Group vs. Individual -- by Cecilia Ragaini

The issue that Susan Moller Okin raises in her essay “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women” is very powerful because it leaves the realm of theory to embrace the very real lives of human beings. I strongly believe that minority cultures have a right to preserve their customs and values. At the same time, though, I feel that no religious, moral, or social belief can justify the oppression and/or repression of a specific group of individuals within a given minority. I agree with Will Kymlicka that a minority culture living in a more liberal society should not be allowed special rights when its traditions involve violating the human rights of some of its members because of “sex, race, or sexual preference” (quoted in Okin screen 7). I am thinking, in particular, about polygamy, arranged marriages, and clitoridectomy. Of course, the question becomes extremely inhuman when that violation takes the form of inflicting physical pain on children—as it occurs in genitals’ mutilation.
Women have always been discriminated in both western and non-western patriarchal cultures. True, modern societies now condemn it and protect women’s rights with appropriate laws, but religion still enforces that discrimination--even though in a more subtle way. While teaching that both men and women are God’s creatures, for example, the Christian religion emphasizes the Genesis’s story of the creation in which Eve was created out of Adam’s body, thus implying women’s inferiority. Interestingly, contemporary religious leaders who still affirm that the Bible teaches very specific gender roles generally omit to mention that there are two creation stories, and in the first, more ancient version, man and woman were created at the same time. The information is carefully omitted because it might irremediably damage the known social order. If this can happen in so-called modern societies, chances are that in more fundamental cultures women’s inferiority is more deeply taught.
Kymlicka observes that people can develop self-respect only when living within “a rich and secure cultural structure” (quoted in Okin screen 7). Okin adds that “our place within our culture” is as important as the necessity to verify “whether our culture instills in and enforces particular social roles on us” (screen 9). Considering the way religion works, even in liberal societies, Okin’s answer has already been answered. And societies are deeply infused with religious values and beliefs. The only debatable point is to what extend cultures enforce such roles on us. In fundamental cultures, each deviation from the religious/social norm is severely punished—if the violation is perceived to be very serious, death is the proper punishment. In more liberal societies, the perpetrator is subjected to more or less overt pressure that goes from ostracism of peers to public victimization in public trials—an example is when victims of rape are questioned by lawyers as it they were the ones committing the crime, and this despite laws that assumedly should protect the victim. The point is that no modern country in the world is entirely free of gender bias.
Okin is right when she states that even the apparently innocuous emphasis on female beauty and thinness slyly disguises enforced social expectations. The proof is that many girls today appear more interested in pursuing these aesthetic goals and pleasing boys than developing their own minds. Yet what matters is that in liberal societies those girls who do not care to follow the social norm do have the possibility to do what they want to do. And this is, I believe, the only reason that can justify, in liberal societies, the refusal to allow fundamental cultures to preserve customs violating human rights.
My position on this regard cannot be called “multicultural” in a strict sense because I reject the liberal concept of “inclusion.” I do indeed exclude fundamental cultures, but my act of rejection is based on a principle that I believe must be, at least to some extent, universal: the freedom that every human being has to choose the life he or she wants to live without suffering discrimination (or punishment) of any sort. It is right that different cultures have the same rights, but it is necessary to establish some basic and common values concerning all human beings and their rights. To defend clitoridectomy (or the even more mutilating infibulation) as a social/religious practice means to state that not all human beings have the same rights; it would equal going back in time and stating, for example, that Black people are inferior people and should be treated as such, or that non-Christian people who refuse to convert must be killed because they are pagan. It progress means improvement of human condition, then it must guarantee, first and foremost, that all human beings have the same human rights.
Okin suggests that it is also fundamental to make sure young women (and not old women who tend to perpetuate the oppressive system) have their representatives in negotiations about group rights. I believe this is the right direction. Despite living in repressive societies, women have shown unusual strength in fighting for their rights—the Afghani and Iranian women are a splendid example. Yet it is also important that women are allowed to speak freely during such negotiations. It is the responsibility of modern liberal societies to make sure they can do so without fear of being punished once they are back in the private sphere of their oppressive cultures. It is also fundamental for western women to increase their numbers as political representatives in their industrialized countries: only when their number will near that of men will we be able to say that women’s interests are democratically represented.