Hacker News Reader

Let me offer an anecdote too. I am of Indian origin. I lived in the country for 7 years; I speak multiple Indian languages quite well too. I was there recently. There are several distinctions between the two countries.

1. Things get more real there. You don't get good grades, your life is going to suck with high probability. In America, you can wank off trying to navel gaze whilst doing your degree in some bullshit and then eventually can be comfortable living your life working in a coffee shop. In India, the people who work at coffeeshops have shitty lives.

2. I agree on your perception of Indians vs. Americans on interpersonal relations. Indians have no concept of personal space. I was traveling alone in the Himalayas. I got tired of the questions that started off with casual strangers asking me "Do you have no friends?" to army men asking me suspiciously why I was traveling alone. (To add on to the shit is more real there; if I had a name of the wrong religion, that would have been a dangerous issue.) In America, people create these shells of beautiful people. Everyone is happy, white shining teeth and shining gadgets. Depression and mental issues covered up. Take a pill; go to the therapist is the solution to everything here.

3. People in the U.S. have a sense of community. A simple fucking thing like littering is a big deal. In India, forget about the fact that the government mandated litter bins exist all over the place, no one wants to take the effort to put a piece of plastic in the damn bin. Again, with high probability.

Finally, to get to the subject of the OP. I met a lot of American girls (and guys) whilst traveling there. I was shocked that fucking Delhi, the capital of one of the largest countries in the world, was where most of them reported being harassed. From the innocuous "Are your freckles a sign of skin cancer" to "Hey, you are white, would you like to get raped.". This behavior is revulsive. Yes, it should be brought up to light.

>>You don't get good grades, your life is going to suck with high probability.

Very true for some one poor, not some one who has a means to set up a business. Which I'm pretty darn sure is true with the US society too. Or anywhere in the whole world for that matter.

Regarding 2) That has both its positives and negatives. In India if you run into trouble there is a massive extended family to fall back on. In US, you have to deal with it yourself.

Regarding 3) Lack of hygiene or presence is not a cultural thing. West was equally dirty during and before industrial revolution.

Have you talked to the women? My wife is Indian as are many of our friends. The men all think wistfully about moving back to India. None of the women do.

People are skeptical of "American Culture" in large part because even after living here for years, they view it through the lens of how it was portrayed in Indian cinema. Regardless, the women all appreciate that in America they can safely go about their business in public, and in India they can't.

That's not culture so much as it is the side effect of culture merged with their current development state as a country. That is, if India's quality of living and development were advanced to that of the west, there probably wouldn't be anything objectively inferior culture-wise.

It is definitely culture. The US didn't start treating women reasonably on its own. It required a generation of women to protest in the streets until the culture and the law changed. This hasn't happened in India yet, but is hopefully now beginning. I wouldn't draw too many direct parallels between women in the pre-'60s US, and women in India since the respective traditions are so hugely different, but what has to happen to fix it is the same.

What I'm going to describe is a bit of a caricature, but it's true enough that it's the dominant theme of Indian soap operas. Traditionally in north India, women don't even eat with the rest of the family. They are expected to remain in the kitchen cooking and serving food until the meal is finished, when they eat whatever is left, alone. The woman only gains power in the family when she's the oldest person left alive, at which point the veneration for elders supersedes her subjugation. The stereotype is that at this point, she takes out the frustration of her years of abuse by ordering around her daughter-in-law.

But I still think it is societal development. Liberalism is a natural evolution as the quality of life and the society advances, and so the way woman are treated in India I believe is an effect of its development, not an effect of its culture.

Like you said, the US had the same stage. We used to be heavily racist and also oppressed women during an earlier stage of socio-economic development.

I don't think it's a useful model to suppose that there's some underlying "true culture" that doesn't change over time and that will be gradually revealed as their economy improves. Culture changes, and economic development is a catalyst for change. Whatever way people behave today, that is the culture today, and if they behave differently tomorrow, that will be the culture tomorrow. Right now, Indian culture subjugates women. In the future, it hopefully won't.

Liberalism might be an "inevitable" consequence of advancement from one stage to the next, but real people have to fight for it to make it inevitable. When they fight for it, they will be changing the culture, not revealing it in a more true form.

