Here are my thoughts:
On one hand yes, the idea of mutilating someone because they believe it helps prevent early pregnancy and other immoral things, makes me a little squeamish. However, how is that different from what we do in our own country? People say, well we don't mutilate our children. Yes we do! Have you ever seen those 3-6 year olds with spray tans, flippers, make up etc.? Do they really get a choice in the matter? No! What about infants that get their ears pierced? They are giving their child an extra hole in the body (which constitutes mutilation) because they think it is desirable in some way. Not to mention that it is almost always done with a gun, guns cause trauma to the skin because it is a blunt object being forced through your ear, it causes extra pain because it tears through the tissue.
What about how people are giving 4-9 year old girls BIKINI WAXES?! That is mutilation, anything that changes your appearance is considered mutilation, these girls actually will STOP growing body hair after the 3-4th wax. These people believe that the coarse black hair that grows is considered ugly and that they will be made fun of. Why?! Since when did our society turn into one that celebrates things that aren't natural and aren't real, to the extent that we are physically changing our children to be perfect barbie dolls? Most of the girls in other countries that undergo things like the breast ironing or vaginal sewing truly believe it makes them beautiful or better, if you tell them it doesn't they don't understand because IT IS THEIR CULTURE! Who are we to tell them they are fucked up and should be stopped when we are no better?! WHY do we feel like we are so much better and more "progressive" than them because they are still living in tribal states? We have a fucked up tribal state we live in, one that tells people it isn't 'normal' to be smart, to not have perfect breasts, to not have perfect teeth, to not have perfect skin etc.
So many teenage girls suffer from eating disorders, suffer from mental disorders or desperately believe that getting breast implants, getting a tummy tuck or a face lift will make them more beautiful. When you tell them it won't they don't understand, this is the culture of America. What about how little girls get the sluttiest clothes now-a-days and many start participating in sexual acts in PRIMARY SCHOOL! Girls actually PRETEND to be STUPID because that is how they feel they will be loved and appreciated by men! We give our youth so much shit that tells them they have to be perfect, nobody will love you if you aren't. How is this truly different than what they do to girls in tribal African Countries that we constantly put down for their culture and the way they treat women, when we treat our women just as badly if not worse at times.
We get inside the heads of our women and tell them they aren't beautiful, they aren't loved and aren't desirable because they don't fit a mold. In many ways fucking with someones mental state is a lot more damaging than mutilating their bodies. We take away any sense of self-esteem or of personal satisfaction, teenage girls are stripped of this at an early age by peers, parents (at times) and the media! How about we worry about fixing how fucked up we are before we go to other countries and tell them how terrible they are because they participate in a form of mutilation we don't? What if they came to us and told us how fucked up we were because of what we do to our little girls? Or how we let 16yr olds get breast implants to be popular(maybe bobby will notice me!) and give them a false sense of self worth? We force our children into doing things they don't want to do or things they can't make true decisions about, but we do it because we believe we are making their lives and futures better. The tribes are the same way but we treat them like they are beneath us because we don't share the same materialistic values. It is like an American going to a South American country and saying your disgusting for eating bugs(most countries do except America) you should eat processed meat. Really? 'Cause i'm 110% sure that eating bugs is WAAAY better for you than processed meat. We have such a plastic society that we lift ourselves up on a false sense of righteousness because we have so much more advanced things and that makes us better. That alone is proof that we(as a whole) have no real sense of self, we don't have a real understanding of ourselves and we rip that from our children because we want them to become who we want them to become, who the media tells them and us is the way they will be accepted and loved.
We have such a jagged and narrow view of the world, but yet we are considered to be a place of acceptance a place of opportunity. Is this why homosexuals can't get married in over 50% of the states? Is this why Christianity is considered to be the unspoken religion of America? Is this why many Americans think English is our language and everyone needs to speak it in order to live here? Is this why people still get fired for being Muslim, Jewish or Pagan?
I'm not saying there isn't a lot of good in America, because there is, however, there isn't enough good for us to go around telling other cultures what to do when our own culture has many faults that are mirror images of the faults we are telling them are wrong.
Why don't we stop telling everyone else what to do and start fixing our own culture, eh?
The 'we' is a generalized 'we' for everyone in America. You may be an exception or maybe you aren't, either way you are somehow affected by American Society in some way.
How do you feel about it?
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