[Andorion]

EmperorMagus, on 08 March 2017 - 04:08 AM, said:

Andorion, on 08 March 2017 - 04:01 AM, said:

It's interesting that you mentioned FGM. I am all for socio-economic reform, but I think there are certain practices so cruel and dehumanizing, an initial hardline stance is also necessary.

From a personal moral point of view: I absolutely agree with you. FGM is despicable and people who propagate it should suffer.\

From a practical POV: It's a rite of passage in a lot of the countries it's practiced in. It's well documented that most of the time, the girls actually want to go through with it ... How the hell do we, as the people with western values, go in and tell them that no, you can't do this?

Because their desire for it is a form of indoctrination. A lot of FGM is practised on underage girls. The power and knowledge equation is entirely against them. It is very far from an informed choice.

It's like Sati in Indian history. A lot of those were straight up murder, but some were voluntary. There is a cultural tradition of some women wanting to entire the funeral pyre. Some educated Indians opposed it, enabling the British to ban it.

There was another really bad practice - in Bengal there is this huge annual sacred festival at a coastal island called Gangasagar. There was a belief that if you sacrificed one of your babies by throwing it into the sea there, you would ensure the good fortune of the rest of your children. This was also unilaterally banned.

Or take the practice of dowry in marriage. There is a socio-economic movement against it, but the existence of state intervention and state laws enable women to seek legal redress, and they have done so many times.

You have to legislate against some practices. In the case of others, where there is a direct threat to life, you may need more drastic intervention. Socio-economic reform and education deals with the problem in the long run. But you should also be prepared to save people in the short term.

And that is my opinion as someone who is not a part of the West. Respecting tradition just because it is tradition is utter nonsense. Culture has no value unless it helps improve quality of life.

[EmperorMagus]

Andorion, on 08 March 2017 - 04:24 AM, said:

Because their desire for it is a form of indoctrination. A lot of FGM is practised on underage girls. The power and knowledge equation is entirely against them. It is very far from an informed choice.

It's like Sati in Indian history. A lot of those were straight up murder, but some were voluntary. There is a cultural tradition of some women wanting to entire the funeral pyre. Some educated Indians opposed it, enabling the British to ban it.

There was another really bad practice - in Bengal there is this huge annual sacred festival at a coastal island called Gangasagar. There was a belief that if you sacrificed one of your babies by throwing it into the sea there, you would ensure the good fortune of the rest of your children. This was also unilaterally banned.

Or take the practice of dowry in marriage. There is a socio-economic movement against it, but the existence of state intervention and state laws enable women to seek legal redress, and they have done so many times.

You have to legislate against some practices. In the case of others, where there is a direct threat to life, you may need more drastic intervention. Socio-economic reform and education deals with the problem in the long run. But you should also be prepared to save people in the short term.

And that is my opinion as someone who is not a part of the West. Respecting tradition just because it is tradition is utter nonsense. Culture has no value unless it helps improve quality of life.

In countries where FGM is practiced, not many people care about the rule of law. Even if you did legislate against FGM and intervened to stop it, there would still be women who put their daughters through the ordeal. Because in Sudan or Somalia a girl has no chance at any life other than that of a prostitute without that operation. The only source of stability and income for women is their husband and men do not marry "uncircumcised" women (normal women are considered dangerous for the health of men). So the intervening would do at least as much harm as good.

Case in point, Sharma (2011) describes that even though FGM had been illegal in Egypt since 2007, its popularity had increased by 2011. It is hard to justify forcing a family to go against their culture when doing so would doom their daughters to a life of poverty (by Somali or Sudanese standards ...)

[Andorion]

EmperorMagus, on 08 March 2017 - 04:46 AM, said:

Andorion, on 08 March 2017 - 04:24 AM, said:

Because their desire for it is a form of indoctrination. A lot of FGM is practised on underage girls. The power and knowledge equation is entirely against them. It is very far from an informed choice.

It's like Sati in Indian history. A lot of those were straight up murder, but some were voluntary. There is a cultural tradition of some women wanting to entire the funeral pyre. Some educated Indians opposed it, enabling the British to ban it.

