system
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human
CMV: When culture is used as a veil to protect oppressive values, it shouldn’t be respected.

Please take it easy on me, I’m open to all ideas and this was an idea that struck me after a conversation with a Nigerian woman. 

Culture repeatedly is used as a veil to perpetuate horrors and oppression. She mentioned that at one point in their history, twins were killed, and as a part of the culture it was accepted. They don’t do that now... But people still use the same argument to oppress women where she’s from. She feels women and men are expected to fit stereotypes, and people say, “this is just Nigerian culture.” It prevents people moving forward. She even mentions that if you walk alone in certain areas as a woman people assume you’re a prostitute. Waitstaff look right past you to any man in the group, and women routinely forfeit dreams and aspirations to get married and make babies even if they don’t want to. The husband’s family even has expectations of how many babies you should have and when to be considered a “good wife.” Sometimes you are asked to promise children to the mother in law in exchange for blessings. Yet what if she is sterile? She is not seen as a woman. Now she was forced to move to pursue her dreams of a career. She still has a deep love for the culture and history of her people, yet couldn’t come up in a society that refused to shrug off the negative aspects of its tradition. (I’m aware there are worse practices, these are just a few that are so widely backed you cannot escape it.) 

I get all cultures have downsides, but often times people won’t criticize culture in fear of being labeled a bigot. You cannot criticize culture that forces women into subjugation, even though we know it fosters things like fgm, low literacy, poverty, poor quality of life. And this is only the aspects that oppress women. We also allow unfair pressure on men to fill certain roles, racism, etc to sometimes get a pass because we either don’t feel like it is our place to question another’s culture, or because we’re afraid to have that discussion. 

If a black person is hurt by a showing of confederate flags in public space, oh well “it’s my culture.” 

If a straight man wants to take ballet, he will be stigmatized and have to suffer being laughed at by portions of society depending where he lives, it can be very damaging or even dangerous. Some don’t follow their dreams because of this. 

Women can be forced to cover up and shamed out of seeking education or seeking proper care, they can be married as children, the list is endless.

There are still cultures where if you are born into them, you are forced to believe a certain religion, and the penalty for leaving that religion is death. I remember hearing a story about a girl who stopped believing in islam, fled the country, went to Europe into witness protection, changed her name, and was informed her brother has tried to hire a hit man to come after her. 

I feel like we do condemn those practices, but when we don’t question the culture that reinforces those ideas it continues. Fgm for instance is widely abhorred, yet unqualified women are cutting girls with broken glass in old shacks, and the culture is to blame as much as the practice. Dances, food, music, language are all good things that come from culture. But old world rules and old ways largely need to go and have no place in the modern world and shouldn’t be used as a guide for living in an enlightened community. “This is how things have always been done” is a really shitty reason to keep doing things that way.
gpt
I think it makes much more sense to condemn oppressive action/behaviors regardless of their perceived culture of origination (even if they are rationalized by persons who claim to act on the behalf of specific cultures) than to assume that an oppressive behavior represents, and by virtue of that representation, invalidates a specific or an entire culture.