Suttee (Sati):
Ahhh, the old (18th century) Hindu practice of the wife (widow) throwing herself on the burning funeral pyre of her recently dead husband. The Brits were completely revolted by it to the point of illegalising it, a move indicative of the early British attempts at complete "Anglicization" of India that they eventually abandoned. You can't blame them though, it is a bit odd that the wife believes so strongly in this practice that she willingly throws herself on a burning body and burns to death with it. Some people would call it love, I call it strange.
The Niqab:
Ya, I went there, please don't argue with me: it's weird. This is the tradition of Muslim women wearing a full black gown and face covering. In going to Wikipedia to try to make sense of this one, I found the article's accidental pun that the Niqab continues to "arouse debate" among Islamic scholars to be quite humorous. For those that didn't get that, the point of the Niqab is so women avoid "arousing" unrelated men with their "Awrah" aka their intimate parts, which apparently includes everything on the female body except for the eyeballs. Many Islamic legalists contend that this culture was a warped interpretation of pre-Islamic Arab and Persian culture, and that its "full black body suit" revival has been brought on by uneducated Imans (clerics) with "little or no formal training". Apparently the forehead, knees, shins, feet, forearms, fingers, etc. are just too damn sexy to be left uncovered...and before I cross the line any further: thats all I have to say about that.
Exorcism:
Time to shit on my fellow Catholics. Exorcism is freakin' weird! Essentially people who have either (1.) gone insane or (2.) gone bat shit crazy, claim that they have been possessed by demons (or other people like priests claim they have been) and a process is undergone to "evict" the demon from the body. Out come the candles, handcuffs, crucifixes, and other things needed for a wild night of demon evicting and some freaky ritual stuff goes down. Sometimes the victim of the exorcism is killed in the process, i.e. ran out of air while the priest tried to "drown the demon out" and other such unfortunate things. This is one of the odder religious practices out there, and is owned not exclusively by Catholics, but is most often performed by them in modern history.
Eunuchs:
Now this one is kind of nasty, but thats the point of "strange cultural practices" is it not? Eunuchs are essentially castrated males that are servants enlisted and castrated to perform a specific task. For any grade-schoolers reading this (which you shouldn't be) castrating means relieving a male of his junk. Some examples of reasons this would be necessary are: eunuchs retain a boy-like singing voice for life valued in some cultures, eunuch priests in some religions are required to practice celibacy the hard way, and eunuchs were used to guard concubines or female family members and castrated so they wouldn't "self-indulge". For lack of a more sensitive way to say it, this s**t is f**ked up. Now I must set the "safesearch" feature all the way up, type "Eunuch" into google images, and hope I don't get any actual pictures of one with "his" skirt lifted(doubtful).
Last but not least, Footbinding:
Footbinding is very odd indeed. The Chinese have been binding feet, that is breaking and compressing the foot into about a size 2 horizontal and size 5 vertical, for one thousand years and were doing it with regularity until the 1900s. The point is for the wealthy to bind the feet to the point that one can not realistically walk and in doing so, they show that they are super-awesome because they can ruin their bodies to the point of not being able to walk and still live off their money, thus showing definitively that they don't have to work. What those geniuses hadn't figured out is that you don't need to crunch your feet into the size of a baseball to not work, you just have to...well...not work. Before you ask, NO, they do not make you look like you have sexy little "petite" feet, rather they make you look like you have nasty ass deformed alien feet. This practice is really quite revolting to me, and it will be to you if you just imagine fracturing the bones in your feet and then duct-taping them until they fit inside of a coffee mug. Thats all, ladies.
Sorry if offended anyone, not my intent!!