There was another really bad practice - in Bengal there is this huge annual sacred festival at a coastal island called Gangasagar. There was a belief that if you sacrificed one of your babies by throwing it into the sea there, you would ensure the good fortune of the rest of your children. This was also unilaterally banned.

Or take the practice of dowry in marriage. There is a socio-economic movement against it, but the existence of state intervention and state laws enable women to seek legal redress, and they have done so many times.

You have to legislate against some practices. In the case of others, where there is a direct threat to life, you may need more drastic intervention. Socio-economic reform and education deals with the problem in the long run. But you should also be prepared to save people in the short term.

And that is my opinion as someone who is not a part of the West. Respecting tradition just because it is tradition is utter nonsense. Culture has no value unless it helps improve quality of life.

In countries where FGM is practiced, not many people care about the rule of law. Even if you did legislate against FGM and intervened to stop it, there would still be women who put their daughters through the ordeal. Because in Sudan or Somalia a girl has no chance at any life other than that of a prostitute without that operation. The only source of stability and income for women is their husband and men do not marry "uncircumcised" women (normal women are considered dangerous for the health of men). So the intervening would do at least as much harm as good.

Case in point, Sharma (2011) describes that even though FGM had been illegal in Egypt since 2007, its popularity had increased by 2011. It is hard to justify forcing a family to go against their culture when doing so would doom their daughters to a life of poverty (by Somali or Sudanese standards ...)

In such a society, education would not have much effect either, would it? Because most women would not even have access to it.

These are actually good examples of what I consider to be cultures so damaged, that they may be beyond salvage. Another example is the caste culture in India.

Somalia,Sudan are still understandable because of the constant turmoil from civil war and famine, but Egypt?

I genuinely don't have a constructive suggestion for this. But I don't think education and awareness can do the trick by themselves. I have seen too many initiatives utterly fail over here.

[EmperorMagus]

Andorion, on 08 March 2017 - 04:55 AM, said:

I genuinely don't have a constructive suggestion for this. But I don't think education and awareness can do the trick by themselves. I have seen too many initiatives utterly fail over here.

Exactly how I feel about it. I know what doesn't work (and the reason it wouldn't work) because the textbooks are really clear on that, but ask "what does work then?" and everyone just shrugs. I'm just really, really cautions when someone suggest foreign intervention for "humanitarian reasons", because well, it's not likely to go as expected.

It's interesting that we're taking opposite sides of the debate we had over FoL, I'm arguing that one should be really wary of pure intentions and you're arguing for direct action in response to one's principles.

[Andorion]

EmperorMagus, on 08 March 2017 - 05:02 AM, said:

Andorion, on 08 March 2017 - 04:55 AM, said:

I genuinely don't have a constructive suggestion for this. But I don't think education and awareness can do the trick by themselves. I have seen too many initiatives utterly fail over here.

Exactly how I feel about it. I know what doesn't work (and the reason it wouldn't work) because the textbooks are really clear on that, but ask "what does work then?" and everyone just shrugs. I'm just really, really cautions when someone suggest foreign intervention for "humanitarian reasons", because well, it's not likely to go as expected.

It's interesting that we're taking opposite sides of the debate we had over FoL, I'm arguing that one should be really wary of pure intentions and you're arguing for direct action in response to one's principles.

I have thought about it, and I think these situations baffle so many people because we tend to judge things by the standards of the West. And West became what it is through some very historically specific processes which are not really reproducible elsewhere. There won't really be a Renaissance or an Enlightenment in other places.

Examples other than the West are societies which have consciously taken the political decision to become something different, the best examples being Japan and China. And even here there is a social cost to this transformation - Japan still has a gender-unequal culture and abysmal birth rate, but if we could quantify these things, I think they would come out ahead. I don't know enough about China.

Now if other countries were to consciously decide to change, not necessarily following a Western model, but a hybrid system that works for them, there might be reason to hope. But this would involve solving some pretty basic issues - tribal rivalries and plain superstition in Africa, the relation between Islam, society and the state in the Middle East, and the strange matrix of caste, patriarchy and religion in India.

