This is a really excellent post. Thank you. I am growing very tired of the "but we're still better" mantra coming so loudly from many Western-centric people when reminded that our [I am a Westerner] culture has many misogynist practices as well. The argument that we are somehow better, of course, frames other people as naturally "worse." Three guesses who gets the "worse" label. How can an ENTIRE culture be "better" or "worse" than another? How is that even remotely accurate or unoffensive? You're completely right in suggesting that we need to think a lot harder about the way we frame these conversations.

This is something I really appreciate, because I've struggled with trying to figure out how to define and discuss honor killings. I don't know enough about non-Western cultures to have an informed opinion about the background of them and what to do. I hate hearing it from people who totally dismiss a variety of Middle Eastern or Muslim cultures simply because of the modern political influences.

I think they're terrible, because no one should be murdered for the sake of "honor".

However, what is to be done? How can I talk about it without being totally insensitive? This is something I still have to learn. Thanks for helping me along the way :D

Thank you very much for this. I wish there were more views like yours, online and on the street.

Thank you for this post, worded as it was. While I've never really thought of the issue as "us versus them" personally, I cannot speak for my subconscious, and I certainly did not think of this issue from any other perspective. You have given me that perspective. I suppose being "inside" Western culture (I'm of European descent living in Toronto) I had no reason to get perspective; I saw a horrifying practice and associated it with a culture. I simply wouldn't have seen it as you pointed out because I had no reason to. I do believe though that culture has a lot to do with misogynistic behaviour, and in this, I am speaking about Western culture. It seems that the entire structure of Western culture is gender roles and maintaining them. In this, I think there does need to be a serious upheaval. I do agree with you completely though that no one really looks at misogyny as a cultural issue, yet honour killings incorrectly condemn a whole way of living.

Thanks everyone! I didn't even think my post would get any comments.

wowcabbage: However, what is to be done? How can I talk about it without being totally insensitive? This is something I still have to learn. Thanks for helping me along the way :D

That's an excellent question. I believe the best thing to do would be to learn as much as possible about the cultures we are discussing & their respective practices. I do agree that misogyny is universal and that things need to change, but change must come from WITHIN, not from the outside. Therefore, we need to engage women and communities of color if we are to address misogyny within their cultures.

Lindsay: I do agree with you completely though that no one really looks at misogyny as a cultural issue, yet honour killings incorrectly condemn a whole way of living.
If you plan on coming back to the thread, could you clarify this statement? I'm not quite sure what exactly you mean.

radhika: ...change must come from WITHIN, not from the outside. Therefore, we need to engage women and communities of color if we are to address misogyny within their cultures.

Okay, one more question :)

I live in a predominantly white, rural area in the midwestern United States. I'm white myself. I don't see many people of color, but they are around. What are some ways that I can engage people of color so that I'm not just talking to them on the basis of skin? I want to talk to some of the Muslim girls on campus - honestly, I want to tell them that their hijab are pretty. They always match them to their outfits and it looks really nice. But I don't want them to feel like I'm patronizing them or something. I want to talk to them about how they feel about Islam and how it affects their lives, but I don't want to treat them like some "othered" person.

While there's always the internet for contacting people far from me, I'd like to make a difference in my own community. I just don't know how to without being one of those people who seems like they have to "prove" how progressive they are by specifically seeking out friends of color.

tamashadekh posted at July 12, 2008, at 09:58PM: "Although cultural context needs to be acknowledged in these cases, it does not give an excuse for Westerners, Western media, and Western feminists to condemn an entire culture because of certain bad practices within that culture. Rather, the individual practice itself should be condemned."

Right on!

Lindsay commented at July 14, 2008 8:31 AM: "It seems that the entire structure of Western culture is gender roles and maintaining them. "

OTOH, does "Western culture" have an entire structure in the first place? Just as there are many different South Asian cultures (some overlapping) with many different customs (some mutually exclusive), there are many different Western cultures. The individual sexist practices should be condemned, in part because "South Asian community" or "Western culture" is too nebulous to pin down and judge accurately.

I'm glad I came back. I've been thinking a lot about the weakness of my last statement really so I'm happy you asked me to clarify. What I meant is that in everyday life, especially modern media, it's "us" and "them". There are never any differences, never any subcultures. It's either Western or Eastern. In this, people look at honour killings and associate it with "them", without stopping to consider the person's ideas, their motivation, their beliefs or their pocket of culture. This to me is the equivalent of "us" being entirely wrong because of Christian fundamentalists. I'm a "Westerner", but I'm not Christian, nor have I ever been. I consider myself a young, thinking Canadian woman, and if asked to identify myself culturally, I saw I'm Quebecois because that's the part of my family and upbringing that I most closely identify with.

In summary, Mina, I was generalizing, and I know what you mean completely. However, I must admit that I couldn't possibly begin to consider all the different points of culture, what defines it and what it is to begin to mention them here. Tamashadekh, I simply meant that everyone gets lumped into one of two apparently polar sections, leaving no room for any other qualifications whatsoever. We're essentially told that things are black or white, and if we're white and white is good, then black is bad. (I don't mean this to relate to race at all it just made more sense in my head than other opposites like "hot" and "cold".)