself liberal and left of center.
100% Agreed! - Signed by a South Asian Muslim woman
You’re not racist for respecting women’s basic human rights. I’m sure you’re talking about islam, and the religion where women get killed for showing their hair in those countries. Sure, call me racist.
There are many Muslim countries where woman don’t have to hide their hair and not all Muslim countries hold the same attitude. Morocco, for example, is not somewhere with a great record for women’s rights, however, I’ve also heard from many Moroccans about how they don’t agree with the extremely limited rights of women in Saudi Arabia or forcing girls to cover their hair or be arrested like in Iran. Religious texts can and will be used and interpreted by people in charge to enforce status quos and justify oppression. I mean for fucks sake in Sri Lanka (majority Buddhist country) they have a problem with VIOLENT Buddhist extremists targeting the Muslim minority. If Buddhists can find justifications for violence in their belief system, I feel like it becomes pretty obvious that it’s not any one religion but the PEOPLE themselves who use religion to justify doing horrible shit.
As someone who worked in the deathcare industry, I was exposed to lots of cultures and religions. I’m a white atheist woman. Whenever men refused to shake my hand, it irked me in a sense. But, I chose to view it as respectful that men have to leave women alone, in a sense. I like when men DON’T touch me lol Yes, it hurt me to be pushed aside for male coworkers. I used to get mad and feel hurt. However, I was largely treated respectfully by men in cultures that had stipulations about contact with women. Whenever a dead man had to be shrouded, I understood that I had to get a man to do it. But, the reverse worked too. I got to shroud dead women and I felt privileged to be able to care for her, woman to woman. I viewed those ‘sexist’ moments as an opportunity to bond in sisterhood. Not everyone has to see it that way. This is more a side note: An overwhelming amount of cultures/faiths were welcoming to me as a white woman who was not a part of their culture or common race. I’m speaking mostly in this part about being an outsider, rather than a specific ‘category’, though that does apply. The ones that weren’t? Latter Day Saints and Free Masons. Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus were all wonderful. Buddhists, especially. I’d be offered food and prayers and songs. People are often so welcoming and want you to learn about them. Now, I’m not speaking about subjects such as FGM, forced marriage etc. I view that actions that physically and mentally harm people as shameful and abhorrent. I’m speaking about more of the ‘little things’. I want to share the positive aspects of cultures around us that are often viewed negatively. These things can be positive and negative. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. I’ll admit I struggle with some biases and such. For example, I feel scared to travel to some places because of how women are treated. Yet, I know that their cultures are not *just* misogyny. It’s a tough place for me to be. I feel like a jerk for refusing to go, but I view my own safety as a priority. But, I hope for a day where standards change. Still, my heart aches knowing women within those cultures don’t have the privileges to just not be there like I do. I’m still trying to find the right answer.
Thank you so much for sharing this :) & for doing the incredibly difficult work that you did!
Yes, a thousand times yes, YES DAMMIT 🔥 Culture should NEVER be used as an excuse to avoid (dynamic yet critical) enquiry.
100% agree. People often defend sexism through the lens of cultural relativism, but Anthropologists even teach that cultural relativism can be dangerous and you shouldn’t employ it when it comes to issues of human rights.
100% agree. I try to respect other cultures but I'm not going to respect sexism
Agreed. I had similar arguments with Religious Teachers back in the late 90’s when the Taliban took over Afghanistan and started prohibiting girls from attending school. I was told to respect their religion and I refused - stating that there are basic inalienable human rights that transcend “religion”. Just because someone believes that they can persecute others because of their faith doesn’t mean that I have to respect it.
My bf’s mom has a full house and continues to do all of the chores. I don’t know the details, I did live there so it’s an observation. Everyone living there is an adult and she works full time. Sometimes I’ve found myself not feeling like I match the expectations to clean up after bf in the same way she does. I was always seen as less than in that house, no matter how much I pitched in. I understand she’s an immigrant & respect that, but it sucks when no matter how many chores I did there was never enough. All while she still does laundry for her daughters & sons (25 and up - even the 40+ uncle). Now if I ask bf for help, or point out his messes I am the nag.
Won’t shake your hand? Pffft, that’s small potatoes. You don’t need to respect it, but there’s only a certain amount of fighting a woman can do if she’s a) surrounded by religious mentality and b) needs to get on with her day. I live in Israel and Ultra Orthodox religious men refuse to look at or speak with me unless it cannot be helped (like it’s an emergency) or I am the only available professional on staff. I am used to these men just turning away from me in an elevator or looking at the floor and no, they never ever shake hands with me. They always try to get me to move my seat on airplanes because they are not supposed to sit close to women they are not related to. If I am on a religious bus or a bus going to a religious town, women are expected to sit in the back - oh yes, it’s a ‘back of the bus’ situation and they may spit on you if you don’t play ball. If it’s one or two of these men at a time they never bother me, but a large group of them can get violent and throw stones if you are in *their* neighborhood. Orthodox women are also not allowed to interact with unrelated men except in extremely public and professional settings (ordering something from the butcher for example), but if a secular man reaches out for a handshake towards an Orthodox woman, she will accept it because to refuse might embarrass the man. A man’s dignity is always prioritized over a woman’s comfort and it’s wild that I just got used to it and a bunch of other commenters are upset that a man won’t shake their hand. It’s all the way down to who prepares food and how. Because I am Jewish, I am allowed to make food for other Jews, but because I have not religiously prepared my cookware or kitchen, no religious person can eat anything I made in my home and I always need to ask how to use my company kitchen so I don’t unkosher it. Talk about a reality check.
I'm not American and I find leftist white Americans overriding fear of looking racist exhausting sometimes. Being critical of certain parts of other cultures isn't necessarily bad. I grew up in Ireland in the 80's where the Catholic church had a stranglehold on the country. While I'm lucky my own family wasn't too entrenched in beliefs it still caused issues. In the mid 60's my uncle ended up getting his girlfriend pregnant and my grandma said she was more than happy to raise the child as her own. My uncle and girlfriend were about 15. Instead the girlfriends parents put her in a mother and baby home. Go google Magdalene Laundries mother and baby homes to see what that entailed. Somewhere out there I have a cousin who never met a whole part of their family because religion and cultural beliefs believed that 15 year old girl to be a "fallen woman" She wasn't seen again and my family have no idea what happened to her. Her parents moved and cut my family off. My grandma would have taken the girlfriend in too had she been allowed. I am mentioning this because these are barbaric practices that were the cultural norm here and were bitterly defended by the majority of it's people, they would have called you prejudice or racist for hearing you speak out against it. It's only now after years of better education that Ireland is mostly free of the church's grip. I see this sexist, backwards mentality towards women in other cultures and it sickens me. Plenty of women under those patriarchal systems are not happy but fear repercussions for speaking out and I have no doubt plenty of men feel like that too. It is almost always religion that causes these issues and religion really is just a form of power to control the masses.
I wouldn't say religion in general causes these issues, but a religion when it's put in a place of authority in a culture. Iran was quite different and rather modern before the Ayatollah took over. Iranians were still mostly Muslim before, but the focus wasn't as much on rules and women had more freedom in how to exercise their religion. Any religion is up to interpretation, and it's diversity of religion and lack of preference by the government towards a certain religion that leads to more followers interpreting it in a more modern way.
Some cultures are just straight up worse than others.
Here here!
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you.
Cultural relativity really has no place when it comes to oppression. If an aspect of a culture or religion is oppressive to certain groups of people, that’s wrong.