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

[BernardBlacksMolluscs]

This thread is to replace the one that got deleted earlier today, and the TAATs that came after it.

As per MNHQ in site stuff, we're OK to have this conversatrion

www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/4687254-how-do-we-discuss-the-reality-of-parts-of-the-uk-absorbing-large-numbers-of-men-from-other-cultures?reply=121883255

a particular way of doing things in one particular area tends to be the best way of doing that thing

Sorry, where is it the 'best way' to systematically abuse women and girls by cutting off their genitals, denying them education, forcing them into marriage and raping them as punishment? Why does that 'suit the geography' of some countries?

It's not that women are in public space because our culture is somehow "superior" per se, but because that is a necessity for how most families survive in Britain.

No, I don't accept that there's nothing "superior" about women being relatively free compared to being completely oppressed. Of course a country that bans FGM is superior to one that allows it. A country where girls are educated is superior to one where they are forced into marriage and childbirth. A country where gay people can live openly with their gay partners is superior to one where they'd be killed for being gay.

Yes, our culture is superior. If you don't believe that and you're not prepared to defend it, then what argument have we got that another culture shouldn't take over?

Torunette I get where you are coming from about the practical side, and I am going to need to restrain myself because I have a geeky fascination with the practical origins or a lot of beliefs and I may go off on one if left unchecked.

For example, when I was a kid, it was extremely common to hear the phrase “seven years bad luck”. I was irrationally terrified of walking under ladders, breaking mirrors or opening umbrellas indoors, for example, because of it.

As an adult, I reflected upon it and realised that parents, who are busy, tired and just don’t have the mental space to go into a long explanation, can stop their children doing dangerous things that could cause injuries- like something dropping on your head from above a ladder, or injuring an eye with an open umbrella, very quickly, effectively and permanently, by breeding superstition in them.

The problem with this though, is that it is irrational.

With religious traditions though, a lot of the superstitiousness and ritual behaviours, were not planted there for practical reasons of safety or comfort, but in order for a small elite group of patriarchs to foster hierarchies to control the population using guilt, shame and fear.

So I agree with saying about the practical things ‘that’s not going to work here’, but there is the other layer that is as much, perhaps even more, influential with regard to the norms of doing things.

For example - I cannot think of any practical purpose for foot-binding or FGM.

Sorry x poster BeastlySlumber

My interpretation of @Torunette's post is that if if circumstances, geographical or otherwise allow men to dominate then they will, and once a particular group has power it's very difficult to get them to give it up, they will never do it willingly.
In cultures which are 'primitive' /less evolved we have no option but to let the strong men have power because we need them to protect us from the wild animals and the other strong men from other tribes. Power corrupts, always, it's bound to go to their heads!
We develop other, better fairer ways of doing things but the dominant group will always try to hold onto power, that is what slows down progress and yet it is human nature to not let go of anything that you have attained.

sorry I hadn’t seen you’d posted too soothsayer, because it was at the bottom of the previous page.

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.

That about sums up Patriarchy in a nutshell.

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.

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.

Could you elaborate a bit?

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

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

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.

*off not of - fgs

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

Yes. That makes so much more sense.

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.

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.

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

*back home.

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.

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.