vimesey writes:
women in the Sudan can be flogged (though in this particular instance, she wasn't) for wearing trousers.
To our Western way of thinking, how outrageously ridiculous (perhaps cruel) does a cultural law have to be, before our objections to it become legitimate, in the eyes of a cultural relativist ?
I'm not a "cultural relativist," but I think the problem wouldn't be that the objection isn't legitimate, it's that it's based on imposing our standards on someone else's culture instead of trying to uphold the standard in our own. That is, our attention to the shortcomings of other nations' laws and customs is a way of ignoring the shortcomings of our own.
Do we fully recognize the personhood and value of women in Western cultures, or are we satisfied with the way they're treated because, after all, we don't whip them for wearing pants?
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