|
 |
Cultural Issues | ||
Tags: Cultural Identity | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| pfwillard Pro Member United States Joined 5699 days ago 169 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 14 22 August 2010 at 5:50am | IP Logged | |||||
Your neutrality and passivity is your xenophobia. Are they friends or are they pets? Pets in the sense that you passively enjoy their difference and want them to please stay exotic. Does that help them? I don't mean to be on a high horse here. Really. Some pets, some friends, it's all good, but don't put up with abuse. Keep your kids safe even if it means failing at sainthood. Consider the possibility that you might actually be surrounded by jerks. I'm not kidding. It happens all the time. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 10 of 14 22 August 2010 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Tolerance is overrated. When you tolerate somebody else's behaviour, it shows that you actually don't think of accepting it. Practicing tolerance is quite easy in comparision to actually accepting differences, too.
There is no set of unwritten rules that tell you how to deal with people from a different culture like there is for your own, and that means that people have to establish the way they deal with each other actively. Both parties have to take part in it to make come up with something that works. (Of course there are imbalanced situations but yours doesn't sound like it.) Oh, and perhaps you can learn a thing or two from how women of that culture deal with sexist jokes. I was pretty amazed by how skillfully my Southern American host mum managed to deflect the bouts machismo in her family and taught her sons that men and women were equal, just not the same. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 11 of 14 22 August 2010 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Very few cultures are really as sexist as some people make out, but sexism tends to be heightened as a reaction to change.
When a culture is being "threatened" by foreign influence, people defend a charicature of their own culture. "In my culture the man is the head of the house," (nonsense -- no happy household isn't run by a woman who tolerates her husband's illusion of being head of the house). Tolerating or supporting this isn't accepting a foreign culture -- it is actually damaging to that culture, because it polarises society into an untenable sexism vs complete westernisation. It doesn't need to be that way. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sunny Groupie United States Joined 6248 days ago 98 posts - 128 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Welsh, French | Message 12 of 14 23 August 2010 at 3:42am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks to all for some very interesting commentary.
Wow. Here I am trying to avoid the colonialist attitudes of my ancestors in their insistence that all other cultures change to suit them... and you call me xenophobic when I think people from other cultures are supposed to be exactly who THEY choose to be. Wow. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 13 of 14 23 August 2010 at 3:56am | IP Logged | |||||
|
You have the right to draw any lines you choose with your personal interactions with people of any culture; they have the right to accept, decline, or negotiate these lines.
A knowledge of the culture and views of the people you interact with will help with doing this in a way that actually leads to friendship and productively chosen lines. Realistically, you're not going to change deep-set mindsets overnight. "Telling racist jokes offend me; please don't do it around me because it upsets me" may or may not be a productive approach, depending on the people involved, but it is a reasonable request. Expecting people to come around to exactly your cultural views on anything is not a reasonable request. Every culture I'm aware of is sexist (in the purest sense of the world - there are beliefs that work to the advantage and detriment of both men and women), though the extent and forms vary. Dealing with this is a complicated dance, and is not easy to summarize in a generic cross-cultural way.
False dichotomy. Your beliefs, and their beliefs, are cultural concepts, and they certainly do not transcend the sphere of culture - though there are both individual and cultural elements to them. Communicating about your beliefs on equal footing is not colonialism - neither you nor they are colonial overlords of each other.
The belief about how public or private spirituality is is a very culturally dependent belief. You presumably feel no obligation to like everyone of your culture. The same goes for people of other cultures. In any culture, some people are amazingly kind and wonderful human beings, and some tend to be assholes more than their fair share of the time. If someone holds a belief you hold abhorrent (such as "men and women are not equal"), you can still be friends. If someone insists on insulting you personally, or in a way that you take personally, even after you've clearly, and perhaps repeatedly, explained it's a problem, he or she is not worth your time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 14 23 August 2010 at 5:16am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I don't see how this thread is language related so I am closing it.
1 person has voted this message useful |
Sorry, you can NOT post a reply.
This topic is closed.
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
