Culture Clash

I like to think of myself as being a typically open-minded person who accepts other people and our differences. Different strokes, right?

However.

The next time someone tries to defend the indefensible and thinks that 'it's just a part of their culture' is an acceptable rationale, I'm going to fucking kill them with a screwdriver. Because this is the stupidest, lamest, most worthless excuse in the entire world. (It ties for first place along with using 'it's part of the religion' to defend the most horrific abuses and crimes.) If your culture is founded on things that are not in at all okay in a civilized world, that part of your culture is not worth preserving and you should be ashamed of yourself and your people for perpetuating and defending it.

It's rude to show the bottoms of your feet in Saudi Arabia. That's cool, I can live with that. The French eat horse. I'm cool with that, as well. Differences that pertain to food, familial structure, education, language use, and certain gestures are completely innocuous and I'm 100% okay with those things because they harm nobody.

You know what's not okay?

Hurting people. Denying people basic human rights. Killing people. Treating people as less than human. That shit isn't good.

Ruthless and often violent discrimination of certain demographics based on factors over which they have no control--race, sex, sexuality, their place of birth--is rife in certain parts of the world. Women are denied the most basic of freedoms in parts of Africa and the Middle East. Homosexuals are killed outright. I do not give a single microscopic fuck about what those cultures or religious beliefs say about these things because these things are absolutely unambiguously wrong. It is wrong. It is not okay to do these things and I don't give a fuck what your religion or cultural tradition dictates. You should not be doing it and I am disgusted that anyone else in the world is allowing this to continue in the name of tolerance. You can't be tolerant of something that's intolerant.

For whatever reason, 'cultural differences' are taboo. We can't oppose them if we aren't of that culture. If something is done in the name of culture, tradition, religious belief--it's untouchable. And that needs to stop. It isn't okay and nobody anywhere is in any way obligated to defend it. And anyone who tries to defend it should be ashamed of themselves. How can you defend that shit? Why is a crime not a crime when culture and god are evoked in its name? It isn't. Something are wrong, full stop, and holding onto these things just because it would be uncouth to demand they be changed is almost as bad as committing them in the first place.

Women in the Middle East are by and large not people. They can't go out, drive, go to school, get jobs, or even enter certain establishments--sometimes they need an escort, but most of the time they're just banned outright. Women are treated like property. They are regularly beaten and raped, then punished for being a victim. Marriages are arranged without any consideration to anyone's feelings or right to run their own life. Women are killed for being the victims of crimes, for something that isn't their fault. You cannot defend this. This is not at all acceptable, and the fact that it's an integral part of the culture doesn't mean anyone is obligated to accept it--we, as people, are obligated to stop it. Especially because, being 'part of the culture', they're easily defended and made to seem, if not harmless, then at least made to seem justifiable.

These things are not justifiable. These things are not okay. And they need to be stopped.

The Aztecs (as well as many other cultures) practiced gruesome human sacrifice. It was an integral part of their culture, of their religion. The practice was stopped. The Chinese mutilated the feet of girls for hundreds of years, a horrific painful process that crippled them for life. It was an integral part of their culture. The practice was stopped. Widowed women in India would be burned alive on their husband's funeral pyres. It was part of their religion and culture for centuries. The practice was stopped.

Because these things are not okay. They never have been, and they never will be, and just because it's part of the culture or religion doesn't mean it's anything but wrong to do it. 'Culture' should stop being a shield. I don't care about your culture. I care about your people. And your people are being wronged in the most repulsive and egregious ways because of your stupid, disgusting, horrible culture.

I don't fucking care about cultural differences. If a cultural difference results in harm or discrimination of innocent people, that culture is not worth defending or preserving. It should die out. It should be eradicated. It should be stopped.

Not everything in the world is black and white. Very few things are. Almost everything is shades of grey. But some things are wrong no matter what, they are objectively wrong. You should be outraged that such atrocious crimes are committed regularly and defended fanatically. You should be outraged that they become accepted and expected parts of life. And you should be outraged at yourself, at everyone in the world, because it has been allowed to continue, above scrutiny and above the laws of human decency, for as long as it has.

A culture in which people are treated like anything but people is a culture that needs to be wiped out. If you're a member of this culture and defend the horrors you wreak on innocent people, I just want to tell you that your culture is disgusting--and so are you.