Pope meets with victims of clery Sexual Abuse
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sowhatifit'sdark
Valued Senior Member
I actually think that is worse. The pedophiles are compulsive, out of control and have a lot to lose. The bureaucrats have vastly less to lose and their effective denial of the abuse and setting up for more abuse is at least as damaging.
sowhatifit'sdark
Valued Senior Member
Hello. I am not talking to one of the mothers, am I? Correct me if I am wrong. If any of them are reading this forum and feel like even more stubbornly clinging to this practices because of what I said, please let me know, and I will speak to them directly in a different manner. Which of course I would. Though I suspect that women who come from those cultures who no longer believe in the practices - some of whom having gone through it and some having performed it - would be the best messengers. Toss in a couple of women who, for example, were without clitoral feeling for some medical reason and then later could experience clitoral stimulation. Just to give some perspective on what is lost apart from the trauma of the mutilation itself.
And SAM you don't seem to follow you own advice. I doubt comments about the white man's burden will have much effect on corporations and the IMF, but you seem to allow yourself to make such remarks here. I find the shift to as-if-I-am-speaking-to-the-mothers disingenuous. Also the we must think practically. Unless I have missed something your posts on occasion may be likely to make opponents dig into their positions more stubbornly and you could get all cross cultural and try to explain it to them in terms they won't get affronted by. But you don't. And I am generally glad you don't follow the rule you seem to think I should, here of all places.
As far as the Australian women, of unknown number to me, it's a big world. They are adults. I am not concerned about them remotely as much as children who are being horribly abused and yes by their mothers.
There are men and women who engage in S and M practices where they are flayed or whipped and have large objects shoved into their asses causing them to bleed. Some men, at least, will pay for this.
I do not therefore draw the conclusion that it's OK this would be done to children.
So including the Australian women example with some vague implicit argument seems rather slimy to me.
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I agree.
sowhatifit'sdark
Valued Senior Member
I appreciate the implicit wish to wipe it out. I am not sure why you put Westerners on a pedestal. A quick look at say, battered women statistics will show you that bad things happen in the West and victims often go along with it. Studies of childhood sexual abuse in the West, and most likely in the East too, would show many cases where mothers are involved, complicit or tacitly approving. Given that we are talking about millions of people, there will always be loopy people who want to do sick things. And, for the most part, if they are adults and want to do it to themselves or other consenting adults, I think we have bigger problems to deal with. Stuck in a stalled train opposite an adult Australian woman who simply wanted to have her own genitals mutilated, I might as some questions, perhaps, if I felt her blathering was a call for help, even exclaim "Are you hoping I will try to stop you somehow?" or "God, I hope you don't do that, it makes me sad and want to cover up my own genitals with a protective hand."
I'm not. The Australian woman could have been an Arabic one brought up in Australia and I would have felt the same dismay. The practice has been going on uninterrupted since the time of the Pharoahs and is so deeply ingrained that any sign of poverty brings a resurgence due to superstition and peer pressure. The idea that even without the cultural fixation, women would consider it acceptable is enough to make me weep.
sowhatifit'sdark
Valued Senior Member
yeah, I can understand that. Self-hatred and perversity are pretty universal and some just need to hear of a new form to be attracted to it. And by perversity I am not judging sexual desires, but rather taking perversity's meaning of 'twisted'. Contorted from its healthy form. Like the perverse pleasure, for example, in being contrary even if it hurts primarily yourself. I have been known to be like this, though in vastly milder forms, thank God.
In some way I think it is important to see how we have the patterns ourselves, in our self relations, in our relations to those close to us, in our relations to the opposite sex, etc. I am not thinking just of female genital mutilation, but with that also.
When I mention this I am not suggesting that all similar patterns have the same level of abuse. I do think that there is a connection. I think we have become so fixated on Newtonian forms of causal interaction that we miss out on approaches to healing things that are more subtle, but perhaps even more direct. I think future scientists will laugh at the limitations we have placed on causation.
And in any case it can't hurt. If men, for example, could look into the ways they fear women's sexuality and potential desire to get satisfaction somewhere else or be critical of the man's performance, that could be one step. I mean really look deeply at that. Feel into it. Even the nice 'non-sexist guys' in fact sometimes most of all those guys, need to look at that. And this is present all over the West and East. Women can look at the ways in which they feel it is wrong to seek pleasure to and to consider sex something for them and not simply for the man or for the production of children. I am sure there are more patterns at work in there that are shared to some degree all over the world.
I think a great deal of self-honesty and exploration - yes, that can be an appropriate double entendre - can make changes in ways that cannot be calculated by Newtonian cause effect models.
I am not saying that we shouldn't go directly at the cases of worst abuse. We should, taking into account all the problematic cultural and cross cultural issues. I do think it is incomplete if we don't look for the same patterns in ourselves and find a way to shift them. If nothing else this will give us a peek at how tricky it is to change these things and how ineffective repression is.
One scientific axiom is
it is best to assume disconnection between things and events unless it can be proven otherwise - IOW disconnection is primary.
I think this axiom will get challenged more and more
as twentieth century science has already shown.
You are disrespectful of their religion and culture!