Not sure if you've heard about this, but in Afghanistan the lawmakers put a law into a recent batch of legislation that would prevent wives from rebuffing their husbands sexual advances.
One more time? Preventing you from denying your husband's sexual desires? Wow...
Now I've never been to Afghanistan, but it seems to me that these Shi'ites who snuck this legislation through must be painfully out of touch with their women...making the specter of rape a viable option?
Here is a link on the story.
Karzai, the US installed president, after fielding plenty of angry calls from world leaders, admitted that he hadn't actually read the legislation that was given to him to sign, and had begun the process to repeal that piece of the law.
In Sociology class while I was in college we learned about two opposing frameworks to view "exotic" cultures. One being labeled "universalism", where there are universal 'goods' and 'bads', but since nobody ever could agree of what those universals were, the field began to sag into Eurocentrism. The other option, "cultural relativism", seemed to be in control when I was in class, and the tenets were what is right in our culture isn't right in other cultures, and that each culture has its own barometer of what is okay and what isn't. Sounds nice and cosmopolitan and politically correct. But what about this rape law in Afghanistan?
I'd be surprised to find any cultural relativists to sign on to that, saying that's right and proper and culturally okay. And, I'd always hoped that in the world of universals, that at least we'd be able to agree that rape is bad, right?
It just seems like a symptom that the plight of the world's ladies hasn't changed for thousands of years...
When a few hundred women bravely protested a mosque who's cleric was instrumental in the legislation, they were apparently pelted with small rocks and cursed, while the police watched.
On the upside, with the light of the world paying more attention, the act of assembling a peaceful protest even being possible in such a repressive land is astounding. Here we are, "...witnessing the power of the people..."
I agree with you that human society as a whole should view rape as a horrible thing and I'd think even in their culture, you'd have to woo your arranged wife before you could consummate the marriage. That, of course, does not speak to all the other times during marriage. But as far as a world dominated by "universals," we also had this discussion in one of my classes. It was a criminal justice class and we were trying to come up with "universal crimes," an act that no matter where you are in the world (time and place), it would be an unacceptable action. It turns out, we couldn't come up with one. Murder - there are honor killing and forced "suicides" all over the world. Child molestation - turns out that in some native cultures, oral sex is performed on small children and infants when they are being irritable in order to relax them and get them to stop crying. While I doubt our culture would agree that this is an acceptable measure to take, I doubt our scientists would disagree that we are sexual creatures or agrue about the results.
ReplyDeleteJust because there isn't a law endorsing this actions in America doesn't mean that American women are oppressed or that they haven't been coerced into sexual relations with their husband becuase "that's what a good wife should do." Women are continuously oppressed even in our own country - whether it be to stay home with the kids instead of taking up the career they've always wanted or keeping their husband sexually satisified so they won't go somewhere else for it even though they're not interested and haven't been woo-ed since their wedding night or being called "sweetheart" and treated like a secretary just because you're a girl would answered the phone. I'm not condoning - I'm just saying with or without judicial mandates, women have always been oppressed and still are throughout the world. Until we have a continuous dialogue on the issue like with racism, we feel that its a thing of the past, when it seems like we're actually going backwards - how many women in the US think its "better" to be a housewife than contribute to society thru their careers, how many women are birthing children and giving them the father's last name, as if he had anything to do with that child since the moment he blew his load, how many women are taking their husband's last name, knowing but not caring that that's a hold-over from a time when you were just his property!?! This is a global issue that our culture has yet to address and hopefully ridiculous laws like this one,the continued use of rape as a weapon of war and the destruction of women's superior (yeah, you heard me) sexual organs thru circumcision will actually start a productive dialogue that doesn't fizzle out in 20 years like the women's movement of the Civil Rights era.