How do you distinguish between culture and its side effects?

I didn't mean side effect of culture. I meant the effect of the product of culture and their current state of development.

Money can't buy you class. See: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.

THIS.

Couldn't have put it better. The men romanticize about life back home. The women don't. They dot want their daughters going back to a place where they're treated as second class citizens. They often know that even their own families would lock them back into a situation where the lost many f the freedoms they learn to appreciate living in America.

I had a good friend tell me one if the key reasons many women stay in abusive marriages back in India is because if they divorce their husbands they genuinely feel they will simply be opened up as fair game for rape by any man who feels like it.

I'm highly offended by the folks in this thread who've even saying things like - yes it's bad for women in India but the us has it's problems. That's not the same as living either a second class status or in constant fear.

One if my favorite movie lines, familiar to many on this site, comes to mind: "how does it feel to live in fear? That's what it is to be a slave".

Are ALL Indian men likely to act this way. No of course not. So let's avoid the straw man of "not everyone behaves this way". This is the cumulative effect of enough people and the culture they live in.

Men in the west are definitely comfortable respecting the cultural values of other countries without a though or care for what those values mean for half the population and that they're often enforced through brutal violence against women or the threat of that violence used to intimidate.

+1 to this. Captures it eminently.

I feel like this is a cop-out. Indian culture is objectively worse than American culture, and this article is pretty solid evidence of this.

"Traditional values" are no excuse for misogyny and barbarism. Tradition is close to the literal opposite of social progress and I don't understand why it is glorified. I'm pretty proud that I have no "solid foundation of traditional values," and that I've incidentally raped a grand total of 0 people.

Edit: I read your clarifying comments on the other sub-threads. What's the difference in this context between a social issue and a cultural one?

Though I am disgusted by the descriptions in the article, I find your comment equally offensive.

All traditions have their spectrum, good and bad. India's a really old civilization and studying a lot of old civilizations, brings to light some unfortunate similarities. I make absolutely no concessions or explanations for barbaric behaviour anywhere, at anytime, but instead of taking a minute to turn a stranger into a person that you can relate to, you too, may be dehumanizing a group that requires effort to learn about.

"All traditions were new once", as we heard in Fiddler on the Roof.

I wanted to write a comment on this topic. But just figured out that every word you wrote is true. I am happy that i follow no religion, no cast, no nonsense.

>"While we may criticize Indians for being misogynistic, many Indians criticize Americans for lacking a solid foundation of traditional values. Like anything else that's subjective, we perceive culture in a relative manner."

Except misogyny is a legitimate criticism of a society, a lack of "traditional values" is not.

A lot of social issues, like legitimate discrimination of minority groups in America, are legitimate. On the other hand, there's a second class of social issues, the subjective ones. For example, the view that America is too "Puritan" in political forums. A theme like that is subjective - that would be a "traditional value."

I think 'rayiner's point can best be summed up as an answer to your last sentence. Yes, America, like India, isn't perfect. Both have unique "social issues" - but America is still, objectively, a better place to live.

Yeah, it can be argued that people in India might not glare at you the same way people in the NYC subway do, and that India has nicer scenery. These are irrelevant to a discussion of which place is actually better to live in.

Am I expected to be O.K. with misogyny in the service of "traditional values", or are traditional values beside the point here? A lot of "traditional" values turn out to be wrong.

I think O.P was conflating two issues there, one about patriarchy in India being very traditional, two about misogyny (apparently) being rampant.

I for one don't expect anyone to be okay with misogyny, whether it be cultural or not, and I presume all the other Indians here feel the same way.

But aren't patriarchy and misogyny fundamentally related? I mean, are there any societies with strong patriarchal norms but very little misogyny?

It heavily depends on your definitions of both those terms. However, strictly speaking, patriarchy in itself while still constraining of women (an egalitarian society would be much better), also required heavily duty-bound behavior from men. Something which is not conducive to open or effective misogyny.

I do not know of any societies with strong patriarchal norms and very little misogyny, if they do indeed exist.

Yeah I'm calling BS on that.

