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