Thread to discuss the reality of parts of the UK absorbing large numbers of men from other cultures

I think that it is primarily a way to control women, and the rape deterrent thing is either total bullshit, or a two birds with one stone form of branding as you say.

Yeah, I honestly don't know. I think things start for one "reason" and may continue out of tradition that no one can really explain. I always think of Shirley Jackson's story The Lottery. They don't know why they do it either, but it feels like there's no alternative.

I think this conversation is uncomfortable and I have been clutching my pearls repeatedly as we veer into a forbidden territory of words and ideas. Talking of ‘superiority’ or ‘advance’ is cringy when as a British person I have been well-groomed in the self-deprecation, apology, and self-abnegation of post-colonial white guilt.

Yet, I know it is necessary to go there.

People will cringe, people will clutch their pearls, people will gasp, people will judge.

Never mind. We need to move on.

I think the cringing away from admitting that the UK is superior in terms of racial equality, women's rights, children's rights, workers' rights, and gay rights is part of the problem. If we want to preserve these things, we have to be able to say why! Because they're good. Because they are better (superior) to the alternatives. Because they are what liberation movements across the world are striving for.

If that makes you "cringe" then how much do you really understand and value those rights in the first place?

I don't disagree with you, maybe it's a 'kill two birds with one stone' thing...... destroy her ability to experience pleasure whilst at the same time letting other men know that you own and control her?

I don't know. I think it's more about curbing women's ability to experience pleasure. Because women are sinful and their pleasure is evil. This is in all the big religions.

If people don't like the way of life here, they shouldn't come
I agree but if you are a man who has been raised in authoritarian patriarchal culture you will not be able to to relate to this mindset at all. Instead you will be attracted by and will want to benefit from the elements of that culture which you like and agree with and you want to impose upon it the elements that favour you from your own culture.
If you are uneducated this will probably not be something that you can put into words it will be implicit in the way you behave, if you are educated you will realise it's better if you keep your mouth shut about what you really intend but you will still think that you are right and entitled to get what you want.

*back home.

It does come across though, that you think that patriarchal oppression is evenly spread across cultures, from what you are saying there.

No, I wouldn't go that far. But some posts on this thread have made me cringe a bit. And I am a person who believes in British values, if not the food! I just doubt you are going to convert many people by going on about "superior" cultures. It's just going to be a circlejerk of people from superior cultures. There needs to be a less bull in a china shop approach then that. And as I said way up the thread, I think people who have been born in the UK are actually far more conservative than back ho

Some of the practices were based on where people were - I remember my mokther explaining how pork could go off in the desert and make you ill if you don't have a fridge which may be why Jews and Muslims did not eat it. Also some religious traditions were apporopriate for life in deserts 2000 years ago.

Eg whene women could not get jobs at all Islam suggesting a man may have 4 wives so ensure he does not abandon wives 1 -3 and go on to one after anotehr after another was in its day a pretty sensible way to protect women.

However having no "reformation" of Islam and no update to traditions as the UK did to things like women wearing long skirts, not cycling etc in long battles before and after 1900s, means we bring into the UK the more backward aspects of some of these traditions.

Someone said we do not have easy immigration in the UK. There is certainly paperwork tod o but just about no one is ever removed, we have 1m illegally here, we have about 120,000 asylum seekers, we have 18m more people than when I was born, we have about 1m people including students coming here from abroad each year and net migration of +504,000 a year so it is not particularly hard to come here. We have a big shortage of housing to buy or rent, 7m on NHS waiting lists so it is not all a positive position that so many come each year.

The suggestion above of putting asylum seekers in groups of 3 or 5 in each place would be a lot better and would help them learn the language and customs of the UK and find jobs more easily if and when their asylum seeker applications are granted. Lots of unattached young men with nothing to do is a waste of time.

I would change the law to allow a swifter assessment of their cases and all other types of application for visa so it was within 2 or 3 weeks.

Sorry I think I am mixing two different posts together so my response may be muddled.

But @Lentilweaver we're not talking about Western women with Muslim faith or heritage but women actually in Muslim countries or brought over here as wives to serve males here. It's different. People are rude/racist to make assumptions about your life simply because of the colour of your skin or that you wear a headscarf. But that's not what's happening on this thread.

Yes. That makes so much more sense.

