Misogyny and unreason

Girl shunned by family after alleged rape.

What's the harm, we're often asked, in this irrational belief or that irrational belief? Does a belief in God really hurt anyone? Is a person who believes in magic really dangerous? Who are they hurting?

Maybe, just maybe, the harm is illustrated by an eight year old being abandoned by her family because she was raped. Let's be clear about something here: wherever you find misogyny, you will find it based in irrational beliefs. They could be religious, or "cultural," or whatever. But they will be irrational. Certainly, any system that blames the victim of a crime for the crime will be nothing like rational.

Whatever the brand of hate -- racism, sexism, homophobia, classism -- it never has a rational basis. It is always founded in irrational beliefs that are never held up to

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the light of reason, never questioned, never tested. Every advance in human ethics has come about because of Reason -- people asking real, honest, difficult questions. Arguments that seemed sound and reasonable were, when subjected to that scrutiny, shown to be nothing more than flimsy rationalizations. Cultural beliefs about women, about gays, about different races, you name it, all shown to be absurd when simply subjected to the simple test of asking "Yeah, but is that true?"

The price for not asking questions, for not subjecting every belief we have to scrutiny, is situations like this. It doesn't even matter what the source of irrationality is in this case -- it could be religion, culture, the conditions created in that culture by decades of war. Maybe all of that. What matters is that the irrationality be fought, that it be called out for what it is. To do that, we have to question every belief, no matter how dear it is to us or someone else. Anything else is, frankly, unethical.