As to how this would happen, I have no idea as of yet.

As for the FoL point, I am not deluding myself even for one moment by thinking intervention would be "pure". There would be all sorts of unanticipated consequences. But once again, some situations merit certain risks.

[amphibian]

EmperorMagus, on 08 March 2017 - 03:55 AM, said:

I have had classes with great anthropology professors, and I look at what he does differently. I think his point is that these people are in a different culture with different values and we can't take a morally absolutist stance against them. Just like it's pointless to go guns blazing into Somalia to stop FGM, it would be useless to go into city X to force racism out. Rather we should try to do it through social and economic reform.

Now, I may not personally agree with his opinions, but I think he is at least partly right. Calling the poor people of "flyover" American states all racists and despicable may not be the best way of bringing about social change. Although I'm really not knowledgeable enough to argue either way.

The point about generalisability and validity of his data is absolutely valid. His methodology seems really suspect at first glance.


Edit: look at the size!

The thing about the people he mostly chronicles is that a ton of their decisions are based on lives started in the 1930s-1950s and shaped heavily by racist institutions.

A slight tangent: the 1860s rebellion of the USA South is often covered in a way that progresses as "it was bc of slavery -> it was because of state's rights etc -> it was bc of slavery". And a ton of people, particularly those from the south, stop at number two.

Arnade is stopping at number two here.

We're also learning that with the federal and most state governments we have, there is zero penalty to obstruction of non-GOP agenda government functions by the Republicans, who are generally the assholes promoting the actions and policies these people want. There is a good graphic on 538 somewhere that shows the most moderate significant chunk of the GOP now is further right than the center of the GOP in the 1970s.

At some point, there has to be a hardline and a ton of these people are going to be mad, sad, and fucked over. Because they either cannot get out of the situations they're in or they don't want to. The landscape might change massively in fifteen years with demographic change, but we're seeing that the now-adult children of the assholes who opposed desegregation are still pretty racist.

[EmperorMagus]

amphibian, on 08 March 2017 - 05:28 AM, said:

The thing about the people he mostly chronicles is that a ton of their decisions are based on lives started in the 1930s-1950s and shaped heavily by racist institutions.

A slight tangent: the 1860s rebellion of the USA South is often covered in a way that progresses as "it was bc of slavery -> it was because of state's rights etc -> it was bc of slavery". And a ton of people, particularly those from the south, stop at number two.

Arnade is stopping at number two here.

We're also learning that with the federal and most state governments we have, there is zero penalty to obstruction of non-GOP agenda government functions by the Republicans, who are generally the assholes promoting the actions and policies these people want. There is a good graphic on 538 somewhere that shows the most moderate significant chunk of the GOP now is further right than the center of the GOP in the 1970s.

At some point, there has to be a hardline and a ton of these people are going to be mad, sad, and fucked over. Because they either cannot get out of the situations they're in or they don't want to. The landscape might change massively in fifteen years with demographic change, but we're seeing that the now-adult children of the assholes who opposed desegregation are still pretty racist.

I agree with your point. He doesn't go deep enough with his analysis of the subjects. Still, his tweets are interesting to read.

[worry]

Trumpcare:

[Primateus]

death rattle, on 09 March 2017 - 02:18 AM, said:

Trumpcare:

This is another of those cases where I know what the words mean but I have zero idea what's being said.

[Garak]

That's because nothing is being said. All those words mean exactly nothing. *sigh* Where's Karsa when you need him?

[Una]

Andorion, on 08 March 2017 - 05:16 AM, said:

I have thought about it, and I think these situations baffle so many people because we tend to judge things by the standards of the West. And West became what it is through some very historically specific processes which are not really reproducible elsewhere. There won't really be a Renaissance or an Enlightenment in other places.

Examples other than the West are societies which have consciously taken the political decision to become something different, the best examples being Japan and China. And even here there is a social cost to this transformation - Japan still has a gender-unequal culture and abysmal birth rate, but if we could quantify these things, I think they would come out ahead. I don't know enough about China.

