re: Emma Watson says she will take a year off acting to focus on feminist causes

quote:

---

Her campaign is a pretty big international one (her UN presentation was solid) and fights some pretty real atrocities committed against women like genital mutilation that's still acceptable in some cultures/countries. Or women not allowed to attend school in those areas. For a long time these issues were never recognized on a national level because it wasn't a "men's issue". That's just a reality

---

A big reason stuff like that wasn't pushed was it involves cultural criticisms of the way another religion treats women (and other people, but only the women are now seriously being discussed). People on the right resent that because they suspect it is an extension of the Hitchens crowd that consider religion as a whole wrong and stupid. Many people on the left resent it because they suspect racism or bigotry to be partial motivations for the people making the criticism.

Frankly, the way women are treated in many parts of the world is pretty substandard and ought to be changed but advocates of the campaign ought to own up to saying this is what it is - an example our superior cultural morality. It is immoral to stone people to death or chop off their hands for misdemeanors or being victims. It is immoral to keep them (as a population) uneducated, to perform genital mutilations, and to refuse to accept the testimony of women as equal to that of men.

These ARE cultural values. They are also closely linked to freedom of religion and at some point you have to admit we believe the right of other populations to practice their religion offends us enough that we want to change it - because the essential welfare of people being discriminated against by those behaviors is being trashed. There is really almost no self evaluation on this necessity IMO. We still have people running around passing UN resolutions saying we decree racism, sexism, bigotry, cultural discrimination, and religious discrimination to be issues we can outlaw by fiat.