“That’s their society; they’ve chosen it”
Remember a couple of months ago when I was talking about how women’s rights are treated as cultural quirks, like food or architecture (here and here, for example)?
Watch this:
Women are getting raped and arrested and locked up at fucking gunpoint, and all Geraldo can say is, “That’s their society, they’ve chosen it…”
Who is the “they” in his sentence? It must be the men, of course. Afghan people=Afghan men, and those men have chosen a society where women are lower than cattle, just like they’ve chosen shish kabobs and minarets. Just a cultural quirk. Or at most, as Geraldo allows, “a drawback” to an otherwise “great religion.”
Can you imagine if people had argued that apartheid was just South Africa’s society, that “they’d chosen it,” and it wasn’t for us to meddle in? Jesus fucking christ.
13 Responses to ““That’s their society; they’ve chosen it””
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Stray Yellar Dawg says:
Perfect illustration of the major pitfall of Cultural Relativity.
This man, Geraldo, considers himself a “progressive” I am sure. So… this is the best he can do… if another man wants to rape, beat, imprison his own wives and daughters….
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:58 pm EST -
Lexia says:
I noticed the rise in U.S. interest in apartheid in another country seemed to correlate with actual backsliding on the rights of black Americans here at home.
“Reno v. Bossier Parish”, a major and explicit rollback to the Voting Rights Act, created not a whisper among the (white, middle class) progressives in our little town. The woman pastor of a local Unitarian church knew about it, alright, just as she’d tracked other setbacks in the rights of disenfranchised U.S. citizens during the 90′s; the local college student hangouts were innocent of the knowledge of any of it, despite their “Free Tibet” and “Divest Now” posters and their insertion of themselves into any fight that didn’t actually cost them anything.
Seems if progressive men might have to give up their privileges or acknowledge their own double standards, and progressive women might have to actually see their own second class status or make the same acknowledgment, suddenly a separate set of laws based solely on a person’s body becomes just another cultural choice.
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Sheryl Robinson says:
I seem to recall something about the U.S. giving Afghan leaders Viagra, so maybe the “every 4 days” thing is a consequence of that?
“They’ve chosen it.” Rape and soul-crushing oppression: the preferred lifestyle of women everywhere.
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Anna Belle says:
I’m for putting this shit down every time I see it. Cultural relativists are just protecting their own privilege, which as we can see is still quite substantial here in the West as far as men are concerned. Shame the crap out of anybody who defends anything like this. They are oppressors and they ought to know it.
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Kiuku says:
I wonder if it were white men being oppressed somewhere. Can’t rape their wives? By God give them Viagra!
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anna says:
Please contact the US State Department:
http://contact-us.state.gov/cg.....3BhZ2U9MQ**
Maybe it won’t help but we have to try something.
Has Hillary Clinton spoken out about this?
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sister of ye says:
Okay, Jerry, let’s put it in terms you might understand:
I invite you to a party. When you get here, I drug your drink, strip you and tie you up. I laugh at you, beat you, fondle you at will, and shove a broomstick up your @ss. As a final indignity I shave your mustache. Then I give you a small parting gift, show you the door.
Will you:
1) Say: Gee, that wasn’t much fun, but I chose to go, so I guess I can’t complain.
2) Call the cops and have me arrested for sexual assault before you get down the block.
3) Sue me for $100 million because I shaved your mustache.It would be choice 2 (maybe 3 with it). But even then you’d have it better than these women, because you had recourse to escape and to pursue justice. You weren’t condemned by a quirk of birth to poverty, a lack of education and a social system that supports and reinforces the “rights” of your oppressors.
I hope there’s at least a misogynsts’ purgatory, where media @ssholes like you, Matthews and Olbermann are forced to get a clue by receiving the treatment you think is “a choice.”
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Sis says:
What I have found most effective, at least in getting someone’s real attention, not a form letter, is to send a complaint to advertisers, with a copy to the publication or broadcaster’s marketing departments; and another letter to the pub or broadcaster’s charitable foundation, saying why you won’t support their X charity until they do something about Y. It’s always good to, someone told me, to send a letter to your stockbroker, with a copy to the broadcaster, asking of you have any money invested in anything they own, and if so, get it out.
A lot of people talk good, but don’t go the mile. Find out where your pension fund is invested. Money is all they pay attention to.
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Nina M. says:
For Geraldo and people like him, the cultural relativism thing is just a supporting argument for their weird isolationist-hawk hybrid position. Geraldo etc obviously don’t really care about Afghani culture or sovereignty; “that’s the way they want it” is part of their “don’t get involved in anything, or blast them back to the stone age, whichever you prefer” foreign policy agenda.
@ anna –
Days ago Hillary Clinton spoke directly to Karzai about it, as did the governments of the Scandinavian countries. The Guardian reported it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....mid-karzai
“Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, came under intense western pressure yesterday to scrap a new law that the UN said legalised rape within marriage and severely limited the rights of women. At a conference on Afghanistan in The Hague, Scandinavian foreign ministers publicly challenged the Afghan leader to respond to a report on the new law in yesterday’s Guardian, and the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was reported to have confronted Karzai on the issue in a private meeting. At a press conference after the meeting, Clinton made clear US displeasure at the apparent backsliding on women’s rights. “This is an area of absolute concern for the United States. My message is very clear. Women’s rights are a central part of the foreign policy of the Obama administration,” she said.”
And the NY Times has this, today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04.....an.html?hp
“Mr. Karzai’s decision to review the law came after a storm of criticism in recent days. Canada called in the Afghan ambassador for an explanation, and NATO’s secretary general questioned why the alliance was sending men and women to fight in Afghanistan when discrimination against women was condoned by law. Asked about the law at a news conference in Strasbourg, France, on Saturday, President Obama called it ‘abhorrent.’ ”We think that it is very important for us to be sensitive to local culture,’ he said, ‘but we also think that there are certain basic principles that all nations should uphold, and respect for women and respect for their freedom and integrity is an important principle.’ Also on Saturday, Italy’s defense minister said Italy was considering a temporary withdrawal of the women serving in its force in Afghanistan to protest the law, Reuters reported.
“The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said the law represented a ‘huge step in the wrong direction.’ ‘For a new law in 2009 to target women in this way is extraordinary, reprehensible and reminiscent of the decrees made by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s,’ Ms. Pillay said in a statement posted on her agency’s Web site. ‘This is another clear indication that the human rights situation in Afghanistan is getting worse, not better.’”
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tinfoil hattie says:
Not to mention, the other guy (I don’t know my Fox personalities) rattles off the atrocities covered under the new law, and his response is: “How embarrassing is THAT? This is what we’re fighting for?”
Yes, yes – your primary concern should be how it reflects on the U.S.
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anna says:
The law has been put on hold “for review.” Probably they are hoping the controversy will die down and they can sneak it in later. Keep the pressure on!
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Sis says:
“For Geraldo and people like him, the cultural relativism thing is just a supporting argument for their weird isolationist-hawk hybrid position.”
No it isn’t. It’s misogyny. It’s nor only right wing, not just ‘hawks’. It’s the left too.
Politicos who think this is about right or left irritate me no end.
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Garlicnosedho says:
Here’s my comment on YouTube (it’s the only one, so go on over and post there!):
“Hmm…consider the source of these comments, a man who continually discards his wives for younger women.
As the sole caretaker of my adult brother with Down syndrome, I thank you for exposing Willowbrook institution. Other than that, Geraldo, you’re a blind, deluded fool.
Please stay home and play with your child bride and antique cars.”
