Female Genital Mutilation "Lite"
Thursday, 10 Jun 2010 — Contributed by Kuncen
Source: Afrol NewsThe American Association of Paediatrics (AAP) has ignited a firestorm by suggesting that perhaps we should allow a small "ritual cut" instead of aiming for the elimination of genital mutilation altogether. They've since retracted the statement, but the debate rages on: is allowing a small symbolic cut the lesser of two evils?
Some condemn this idea and adopt a zero-tolerance view. But some people are starting to suggest that by making a small cut more available to families, performed by a doctor in a sterile environment, that we might be able to reduce the instances of infection and other complications.
Dena Davis, a professor at Cleveland State University, says that this kind of compromise might be effective in terms of "harm reduction", and uses Indonesia as an example, "where cutting has died out, according to the WHO, but a ritual form persists, involving a symbolic scratch of the clitoris."
Perhaps the most ironic part of calling for the immediate elimination of female genital mutilation is that it is still practiced on boys throughout the Western world - in the form of circumcision. Davis suggests that this double standard exists because it's a cultural practice that Western countries are familiar with, whereas the female version is foreign to them.
So what do you think? Is there a place for a "halfway step" on the way to eventual elimination? Is there some benefit to be had by allowing a small symbolic cut?
Favorite
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Newsvine
StumbleUpon
What about male genital
What about male genital mutilation, a.k.a. circumcision? Can we eliminate that too?
Anthropologists went from calling this practice "female circumcision" to "female genital mutilation" to "female genital cutting". The last term is the one in-vogue. There's an interesting study out there somewhere where they asked women who had been cut if they wanted the practice to end. The most common response was, NO, that they considered it part of their culture and their right to do it...
Mentioned above
It's mentioned above in the article. But is it the same?
Cultural Freedom
Cultural freedom, I think, is also a form of human right. But in this case, is totally wrong and sad. I understand that culture or religion is a very strong influence for decision making for some people. But you would think in this modern era people will make a better decision with the information they have access to.
And the sewing or cutting female genital JUST to reduce sexual desire and maintain their daughter virginity is just saying they have a really low perspective of themselves and their own daughters.
who is human rights?!!
It's an interesting dichotomy within the concept of human rights; the right for people to practice cultural traditions that often seem brutal to outsiders, or the right to be free to choose, and not to be subjected to demeaning or brutal practices. It's all very well to wave the banner of human rights and claim that you believe in it, but there are so many grey areas it's impossible to pin it down - so what exactly are you supporting?
Unfortunately I can't even hazard at a resolution. The pain and brutality involved in female genital mutilation (say it as it is, eh?) is repellent, but unless you want to police the world and strive towards a single uniform view, what can you do? should cultures be free to choose their own path, to follow their their ancestors and preserve their heritage, or should they be forced to stop because humans rights deem it unacceptable? Human rights is a very modern idea, trying to reconcile it with tradition is incredibly difficult. Ideas change with every generation, but should forcing out certain elements of a culture in order to bring it into line with out own point of view be considered as libertarian or fascistic? is the culture really compromised by the change? I know that when headhunting was outlawed in Borneo it's said that the Dayak people lost one of the central pillars of their culture. Should we weep for diminishing richness of world heritage, or score human rights - 1 0 - savages?
I can see why people are torn, but...
In almost every situation I'd fight for the side of cultural preservation, but this, to me is atrocious. I do understand why the world over isn't completely outraged, because it's so hard to determine how much one's quality of life is altered by either the male or female mutilation. I don't know the science of that, but I can't help thinking of it as a massive robbery of some part of basic human nature.
I mean, suppose there was a cultural group who had ritualized making newborns permanently blind. Maybe they had firm beliefs in the enhanced value of life without sight, and really want their children to grow up learning to live without being able to see, finding ways to more fully enjoy the other qualities of life. I sure as hell hope the rest of the world wouldn't be all graciously tolerant of it, setting up well sterilized clinics to provide a safe way to blind them. Maybe it sounds severely radical, but is it really that different?
I'm sure no one would argue that Anonymous2 is right — cultural traditions add richness to the planet, and I think we should be doing a lot more to preserve that. But only so far as those rituals aren't harming children, or actually taking away some basic part of their humanity. I think it really is our job to stand up against that whenever we can.
what about poverty?
