Khadija Sali, a journalist from the Philippines, said: "We have to respect the culture and respect ourselves as well. Don't wear anything too short or too tight, it's common sense."No, Khadija, I do not have to respect the culture. I no more have to respect the culture of those backwards goat-molesting savages than I do the culture at a backwoods Klan cross-burnin'; the only difference is that the Kluxxers aren't sitting atop the world's petroleum reserves, so I don't even have to pretend to respect them.
Any culture that is afraid of women flashing knees in public lest it drive their menfolk into helpless throes of rapeyness is messed up on a fundamental level. If that's the problem, why not make the menfolk wear blindfolds? That'd fix the women not having driver's licenses problem in Saudi, too, neatly killing a pair of birds with a single stone.
It is times like this that I wish there were some way to extract all the oil over there at once and pay them off in one lump sum and then we could ignore the 'eathen wogs and leave them to their teetotalin' burkha-wearin' desert savagery in peace.
why not make the menfolk wear blindfolds?
ReplyDeleteDon't be silly. Given their penchant for mutilating women's genitalia to prevent them from enjoying sex, I would think the right thing to do would be to gouge the menfolk's eyes out so they aren't tempted.
It utterly befuddles me how the enlightened left who would want my balls on a chopping block if I whistled at a woman at my office would prostrate themselves* in front of these savages.
*When it comes to the current pres, that seems to be a theme.
If they have a culture that allows them to rape women who show a little knee, I have a culture that allows me to shoot men who rape women. I'll respect theirs when they respect mine.
ReplyDelete... said Tam, who lives in the country that makes bearing female breasts a crime.
ReplyDeleteDivemedic,
ReplyDelete"... said Tam, who lives in the country that makes bearing female breasts a crime."
1) There is no federal law against bearing breasts as far as I am aware.
2) I'm fairly certain that there isn't any federal law against baring them, either, although state laws and local ordinances may differ on the topic.
3) There's that wonderful sense of proportion unique to internet arguments, whereby there are no degrees of wrongness and everything even slightly bad equals the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Think about this one, Tam! Lots of blog focus on the right to bear arms, but you can be one of the first focused on the right to bear-
ReplyDelete... ahh, it's just too damn early to go rouge on people whose completely misinformed points are made even sillier by choosing the wrong homonym.
Well--! Go rouge? Are my cheeks ever red!
ReplyDeleteI see what you did there.
I'm not sure that not being able to show your knees vs not being able to show your breasts is a particularly different standard - they're both completely irrational and arbitrary limits, as are most rules of modesty.
ReplyDeleteThat said, when taken as part of the whole picture of women's rights in the country, I don't feel a need to respect their shit at all.
If it's "women have equal legal standing in general, but different arbitrary dress code rules", then whatever. It's a stupid rule, but so are ours. But, that's *not* what we're talking about when we talk about the middle east.
Yrro: It's not so much that they aren't different arbitrary standards, it's that if you are walking around with your breasts bared here in America, and you do get raped, well, there are still fuckwits who will claim that it's your fault, rather than, y'know, the rapist, at least you won't get stoned to death for having been raped.
ReplyDeleteYeah, ok, we still have a long way to go, but we're better than them.
Not to mention the silliness of being able to show a TV braodcast of a documentary featuring an amazon tribe with bare breasted teenage females, but if a white woman was standing beside one of them, also bare breasted, she would have hers blurred out....
ReplyDeleteWould you believe that there's no law against it here in North Carolina? (At least in Asheville). Just last summer we had several women downtown that went topless. Lots of silliness and attention whoring going on then. Some of the women were actually angry that people showed up and took pictures! My take on it was that if it was so important to them, why didn't they do it every day?
Their rules about bare knees and shoulders were not laws, it was a policy in the mall. If the right to bare breast is too much of a stretch, I will point out that here (about a mile from the beach) a MALE can't go in to a 7-11 without a shirt. How is that any different than their policy?
ReplyDelete$150 a barrel sea lane protection tax on every bbl. priced over $20. and/or destined for a non-allied port.
ReplyDeleteRandy,
ReplyDelete"Their rules about bare knees and shoulders were not laws, it was a..."
...systemic cultural problem. That's what you were going to say, right?
