Well, I think you're changing your ground a bit. You first wrote "If you violate a basic social norm, you are behaving very badly, unless it can be shown that the norm does not apply to the situation, or does not do so with full force." But now you seem to be adding that a person withing the society can violate the basic social norm if you can argue that the normative practice does not necessarily lead to the underlying rationale, and that a person outside the society can violate or otherwise oppose the basic social norm or underlying value if that society's underlying values conflict with the observer's underlying values. Which implies that the outsider assumes that his values are better.
I'll let you make the switch, just wanted to point out that you are doing so. But I still think you have a problem. I pointed out the aspect of conflicting social norms -- I am not so ready as some others to assume that my social norms are necessarily better than theirs. Nor that all of the world should eventually adopt one set of social norms, which is what your position must eventually lead to.
But even within a society, if you accept that people can argue that a position is pointless, who is to decide whether they are right or wrong? If the society says that one of its social values is that if you believe a social norm is pointless you are free to ignore it, and that's not behaving very badly, then the norms aren't norms but merely suggestions. Your initial argument was that any violation of a basic social norm was necessarily bad. If you're going to change that, then I think you need to go further and say how and when it can be violated (you claim that pointlessness is a basis, but I'm not sure you really want to get committed to that, so I'll give you a chance to back off it if you want), and whether society should accept violation and what standards it should use to decide when violation of a basic social norm is societally appropriate.
I think, BTW, that your underlying rationale offered for my example is too narrow. I suspect, frankly, that the practice is intended to reinforce and solidify the basic social value of male domination--very much an assertion of right and power of males over females. Which is a basic value we in the West may not find ourselves comfortable with. |
