Gobsmacked
Posts: 4,627 
April 22nd, 2008, 07:27 PM
What a sad fact that this is still happening in our world.
Quote:
Female foeticide, though illegal in India, is widespread as boys are traditionally preferred to girls as breadwinners, and families have to pay huge dowries to marry off their daughters.
What a sad fact that this is still happening in our world.
April 22nd, 2008, 07:34 PM
That got me thinking Zan.
We don't call if foeticide here in Canada, we call it every woman's right. We can't legislate against it, because in order to say 'you can't abort based on gender' then we have negated the whole notion that no woman should have to carry a pregnancy she doesn't want. So we enable a fresh wave of ultrasound aided gender selection.
Hopefully as cultures mesh and mingle and youth are born into Canadian culture, this will die down and fade away. Hopefully. If not, we may have one gender skewed mess on our hands in a couple generations.
That got me thinking Zan.
We don't call if foeticide here in Canada, we call it every woman's right. We can't legislate against it, because in order to say 'you can't abort based on gender' then we have negated the whole notion that no woman should have to carry a pregnancy she doesn't want. So we enable a fresh wave of ultrasound aided gender selection.
Hopefully as cultures mesh and mingle and youth are born into Canadian culture, this will die down and fade away. Hopefully. If not, we may have one gender skewed mess on our hands in a couple generations.
April 22nd, 2008, 07:44 PM
Quoting Zzarchov
There are ways around that though too Zzarchov. Even in our culture it was (and is for many still) common custom for the girl's family to pay for a wedding. How do you tackle it as prostitution? How would you ever prove that the house my friend's rich dad bought for her and her husband as a wedding present wasn't a form of payment for 'taking her off his hands'? Because it wasn't, but, if her skin were a different color perhaps people would assume it was.
true, we could forbid dowries as prostitution though. Make the punishment harsh enough and it will end.
Gobsmacked
Posts: 4,627
April 22nd, 2008, 08:15 PM
When will people learn there's consequences to messing with the natural order of things?
Here's an interesting article that discusses how these cultural attitudes are affecting demographics - not just in their countries of origin, but here at home also.
Selecting gender - a demographic time bomb
When will people learn there's consequences to messing with the natural order of things?
Here's an interesting article that discusses how these cultural attitudes are affecting demographics - not just in their countries of origin, but here at home also.
Selecting gender - a demographic time bomb
Quote:
Some Indian doctors maintain that the problem has been exaggerated, but statistics belie that. In parts of north India, there are fewer than 800 women for every 1,000 men. A more normal ratio would be an almost equal number of males and females.
Quote:
Among those who believe that sex-selective abortion is also a problem in Canada is federal opposition health critic Ujjal Dosanjh. A prominent member of British Columbia's South Asian community, Dosanjh says Canada needs to be concerned about imbalances in the ratio of boys to girls in Vancouver, Greater Toronto and elsewhere.
April 22nd, 2008, 11:33 PM
Quoting Zan
Do we really need to be concerned about gender ratios anymore anyway? Given the modern divorce rates, rates of homosexuality, modern attitudes towards bisexuality, and current shouts and hollers for population control, is a mismatched gender ratio the crisis they make it out to be (from a purely scientific point of view)?
When will people learn there's consequences to messing with the natural order of things?
Here's an interesting article that discusses how these cultural attitudes are affecting demographics - not just in their countries of origin, but here at home also.
Here's an interesting article that discusses how these cultural attitudes are affecting demographics - not just in their countries of origin, but here at home also.
Gobsmacked
Posts: 4,627
April 22nd, 2008, 11:49 PM
Not yet, but if I look ahead and imagine what this behaviour might yeild in the next 50 - 100 years, then yes... the perspective on that question may look different I think.
Somehow it smacks of something else too - the fact that people are making selections on who shall and shall not live based on gender, leads me to believe that this could become at some time a mere prelude to bigger and [not] better things to come. It seems to me that people can and will justify the most baffling choices with the weakest rationale imaginable. So this starts with gender selection... where does it go from here... and it does go somewhere from here... we seem to be incapable of not taking things to places they shouldn't go. Just because we can doesn't mean we should... but we will.
Not yet, but if I look ahead and imagine what this behaviour might yeild in the next 50 - 100 years, then yes... the perspective on that question may look different I think.
Somehow it smacks of something else too - the fact that people are making selections on who shall and shall not live based on gender, leads me to believe that this could become at some time a mere prelude to bigger and [not] better things to come. It seems to me that people can and will justify the most baffling choices with the weakest rationale imaginable. So this starts with gender selection... where does it go from here... and it does go somewhere from here... we seem to be incapable of not taking things to places they shouldn't go. Just because we can doesn't mean we should... but we will.