So maybe we should ban people from giving birth the children in poverty too? what's the stance on giving birth in refugee camps or war-zones? When does it become the right of some distant international community to step in and lay down the law? How do you want to stop people doing it? Ok, it's cruel and probably for the most part unnecessary, but the idea of personal liberty is also culturally rooted, not everyone sees things that way.
There is a gradient.
There is a gradient. Sometimes it is simply light scoring, other times there is actual "mutilation".
The reason we assume it is such a "horror" is the emphasis we place on sex in the first world. We glorify it, commodify it, sell, buy and trade it, elevate it, etc. In much of the rest of the world, marriage is a strategic union, not based on love or sex. And by extension, sex is not the end-all point of life, so "cutting" is not a tragic as it may appear here...
The claim of universal human rights seems a bit silly coming from within the Empire.
Symbolic
Your comment about sex not being the end-all point of life, and thus "cutting" not being as tragic, makes sense in a way. But it's still tragic because it has to happen at all. Even if it's just "scoring", it's still symbolic of a more grotesque action, and symbolic of violence against women. Why should we be commemorating or honoring the memory of a mutilation which is now considered unacceptable?
I read a comment somewhere (and I can't remember where, otherwise I'd post the link) where someone said that by using the same logic, he should be allowed to chain up some black people for a few hours every month to symbolize slavery.
disagree mostly.
I read a comment somewhere (and I can't remember where, otherwise I'd post the link) where someone said that by using the same logic, he should be allowed to chain up some black people for a few hours every month to symbolize slavery.
I'm interested by the way that you chose to express this, it's almost as though you haven't read the rest of the thread. Where do you get the idea that is is an idea which "is now considered unacceptable?
wasn't the prevalence of this practice the basis for this discussion in the first place? In which case, what leap of logic brings you to the conclusion that this practice is universally not accepted? I agree with Mr. "There is a gradient" I think a big part of the problem we have with it is the way we think about sex and - if I can extend this notion back round to my previous comment - with the idea of personal freedom. Our idea of freedom's culturally ingrained, it's not universal, nor should it be. Sex is one of the most effective tools of marketing, it drives consumerism and baseless desire, you could argue that to be free of sex is to be freer than western freedom. To be a sexual being is to be easily influenced, easily corrupted, focused on yourself and your own needs; take that away and you can think about what's best for your life and for society. I don't wish to make a stand for this practice, but the more people condemn it on completely ethereal grounds, the more it needs to be defended.
As a side note I want to agree with mike, that a "symbolic scoring" is probably not a fit alternative, it makes a carnival out of a culture. What's the point of commemorating a practice whilst simultaneously stripping it of it's primary function?
A decision made by someone else
What is its primary function? To remove the desire for sex?
Apologies, but any physical alteration to another person before they have the chance to decide if they want that alteration, and ESPECIALLY for the reason of reducing that person's full experience of life (i.e. pleasurable sex) is indefensible. Your argument of leading a less sex-filled life is compelling, but we mustn't make those decisions for other people. I enjoy sex, but I'm not consumed & obsessed with it, and I certainly don't need a circumcision to help me stay focused on what's important in life. I'm glad that no one decided to make that decision for me.
yes
Yes, I imagine the primary point is to remove the desire for sex. The point I was making however, was that there's no point in commemorating a practice that used to serve a function but isn't practiced today. I don't think that a "symbolic scoring" is a meaningful replacement, it doesn't really reflect anything of the society since the point of the practice in the first place is it's function.
On the issue of "decision made my someone else", it's true, but at what point do you intervene in a still massively widespread tradition, deem it unacceptable and tell the people to stop doing it? The point I was making is that the idea of personal liberty is also culturally ingrained, if people want to preserve their culture they need to be free to continue practicing what they have done for centuries. Why do people fight wars? I think what you're asking of people here is that they all make a choice to be the last of the line and allow their children to grow up in a modern, enlightened, re-shaped world, holding onto symbolic tokens of an identity they used to have. What about their right to protect their culture and resist modern ideas? It's funny how these days people have taken so many dogmatic views at face value. These people, however liberal they feign to be, are the most dangerous of all, because they're not interested in war and plundering; they actually take an interest in the moral well-being of societies and cultures they know nothing about and come out condemning and calling for action. We're not the first people in history to believe that we have all of the answers and that we can guide the rest of the world to out of darkness and into the light. I just think people should think twice before drawing their line wherever it's their basic impulse to draw it.
