Not to get preachy but...
Acid attacks, mainly against women, went up to 338 in Bangladesh last year. The world is full of truly fucked up things, but I never thought that the problem would grow to the point where it would be necessary to organize a march against maiming women with acid. What kind of society engenders that kind of horrific violence? Here's a PSA for all my readers in Bangladesh: "Throwing acid on people is bad, m'okay?"
Re:Bangaldeshi barbarians
hfb on 2002-03-08T05:34:08
To a woman in a world where her value is largely judged by her beauty death would be a more just and swift punishment.
The western world can look upon this smugly but not so many things have changed since the days of our swinging from the trees.
Re:Bangaldeshi barbarians
Matts on 2002-03-08T07:49:38
On the contrary. I think we were a lot more civil swinging from the trees.Re:Bangaldeshi barbarians
Fletch on 2002-03-11T14:58:21
At least then the worst that would get flung at you would probably be feces.
Re:Bangaldeshi barbarians
autarch on 2002-03-08T16:16:10
I'm not being smug at all. My point is that we in the West just love to criticize the Bangladeshis and the Taliban and the "you name a non-white culture here".
But are we really that much better?
Certainly in the area of women's rights, the US has it all over Bangladesh and Afghanistan, and I'd rather be a woman here than there.
But we have different barbarisms, mostly inflicted on people in other countries as opposed to people in our own. Let's face it, when it comes to numbers of people unjustly killed, the US has done a lot more killing than the Taliban or Bangladeshis.
My point, I think we _all_ suck.Re:Bangaldeshi barbarians
hfb on 2002-03-08T17:41:55
Splashing people with acid is an evil you can see, name and make a judgement on but the things we cannot see are just as uncivilised if not moreso. I don't know that you'd rather be a woman anywhere on the planet.
Re:Bangaldeshi barbarians
autarch on 2002-03-08T18:54:19
As I said, if I were a woman I'd rather be in the US (or Canada or Western Europe). As a man, I'd rather be in one of those places too. Living _in_ those places is relatively good. It's what those countries do outside their borders that sucks.
I just think that there is an ugly racist component to the way we westerners like to criticize non-white folks in poor countries for all the bad shit they do, while not tending to our own house.
Yes, I'd like to see Bangladeshis not throwing acid on women's faces. But I'd also like to see the US not implementing policies that kill by the thousands in Iraq. Is one worse than the other? Well, in terms of sheer numbers, the US is worse.
And more importantly, I'm a lot more responsible for the latter than the former.
