[lbo-talk] Re: circumcision

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Fri Feb 11 07:19:07 PST 2005



>Here's my moral point, I guess: I draw an analogy
>between biodiversity and cultural diversity. Biodiversity
>allows an ecosystem to survive in the face of many
>threats (extinctions, changes in local climate, disease):
>if one species dies off, there are plenty more that
>fulfill the same functions in the ecosystem. If you
>decrease biodiversity, you limit the ability of an
>ecosystem to adapt to new conditions.
>
>And just so with cultural diversity. Thus anything
>that homogenizes human culture decreases the chance
>that human beings will survive conditions and threats
>we can't foresee.
>
>Miles

First, cultures adapt much faster than ecosystems. You wouldn't object to an ecosystem adapting. So where do you draw the line between unwarranted homogenization and cultural evolution? Dealing with similar conditions, we'll develop in similar ways. (And our conditions globally are getting more similar; the main impositions are economic, not military or political.) And so it is with female genital mutilation here and there, conditions change, understandings develop, resistance grows, abolition ensues, backlash follows, and so forth. Internal to that culture, the arguments will be made about survivability, just as we have the argument here around gay marriage, the end of the family and all that. You can't put a culture behind glass like a butterfly on a pin.

Second, humans did evolved with the human female having sexual desire and the capacity for sexual pleasure. An argument could be made that that capacity might've _helped_ keep us going when we were in danger of getting wiped out--gotta be some payoff for sex when the prospect of childbirth is difficult (at a point where sex and childbirth were known to be related). Not to mention sociability and social cohesion. So there's something there, too.

Jenny Brown



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