The Arabic world gave us Arabic numerals, the Rubaiyat and Mohammed. Courtesy the religious notions of Mohammed, the Arab world became a stagnant swamp of intellectual vacuity which is now impacting the western world.
ReplyDeleteHowever, having been raised to give some credence to, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," I just figure that there are some places to avoid as I would avoid plague areas.
The sad part of the whole deal is that our Fearful Leaders have no objection to importing the plague into this country...
Art
We got plenty of oil under our own feet. We just aren't allowed to grab our shovels and sippy-straws and extract it.
ReplyDeleteAs for the tits in public thing, you won't get any argument from me that it's an arbitrary line based on a generalized morality, but the women who dare to go against the norms here get YouTube coverage, not a lethal stone-shower.
Big. Fucking. Difference.
It's kinda surprising that the focus in many of the comments here is on knees, ankles, and boobs.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong: boobs are very distracting (to me). I can understand how that would get someone off track. But, sooner or later, you've gotta get your eyes back on the road. "Because Boobs" will not beat an arrest for vehicular manslaughter.
You can't say, "Same-same," or even, "What's the difference?" The fact that they publicly murder women for getting raped in a world where due process doesn't exist at all is the difference. If you can't see that, you most certainly have a need to find a better cork for your ass than your head.
About 20 years ago PJ O'Rourke wrote that he was in favor of nuclear and alternative energy just so the Middle East could never be of any importance to the world ever again. If only we could realize that dream.
ReplyDeleteActually Art, it wasn't because of Mohammed that the Arab world became a stagnant intellectual and philosophical miasma. They were doing just fine until the Mongols came along and stomped the "Golden Age of Islam" into a squidgy paste.
ReplyDeleteThey were already on the wrong side of the power curve by time Lepanto rolled around. They just didn't know it yet.
It's long been a source of amusement to me that Al Qaeda has chosen the West as the focus of its violence. Hey, WE didn't stuff the Caliph in a bag and ride an entire Mongol horde over him. They're avenging themselves against the wrong infidels; then again, even they are smart enough to let their grievance with the Mongols' historical heirs go unredressed.
gvi
I'm just looking for the day when mooslimbs aren't afraid of women.
ReplyDeleteTam: We aren't talking about Federal law or stoning. The linked article is about a woman who is complaining that women are showing shoulders and knees in a shopping mall and saying it is indecent.
ReplyDeleteFrom the article: "While wearing skimpy clothing is not illegal in the United Arab Emirates, shopping malls have policies that state knees and shoulders should be covered.
You then judge her entire culture by saying: "Any culture that is afraid of women flashing knees in public lest it drive their menfolk into helpless throes of rapeyness is messed up on a fundamental level."
All the while refusing to note that this about what dress code is being imposed by private property owners, who can set whatever dress code they please on their own property, while simultaneously ignoring that a woman with bared breasts in the US will be jailed, unless she is actively breastfeeding.
Whose culture is backwards?
Did anybody even read the article? They never said they were going to stone or rape the bare westerners. They are just encouraging visitors to respect their culture. That's "visitors", as in people that are free to go home if they want to expose their knees.
ReplyDeleteI LIKE our way of life better than theirs, as most everybody likes "home" better than other places. But are we so blind that we can't see this is a simple "we are right because we are used to what we do" argument?
Anon-
ReplyDeleteArab and Muslim weren't synonyms back when "arabic" numbers were being adopted. Even as recently as World War One it wasn't monolithically Muslim.
Divemedic,
ReplyDeleteF$%# the article. I used the article to launch a general rant on the shittiness of Arab/Muslim culture towards me and all the people who use the same bathroom I do.
And then you said "But what about boobs?" and claimed that boobage was agains the law in the US.
It is not against the law in the US. There is no federal law against boobage. There may be state and local laws, but not everywhere. I'm as free to jiggle around as you are in many locales (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indecent_exposure_in_the_United_States#Laws )
All this completely ignores the fact that, even in the most snake-handlin' backwoods region of America, the worst I'd get for going au natural is a fine and some jail time, whereas if a girl in Suadi tries to flee a burning school without a burkha, she'll get chased back in to die in the flames. If you think those situations are analagous, then I'm afraid our viewpoints are so far apart that never the twain shall meet.
