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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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This story just sounds like the 20th century version of all the usual “inhuman bugs blah blah they don’t help strangers blah blah they run over crash victims so they don’t have to pay their healthcare costs blah blah watch a coworker jump off a building and just keep working etc etc” propaganda.

In reality, I’ve never seen a shred of genuine evidence to suggest that Han value human life less than Europeans in a way that transcends material conditions. For every cruelty or inhumanity alleged there would seem to be an analogue in the histories of other peoples.

For every cruelty or inhumanity alleged there would seem to be an analogue in the histories of other peoples.

Feet bending and FGM (en masse and not as a punishment) seems to be unique in their respective places though

FGM is more widespread than unique; it at least dates back to Egypt in classical times, and today extends from sub-Saharan through North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. It seems to have been a cultural practice in Northeast Africa that predated Islam and was adopted by it before it made its way around the world. (Not many sources on its spread, unsurprisingly; I'd be very curious to learn why Indonesia adopted it with a lot more enthusiasm than other countries between it and its origin.)

Footbinding is genuinely unique. Even calling it Chinese is slightly overbroad, as it was a mostly Han practice.

ETA: thinking about it a bit, footbinding can only exist as a widespread cultural practice in places where either 1) there is a sufficient surplus of resources that you can write off a part of the population from contributing to economic activity or 2) technology has developed enough such that there's valuable economic activity that can be performed while sitting. China was optimally positioned for both compared to most regions around the world. FGM, by contrast, seems like it would have minimal economic effect, so different cultures could adopt it more readily.