Gently educating the clueless

[clyrc]

I have a young Pakistani friend, a male, and I am trying to educate him. It is a tricky process, because I run up against his cultural and religious teachings, and I am trying to be sensitive to them. Still, he is like a sponge trying to soak up all the knowledge he can, and I have made some progress. He knows what Feminism is now, and why it is important to me. We have had interesting discussions about his culture as oppossed to mine, and sometimes he even seems to understand that women and men are not as different as he has been lead to believe.

Sometimes, though, his attitude towards women stinks. He respects me because I am older, married to a man he respects, and I'm a stay at home mom. He thinks it is silly for me to argue the case for women who choose to live thier lives differently than I do. I try to remind myself that when I was his age I was pretty stupid about some things, too. And that all I can do is present my veiw and hope that he sees the merit in it.

Anyone else ever had to do something like this?

[blogbear]

1. My observation over many years and with many people is...

that we don't 'change' anyone. Personally, I've felt some relief whenever I've had any success in helping anyone to 'see' anything differently. As they say you may lead a horse to water...but then it is up to the horse! Also, are you suggesting that this Pakistani young man is necessarily 'pretty stupid about some things'? True enough that young people anywhere have growing up to do..and some people regardless of there age have never really grown up. Where I'm coming from is that this young man has had to absorb his own culture and now is attempting to fit into another one which is very different. I'm wondering that if at his age he might be way ahead of many people in so far as learning goes.

[clyrc]

2. Yes he is far ahead

and he has a desire to learn that encourages me. That's why I use the words gentle and sensitive when I describe the way I'm trying to teach him.

But the differences in his culture and mine are huge. Where I live, his culture is closer to the norm than mine is, anyway, so that makes him doubly impressive in his desire to know more about mine.

Cultural sensivity is important to me, but when it clashes so hard with my highest held ideals, it is difficult for me to stay cool headed.

I admit the problem.

[blogbear]

5. I understand what you are saying..

I was a tutor and learning assistant for several years and what always seemed to help me out with such 'diversity' in the students I encountered was that I strove to always be on their level ie learning right along with them. Commonality seemed to aid me and I came away from it thinking that all of us somewhere have things in common. I started by establishing the common ground with students and at times with students had to return to that point. (If you think of it we are all very alike that way regardless of where we are from or who we are) I hope I helped and wish you the best! Peace!

[clyrc]

6. excellent advice

I will remember it next time I see my friend.

[Enquiringkitty]

3. I have seen that it doesn't have to be a matter of change but a different

point of view with logical backup. Like on Bill Marher a show or two back. They were going on about a man not shaking hands with a woman. No one brought up that the reason why at meetings and in government a man won't shake hands with a woman isn't because he think she is a lessor person...it's because it is deemed inappropriate for a man to touch the bare skin of a woman not his wife. We see men and women hugging and kissing on the cheek as good bye to close friends of the opposite sex....you won't see it there. Not bad; not good; just different. That is what I try to do...show a different point of view and show that it is just different. They think about it long after we talk and they think up many things on their own that I didn't have to convince them of.

[clyrc]

4. Some things are just different

Some things are not.

In our discussions, I have conceded things to him, because he has some good points. Like how his culture respects the elderly. In other points, I have admitted that we have the same amount, but different kinds of problems in my culture.

But on the subject of women, it is hard for me not to argue with him, and get a little upset.

[Enquiringkitty]

7. All cultures have their good and bad points from our own point of view.

In the old days the Jewish people didn't think that women needed an education....not to make them subservient but because they were taught that God had given women all of the knowledge to make the world right and given men the responsibility to do the work to make it right....women were to close to God to get into the dirt of the world. I first saw that in a movie about a WWII airman who was shot down in a Jewish community and it was mentioned in "Yentl" too. So I asked a friend of mine if he would ask the Rabi next time he went to Temple...he said it was true! Learn something new everyday!

Yeees! I admit watching "Yentl"

[clyrc]

8. Well, of course

but when it comes to things like a man's right to hit a woman, I can't help but have an opinion.

[Senior citizen]

10. Bullshit.

Judaism denied education to females for thousands of years so that they wouldn't learn how their captivity and subjugation began. If the story about knowledge and responsibility to make the world right were true, an Orthodox Jewish female married to a male who is a philanderer, beats her, molests children, and doesn't support her, would be able to get a religious divorce without his permission. A religion that gives an immoral male such power over a virtuous female, can't justify it without a few lies here and there.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. A friend of mine who has lived in Norway for many years

told of a Pakistani man who arrived to study in the university department where she worked.

He had been married five years, and he and his wife had four children. One of the men in the department carefully inquired about whether they knew about birth control. Oh, yes, he did, but no wife of his was ever going to go on the pill. All his male relatives would tease him about being impotent if his wife didn't turn out babies one after the other.

Not surprisingly, the wife was soon pregnant again, and this time under the Norwegian health care system. All along, everyone acted as if it was only natural that the father would be present for the birth. The man balked, since attending births was strictly for women, but everyone at the clinic insisted.

So he was present all through labor and delivery, and it was evidently a shock.

After the baby was born, he took the nurse-midwife aside and said that he had decided that five children were enough after all.

[clyrc]

11. It amazes me how men and women can live such separate lives

my young friend really was taught to believe that men and women are completely different creatures with little capacity for understanding each other. I'm constantly telling him to put himself in a woman's shoes and think about things that way, and evidently no one had ever told him to do that.

He still doesn't quite know what to think of me. I answer any question he asks as honestly as I can. He tells me it's funny hearing a woman talk like I do.

In case I haven't made it clear, I am learning from him, too. We spend hours at the kitchen table debating and discussing. He has such potential to turn into an amazing person, and my husband and I are helping him in any way we can. I'm not surprised that my husband is enjoying the mentoring thing, since he's an excellent teacher, but what surprised me is that I enjoy it so much.

[_TJ_]

12. Women in Pakistan...

...as I said in another thread, are still being raped and killed
for so-called honor crimes. Along with Saudi Arabia and Iran it
is one of the most backward countries on earth. :(

TJ

[clyrc]

13. All the more reason to try and educate someone

who will halfway listen. He has never lived in Pakistan, and I don't think he wants to, but he is still very strongly culturally Pakistani. He actually identifies more with being a Punjabi than being Pakistani, but the fact that he's Muslim is of course important to him, too.