Randy,
ReplyDelete"But are we so blind that we can't see this is a simple "we are right because we are used to what we do" argument?"
No. That is wrong. There are certain things people do around the world that aren't "charming ethnic customs", but rather are objectively and absolutely wrong. Owning people, for example.
In colonial India, Suttee was the practice of tossing the widow on the funeral pyre of the husband. It was stopped when the British, fully respecting the practice, insisted that those doing the tossing would be immediately hung fur murder, also insisting that the natives respect the traditions of the British.
ReplyDeleteMight work in other countries, other situations.
Tam,
ReplyDeleteI think you are taking this too personally. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
Or, better yet, when there is a labor union around, don't mess with the labor union. Or Chicago thugs when in Chicago. Same principle, apparently.
See, the US is enabling all this raucous behavior. We keep sending money, and using our influence, to keep the same folk in power. If we want them to change, we set up a WalMart across the border from them, tell them, "Sorry, no picture ID, no enter. And take that face mask off." Let them rant as they will, but an ethical, moral alternative will defuse most bullies and terrorists. You just have to isolate them and their antics from responsible people.
Um, wait. Would responsible people elect a do-nothing Senator, with a Senate seat bought and paid for by Chicago thugs and foreign oil, to be President? Would responsible people let their Congress get away without passing an annual budget? Would responsible people close the middle-school program for unwed mothers to otherwise eligible sixth graders because there isn't room? Would responsible people offer a root beer float made with Coke(tm)? Let me think about this a little more.
And here in Austin both mantits and girlboobs are lawful to expose. Which caused many trips to the local swimming hole at the insistence of my teen son.
ReplyDeleteI, for one, was disappointed with CNN's "immodest clothing" slideshow. Only one picture of Daisy Dukes? Only one pic of of a sunbather in a bikini? Whatever happened to pushing the envelope?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I agree with the mall's request, and wish WalMart would adopt the same policy. **shudder** At the very least, they should put up signs saying: "Hey lady! Just because you can pull it on doesn't mean it fits!" **shudders again**
So a mall doesn't want the wimmens to show their knees. Not unusual for that part of the world.
ReplyDeleteWhat about property rights? I cannot read a Wookie blog without having to be lectured about property rights every other paragraph. What about the property rights of the mall?
Shootin' Buddy
SB,
ReplyDelete"So a mall doesn't want the wimmens to show their knees. Not unusual for that part of the world."
My post is not about the mall, my post is about That Part Of The World. Which is Wrong.
"What about the property rights of the mall?"
The mall has a right to set dress codes. I have the right to call Islamic culture a bunch of backwards 9th-Century goat-buggering sandjacks. What is so hard to understand about that?
Divemedic,
ReplyDeleteThere's that sense of proportion, again. I'd assume the Florida teen's father then killed her to clear the family's shame, correct?
mikee,
ReplyDelete"And here in Austin both mantits and girlboobs are lawful to expose. Which caused many trips to the local swimming hole at the insistence of my teen son."
Are you calling Divemedic a liar?
Baring knees in the UAE will not get you stoned, either. But, hey all those backwards countries are the same, ya know?
ReplyDeleteBare knees, bare breasts, baring your bigotry.
Divemedic,
ReplyDelete"Baring knees in the UAE will not get you stoned, either."
Show me where I said it would. That's a classic strawman argument, right there.
And yes, I am bigoted against backwards BS customs, whether enshrined in law or not.
I can't speak for Dubai, but just up the road in Abu Dhabi you'll see lots of Europeans women on the beach in bikinis drinking a beer right next to the Emirs Palace.
ReplyDeleteHaving spent time there, they will not stone an Emiree woman if you ask her a question or to the best of my knowledge the do not practice female circumsision. I spent a fair amount of time talking to young women who wearing jeans, heels or sneakers under their abayas. The Lebanonese woman who worked there wore Western clothing at all times, even to the big mall.
They do not practice the strict Islam of the Saudis who they do not like or trust. Emiree women drive just as poorly as do their men.
Gerry
Tam, you are sadly forgetting two key points of modern multiculturalism.