Patriarchy in cultures is without fail about the control of women. All niceties around protecting them boil down to treating them as property, as chattel. You fundamentally don't have an equal situation when one gender is rendered property of another.

ergo misogyny

Yes you are entirely correct, I mixed up those concepts when I was writing my comment. I meant to highlight the cultural patriarchy and distance myself from the misogyny ("I won't defend this").

I do think much of the misogyny in India stems from their patriarchal values, but misogyny is a social issue rather than a cultural concept. I doubt many Indian women are cool with misogyny...

Social issue versus cultural concept

This is a new distinction (and somewhat confusing) for me. What is the difference between a social issue and a cultural concept?

Examples: While Indian culture is patriarchal, its society can be quite misogynistic. While American culture deeply frowns upon racism, racism is a very real and ubiquitous social issue. In the first example the societal behaviors arise from the culture, in the second I show that they can be totally contradictory.

Society is about the way people act among each other, culture is what is passed on and shared among a group of people.

I really hate to cite wikianswers because it's one of my least favorite sites, but this description is exactly what I am getting at: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_soc...

>"Society" is more about, "How do all these people interact?" "Culture" is more about, "What do they believe, and what do they value?"

>A lot of "traditional" values turn out to be wrong.

As judged by whom?

Common sense, if the "traditional value" is that women should be in the house cooking lest they subject themselves to groping and leering. Common sense.

Only billions of other people have a different a kind of "common sense" where "women in the kitchen" is considered perfectly natural for them.

What makes yours better? That it's you (your culture that is) that has it?

Which brings us to a bigger question: should different cultures with different values on such issues exist in parallel?

E.g I for one take offense ("common sense" to me) with any culture that is so backwards as to have the death penalty.

You need to go back and edit your comment. You mistakenly said billions of people.

You clearly meant billions of men. The idea that the women of the world are crying out to be restricted from opportunity, to be rendered a second class status in society, and that it should all be enforced by cultural or religious traditions and authorities through the implied threat of violence, or often actual violence... yeah that's nonsense.

> You clearly meant billions of men.

Plenty of women believe this too.

Well most of those cultures you just said are not objectively worse also have the death penalty, so I'm not sure where you're going with this. This sort of moral relativism is not really helpful to anyone or any society. Enforced gender roles are morally objectionable because they are not compatible with justice, period.

There's a difference between saying a culture is bad because they eat an animal you think it's wrong to eat and that they mistreat an entire sex and if you don't see that, you need to work on your moral system some more.

"women in the kitchen" was considered perfectly natural in Europe/america culture some time ago, but when women could choose, they mostly chose not to be in kitchen. That's a quite strong argument that women in other cultures will do the same, if they can.

Is there not plenty of misogyny in non "traditional values"? What does media sell, show 24/7? Valuing? or objectification?

right - objectification of women in ads is bad - boo West

You have me on that. I'm with you all the way.

Treating women as property of men. Using violence and intimidation against women to maintain the traditional order. The normalization of sexual harassment of women in a culture at large. The institutionalized discrimination against them (try getting a divorce lawyer to take your case as a professional woman in India).

All vastly, dramatically and objectively worse.

It's not ethnocentrism, it's real. Even from wealthy countries in East Asia where the strict Confucian relationships put huge burdens on women. Obviously, a lot if not most people are inured to those cultures and don't like the Euro/American level of cultural freedom. The ones who moved are the ones who couldn't deal with the oppression.

> Obviously, a lot if not most people are inured to those cultures and don't like the Euro/American level of cultural freedom.

Nope, still ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism would imply racism, whereas our pluralism is one of the ways our culture is more free. Korea and Japan are wealthy, first-world liberal democracies, but they abhor immigration and remain 99% ethnically homogenous. The weakness of their cultures is (ironically) ethnocentrism. And even though Western Europe is much better, no place really matches America on this one.

I don't think there is anything wrong with a certain amount of ethnocentrism. It is taken for granted that culture matters in say a startup, so I see no reason not to extend that thinking to nations.

While cultural preference might be subjective, culture impacts things that are objectively measurable. How close you stand in lines might be purely subjective, but the woman in the article did not suffer PTSD for purely subjective reasons.