The closest equivalent to FGM that China has is foot-binding. Polygamy and concubinage were pretty normal too. The way they got rid of it was never any enlightened desire to progress society. It was because during a long series of bloody revolutions, the revolutionaries were very focused on rooting out any signs of the old world order, which they saw as being elitist and decadent. Women who were forced to bind their feet because when they were young girls, it was the only way to ensure a proper marriage and avoid poverty, were suddenly shunned and punished, and sometimes killed for something they had no control over. I wouldn't recommend this route. There an old adage that basically translates to "It really sucks to be a woman." It was true then and it's true now.

[MTS]

I'm really interested to see how this healthcare debate unfolds as we go forward. The Republicans are pretty good at voting in lock-step (especially in the Senate), and they only need a simple majority to make the AHCA law. What's interesting is that the far-right hates it ('cos it doesn't go far enough), and moderate Republicans are wary of losing their seats because of how transparently it hurts poor people, so the picture becomes much more complicated.

Thus Democrats have a perfect opportunity to make this a wedge issue for the purposes of the mid-terms. Will they go full-on 'death panels/end of America as we know it' as their approach? They probably should, as Republicans have shown over the last 8 years that damn is it effective. That being said, other than Sanders and Warren, who has the national profile & passion in their gut to light a fire under progressives and independent voters? Nobody comes to mind, certainly not Pelosi or Schumer. If they go the whole 'Trumpcare' approach try and link it to the President or stage limp-dick sit-ins like over gun control and the Supreme Court nomination, I can see it blowing up in their faces, and they'll have wasted a golden opportunity. They need a simple, cohesive narrative to sell, and I'm just not hearing it at the moment.

[D'rek]

Una, on 11 March 2017 - 08:26 PM, said:

Andorion, on 08 March 2017 - 05:16 AM, said:

I have thought about it, and I think these situations baffle so many people because we tend to judge things by the standards of the West. And West became what it is through some very historically specific processes which are not really reproducible elsewhere. There won't really be a Renaissance or an Enlightenment in other places.

Examples other than the West are societies which have consciously taken the political decision to become something different, the best examples being Japan and China. And even here there is a social cost to this transformation - Japan still has a gender-unequal culture and abysmal birth rate, but if we could quantify these things, I think they would come out ahead. I don't know enough about China.

The closest equivalent to FGM that China has is foot-binding. Polygamy and concubinage were pretty normal too. The way they got rid of it was never any enlightened desire to progress society. It was because during a long series of bloody revolutions, the revolutionaries were very focused on rooting out any signs of the old world order, which they saw as being elitist and decadent. Women who were forced to bind their feet because when they were young girls, it was the only way to ensure a proper marriage and avoid poverty, were suddenly shunned and punished, and sometimes killed for something they had no control over. I wouldn't recommend this route. There an old adage that basically translates to "It really sucks to be a woman." It was true then and it's true now.

To add to this: there were several different periods of significant economic and cultural growth/prosperity in Chinese history that could sort of be compared to the Renaissance or Enlightenment. One of them was near the start of the Qing Dynasty, and two different Emperors at that time did try to ban foot-binding... but failed. Even with severe penalties against it imposed by the Emperors women kept on binding their daughters' feet.

It's not like foot-binding was an isolated practice with no linkage to the rest of your life. The whole foot-binding process was structured, with certain celebrations/rituals taking place on certain anniversaries, etc.

Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee: Confucianism and Women: A Philosophical Interpretation said:

Although footbinding took place in women's inner quarters, it was not just a private, family affair. To the contrary, the date for commencing the first binding for the young girl was also a date of great importance, and the mother often sought divine blessings prior to the commencement. It was a celebratory, festive event for the family's female friends and relatives who with their tiny bound feet often traveled long distances to attend since it marked the beginning of "womanhood" for the young girl.

