Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
Are women treated better in the "Islamic world"?
Shanadeus
Registered User
Registered User
Well, this group has made a fast spreading video arguing precisely that:
مقارنة مصورة بين الغربيات والمسلمات - Western & Muslim Women
Some of the statistics and numbers brought up in the video seem to be legit, but statistics are misleading as we all know.
But it does make for an interesting topic:
Are women treated worse over here in the "west"?
And better in "Islamic" countries?
What do you think?
Updated discussion direction:
How can one get through to these people?
Just let the free market of cultures decide?
Or ignore the mainstreamers who believe this stuff and instead support of the fringe in these cultures?
Is it even possible to make these people understand?
مقارنة مصورة بين الغربيات والمسلمات - Western & Muslim Women
Some of the statistics and numbers brought up in the video seem to be legit, but statistics are misleading as we all know.
But it does make for an interesting topic:
Are women treated worse over here in the "west"?
And better in "Islamic" countries?
What do you think?
Updated discussion direction:
How can one get through to these people?
Just let the free market of cultures decide?
Or ignore the mainstreamers who believe this stuff and instead support of the fringe in these cultures?
Is it even possible to make these people understand?
Spoiler:
Shanadeus on
Posts
* - based on me randomly clicking around the video and seeing some of the same tired arguments about STDs and infidelity that Christian fundies use to justify their lifestyle.
steam profile
????
steam profile
http://www.shobohat.com/vb/showthread.php?t=11144
They are pointing at facts such as the following:
and claiming it shows that women have it horrible in the west (here meaning the U.S.A) and then talking about how X (STD-rates, Infidelity-rates, "Happyness" and so on) is better in Islamic countries because of a number of Islamic customs and rules.
There might be some convincing arguments about the Muslim lifestyle somewhere, but this isn't it.
steam profile
What on Earth does this even have to do with infidelity?
I mean, a well kept slave may enjoy more safety and health benefits than the struggling but relatively free individual.
There isn't enough substance here to even argue with. It's not even a complete claim.
This is something to post in chat and laugh about. That's it.
This is what I'm seeing with those statistics.
That 42% of Britons are in a second relationship explains pretty much nothing about whether or not women are better off.
So basically: buh?
I can safely say the people stating these things are horribly sexist. Look at how women don't have agency!
Updated discussion direction:
How can one get through to these people?
Just let the free market of cultures decide?
Or ignore the mainstreamers who believe this stuff and instead support of the fringe in these cultures?
Is it even possible to make these people understand?
Spoiler alert!
There's also a bunch of fun caveats like: "In the Islamic Marriage the husband shows the real love and commitment when he pays the dowry, the house and all the necessities of life to live with his wife a happy, secure and permanent life" Remember, you ignorant westerners, real love and devotion=money spent.
This is of course ignoring the hypocrisy of making statements about how few women are in management positions and citing it as oppression.
The video is designed to appeal to a person's confirmation bias, pure and simple.
I'm pretty sure we're reminded of this every mid-February already.
Depending how you define "Muslim World" and "the West," I'd still be willing to bet that their best countries are still about on par with our worst.
So yeah, to the thread title I say nope. Not really.
Yeah. Want to compare HIV rates between a Muslim and a non-Muslim country? Okay, on the non-Muslim side, I pick Norway, and for the Muslim side, how about... oh.... Sudan.
Or we could talk about things they don't talk about, like female literacy rates (abysmal in any given Middle Eastern Islamic country), female life expectancy (ditto), or the chance of dying during childbirth.
The easy counterarguments would be some kind of No True Scotsman ("'real' Islamic people don't get HIV because they don't have sex out of wedlock!") or special pleading ("literacy doesn't make women happy; monogamy does!").
I'd say that looks pretty good. Still room for improvement, mind, but not some sort of horrific gap.
We're winning that battle already. Every illegal satellite dish on an Iranian rooftop, every can of Coca Cola opened in Iraq, every girl in Afghanistan that learns to read means we're winning. That's why the reactionaries are fighting us so hard. Eventually their medieval culture will be an unacceptable fringe in their own countries. Modern consumerism has so much sophistication, so much money, so much effort behind it that'll seep in from every border of your country until it has totally assimilated.
You could very quickly reduce this argument to one about economics, healthcare, education, etc. conditions in the countries you're talking about.
Good point. Though I wouldn't necessarily consider the USA to be the best on the western side, and I'd imagine Turkey is about as good as it gets in the Muslim world, so....yeah?
EDIT: Which is to say that you basically just showed more or less what I said, and I still stand my assertion that any claim that women have it better in "the Muslim world" (by any imaginable definition of that term) is laughable.
I don't know, I think "women being punished criminally for being raped" is a pretty special kicker that has little to do with shitty school and low-paying jobs.
I don't think it's coincidental that Turkey is not a theocracy.
Perhaps I was comparing 'their' best to 'our' worst in order to test your theory? (oh ho ho!)
The point I'm making is basically the same that's used against a lot of stupid sociological declarations. Differences within groups are often more significant than differences without. Life is pretty good in Turkey and Indonesia and it kind of sucks in, say, Serbia. The reasons for this are extremely varied, and almost none of them boil down to people being brown/Muslim v white/Western as a primary cause. The entire premise behind the question is a category error.
Even then, it still reliant on specifics of the Muslim faith. I agree that many of the specifics are shared by Christianity and others, but a theocracy based around a hypothetical matriarchal religion wouldn't have the same problems (it would have other problems). A Buddhist theocracy would seem to avoid gender based oppression, though to be fair I don't know a whole lot about Buddhism.
Neither do I. Lebanon and Indonesia, for two more examples, are doing pretty good as well. In 50 years the OECD is going to look a hell of a lot different.
Ehhhhhhhhhh
There's a fair bit of sexism in Buddhist scripture that gets glossed over by Westerners. If you look at pre-PRC Tibet, women did not attain positions of clergical or civil leadership. Some Buddhist traditions don't ordain women at all; most of those that do will ordain them only in a subordinate position to monks. And there is plenty of fear and shame applied to female sexuality; Buddhism is no stranger to the concept of the sexual woman as a temptress, a corrupting influence.
Did...did you honestly post this?
This is a joke, right?
Straight from the video.
That's not really a new thing.