I saw this on T.V. last night and found it very disturbing.

Chinese Foot Binding

Yes, I was very disturbed. This isn't just a fad thing like poking holes in strange places and inserting ear rings either. This is mutilation at its best. I used to get a weird feeling just watching the films of those women who stretch their necks with those brass rings, but this... It takes the cake.

Anyone else heard of some weird s**t?

i heard about it, i think we had it as a subject in...4th grade or
something like that, but it is disturbing indeed, i don't understand
why the chinese saw that as pretty, i also saw one of these x-ray
photos of a foot, and it looks like it would hurt like s**t if you
walked on them.

The Chinese are known for their extreme behavioural traits. Some time back I saw a documantary on the last Emperor. The Emperors court was thick with eunuchs. Apparently, thousands of people a year would stand in line at the castration centers. Once there, they were tied to a seat with a hole in it and there genitals were simply lopped off by a man with a sharp knife. This caused most of them to die from shock and infection, and the ones that lived wer'ent even guarenteed a job as a eunuch!. It was also inferred that the real power in the last dynasty was secretly held by these manipulative eunuchs, who had access to every aspect of the Emperors life.

http://www.usrf.org/news/010308-eunuchs_china.html

Not gonna look.. I just ate.

What people view as attractive is purely cultural, and unfortunately
for Chinese women throughout a long period of history, this meant small
little feet. If you had your foot bound it was supposed to be
attractive because you really couldn't work, and it showed that you
could afford to live a relatively easy life. Same thing with
their obsession with light skin. If you were working in the
fields all day you would be tan and needed normal feet, and I guess
that wasn't attractive.

I have a little personal story about this:

When my grandmother was a child her mother and grandmother would bind
her feet everyday. However, as you can imagine it was
excruciating so my grandmother would just untie it. Eventually,
her mother and grandmother got so exasperated with her stubbornness
they just abanded it, telling her she could be ugly if she
wanted. So my grandmother ended up having normal feet. My
grandmother was lucky she was so stubborn!

How about female circumcision? I'm not even going to try to find a website to back this up, but I heard about it on NPR. Apparently it is common in some areas of Africa and can be as extreme as complete removal of the clitoris!

Yes, and I think usually without any anesthesia, and in a public
setting with many people watching. Furthermore, there are
terrible stories of the act being performed with rusty/dirty
razorblades that have been used on other women.

It seems very dangerous and harmful to the women who are forced to
undergo this proceedure (which effectively mangles them so they can no
longer enjoy sex). Can we go in and stop what we see as torture
if they are an important part of cultural identity and tradition?

Tracer Bullet said:
How about female circumcision? I'm not even going to try to find a website to back this up, but I heard about it on NPR. Apparently it is common in some areas of Africa and can be as extreme as complete removal of the clitoris!

But it is done for completely different reasons. It is used as a method of keeping women in their places, so to speak.

There are more reasons, but thats the main gist of it.

SWEET JESUS

I'd seen a type of Japanese foot binding before designed to narrow the foot. That's terrible, but this is just insane.

I have seen a documentary on woman castration, it has become part of
there lives, just as foot binding, it comes close to torturing.

I've heard about this a long time ago and it still stuns me.
Chinese are very...special people.

Has anyone ever heard of the so-called "animal people" fashion
(although I?d rather call it a syndrome)? A snake-guy cut his tongue in half to
resemble the one of a snake.