Respecting other cultures
Having spent roughly half of my life living overseas in cultures that are not my own, I can heartily agree with the importance of respecting other countries' traditions and ceremonies, and not trying to import our own beliefs to impose upon the locals. That kind of ethnocentricity is galling to me.
But I believe in our earnestness to respect all cultures and traditions, we run the risk of assuming that a cultural practice cannot ever be wrong, because it's "just different" - that all cultural practices are 100% correct and acceptable by definition. After many years, I've arrived at the conclusion that some practices can indeed be just plain wrong - and this goes for my own culture as well as the cultures of other countries. Certain actions are just universally wrong, and from my perspective these usually involve harming other people or denying their freedom. In addition, cultures can become warped over time, and certain perverted ideas can become traditions (I'm especially thinking of my own country here).
I believe that saying we can never pass judgment on another country's traditions is misguided. 99.9% of the time, it's true. But in some cases, universal human rights come into play, and when people are getting hurt, there's just no gray area.
Just my $0.02.
I was just reading back
I was just reading back through this thread and came across Winston's respose. Winston, I don't know where your line is. Human rights concerning physical harm are as relative as those of personal freedom and emotional harm. If you'd properly read the thread you would have seen the point I was making from the beginning. This is something that hits a very emotional nerve in modern western countries, but is your own position really so universal that you can come out and call it "just plain wrong"? So it's ok to be a bigot when you're confident that you're right? I think this thread is way apart from the honour killing thread, it just so happens that both have fallen into your "universally evil" category so somehow the distinction has been rendered less important which is why everyone's come out saying the two things are basically in the same vein. I'd like to point out that no-one is being killed in FGM. In the same way you might argue that western societies - by prohibiting or controlling the use of certain naturally occurring substances, actively discouraging people from hearing voices or talking to oneself, giving drugs to overly energetic kids - people are being permanently shaped and altered in the interest of social stability and homogeneity. There IS a question around the limits of free choice and the extent of social intervention. In a place where it seems most people are understanding or condoning of the practice, even those who at some point in their past have been subject to it, I'm just saying it might not be our place to dish our universal doctrines.
Universal truth
The people who are condoning it are the men. It's a tool of subjugation and there are many women who don't like it, and in fact there are women's groups fighting against it.
I'm not sure how to respond to the rest of your comment. I did read the entire thread carefully before I posted my last comment, and I don't remember a comment where I linked this issue with honor killings, but maybe I just forgot, I don't know.
In my opinion, violence toward another person is just wrong. Yes, for me that's universal. I can understand you wanting to be open-minded about everything, but there are universal truths. If you don't have any truths which you hold to be universal, then I guess we have nothing to talk about.
Manipulating other people, modifying their bodies (FGM) without their consent and against their wishes... well to me that counts as physical violence, and it's wrong, in every country where it occurs, including my own. There are many things wrong with my own country as well.
As I mentioned in my previous comment, there is an over-tendency to say "well, it's cultural, so it must be okay" and excuse EVERYTHING that happens in a culture because it's "just different". That is true a LOT of the time, but there are some cases where a culture over time has adopted a practice which is unacceptable. Slavery is one of those. Could we just say "well, the child slavery in Sudan is something we need to accept as a cultural difference"? No, of course not. It's just plain wrong, just like it was wrong in the United States. Is it "accepted" and "condoned" by the slavemasters? Well, of course it is.
There are lots of other issues where I will freely admit I find a cultural practice to be strange, but I won't say it's outright wrong, just different. This is not one of those issues, because it involves changing a person's body against their wishes. In essence, you're taking their freedom of choice with regards to their body.
Foreskin
Should I finally pluck up the courage to marry my muslim girlfriend, I'll have to get my foreskin cut off.
Rubbish.
Is this a wind-up?
Not so my good man, unless you happen to be going out with a very very strict Indonesian girl, in which case she wouldn't be anywhere near you anyway! Is this your quote? Am well confused.
Here's to the wrinkly bit, may it always be yours to fiddle with!
Kurdistan urged to ban FGM
This just in - Human Rights Watch asks Kurdistan to ban female genital cutting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/world/middleeast/17kurd.html?ref=world
Seize the skull!
(Add a new comment)