Culture as an Excuse for Things Other Cultures Don't Like

This is a sore subject with me, though I must admit that before I was actually immersed in a foreign culture, in the same way that a disposed-of feminine hygiene product is immersed in the sewage upon flushing, I thought I could objectively look at things and just accept them. I couldn't and I can't.

Culturally, white America lacks. If anything there is kind of a culture of money-making with tons of little sub-cultures thrown in that act as breaks in the monotony of earning a living. About the worst culture we have in the States is the obsession with sports and the absolute stupid loyalty to teams who care nary a whit for us, and whose jerseys and biographies we purchase as if they are somehow important. Yet, this cultural thing is pretty mild if ultimately socially ridiculous.The American marketing machine has somehow made the blind followers become ...uh.... blinder? And so, something as unimportant as professional and collegiate sports has been marketted to be "cool", and so it must be, and so people follow. We cultists know the real truth, but we ain't sharing.

Back to the point... maybe.  So, everything that is annoying to me, a westerner in Asian "cultures" is easily explained as "cultural" and therefore either acceptable or something that an ignorant foreigner couldn't possibly fathom. Examples: Spitting. Men spit all the time everywhere. How many? I don't know, but I will conservatively say 48.7%, almost as if I read it in a study somewhere. Why do they spit? No one knows. They fumble for answers and finally say something about phlegm build-up or sinus problems, but the mere fumbling for an answer means they don't know and they just spit because they spit. That leaves culture as the only possible reason; Horseplay: The Tajik boys spend all day insulting and beating on each other. It is not only acceptable. It is considered a good thing. OK, so it carries over into the classroom, onto the streets, and
Into any public place they happen to be, but boys will be boys, right? At my school (and this just slays me), all the girls had an afterschool meeting where they were told how girls must behave. They cannot be within a meter of a boy. They cannot be alone with a boy. They cannot push and hit or even shake hands because-and this is the reason they were told- because they are girls and they cannot do what boys do. It is ill-mannered for them. For boys this is fine and the boys who spend really all day insulting each other's mothers and beating and caressing each other, had no behavioral meeting.


I don't want to suggest that such things are due to Islamic upbringing as I am sure there are many Muslims out there who believe that women are just as capable as men and that the whole idea of roles is old-fashioned and inapplicable to today's societies. What am I then left with? Oh yeah. it is "culture".

End of Part 1