‘Honor’ killings, being an extreme form of social control, are very foreign to a Westerner looking through their own cultural lens at this practice. It is so easy to condemn it as a completely backwards practice that violates basic human rights and reinforces patriarchal values, with the blind assumption that nothing in our own culture mirrors ‘honor’ killings.
In the United States, we have our own forms of social control for women, which are based around our culture’s dominant perception of ‘honor’. Each family has different values, but their values are always shaped around, by, or in response to the values of our, or any, popular culture. Generally, women and especially young unmarried girls are still viewed as embodying the honorable values of her family and society, and remember, ‘Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.’ The importance of a girl’s or woman’s virginity, chastity, and loyalty is still a widespread view of the way things should be in our society, although that view is slowly changing, and varies widely. Girls and women who engage in pre-marital sex, extra-marital affairs, or get divorced, are seen as possessing more power than is socially acceptable, which scares many who adhere to the cultural status quo where women have expected and often limited roles and duties. They are often labeled, either consciously or subconsciously by many, inherently as a harlet, who has completely disregarded their gift of virtue. Respect can be lost for a woman. She may be kicked out of the house, shunned, or viewed in a light of digust by her family and peers, experiencing a social death. It confronts many people’s understanding of societal norms where men are the head of the family, the boss at work, and the leaders of our nation. To clarify, this is obviously not the case everywhere in the United States, but I would say these ideas are still part of the dominant American mindset, whether one holds fast to them or not. The traditional roles of men and women in our culture, as well as our understandings of virtue and ‘honor’ are constructed by and reinforced by Judeo-Christian traditions and beliefs just as in parts of Pakistan ‘honor’ killings are justified by a particular interpretation of Islam.
Another social control is the immense social pressure to look and act in certain ‘feminine’ ways. The idea that women are property is represented through many cultural rites and symbols that remain constant today. Some of these symbolic practices include a father giving away his daughter at her wedding ceremony. This symbolizes when brides were literally given away to her husband’s family or exchanged for some monetary value. Rights or guardianship over the daughter would be transferred from her father to her husband. Women in our culture either experience violence or a least the threat of violence toward them as yet another form of social control. This threat deters women from being able to experience certain types of freedoms, like walking down the street alone at night. The combination of the pressure to live up to social ideals, our cultural perceptions of ‘honor’, women as property represented through prevalent symbols, and the threat of violence against women all act as deterrents and serve to shape the way women act and the ways in which they are viewed. We tend to think our culture is superior in terms of gender relations until we really take a look at the underlying complexities of the things we are familiar with, but never realize or think about. We may not refer to them as ‘honor’ killings, but they most definitely occur here, whether they take the form of actual murder or a social death. While restrictive or negative views toward women, or anything for that matter remains, the capacity to act on those beliefs in order to maintain control will always be there in any society.
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