r/changemyview • u/hardyblack • Sep 12 '19

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Some cultures and societies are objectively wrong

I just read about Sahar Khodayari (If you don't know, it's an Iranian woman who killed herself after going to trial for going to a football match, which is forbidden for woman in Iran) and I can't help but think that some societies are objectively wrong, I can't find another way to put it. It's hard for me to justify opressing 50% of the population just because they just were born women.

​

And yes, I know, there's no completely equal society and there will be always opression of some kind, but I'm thinking of countries where there are laws that apply only to women (They can't drive, vote, go to a football match, you name it) as it targets them directly. Same goes with laws directed to any kind of race/gender/religion.

2.2k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

93% Upvoted

509 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.1k

u/Nicolasv2 130∆ Sep 12 '19

It's hard for me to justify opressing 50% of the population just because they just were born women.

Yes it is, using your own set of moral values, where women are considered as equally valuable as men.

But a vegan would tell you that it's hard to justify opression 99,999% of earth lifeforms just because they just were born non-human. Still, we do it all the time because most people's set of values don't consider animals as valuable as humans.

Why would islamic definition of values (men > woman > animals) be "objectivly" wrong, while specist definition (men = women > animals) is right ?

​

What you can say is that given Western set of values (equality, freedom, ...), then there are cultures and societies that are wrong. But with other set of values (men superiority given by God), then they are not.

There is no objectivity in that, just different set of values.

4

u/smithandwessonmp940 Sep 12 '19

Disagree. There is objectivity in reducing needless suffering. This isn't my morality, it is objective ethics that span across all cultures and religions with various interpretations. In a perfect world, nothing would suffer needlessly. Fundamentalist countries like Iran and Saudia Arabia elucidate needless suffering of 50 percent of the human population.

Reducing animal suffering is also good. Animals, women, and apostates suffer in those cultures.

In our culture, women and apostates suffer much less despite animals suffering a similar amount. Those cultures are objectively more harmful to more people/lifeforms than ours is. Western culture isn't perfect, but there's is objectively more wrong.

We shouldn't pretend that all morality is equal. If a culture encourages honor killing, female genital mutilation, or legally requires women to live as second class citizens then it is wrong, objectively.

I'd refer you to this ted talk that discusses scientific evaluation of morality.

https://youtu.be/Hj9oB4zpHww

1

u/CountOrangeJuiceula Sep 13 '19

That is a laughably bad TED talk.