ReplyDelete1. It is unfair to judge Islam/Muslims/other cultures based on things done in the past, the near past and even currently. To do so is bigoted and racist.
2. It is fair and sagacious to judge Christianity/Christians/the West/the US based on things done in the past or near past, to do so is just and good sense.
See also:
http://montieth.livejournal.com/348991.html
When in Dubai or any of dar-al-Islam you have to respect their tradition.
ReplyDeleteExcept "respect" is probably not the right word. More like you have to "conform-to-norms-in-such-a-way-that-you-won't-be-stoned-to-death."
Respect is the last thing they deserve.
DanH, thanks for the chuckle paraphrasing the famous quote.
ReplyDeletemikee, while a certain General is attributed the quote, the policy was first attempted by a Governor (East India Co. appointed, the true rulers not the UK government) - who was called to London and put on the carpet for it, and told to stop imterfering. Upon returning to India, he defied London's orders: the General (and most of the native Indian rulers) supported him.
The point here is that you took an article about a mall in the UAE, combined it with a generalization about something that happened in a totally different country, and used that to slam on a culture that you obviously know little about. You took an article about the owners of a mall in the UAE not allowing women to bare their shoulders, added a generalization about Muslims based upon a strict interpretation of Sharia law from other countries, and somehow came to the conclusion that the entire UAE culture was bankrupt.
ReplyDeleteI have come to expect a much higher level of intellect from this blog.
I spent two years in the UAE as a ward of the US military. They are not the backwards people that your obvious bigotry would seem to suggest.
Wait, let me get this straight.
ReplyDeleteTam reads an article that's in the UAE, makes a generalization about a region, YOU come in here with your unmentionables in a wad because the US is just as guilty of something totally unrelated and you're complaining that Tam has geographical and consistency issues?
"When in Rome... "
ReplyDeleteScrew the Romans. If they showed up on our doorstep today and demanded tribute and slaves, the local police would swiss cheese them the second they threw a pilium in anger.
Tam, I think you're sensitive and over-reactive because a whole subculture of the earth (and its associated theocracies) values you and your gender somewhere between a pile of camel shit on the ground and the hole from which the camel shit emitted.
ReplyDeleteThere are places in America that value me less than a "cap busted in my white ass." I make it a point not to visit those places, but I can't let the actions of the inhabitants of those racially and culturally monolithic cesspools affect my opinion of escapees of similar melanin content.
"There's that wonderful sense of proportion unique to internet arguments, whereby there are no degrees of wrongness and everything even slightly bad equals the gas chambers at Auschwitz."
ReplyDeleteProportion on the internets is for suckers! Everybody gets to send everybody else to the gas chamber at the insistence of (usually) nobody in particular!
Dudes, the lady has a poetic license, and she ain’t afraid to use the sucker.
ReplyDeleteI get it, some predominantly Muslim countries won’t stone a woman to death for appearing in public without a male family member, or not wearing head to toe coverage, or being a rape victim. But, there are many where just such an outcome is SOP. That’s fucked up.
“So, Achmed, what is the punishment for rape?” “Stoning”. “Awesome, that seems about right. Do you have some sort of victim advocacy program, counseling and shit?” “No, we stone the victim. The perpetrator gets a slap on the wrist.” “uh, ok. How do you deal with homosexuals?” Achmed adopts a Slim Pickens accent: “We rape the shit out of ‘em at the number six dance.” “Riiight, well Achmed baby, I gotta get back to the twenty-first century, Deuces.”
In the West, we're suppose to revere every culture in the world as equally wonderful and valuable, except our own. -- Lyle
ReplyDeleteDivemedic and the others just want to see tits, and they're not terribly subtle about it.
ReplyDeletedivemedic,
ReplyDelete"and somehow came to the conclusion that the entire UAE culture was bankrupt."
No, I came to the conclusion that the whole fucked-up misogynistc fundamentalist Islamic/Arab culture is bankrupt.
Further, I came to that conclusion thirty and more years before I read this article.
Further, if you think that treating women as second-class citizens is just a quaint ethno-cultural thing, then feel free to fuck off and die.
(I'm glad you had two great years in 1960's Alabama, honky.)
