On Tuesday, I almost started to cry in class when we started talking about cultural relativity. A year ago, on June 21st, 2006, I made the following post to my old livejournal from the slow-as-hell internet cafe in Sapone:
The stars here are amazing. You can see so many. Last night, when it was still 30-some degrees at midnight, the three of us and a Burkinabe friend lied out on a mat and stared at the stars for hours. We counted over a dozen shooting stars and argued over whether the light in the sky was the Milky Way or a narrow cloud.
I have been pretty bummed out today. Before I came here, people always told me to never judge the way things are here, to keep cultural relativity in mind. But sometimes it is so hard. How can I accept the way women are treated here? Every day, I see the little girls slave away the whole day while the boys run and play. My job here might be data entry, but every time I type in a student’s personal information, and write why so many girls quit school so early, I have to type in that yet another fifteen year old girl has been taken out of school and married off. Last night we had some friends over for wine, and we learned that these particular (well-educated) guys that we hang out are incredulous that we don’t realize that women are inferior and that the Bible gives them the right to beat their wives. My friend Adeline, a young Burkinabe woman my age, told me that even educated men here want to keep their women ignorant, because they find educated women too emancipated. I know that I am not supposed to judge, but it is so easy for us politically correct social science students to talk about cultural relativity and the importance of not judging when we are the women who get to sit in our comfortable homes, gaze at out university degrees, and (for most) live without beatings from our husbands, who we get to choose.
Also, I miss dairy products. But I think I will get over this second complaint. The status of women here is likely to continue to haunt me, however. I have grown quite fond of the small girls and teenage women living near me here, and it depresses me to think about their futures.
It’s now October 2007, and I still feel pissed off. Cultural relativity can be a good thing. A month after getting back, I realized that some of the things that perplexed me about Burkinabe society – overwhelming emphasis on family and community, not individuality, for example – made more and more sense when I reflected upon the cultural context of the village. Suddenly, the slow pace of life in West Africa seemed a whole lot more civilized than my lonely commute every morning, rushing from bus to train to streetcar without so much as looking at my fellow passengers.
But I will never accept the argument of cultural relativity when it comes to what I hold to be basic human rights. One of these, of course, is women’s right to equal opportunities, equal treatment, and, most importantly, a life free from abuse.
Saying this, I can already hear the groans from the uber politically-correct development studies students. I’m unfairly imposing my beliefs on a different culture, they might say. Gender equality is not valued in all cultures, and it is ignorant of me to expect otherwise.
But fuck it, seriously. Any such arguments are only suggesting that the little girls and young women of Sapone don’t deserve the same things that I take for granted. And no matter what I hear in development studies I’m not going to accept otherwise.
Comments 4
Agreed. Have you read “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers” by Kwame Anthony Appiah? I’m working my way through it right now and it deals with this exact topic, arguing against relativism. Haven’t finished it, but perhaps it’ll fit with your line of thinking at this time. (Three cheers for the Facebook news feed for putting your post in front of my nose.)
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 7:09 pm ¶Long time no speak, my friend. I really identify with your post. I wrote a paper on this topic, and one of my arguments was that idealizing culturse can be very oppressive to those within a given culture. Culture is sometimes arbitrary, but more often it is tailored to suit the interests of those in power. The women in Burkina Faso have likely had much less power to shape their own culture over the years than their male counterparts. Likewise, the poor tend to have less power to shape culture than the rich, etc. Thus, I don’t think that the view of women as inferior in Burkina Faso automatically trumps other ethical values. It’s not like those girls and women agreed to be subject to their culture’s values.
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 11:02 pm ¶Caitlin – I agree completely with your abhorrence with the way women are treated in so many countries. As you know I’ve spend time in Afghanistan and I’ve seen how the girls and women are treated there. And there are similar issues although on a different scale in other countries I’ve been to. I have also struggled with how to respond – do I refuse to compromise myself, or is what I’m doing at least helping to set an example for the next generation? Because the change we all want will not come soon no matter what we wish for. The question for me is not how we judge these situations – do we accept what is or express outrage – of course it is outrageous – the question has to be how do we start to affect change. This is far more challenging, but finding some answers will be much more meaningful to those lives we hope to improve.
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 11:05 pm ¶We were talking about this with regard to sexual relationships, and how there is a running theme of disloyalty when it comes to men– women of all ages, from 15 to 50 tell us about this- you can’t rely on a man, men always cheat, always have more than one girlfriend, etc. But I think fidelity is important. So who am I to impose my moral standards on South Africans? One woman asked me this. I saw her point. but then, I think the core value of having integrity when it comes to relationships– sexual or not– is universal. If men deceive their friends, cheat them or otherwise, this is not accepted, why should it be different when it comes to women?
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 3:25 am ¶Post a Comment