Greer on bastardy and Islam

Check this article by Germain Greer in the Times on the UK's Children's Minister, Beverley Hughes, and her crusade against teenage pregancy:

Bastardy: for thousands of young girls it will always be a legitimate choice: "Beverley Hughes prefers to “target” BME girls. A BME girl is a “black [and] minority ethnic” girl; women of Asian descent, who have the lowest rate of unmarried pregnancy of any ethnic group in the UK, are included under this condescending and misleading acronym. (Islam has very effective ways of curbing sexual activity outside marriage, but it has no quarrel with teenage pregnancy; the average age of mothers at first birth in Bangladesh is 15.)

If the minister understood the word “ethnic”, she might realise that the phenomenon of teenage pregnancy among certain BME groups is an aspect of their shared culture. "

I agree with Greer about the ridiculousness of the now orthodox term BME, which grates with me every time I hear it.

But I completely do not agree with Greer's cultural absolutism and moral relativism. "It's the culture, stupid": the default answer of multiculturalist liberals and racists alike to any social ill.

Presumably female genital mutilation - not to mention burning books - is OK with Greer, if it's part the culture.

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