Christoph Reuss wrote: > Few victims want to admit that they are being victimized, > especially if they have been brainwashed all their life,
True. And who is going to decide who is the one who has really been "brainwashed all their life"? Do we represent the vanguard, saving the benighted masses from their false consciousness -- the fruit of the awful fate of not having been born in a rich, liberal, post-Christian "democracy"? Christoph Reuss wrote: > Lawry, you have completely missed my point: That there's much > more to social science than simply asking victims whether > they _feel_ victimized. That's for sure. Was the discussion about social science, or about what the women want? Do people's desires -- conscious and simple, or unconscious and complex -- count for something in social science? How does social science assess (true) desire? > That's like asking a SUV driver whether he feels safe, and when > Bubba says Yea, then conclude that SUVs _are_ safe. Whether or not SUVs are safe is a matter of empirical fact (or falsehood), not a matter of Bubba's opinion or feeling. Whether or not a woman feels comfortable wearing a burqa, and whether or not she prefers it, and whether or not she feels herself to be a part of the entire cultural context and ethos associated with said burqa, IS a matter of HER "opinion", and (more important) the collective opinion that arises out of said cultural milieux of which she is and desires to be a part -- and not that of the exponents of liberal democracy and presumptuous "human rights". (See, by the way, Jim Kalb's very interesting human rights critique page at http://www.rightsreform.net; also, see generally Kalb's http://www.counterrevolution.net) I said "opinion" in quotation marks because, as you correctly point out, it probably is not a simple matter of asking, as per a public opinion poll. It IS however a matter of her personal resonance with that cultural milieux and with her experience of her place within it, and with her FELT desire (not necessarily, and probably not, intellectually calculated) to be a part of and perpetuate that culture -- not unlike the situation with individuals in their cultural circumstances all over the world, including some very very close to you, Chris. It may not be something that she can articulate clearly. But the fact that she cannot articulate her "opinion" clearly ("clearly" meaning explicitly, in a fashion that can be easily communicated to a stranger), IF she cannot articulate it clearly, does not mean that her "opinion" -- or rather her entire life experience and personal identification with her culture -- is less valid or meaningful, or that it is the result of mere "brainwashing", as you (insultingly) imply. In fact, I would suggest that her inability to articulate her desires in a check-the-box poll-answering style would tend to correlate *more* with validity and meaningfulness, in terms of what is important to her as a human in cultural relation with other humans. If she can express her desires on a canned ballot-sheet, or in response to the direct questioning of a stranger, so much the more reason to suspect the authenticity and human fullness of her expressions. It seems that Americans are very good at articulating what they want, but that this seldom correlates well (if at all) with what they *really* want, on those occasions when it becomes evident what they really want. Perhaps that is to be expected of victims who do not want to admit that they are being victimized, and find it difficult to do so since they have been so aggressively brainwashed all their lives. Perhaps the Afghanistanis, or the whole Muslim world, could organize a cultural relief mission to the U.S., designed to offer alienated and wealth-obsessed Americans some hope of restoring their souls. Alan _____________________________________________________________________
