Refugees and Sexual Assault

In regards to Refugees in Europe, sexual assaults, and cultural clashes, by /u/patterninstatic

I've spent a significant time in the last 15 years in many of the countries that these asylum seekers are coming from, notably Afghanistan. The thing is, none of this surprises me, and not because these are bad people. In fact, the vast majority of people that I interacted with in these countries are no more evil than people in western countries. Some days, I think even less so, but that's another debate.

The thing that I believe many people just have a hard time wrapping their heads around is how diametrically different local culture is to ours. In terms of equality, freedom, civil rights, democracy etc our culture has evolved in a truly profound way in the last century/couple of centuries.

Due to this, it becomes increasingly difficult for these people to understand or relate to our norms, but it also becomes increasingly difficult for us to fathom why other people have so much trouble embracing our norms.

I remember one day having been invited to a man's house, and while he was sending his son to the kitchen to get the drinks and food his wife and daughters had prepared (it would have been improper for any of the women in his family to even serve us), he started telling me how important women rights were for him and how it was great that the west was doing so much. Thinking about it, I realized that this person genuinely thought that he was a paragon of women's rights, and in his society he really would have been considered one, but by our norms even his ideals were patriarchal and bigotted.

The thing is, in many of these societies women have comparable rights and status to dogs in our society. You're expected to take care of your dog and not mistreat it, but at the end of the day it's your property and you do whatever you please with it. There are some people who think dogs should be taken care of, and there are even groups that call for equal rights (PETA) but they are viewed as fringe and extremists.

When we went in to namely Afghanistan, starting all these programs and throwing money around, it's a little bit as if some country came to us throwing money around and started all these programs for dogs. Doggy university, doggy police programs (I guess that already exists), dogs in governement. As long as money is being thrown around, you don't care, let them do their thing. But to you, your dog's your dog, and though these weird people may be putting an outfit on him and sending him to work, he's still only a dog to you. The day these people leave and the money stops being thrown around, your dog will go back to being a dog, hanging out on the couch licking his balls while you watch TV.

Now imagine that you end up living in this foreign country. There are dogs everywhere and people are telling you: "These dogs are actually just like us." Do you really think you can begin to imagine these dogs being your equal?

Ok enough with the metaphor. But seriously, to a lot of these people the idea of women having rights is simply ridiculous. But there's more. To many of these men, who have lived in a society where they have been forced to sexually repress themselves, the west is seen as a not only financial but also a sexual El Dorado. They have heard stories about how women are "loose and easy" and how all western women want sex. Coming from a society where many women are essentially hidden and never talk to non-family men, and coming to our society and having women dress and act in ways that we would consider as normal, is to these men the same as a women in a bikini staring at us and licking her lips is for us. The culture gap is just that big.

It's when you combine these things, the lack of cultural belief that women are equals and the belief that all western women are dirty whores that you really get a powder keg.

Sometimes my young nieces in nephews will do something in public that isn't appropriate, and you have to tell them "no you can't do that, that's not ok." When you tell them that, they often have a bit of a confused look, as if saying "really I didn't know that." In many ways I feel like these migrants are the same.

The cultural gap is simply too wide, and integration either isn't possible, or will require a lot of time and patience for each person. Now however, there is such an influx that this just isn't possible. It's like having special need kids. You need more staff to help them along, and if you have that special attention then it can work. But instead we are dropping hundreds of them into a one teacher classroom and acting surprised when there is pandemonium.