Or, just like how the UN refers to FGM, it was a "self-enforcing social convention". And similar to foot-binding, FGM also has all these ritual, "beginning of womanhood" trappings, too, so it will also resist bans and attempts to eliminate it through "enlightenment". A lot of people think of these things as isolated practices that can be stopped on their own with no effect on the rest of peoples' lives, but that's not how the people doing these practices think of it.

[worry]

MTS, on 13 March 2017 - 01:03 PM, said:

Thus Democrats have a perfect opportunity to make this a wedge issue for the purposes of the mid-terms. Will they go full-on 'death panels/end of America as we know it' as their approach? They probably should, as Republicans have shown over the last 8 years that damn is it effective.

Always good to have a nice laugh, thank you.


https://twitter.com/...583058894422017

Republicans: "We're Nazis who will starve your grandparents for a set of shinier cuff links."
Democrats: "Not so fast. We'd like to start negotiations at 2 out of 4 grandparents."

[EmperorMagus]

death rattle, on 13 March 2017 - 09:09 PM, said:

Republicans: "We're Nazis who will starve your grandparents for a set of shinier cuff links."
Democrats: "Not so fast. We'd like to start negotiations at 2 out of 4 grandparents."

What? You want to use MY TAX MONIES to feed your grandparents??? If they deserve food, they would have enough money to buy it.


*I'm making minimum wage and need food stamps to eat food. Please don't touch that program and also don't let the "inner city people" take my stamps.

[Tsundoku]

REALLY interesting article on cognitive dissonance, belief, fact, "motivated reasoning", partisanship etc. And how it applies to the "alternative facts" crowd, plus similar groups eg cults, religions and so on.

https://www.theatlan...ur-mind/519093/

"What’s more, being intelligent and informed can often make the problem worse. The higher someone’s IQ, the better they are at coming up with arguments to support a position—but only a position they already agree with, as one study showed. High levels of knowledge make someone more likely to engage in motivated reasoning—perhaps because they have more to draw on when crafting a counterargument.
People also learn selectively—they’re better at learning facts that confirm their worldview than facts that challenge it. And media coverage makes that worse. While more news coverage of a topic seems to generally increase people’s knowledge of it, one paper, “Partisan Perceptual Bias and the Information Environment,” showed that when the coverage has implications for a person’s political party, then selective learning kicks into high gear."

"In 2016, Oxford Dictionaries chose “post-truth” as its word of the year, defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
It was a year when the winning presidential candidate lied almost constantly on the campaign trail, when fake news abounded, and when people cocooned themselves thoroughly in social-media spheres that only told them what they wanted to hear. After careening through a partisan hall of mirrors, the “facts” that came through were so twisted and warped that Democrats and Republicans alike were accused of living in a “filter bubble,” or an “echo chamber,” or even an “alternate reality.”"

This post has been edited by Captain Needa: 14 March 2017 - 11:11 AM

[Hairshirt]

Rachel Maddow released Trump's 2005 tax return tonight. As much as I disagree with Trump, I don't like this. This is illegal right?

[Nicodimas]

Hairshirt, on 15 March 2017 - 02:22 AM, said:

Rachel Maddow released Trump's 2005 tax return tonight. As much as I disagree with Trump, I don't like this. This is illegal right?

Why? If they don't care what's legal/illegal, why should we?

Nothing's private anymore.

[Hairshirt]

Nicodimas, on 15 March 2017 - 02:49 AM, said:

Hairshirt, on 15 March 2017 - 02:22 AM, said:

Rachel Maddow released Trump's 2005 tax return tonight. As much as I disagree with Trump, I don't like this. This is illegal right?

Why? If they don't care what's legal/illegal, why should we?

Nothing's private anymore.

I couldn't disagree more, this is a very slippery slope. Maybe I'm paranoid because the IRS gave me a personal pin number this year to use when I file my taxes. When I called to ask them why I found out over the past six years someone tried to file a return on my behalf 4 times. Thankfully I file super early so they caught it when they tried it late in the tax season.

[worry]

Are you asking if it's illegal for Rachel Maddow to have reported on them, or for someone to have leaked them in the first place?