ReplyDeleteComparing the towelheads to Klansmen is insulting to Klansmen. Who knew it was even possible?
ReplyDeleteWell. Robb Allen Ftw!
ReplyDeleteAnd Cormac and Montieth tie for an almost-too-close-to-call second!
We are always asked to "understand" alleged cultural origins of such crimes against humanity as the Bataan Death March, or honor killings, or chasing girls back into a building to die because they lack the proper tent, but somehow Americans are held to have intended the unintended and unforseeable consequences of any number of things. No need for understanding there.
I agree that cultures are wrong when they consider women as property and punish them for a mans sins. You just threw me off by using an example of something entirely different.
ReplyDeleteI thought the title "Listen up you primitive screwheads" was directed at the Islamic fuckwads. After reading the comments section, I'm not so sure...
ReplyDelete@ Anon 7:33,
ReplyDelete"Comparing the towelheads to Klansmen is insulting to Klansmen. Who knew it was even possible? "
Um, they both hated Catholics in the past, didn't they? Naw, I think there is enough vigilante and terrorist similarity to warrant the comparison. Even when they hold community, family picnics.
@ Jayson,
". . and the others just want to see tits, and they're not terribly subtle about it. "
Nothing wrong with wanting to see tits. And smiles. And hand and body gestures. If you need to renew your Naturist Society membership, write to them at Oshkosh, WI. Or visit http://www.naturistsociety.com. For additional access in the US to family nude recreation, consider the American Association for Nude Recreation (www.AANR.com). Both are family oriented, nude recreation organization -- hanky panky not permitted in public, PDA's discouraged as inappropriate behavior. One AANR member facility, the predecessor to Lupin Lodge, was Lupin Naturist Club near Los Gatos, CA, which was a healing retreat for many, and a stable and supportive community. With tits. And smiles.
@ Kristopher,
"Screw the Romans. If they showed up on our doorstep . . "
But that is the point. You pay attention to what the Romans do when you set foot in Rome. The Romans better pay attention to NY (or OK) norms when in NY (or OK).
At some point we need to make it clear to the Saudi royals that while we might need their oil, we don't especially need *them*, and if they don't stop funding their more radical brethren, we might just put the Hashemites back in charge. Or remind them that we could just go all Third Punic War on their asses, & keep the oil fields ourselves...
ReplyDelete@ Cybrludite,
ReplyDeleteOK, reality check here.
"Or remind them that we could . . keep the oil fields ourselves"
Look. The WalMart in my small OK town cannot keep enough cashiers working, every day without calling in, around a 9 pm to 11 pm peak (nearly every damn day) time, to serve the community properly. Folk don't want to work that bad.
Now you want to work desert oil fields. You want to confront the anti-imperial left, "OMG! America cannot be an evil empire! Oh, shudder, it would take advantage of those poor people, and enrich evil corporations!". And also find enough people actually wanting to work bad enough to come to work day after day. Away from WalMart, KMart, and Burger King.
Right. I recall this passionate song after 9/11, something about "put a boot in your a**". Made a nice song. Not a whole lot of follow-through.
Show me a 40% drop in unemployment and food stamps applications since January 20, 2008, show me active support more than 6 months after National Guard, Army, and other units return from the Sandbox, and you might have a point.
Actually, show me that we have enough military to sustain operations, without calling out the National Guard and Army Reserves for service overseas. And you want to think we are ready for any kind of adventurism.
Our military operations in the Mid East in recent times have significantly improved the combat readiness of our military, improved specific unit experience and preparedness, improved equipment design, improved deployment practices, and improved the effectiveness of sending our people, under arms, to project our government's intent.
And you want a Senate that cannot pass a budget to take rational and decisive action in the best interests of the nation.
It sounds like a nice ploy, but anyone with a week's back newspapers has enough history to call that bluff.
We can, and have, disrupted those we target. Regardless of what you think of the excursion to Iraq, there isn't a nation on Earth that wants what Saddam Hussein's government got from us. And look at how that military action fell into political disarray.
Luck.
What I find neat is that this is proof positive that any internet thread can be turned into a discussion about boobs.
ReplyDeleteBrad K.: Slavery alone is enough for me to advocate carpet bombing Rome if their empire was still intact, regardless of whether or not they stay out of my home town.
