Angel: I appreciate you guys looking out for Connor all summer. It's just—he's confused. He needs time. That's all. Fred: Right. Time, and some corporal punishment with a large heavy mallet. Not that I'm bitter.

'Just Rewards (2)'


Natter 48 Contiguous States of Denial  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


DavidS - Nov 30, 2006 9:32:34 pm PST #3916 of 10007
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

At least not in that article -- people want to change it and they're wildly poor and powerless to do so.

Yeah, but there are all those other articles where people sell their kids off to the brothels in Bangkok, or slave labor for fishermen elsewhere in Africa, or the production of chocolate, or rugs.

There's a lot of child slavery in the world.

People need to not be powerless

The power wielded against people is not just the exploitive gov't, but often their own cultural practices.

The Society estimates that there are 8,000 girl-slaves — slaves in the fullest sense of the term — in West Africa today. These girls are hierodulic slaves, combining the roles of agricultural slave, domestic slave, temple slave and sex slave.

Originally offered as human sacrifice to ensure success in war, these girls are the helpless victims of a traditional form of slavery which has survived intact since the pre-colonial era. These slaves live in villages just a half-day’s journey inland from the very coast from which slaves were once shipped to the Americas.

Taken from their mothers from the age of four, these girls work from dawn to dusk in the fields. From the age of five they are beaten with canes or with specially-made wire whips. They are raped from as young as eight years old. Their masters, the voodoo priests, claim the traditional right of masters since the dawn of history to free sexual access to the slaves, and the girls are beaten into submission if they refuse.

Many instances of common cultural practices which are abominations:

Traditional servile concubinage takes different forms, but usually involves either the selling of a girl-child or a young woman by her parents or clan into concubinage, or the transfer of a woman as property to another man on the death of her husband.

In the Kingdom of Nepal, this occurred in a traditional form, such as the badinis and helambus, where the girl-children had to be offered by the serfs as servile concubines to their feudal or royal overlords. Following the overthrow of the Ranas, these traditional forms of servile child concubinage have degenerated into a commercial industry in the cities.

The tradition of servile marriage still exists in Ethiopia, where it is common for a man to assault and defile an underage girl against her will. Once the girl is assaulted and defiled, the man goes to her father and demands the girl as his wife. The father and the girl have no option but to agree: if they refuse, no other man will marry the girl.

This tradition of servile marriage was recently highlighted by a girl who had been kidnapped by a man and his gang, who intended to defile her. She escaped and murdered her pursuer. The case highlighted the plight of girls who, after experiencing the trauma of the assault, must spend the remainder of their lives as the servile wives of their assaulter.

I'm just putting my vote behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.


Nutty - Dec 01, 2006 3:29:41 am PST #3917 of 10007
"Mister Spock is on his fanny, sir. Reports heavy damage."

I'm all a fan of human rights, but, also, this is not new. The only reason child labor is illegal in this country is the historical power of the union. (And if family farms were more prevalent, that law would be more honored in the breach.)

And don't get me started on rape as a quasi-legal form of marriage or concubinage. I suspect it has existed in a lot more cultures than it hasn't. For that matter, it persists today, in American mythology -- the 1980s soap supercouple, Luke and Laura? There's rape in their history together.


Topic!Cindy - Dec 01, 2006 3:42:01 am PST #3918 of 10007
What is even happening?

Rape laws are pretty much tied into philosophies of ownership rights (and violation thereof). In most of the modern western world, we recognize that women own ourselves, and have the right to self-determination.

The history of the world is a different story. For most of what we know about it, wives, daughters, and sisters—that is, women—have not enjoyed any sort of meaningful right of self-determination. It's their male relatives (including spouses) who have the right of consent. When rape occurs in a society like that, it's the male "owner" of the woman who has been wronged.

And yeah, pfffft in many cases, cultural relativism can bite me.


esse - Dec 01, 2006 3:42:10 am PST #3919 of 10007
S to the A -- using they/them pronouns!

The Roombas have a secret: [link]


DavidS - Dec 01, 2006 4:41:24 am PST #3920 of 10007
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

but, also, this is not new

No, but I think the Times coverage is relatively new. Back in the 90s the only person I remember talking about this stuff was William Vollman.


Liese S. - Dec 01, 2006 4:49:18 am PST #3921 of 10007
"Faded like the lilac, he thought."

Whatever traces of cultural relativism I've had are now fully erased and I'm back to inalienable human rights enforced at the point of a gun (if necessary).

Yikes.


DavidS - Dec 01, 2006 5:08:43 am PST #3922 of 10007
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

Yikes.

Starting with Rush fans!

No, I just mean that the intervention in Kosovo was motivated in part by humanitarian concerns and I think that was the proper application of military force. Situations like that.

I'm not talking about sending everybody in West Africa to forced re-education camps to stop the practice of clitorectomies.


Frankenbuddha - Dec 01, 2006 5:23:27 am PST #3923 of 10007
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"

Starting with Rush fans!

Geddy Lee died for your sins!!!

This is SO not a joking matter, but that's where my mind went when I saw "Rush". Whatever you think of their music, I'd rather think about them than that hopped-up, bloviating windbag.


Fred Pete - Dec 01, 2006 5:26:27 am PST #3924 of 10007
Ann, that's a ferret.

I'm decidedly not a fan of the band, and I'd still rather think of them than the talk show host.


Theodosia - Dec 01, 2006 5:33:19 am PST #3925 of 10007
'we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn't end any time soon"

What does it say about me that I went with the Geddy Lee image immediately?

Possibly I am too fixated on Canadian music...