> I can assure you that the practice of female genital "circumcision" is abhorent regardless of whether you are in the culture or not.

Your assurances are different from demonstration. I asked for demonstration. If it is so clear that this is objectively true, how would you demonstrate it to someone who fully adopts the culture in question? Until you can do that, I don't think you have demonstrated anything other than "we feel horrified" which is a basic view that "these things are self-evident." The problem though is that what is self-evident depends on culture.

> Well, yes. It means that the person has discriminated against the other. Ergo, that's inherently discriminatory. That's not from a value-judgement, that's definitional.

So now we understand that if discrimination against same-sex couples is a human rights violation and retire-with-the-kids cultures are inherently discriminatory in this respect, then a cultural expectation to retire with family is a violation of human rights, right? This is just Aristotelian logic here. Hence my proposition, that one must choose between an equivalent to social security payments being a human right and access to same-sex marriage not being.

> I'd just like to end this to say that not all cultural practices are equal.

I actually never said they were. I think all cultures are open to critique but I think that critique is most productive (and more likely to be on the mark) when one treats the culture as a whole as a generally good, functional system.

OK. It causes massive damage to a woman's reproductive organs. Not sure how else it should be demonstrated. They'll probably disagree, but now it is they who are wrong, not me.

Not all forms do. The words describe a wide variety of practices. Some are significantly less intrusive than male circumcision, some are far more intrusive.

What you are missing in your demonstration is an understanding of how the practice fits into society, and so why women would be willing to have it done. In at least Sudan it is in part a status symbol and therefore is important for upper class women to do to preserve marriage options. This is particularly true in cases where re-doing the intibation after divorce is important.

I think if one starts at this point, it is easier to say "ok, so this is why you do it. But here are the health implications, so something to think about."

But additionally if you go that route, I think you'd have to be totally up in arms over this: http://www.gynsecondopinion.com/hysterectomy.htm (statistics in how many women get hysterectomies in the US that are medically unnecessary by international standards).

So lets refine this to forced female circumcision. You just changed the playing field there, I see what you did! Are you saying that it's OK in any culture to have it forced upon you against your consent?

> So lets refine this to forced female circumcision.

Is "if you don't get this done, then you will have to marry below your class" forced? If so then no changing of the playing field. If not, then let me pose a different question:

There's an indigenous tribe in Papua New Guinea called the Sambia. The Sambia have as part of their coming of age ceremony for males a required element where they must become men by, well, consuming manliness (and giving tribal elders oral sex). Is this a violation of human rights even if one cannot show harm? I mean we might look at it and say it is not freely consented sexual conduct with a minor....

No. More like "I'm going to catch you, hold you down whilst you struggle, and circumcise you". Please give me an answer to this one. I'm genuinely curious as to what this will be.

Incidentally, that example you give is sexual abuse. It should be stopped.

> No. More like "I'm going to catch you, hold you down whilst you struggle, and circumcise you". Please give me an answer to this one.

It's hard to have any social autonomy without some degree of bodily autonomy. If the line is between catch/hold down and merely exiling those who refuse, I would be fine with such a line. Without social autonomy nothing can get done, so there is a social imperative to individual autonomy subject to social obligations.

Now once one has not avoided a ritual context though, I don't know that I would draw the line at exiting a ritual. Otherwise you have problems with some aboriginal groups which, say, have someone pretending to be a legendary monster hold down young men and extract a tooth as part of a coming of age ceremony. Condemning something like that is in essence to take away aboriginal culture rights on the basis of white man's fiat which strikes me as very dangerous.

So what you are essentially saying is that there are indeed some things that can be said to be unacceptable, even though they are practiced and accepted by a particular culture.

But then the question is, who is responsible to change them and, if the culture at issue is unable to change the problems what can be done to enable them to move things in the direction they collectively desire.

If something is acceptable it still doesn't necessarily mean that the question of who gets to decide what to do about it goes away. I still think that those questions have to rest with people from the culture.

I certainly don't think that a social expectation to retire with the kids falls in that category even if it forecloses an ideal of equality for same-sex couples.

That's an interesting question, and not one that I asked.