General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I do not need... Eurocentric feminists to dictate to me what I wear or shouldn't wear. [View all]BainsBane
(53,032 posts)I hate that whole religious choice argument, but even granting that for the sake of argument, we are talking about cultures that differ greatly from the US. Religion and ethnicity are one in the same in most of the world. People are born Sunni or Shia. You don't think people in Syria wouldn't have become Alawite, the religion of Asad and the ruling class, if conversion were so easy? People don't switch. Religion is who they are. Part of that is identity born from oppression, as Rashid Khalidi's book Palestinian Identity makes clear. How likely do you think it is that someone born in Ramallah will say, hey I think I'll try out Seven Day Adventism as a religion, or better yet, Judaism, the religion of my captor? Seriously? That's not how it works. Holding foreign cultures to American standards is highly problematic. You need to knock that whole notion from your head. It is itself culturally imperialistic.
Here's the parallel to what you are doing: Pat Robertson says some fucked up thing about the US constitution or the Magna Carta. Someone in Pakistan decides that defines all Americans and Europeans and figures they need to know nothing else about any of us. Do you think that makes a lot of sense?
I'll also point out we have our share of sexism and homophobia in this country to worry about. Do we really need to be pointing fingers at oppressed populations and people's emerging from dictatorship and neocolonialsim? I think we've fucked enough of the world up already. We really are in no position to judge.