Different Strokes
“Being forced to have sex is traumatizing. Child prostitution is evil. Polygamy is oppressive to women. Female circumcision is barbaric. Most of us would easily agree with the above statements, right? But if my column were syndicated in Africa or Thailand, there’d be plenty of folk who’d disagree… [About polygamy:] Seems women in Kenya are okay with sharing their husbands with other women. ‘We have co-wives to share our work and to be our closest friends and confidantes, and our kids have many playmates…’ [About female circumcision:] female circumcision is part of a rite of passage… In fact, they wonder why we seem only to listen to those who oppose female circumcision and never to those who favour it… [About child prostitution:] in rural Thailand, where child labour in general is the norm, selling sex is considered a pretty sweet deal… Ask young women in rural Thailand what they want to be when they grow up, in fact, and they’ll often say, ‘a sex worker, because you make good money — especially if you get to go to rich countries like Canada and Germany.’” — Hour (Canada)
You would almost think this is a satire of some kind, a parody of political correctness, until you realize that the article is based on an academic study in which women from different cultures were interviewed about various sexual practices. And what do you know? It turns out that things we here in America view as perversions — particularly polygamy, pedophilia, prostitution, and genital mutilation — are considered “normal” in other places. And not only that — the women don’t view these things as “normal” in the sense that they’re resigned to them, that they’re necessary evils. Rather, the interviewees regard them as “normal” in a positive sense. Female circumcision, for example, is considered an important social rite, and the women interviewed scoff at the idea that it robs them of sexual pleasure. “We have pleasure,” one said. “For women, sex happens between the ears, so why all this focus on the genitals?”
Why indeed? You can’t help but wonder how many things “normal” in America seem perverse to people from other cultures. Perhaps our lurid exhibitionism strikes them as grotesque, or our obsession with breasts makes them — the bare-chested — laugh. Perhaps our focus on genitalia seems absurd to anyone for whom sex happens between the ears. After all, it must seem pretty laughable to think with your dick when you’re capable of having sex with your brain.
There’s a huge difference between acknowledging cultural subjectivity and blindly accepting torture. Whether polygamy, prostitution or pornography is “immoral” or (more importantly) oppressive is worthy of discussion. And I completely agree that many of our own culture’s erotic tendencies must seem absurd and perverted to others. But rape? Mutilation? Are we really so numbed by the P.C.-era that we can consider these acceptable? Some cultures, past and present, have also practiced human sacrifice; maybe that’s fine too? What about pogroms, genocide, or “ethnic cleansing”? Just a culture’s way of expressing it’s beliefs? How about burial alive as punishment for breaking the vows of chastity? And what if a 9 year old girl says it’s OK for her cult-leader to rape her, is that fine too? Come ON. Female genital mutilation and child rape has zero to do with the varieties of human experience and sexuality- there are a few things, like mutilating children, that I *hope* we can all agree are wrong.
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