Feeling devastated after seeing this news about Afghanistan

It’s not whataboutery, it’s feminism - recognising it’s a global issue, terrible everywhere, and the impacts are much much worse in poverty stricken and conflict ridden countries.

Your whatsboutery is very transparent.

Rape, sexual violence, brutality and the degradation of women is normalised in the U.K. too.

Rape is effectively legalised here, prosecutions are less than 1% of rapes committed with victims often finding the justice process as traumatic as the rape. A majority of British women have experienced some form of sexual violence in their lifetime with teenage girls facing the brunt of it.

A majority of British men (and plenty of women) regularly masturbate to pornography - which is the filmed degradation, abuse and rape of vulnerable women. Very little is said about this as any criticism is labelled as being sex negative or a prude. You’re in denial if you think that has no impact on how women are perceived and treated. Most boys have watched porn by the age of 10 and porn is incredibly violent and misogynistic these days.

There are so many paedophiles in the U.K. the police don’t bother dealing with them as they simply don’t have capacity. There is a huge trade in British men watching children in poorer countries being raped over webcam for their sexual entertainment. This is a global problem. The porn industry is driven by the west and guess who else is consuming it and being affected by it - men in Asia and Africa.

That is a bit like saying the transatlantic slave trade was driven by poverty. The men who buy these young girls as sex slaves are not poor.

My point is that to centre a discussion on whether we should “feel sorry” for a set of people is quite an immature perspective to take. What difference does it make if we as individuals “feel sorry” for people, other than perhaps pointing to our personal capacity for empathy and the psychological impact of that on our ability to live a meaningful and purposeful life?

My point is that in a world where male sexual exploitation and violence is global, we need to be alive to the conditions which encourage it and which create the opportunities for it.

If a brutal conflict arises, in any country, one of the results will be the mass rape of women. If severe poverty arises, in any country, one of the results will be an increase in child sexuality exploitation and child rape.

It’s therefore incumbent to reduce conflict and poverty EVERYWHERE. Not to throw our hands up and declare that specific nationalities are more prone to violence against women and children and therefore there’s nothing much we can do, so let’s just leave them to fester... Because, if you haven’t noticed, the biggest victims in these environments are women and children.

I had not seen that. I can’t imagine the BBC will be investigating or reporting it. Once that would have been headline news.

The problem with this is that child rape and selling of daughters in Afghanistan is NOT a result of famine or societal breakdown. It’s PART of their society and has been for generations.

If your point is that if British men were socialised to consider women as mere objects then they too would be ok with selling their daughters when they needed to raise some extra cash, well yes that’s exactly the point.

And that’s why it’s an Afghan who’s just been convicted in Austria for an attempted honour killing after stabbing his 15-year-old daughter 12 times because she was dating a Romanian boy.

A 51-year-old who arrived in Europe 22 years ago, who still felt that that his daughter must remain true to his culture. She had been “promised” to an older Afghan man. Well of course she had.

And isn’t it funny that Austrians are committing honour killings now too, just like in the UK.

Oh wait no. The factor in common is Afghan, not Austrian.

Exactly, OtterlyAstounding

As you suggest it's perfectly possible to recognise where western meddling's been unhelpful without blaming us for absolutely everything, especially when it involves local mens' choices

I think that what people need to realise here is that there are no normal men in countries like Afghanistan. Not normal in the way we think anyway.

Rape, brutality, sexual violence, the degradation of women is their normal. It’s how they’ve grown up, it’s their culture brought about by the leadership yes, but that’s something which has never changed.

If there were enough men who wanted change they could bring about a revolution but they haven’t.

There will be people there who care about their families in a less brutal way. But still all men there will see their wives and daughters as less than them. That’s never changed and it never will.

We can’t bring about change in Afghanistan because Afghanistan doesn’t want change.

The girls and women do, of course they do, but having said that so much of this is normal to them as well. The younger generations will have seen some more liberal life while western forces were in there, but the older generations have grown up with it, to them it’s how they’re meant to live.

So it’s the younger generations which need to bring about change, the young girls, and boys, because the boys will grow up into the men of today unless they can be got to first in order t change that.

I mean, fair play to those who point out that the western world has meddled where it shouldn't have for its own gain, and made the overall situation worse... And fair enough, it's possible that any culture could end up doing terrible things when facing deprivations...

But right now, it's Afghani men doing it, and the western world cannot be blamed for them engaging in child rape, or owning women like animals. That doesn't feed anyone. There are wider factors at play, such as the fact that the culture is drenched in unimaginable misogyny and child sexual exploitation, and that's not because of the West.

