I wrote a post last night about being the father of a girl or a boy, and how it doesn't matter to me. However, if you have a read through the comments, it is pretty obvious that my opinion, isn't the reality for most people, in many places. In many places, it does matter if there is a son or a daughter, and most of the reasoning comes down to *economic incentive.
Sad eh?
While people talk about "tradition" what most of the tradition actually is concerned with, is wealth maximization and protection. It is about generational wealth through inheritance, or the financial independence (or lack thereof) of the child, or seeing men as reliable arbiters of money, or whether they are able to get a job or....
whatever, whatever, whatever.
And this is one of the issues that the "equality between the sexes" movement fails to address adequately. Because no matter what happens in the workplace, if the family cultures are living in an economic paradigm of passing inheritance to the male child, or where there is a cost of a dowry paid to have a woman married off to a man, it isn't going to have a great effect. Because in a world driven by money, financial incentive is going to dictate activity. And when there is a financial cost to having a girl child and a gain for having a boy child, there is an asymmetry that is of course going to lead to inequality.
Changing corporate culture doesn't mean that there is going to be a change of cultural tradition, where a woman "loses" her name in marriage, meaning that her father loses the continuance of his name. And while that itself is an antiquated tradition, it is still just a name. What does it matter? My name will be buried if my daughter marries, but it will be buried soon enough anyway, because we all come to an end and die, but life goes on. What is the point of a name?
Legacy?
And this is what a lot of it comes down to, because people want their life to count for something, like being able to pass on a name, or a financial inheritance like a house. But, in many cultures still, inheritance doesn't get split evenly among children, and there can be a "tax" on having a girl, as the dowry needs to be paid. Even in western tradition, the wedding is paid for by the bride's family, though this is probably rare these days, as most spilt the costs, or the couple pay themselves.
Tradition is a scourge on society.
Not because all traditions are harmful, but because traditions are a cultural algorithm that gets put into effect, without sensitivity to the changing environment or needs of the community. And you can say that "not all traditions are bad", but the fact is that under the right conditions, all traditions *have the potential to damage. You might be thinking about the barbaric things like female circumcision or foot binding - but if fir trees were an endangered species and people were cutting them down to fulfil Christmas tradition, it is harmful.
All traditions run blindly, have the potential to harm.
*Anything performed blindly and automatically has the potential to harm, because the conditions the algorithm was created for can change, and then it no longer behaves appropriately. Like a GPS guided combine harvester, that loses track of the satellite positioning and rolls through a kindergarten.
Traditions need oversight to ensure sensitivity.
Not sensitivity of the culture. Sensitivity for the conditions. If a traditional people hunted sea turtles and now sea turtles are endangered - stop fucking hunting sea turtles.
And you might be saying, "Hey Taraz, you have got well the fuck off track here - I thought we were talking about equality for women!" And I will ask - Aren't you paying attention? So much of the problem in the world lays in traditions and the defence of traditions that are no longer appropriate for the conditions we have. A group of them are surrounding equality between men and women in things like inheritance and pay. There are many reasons for the pay gaps, but a lot of those reasons are also due to traditions.
And before women start blaming the patriarchy...
A lot of the traditions are perpetuated by women themselves. Things like who stays home with the child, as often the woman wants to stay home longer wit the baby, even if it would make financial sense for the man to stay home. Is it social conditioning, or genetic desire?
Hard to say, but my point is that the world has been set up on traditional social structures, and people have become accustomed to relying on the rules of the tradition, rather than being sensitive to the environment. However, what ends up happening is that people want to change the rules of one tradition, but also want to keep other traditions that work in their favour, often setting up a double standard.
What would the news be if it was him pushing her face?
And there are many double standards.
It doesn't mean kill all traditions right now. It means that "everything has its time and place" and at some point, the time for every tradition comes to an end, to be replaced by another tradition. It doesn't matter if it is the oldest of religious traditions, if it is no longer serving the positive growth of individuals and the community, it has to be retired. But we needn't wait until it becomes damaging to individuals or the community to retire it, we just have to pay fucking attention to the world around us, our actions, and the implications and impacts of them.
Do they align for a better world?
No?
If we all had the understanding that traditions are fluid and constantly under environmental pressures to change, it was a natural part of our own growth, perhaps we would get as attached to what we have done in the past, but rather consider what we are doing right now instead.
You might hold some of your cultural or personal traditions dear to you, but run yourself a thought experiment and consider under what kinds of conditions it could become harmful. It is not that there are those conditions now, but realise that there is the potential that at some point, the tradition must be replaced with something healthier. And then perhaps, we could think of healthier things to do, rather than be dictated by tradition to begin with. But, if you realise that your tradition is already turning harmful.
Pretty easy.
Taraz
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