The thing about FGM as a rape deterrent.... I think this could be a bit like branding of livestock, ie a way for the farmer to show that this is his property, mutilation of the genitals is a way of indicating that this woman (and in particular her reproductive organs) are the property of someone else and so there will be consequences if another man attempts to use these organs for his own purposes.
It is all predicated on the women being owned and controlled by men in the way that livestock are.

I'd rather be "enslaved" by getting my nails done than be killed in the street for not covering my hair.

I'm a free woman here. I wouldn't be free in Afghanistan or many other places. Yes there is all sort of diversity in those countries but I want girls to have an inalienable right to education - not to hope that their fathers are liberal enough to allow it.

“Women from other countries tend to be more diverse and complicated than you think.”

I am assuming you meant the collective “you” there, right?

I don’t get the bit about literature either - it seems a bit pejorative to say it’s over-produced - it’s sounds like Shakespeare should have STFU instead of scribbling by candlelight. I can’t be bothered to go into it though, sometimes people aren’t that careful about how things will be received, that’s life on a forum.

It does come across though, that you think that patriarchal oppression is evenly spread across cultures, from what you are saying there.

Lentil, I must have missed the bit about literature. That's obviously bullshit. The Arabic tradition in particular is literary and come to think of it, it was the Arabic empire that invented and developed all sorts of maths, science and general civilisation.

So I am not buying that these woman-hating practices developed because of the geography. I also don't think it's really necessary to understand why they started in order to say we don't want to do that here.

I don't think it's imperialist to say the UK is better than, say, Egypt for women and girls @Torunette . I also don't think it matters if people resist that. It's fine. If people don't like the way of life here, they shouldn't come.

No. But as an immigrant from another culture, finding some posts a bit ... odd. The part about other countries not having a rich tradition of literature because of our hot climates. Come on! We do. We just have them in other languages.

I don't believe in FGM, arranged marriages, modesty clothing or the denial of education to women. But some sweeping assumptions remind me of what I have to deal with in the workplace. I am always assumed to have had an arranged marriage, denied education by my terrible parents, an oppressed depressed suppressed slave to my husband and so forth.

None of that is the case though. Women from other countries tend to be more diverse and complicated than you think. And some of what native British people think is the liberation of women strikes me as utter slavery to the patriarchy.

*off not of - fgs

How does cutting of the clitoris deter rape?

I can see how stitching the vagina shut might, but why cut off the clitoris or clitoris and labia?

I don’t buy it.

That about sums up Patriarchy in a nutshell
Thank you 😁
I do wonder if it could be further reduced to 'do as I say or I'll belt you one'?
Of course women could do that too ....if we were the big ones and men were the smaller ones that had the babies, but then we'd be the men wouldn't we🤷
I think it all comes down to power which works a bit like gravity, there's an inverse square law.... kind of thing

Could you elaborate a bit?

Are you making the ‘the UK is just as bad’ argument?

Traditionally, FGM was seen as a rape deterrent in African rural areas with significant trade passages (the same reason it appeared in Kurdish communities in the Anatolian hinterland).

Denying education to girls, which tended to need to be paid for, was a way of binding those girls to the agricultural family unit that relied on their manual labour and reducing cost to the household that bore no subsequent value (as they saw it).

All this about geography.

You are seeing all this from a modern Western perspective that reflects an advanced economy and advanced civic infrastructure. That won't help. You are comparing apples and oranges. You need to dig down into why these attitudes and practices have developed, because that it how you will address them. Otherwise, it's just cultural imperialism, and people will resist that.

The argument as to why another culture shouldn't take over is the argument I made in my above post: because that adopting that other culture will not ensure the survival of the people who adopt it in this country. Britain has the culture it has because that culture works here.

I find some of the posts on this thread about what is a patriarchal culture and what is not a bit simplistic. I think shooting yourself full of Botox and lip fillers by age 30 is pretty damn patriarchal, for instance.

That about sums up Patriarchy in a nutshell.

This is a very interesting observation about authoritarian patriarchal cultures and the intrinsic motivations of the men.

As a woman, I find it really hard to get my head around the dragon-slaying/princess-claiming trope that seems to really chime with a lot of men across cultures. I am thinking of the jihadis winning all their virgins in heaven and everything.