During the US Presidential elections my students asked me which candidate I liked, I turned it around on them and asked for their opinion. One came right out and said “I don’t like Obama, he has black skin.” Yeah, I could have ‘respected the culture’ and accepted that here light skin is valued. But no… that’s where my line is and I challenged him on it.

No, I’m not trying to ‘liberate’ anyone, but I am trying to find that balance – when do I go with the cultural flow and when do I stand up and show people that there’s a different way to see things?

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There’s a line to be drawn somewhere, as you say. Speedos at one end, tents (chadors) at the other?

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I’m coming to the end of a six month bicycle journey which has included nine Middle Eastern countries, 7 of which are Arabian states. Here, the issue of gender equality is not spoken of – but then I can count the number of conversations I had with Arabian women on the fingers of my two hands. I can tell you any number of common men’s names in Arabia, but not a single women’s name.

You are right that many travellers from the West arrive at their destinations with the idea that whatever cultural differences they experience must be accepted, regardless of whether or not these differences agree with what they brought from home, simply because ‘it’s a cultural difference’, and the inquiry generally ends there. I don’t know how this line of thinking came to exist – historical travellers of yore pulled no punches when they described the ways of the ‘barbarians’ they encountered!

It is clear that while many women in Arabia never question their ‘traditional’ social role as the covered, unseen housekeeper (with the exclusion of liberal minorities in urban areas), there are many who are deeply unhappy with it – but are powerless to change it. This came from the horse’s mouth on more than one occasion.

The progress of social justice continues all over the world. Western nations now almost universally accept the equal participation of men and women in all aspects of society (besides front-line combat). Go back less than a century and it’s a very different picture, and we now consider our previous ways to have been wrong. So can we make the same judgement on cultures who haven’t overcome this hurdle? The issue is complex and I don’t have the answer there.

But even if we disagree, there’s no point lambasting other cultures, and there’s nothing to be gained from arguing your case while you’re a guest in somebody’s home. Change takes time and sufficient inertia, and the West is far from perfect. I’m embarrased by my own country’s (England’s) inability to deal with alcohol abuse. Not until I could compare my own nation to others did I understand how deeply this runs. Yet Lonely Planet bring out a new edition of their Great Britain guidebook which says as much, and people run to defend binge drinking on the grounds of ‘cultural differences’!

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Sexist cultures are no more acceptable than apartheid was in South Africa when it was the dominant cultue, yet there aren’t the same calls for boycotts etc.

As the articles suggests, travelers have to make a choice whether to visit cultures they don’t agree with, and although there is usually something you don’t like about every culture, some stand out as unsavoury.

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It was less than a hundred years ago when men wore those ridiculous one-piece bathing suits, but we’ve “progressed” since then, no? But imagine if you had a culture where everyone wore the assless chaps that Prince wore (wears?) – you’d kinda flip out if they demanded everyone “progress” in the same direction.

I understand when a church asks people to cover up, and even when the church extends out into the streets in less secular cultures. There isn’t a “right” or a “wrong” here, but a difference of values. And that’s the problem: we’re talking reverence versus expression here, and the values don’t match up.

In the West we lose our minds when we hear about honor killings and womens’ oppression, but you can’t expect to have the same level of concern 100 years ago as we do now. The same goes for racial discrimination 50 years ago. Or gay rights – aren’t we proud gays have the same rights as heterosexuals? Ahem.

My point is the line shifts, and it’s arrogant to conclude we’re the only ones who are right all the time. There will be a time when we’re looked upon as backward because we passed any law we wanted against terrorists and pedophiles, or supported the death penalty, or everyone had guns in the house.

click said something about oppression being wrong, but it’s something we have to submit to every day so there isn’t anarchy. I can’t punch it to 100 MPH anytime I want – there’s got to be a standard, or there’s no order. If everyone’s so “equal,” why do we still have separate bathrooms?

We aren’t so damn superior, and we should stop acting like it. There are things we do that are considered barbaric by other cultures, but we’re largely deaf to those claims – but what do we lose by listening to them? That’s what I mean by dialogue. The line shifts because the values behind the words take time to be shared, and we just have to get used to the awkwardness of it.

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Sigh. It’s not about *wearing less clothes* — it’s about *having the choice to wear less clothing* without repercussions.

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