As for ISIS...the West did not make men believe those things, or perpetrate those brutalities. We're not talking about the economic upheaval that the west is responsible for, we're taking about an organisation that relishes unimaginable, sadistic cruelty

You're right of course, @OtterlyAstounding, but I suppose it's easier for some to blame the west for everything rather than recognise that there really are some cultures like this

Add in the fact that they happen to be brown and there's not the slightest chance of some accepting the population's own culpability for aspects of their situation

I’m not for one second suggesting they don’t.

I mentioned the bacha bazi, not because I think it’s in any way worse than what’s happening to the girls, but because I was not previously aware of it.

I was not differentiating between the harm done to boys and girls.

I was trying to differentiate between the men who are involved in practices like the bacha bazi, and normal family men who’s families are starving.

Of course not. I’m horrified by both. I said my heart breaks for the children in particular.

Not sure how you inferred that from what I wrote.

The girls experience the same letchy old men but they are raped and abused behind closed doors. They will then be expected to feed their rapist, clean after their rapist and raise the children of the rapist. And probably care for the parents of the rapist. If she runs away I can only imagine what would happen.

And 3-4% will have a fistula due to injuries caused by raping a child.

You are horrified for the little boys but not the little girls?

Inclined to agree with @XDownwiththissortofthingX
Additionally,
”Afghanistan” wasn’t really a thing to many of these men. Afghistan was/is really just a region full of very old villages / tribes. They didn’t identify as a unified country. The history of the country just wasn’t like that. A man from one side of the country had nothing to align him to a man from the other side of the country.

as @XDownwiththissortofthingXsays, expecting them to unify, align and fight from the starting point they were at was too much.

I think it’s a horrible, horrible situation. My heart breaks for the children. But I am also sad for the men, I’m sad for everyone. At the end of the day, many of them are just men trying to make a living and provide for their families. Like in any country, you can’t tar them all with the same brush.

The Bacha bazi, however….im horrified. I’ve been reading a little online about it and there are some utterly heartbreaking photos of these poor boys, surrounded by lecherous men.

I don’t know. Perhaps it all just is a bit too different from our western society to be able to understand it or help in any meaningful way. It’s all just so sad.

What is your point then? That it is ok that Afghan men sell their daughters into slavery because some British might do it too? Why are you trying to justify rape and slavery of afghani girls?

They are the Taliban! You are right!

And which industrialised societies are you thinking of too? The industrial age in Britain was founded on misogyny, where women were openly employed with lower wages than the men in the early factories, and women were preferred both for this reason and because they tended to behave themselves more. It was also widely known that after the cultural shifts of the 15th century (ish) women were literally written out of land ownership and so had fewer choices than before. Evidence has recently been found that supports the long held suggestion of greater rights for women in Britain before Rome.

(that was aimed at RingoJuice following the query about hunter gatherer societies).

As an aside - I read there is some disagreement on how the new dalai lama will be chosen. Controlling a religious hierarchy is historically a good way to control the people who follow it.

I'm not sure what your point is, here. I don't feel sorry for any men who own their wives like breeding cattle, and sell their daughters into sex slavery. I only have boundless contempt for them. I don't care if they're starving. Death is better than that depravity.

Right now, the Afghani men are the ones engaging in that, and they're the ones that this article is about. If women's rights are stripped in Britain and British men begin selling their daughters, I'll have the same contempt - which is one I already have for rapists, abusers, and other such men.

Which hunter gatherer society are you thinking of here?

It seems like a bit of a brain dead response to my statement.

The point is that Afghani men are not special. They’re not uniquely bad due to religion and culture.

If Britain were to face the same levels of poverty, corruption, conflict and societal breakdown we would also be seeing the same levels of child rape, children being sold off etc.

Male sexual exploitation is global, how it manifests is shaped by socioeconomic factors.

@Galadriel I would have agreed with you if not for this buried bit of misogyny.

” It's no different to when men say things like "women want equal pay but don't want to work as hard as men". Although that's possibly a more defensible statement as it seems there are always a lot more women moaning about 'male dominated jobs' than there are women who are prepared to step up and do these jobs.”

Tell me have you ever lived in a sexist area? Never been subjected to horrendous male sexual harassment just for walking down the road as a 10 yr old there? Ever tried to break into one of the male trades and been told to go out, show your tits and flirt with a male client?

Also have you never worked in one of the female dominated work areas and watched pay dwindle while demands increase? Are you aware that hospitals primarily employ women who are required to work while getting into debt for their qualifications while the male transport trades and bin men are given everything they want, knowing there would be a very hostile uproar if nurses and healthcare went on strike for what they deserve?

How fucking dare you. I’m horrified by Afghanistan because I can see it’s the extreme edge of male normality, not because it’s totally alien.

By the way anyone who thinks women haven’t had work or professions in the past needs to read through and past the misogyny of the ‘early modern state’. Philippa Gregory’s ‘Normal Women’ is a good introduction. Women leaders were once common, before Rome.

The Women of Afghanistan should have be armed not the bloody men