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You got my point better than you realize.
This is the precise point that I was trying to make - that we walk a fine line between being tolerant of cultural differences and accepting that some behavior patterns are unequivocally wrong.
When I wrote this post, I was thinking of an Albanian father who lost his children permanently over just such problems. In his subculture, it was considered acceptable to pat children on their clothed genitals in public as a sign of affirmation, in much the same fashion as we might pat each other on the back. Someone saw this behavior pattern at a basketball game, took umbrage, and hotlined him for doing that.
Now, I myself cringe at the thought of having someone pat his child's clothed genitals in public, but hotlining this man was the wrong response. It would have been better just to tell him (in no uncertain terms) that we Americans don't do that because we consider it child sexual abuse. He would then have been forced by informal pressure to limit his behavior towards his daughter to those situations when he knew he was in a roomful of other Albanians. Instead, his family got ripped apart, and his children were eventually adopted into a family which practiced a religion offensive to him (he was Muslim and wanted his children raised Muslim). He was guilty merely of not knowing he was behaving inappropriately, a "crime" of which we are guilty every once in a while.
Intervention is necessary in these situations, no doubt about it, but the style of intervention must be geared toward what we know to be true, not toward what we believe to be true. If it's clear over the long haul that someone just needs more information, then the way in which we intervene will be different from situations in which we know we are dealing with deliberate abuse.
posted by
kidnykid
on February 19, 2003 at 6:02 PM
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I am thinking about your suggestions...
and some of them seem very sound. You are quite right that we often mistake differences in cultural norms for aberrant behaviour, and I agree that we must be on guard against that tendency. I am concerned, however, that we not go too far in the other direction. I believe that there are certain things which may be culturally acceptable, but which are, nevertheless, quite wrong. I will give three examples for illustration.
My neighbors are Armenian. They are very nice people, and we have a good relationship. But I cringe when my neighbor becomes irritated with his wife. Although he usually speaks to her in their native tongue, he once yelled at her, in front of me, in English. He called her a stupid cow. I think that demeaning language like this, no matter the cultural norm, is wrong.
Another example is the cultural norm of wife beating. It used to be acceptable in English common law for a man to beat his wife, so long as he stayed within certain parameters regarding the instrument used and the severity of the beating. Physically injuring another person, no matter how culturally acceptable or constrained, is wrong.
Finally, dueling used to be the culturally accepted form of settling disputes and insults (or perceived insults) in many cultures, including the British and American cultures. This practise has died out and is now legislated against, but I do not think it was ever right.
In short, I think we need to be careful what we characterise as abuse, as you have pointed out so well. But I think we also need to be careful that, in our attempts to be tolerant of cultural differences, we do not forget that there are certain behaviours that are unequivocally wrong.
posted by
editormum
on February 19, 2003 at 2:42 PM
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