«After reading the post «A trip back in time» we were debated with two different opinions. The grandmother and mother of Mary. The grandmother of Maria despite being a generation older than the mother of Maria agrees with sex before marriage, but the mother of Maria who is less of a generation does not share this ancient custom, which leads us to conclude our thoughts and our tastes are influenced by our culture and our beliefs because even by the same family being a mother and grandmother of Maria have different cultures and consequently different opinions.
Currently, our society is not as conservative, because with the changing times, the customs and way of thinking of most people is changing, and we are having a more open mind to the various matters that were previously more difficult to address. Given the situation of this post, we agree that our society is currently in disagreement with the fact that the woman be forced to have sexual relations with the Turkish leader in her wedding night.
However, there may still be cases of people who agree with this. These people may have historical and cultural conditioning or psychological make them agree with this. Taking the example of a pedophile. This does not give freedom to the person who chooses to satisfy his own sexual desire and is not free because it is conditioned by psychological problems. Now, consider this action good or bad depends on the values of each subject or culture (subjectivity of values) and ethics of each.
That is, people's opinion depends on their culture and their beliefs. As the culture and beliefs, are influenced in our thinking and our decisions. Right and wrong and good and evil are concepts that can have different meanings for different cultures, which leads us to think that at that time, the chances for the Turks was having sex with the woman on her wedding night that she did not agree. This is an ethnocentric culture, because they are only worried about their own pleasure , not valuing the views of women, even to the point that they cut the breasts if they did not take having sex with them.
Currently this is an unacceptable situation for our culture.»
Bruno Camacho
Beatriz Esteves
Cátia Santos
(10ºC, in Henriques Nogueira School)
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6 comments:
As you said, Turks leaders were ethnocentric - selfish, I think we can say. What do you think about that? Do you think people, even from other countries, should interfere in situations like that , avoiding that kind of violence upon other peoples (Greeks in that case)? Should Turks be punished because of that actions in Crete? What about pedophiles you talked about? What is the correct way of facing their behaviour? You talked about the lack of freedom in pedophiles... what do you say about the lack of freedom of the children that they involve in sexual intercourse?
Can you answer these questions?
I'd like to clear out something, in case it's misunderstood. My grandmother (mother of my father) was Cretan. My mother wasn't. And what my mother was talking about was happening 2-3 centuries ago, forming a sexual attitude of the Cretans for specific reasons, but nevertheless that attitude was preserved through the years, even when the reasons did no longer exist.
Let's not talk about Turks and Greeks but about sexual violence in general. Conquerors, or soldier in war conflicts use sexual violence as a means to threaten, scare and punish people, even nowadays. Do you know what is happening in Africa, in countries with civil war? Does anybody do something about it? Do you realize that sexual violence is reproduced even by the male victims?
What about sexual violence at home? We talk about the International day of Women, pretending that women are equal to men. If we are not equal everywhere, we are equal nowhere.
Most people think that sexual education is about condoms and the act of sex. No! It's a lot more than that. It has to do with respect, with developing healthy attitude of both genders.
Excuse my reference to many different issues in this comment but I had to speak about them.
I strongly agree with Maria and I would like to share a video about some questions Maria focus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkp4t5NYzVM
Maria Gonçalves
Teacher at ESHN
Really worth seeing this video; it is very enlightening.
Comment of Catarina Costa (Henriques Nogueira School):
«With this post, I can say that over time has come to change the thinking on the topic of sexuality, and many ways of looking at this issue have changed, and others have remained. With this post, I also come to the conclusion that we should not judge someone by their actions, before we knew the causes that gave origin that act, we must analyze each case and put ourselves in another's place. The theme of sexuality is a good example, since we did not know if the causes of the Cretan people, many people possibly judge that would act wrongly, so before you judge someone, we know the causes that led to practice such an act.
This topic can also lead to the philosophical question of "whether the man is free or determined in their actions,” because the people of Crete had to do actions not wanted by the Turkish people who occupied its territory at that time. In this case, the people of Crete was not free in its shares, was determined, so the human can be free, but human beings who are free to determine the other times before being certain that they were free. Humans sometimes bring into question the freedom of others. Often the human race is not fair, why suffer the consequences. Because the people of Crete to be forced to perform actions not wanted, got a way to "get rid" of it, and practiced it for other shares, determined by other factors being the same that were not free, but prefer to practice those actions devised for themselves, to submit to the demands of the Turks.
However, we sometimes judge the acts of others as if we had all the power and the whole reason on our side, adopting a position ethnocentric, because to judge the actions committed by people of other cultures based on the values of our own culture, which often is wrong. But many times to not commit this error, we adopt a relativistic position in relation to many issues, which is also not entirely correct, because by adopting a relativist position we become indifferent to what surrounds us, what is wrong, because with that what is wrong will never change if nobody does anything about it. This discussion leads us to the conclusion that we should have an intercultural approach, we must think about the best action the most correct, according to various aspects, which tab is based on what is most proper in the level of values, without being tied to specific crops. When we criticize something we should consider all these ideas and issues. So we should not make judgments of something, knowing something is not in question.»
Comment of Linda Viduedo and her group (Henriques Nogueira School):
«The attitude of the mother of Maria was ethnocentric because she thought the custom of people in Maria’s grandmother island was a provocation to her culture, because she was not an inhabitant of Crete and had a different moral.
Ethnocentrism was due to the culture that had church at that time, because people who did not fulfill moral laws of the church would be punished for their sins. So it was simply a deterministic point of view of the church, forcing people adopting nothing more than church's will. The attitudes of the mother and grandmother were full of prejudiced because were not based on the reasoning. If one of them was influenced by the culture of the church, the other one was influenced by a tragic event that took place at hers youth time. At first glance the attitude of the grandmother may appear as correct, because it is more similar to the current culture of the West.
In our opinion both attitudes are wrong, because even though the customs vary from culture to culture, both are not drawn in accordance with human rights, because it conditions the choice of the person in relation to the onset of sexual intercourse. As we are interculturalists we think that we mustn't judge based on our culture, but we must to judge based on universal criteria (human rights).»
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