ReplyDeleteFuck multiculturalism.
@ Kristopher,
ReplyDeleteI think we differ on a couple of things.
First, my understanding is that the "When in Rome" line refers to the Rome in Italy, a part of Europe, which is east of the Atlantic Ocean from the US. I wasn't thinking of Rome, NY.
Second, it cannot be "multiculturalism" when you talk about Italian Romans obeying Italian laws, and living within their Italian culture. As far as I know, the only two cultures in Italy are Italian and the Vatican, but that is another story.
Third, I wasn't thinking so much of political correctness, as avoiding negative attention from the local police, or getting the local community organized to toast one's butt.
Lastly, read up some of the more recent positions on slavery in the US, into the early 20th Century, lo-o-ong after the ink dried on the famous government dictum ending slavery. Right. Just like Congress making a law that established Metric measurements as the law of the land in the US back in the 1970s ended use of the English (feet, hands, yards, inches, miles, etc.) system. Or that the war on poverty ended poverty, or the war on drugs reduced drug use, in or out of prison.
You might be interested in following the news stories on white and sex slavery rings working in the US today, and the stories of people abducted into that involuntary world. And then there is debt-slavery, making a striking comeback in the last decade or so, where one is bound by one's debt into loss of basic freedoms. TheAutomaticEarth.com has some good background on that little modern economic model.
And, lastly, I cannot think that carpet bombings would be any more effective than they were in WWII, Vietnam, etc., in actually affecting social issues. Bombs are good for blowing up stockpiles of stuff, and factories that make stuff. But when you bomb people, their relatives and neighbors tend to get irritated. Count the friends of the US in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan. Impressive accomplishment, hey?
Don't be stupid, Brad K.
ReplyDeleteWe both know which Rome we are talking about.
Slavery is evil. I don't care if it is a cultural norm for someone. The slave takers and users require immediate Napalm baths.
Nazi Germany's industry was tied in knots by carpet bombing. Speer's greatest problem was manpower ... between bombing raids and the draft, he did not have enough bodies to make munitions, even while enslaving foreign workers and POWs.
Imperial Japan's industries were wrecked by it as well.
And North Vietnam actually got serious about negotiating a ceasefire once Nixon loosed SAC and had them start arclighting entire blocks in Hanoi.
No ... your contention that carpet bombing is ineffective smacks of excessively libertarian bullshit to me.
It's not that carpetbombing is an ineffective tactic ... it's just that you want it to be so.
Carpetbombing, of which nuclear weapons are a technologically advanced variant, worked pretty damn well on the Japanese.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking hypothetically, just for shits and giggles, if the response to the attacks on September 11, 2001 had started with turning Mecca, Medina, Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Islamabad, Lahore, Kandahar, Tripoli, Nablus, and Gaza into self-illuminated glass parking lots, and was followed up by a brief, simply worded announcement that the response to any further such monkeyshines would be that the Arabic language would henceforth be spoken only in Hell--well, you can imagine what the usual suspects would say. They're saying it already. Otherwise, one cannot imagine it being any worse and in some aspects it might be better, and mostly I suspect things would not change greatly. Europe's economy is utterly dependent on the US export market, as is China's. Angry speeches would be made at the UN--more or less identical to the ones already being made there. Strongly worded letters would be sent, then read, laughed at, and thrown away. But everyone who matters bets on the strongest horse, in the end, and no one's going to send his own economy back to the Stone Age by snubbing American trade to make a political point.
Additionally, all those American soldiers who have died thus far on the Iraqi and Afghan fronts of the war would still be alive, as well as all the victims of Islamist terrorism who have died in the past eleven years.
For Nablus & Gaza, I'm thinking an Arclight done with JDAMS where the bombs go off simultaneously and with optimal spacing. They're a bit close to an actual ally of ours for the bottled sunshine, otherwise I concur your assessment.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that one.
ReplyDeleteHave been saying similar and getting grief.
If you haven't heard of the Hadith ten plus years after the towers you are the problem.
A-Frickin-Men Tam.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to me that pointing out the obvious fact that some cultures are inferior to others provokes such a poop storm of comments.