Feeling devastated after seeing this news about Afghanistan

[LovingLilacDuck]

I stumbled across this on BBC — https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q25dwj807o

I can’t stop crying. I feel so incredibly devastated that we live in such an unequal world. I cannot believe in 2026 people have to starve and children die — and girls be sold??? because of hunger. Goodness sake. That’s not right, it’s so inhumane. Seeing the tears on those tiny girls’ eyes and how fearful they are just breaks my heart so much, oh Gosh.

I just really feel sorry for these people who have to live under Taliban and suffer immensely. It’s so heartbreaking. And I know these people are not the only ones unfortunately…I just feel like we all have so much, more than we all need to and I wish we could just help the poor more as a whole world. But that doesn’t bring any profits does it???!

I wish I could do something to help, whatever that may be. Does anyone have a clue about what to do? I’d appreciate any insight. Thank you.

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.

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.

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.

Your whatsboutery is very transparent.

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.

I'm not sure why you think I disagree with the main thrust of your argument? You're stating the obvious, in regards to the fact that women and children are the most vulnerable to rape and abuse.

But the article is trying to drum up sympathy for the fathers, centring their feelings and experiences, while totally erasing the mothers (who are no better than property) from existence, and silencing the children who are the actual victims in the situation.

The BBC is who wants people to feel sorry for the fathers, complete with a 'sadface' photo to drum up sympathy, trying to paint a picture that waxes poetic over how much the fathers suffer, and how it's so terrible for them that they have to sell their prepubescent daughters off as rape slaves.

Some people have felt sorry for the fathers, but I don't, so I've said so. My sympathy is reserved for the victims who actually suffer in this situation; women and girls, and young boys.

(I'm not sure that 'feeling sorry' for people is immature though, as you say it is. Without feeling empathy over a situation occurring halfway across the world, why would you feel the desire to try to change it?)

Pointing out a causal factor isn’t to justify something? It’s to explain it.

Could you please explain how an increase in poverty leads to an increase in child rape?

Genuine question, not saying I’m disagreeing.

The Power dynamic of men with money and children without.

Children in poverty are more vulnerable to predation and exploitation:

https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/what-we-do/global-issues-hub/cse

This article is old but the problem is worse than ever now - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25729140 - poor children in the Philippines being exploited by British men

Except rape in these backward countries is pretty much cultural.

Except we’re not allowed to say it because “racism.” Even if it’s true.

Why can’t we just acknowledge that certain cultures and certain segments of those cultures and certain religions are rotten to the core!

The more we pretend that it’s not like that, the more it happens, and when people from these cultures come over here and bring their cultural norms here we end up in a position where afghan men are being charged with the rape of women over here as well.

Child marriage in Afghanistan is normal

selling children in Afghanistan is normal

Women are not allowed to speak, engage, be educated. And it’s simply not enough to say “it’s the taliban.” It’s all the men who don’t stand up and be counted.

Same in Iran.

Same in all these countries where rule could be overthrown if enough people on the inside cared. But they don’t.

Who build the Afghani system? It isn’t come out of nowhere, fully formed.

Who is the foundation for the corruption, bribery?

Those men.

Britain doesn’t have to face it because British people didn’t built it that way.

Your post is completely illogical.

It’s more than that. The men with the power are often very wealthy. It’s still their control and orders that repress and effect violence onto women and children.

They’re not suffering from lack of resources but they make sure everyone else is. And if people rebel or try to change it there’s torture and death.

Yes they already pulled these shenanigans with the Pachen Lama nobody knows what happened to him. It’s not looking good tbh

Oh and what are ‘we’ going to do about it?

In fact there’s nothing you can do about it except use power and violence to overthrow the regime, kill every male who stands in your way, imprison the men and women who enforce this hierarchy in the home, maybe create residential schools to introduce and enforce the culture you want to spread among the children …

But your own values will not allow you to do this. So we have to look the other way and tidy up our own houses, plenty to do there as you well point out

I’m not advocating for looking the other way. I’m advocating for identifying the real root causes.

How can you make sure money and resources flow past the Taliban?

The ‘real root cause’

Sure, fix human nature. NBD

It is human nature for men to oppress women unless they are taught (or forced) otherwise. If this is depressing to you, maybe you should appreciate how far Western civilization has come and do YOUR UTMOST to protect what we have. Because it’s fucking bleak out there and squishy feminists like yourself are undoing all this hard work by letting such evils into our society.

Same in Iran.

The current colonial Arab regime have imposed a religion on the Persians where the venerated leader kept slaves, had a child bride, claimed it was ok to rape and kill non-followers and treated women as lesser. Followers of that religion look to this tribal ruler for how to live their lives.

The religion of the Iranian people (Persians) was Zoroastrianism - I have to admit I don’t know what the attitude is to women within that faith.

The more we pretend that it’s not like that, the more it happens, and when people from these cultures come over here and bring their cultural norms here we end up in a position where afghan men are being charged with the rape of women over here as well.

And then we are expected to pretend that men from these misogynistic rape cultures do not commit sexual offences at a much much much higher rate than British men

I like the zoroastrian tradition of sky burials. Environmentally friendly.

Iirc Freddy Mercury was a Zoroastrian born in Zanzibar with Persian heritage.
@Borrowerdale

And then we welcome them with open arms into the UK and wonder why rape and sexual assault figures have gone up enormously … then get called RACIST for saying it out loud.

The only ones my heart breaks for is the children. They had no choice to be born and were born into this HELL on earth.

I absolutely have no sympathy for the ‘fathers’ a term that shouldn’t even be used on them. Why keep breeding and having children when you know what you are bringing them into?

I can almost guarantee you, they will not sell their sons.

Not denying that but what about the fathers who were shot or tortured trying to do the right thing for their daughters? Which made things even worse when their father was dead.
How do you think the US withdrawal made it easier to stand against it?
The US continued to withdraw from Afghanistan despite the Taliban breaking its agreement by working with extreme Isis linked groups ( that helped the women and girls ???) and the US is now starving the people through sanctions.
Meanwhile the US switches to spending billions on bombing Iran and killing children to free the Iranian women.

It can. Because if you live in a society where you can sell children, then people will end up doing it as a survival mechanism. Because desperate people do desperate things I suppose. In South East Asia people sell girls for marriage. They sell children to traffickers. There is even a rise in mothers there exploiting their own children online in order to raise cash. In parts of Africa, selling girls into marriage is common and closer to home in the balkans.

Poverty is one thing that drives this. But it’s not the only one.