Criticism of opposition
editTolerance versus human rights
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Anthropologist Eric Silverman wrote in 2004 that FGM had "emerged as one of the central moral topics of contemporary anthropology." Anthropologists have accused FGM eradicationists of cultural colonialism; in turn, the former have been criticized for their moral relativism and failure to defend the idea of universal human rights.[2] According to the opposition's critics, the biological reductionism of the opposition, and the failure to appreciate the practice's cultural context, undermines the practitioners' agency and serves to "other" them – in particular by calling African parents mutilators.[3] Yet Africans who object to the opposition risk appearing to defend FGM.[4] Feminist theorist Obioma Nnaemeka – herself strongly opposed to FGM ("If one is circumcised, it is one too many") – argues that the impact of renaming it female genital mutilation cannot be underestimated:
In this name game, although the discussion is about African women, a subtext of barbaric African and Muslim cultures and the West's relevance (even indispensability) in purging the barbarism marks another era where colonialism and missionary zeal determined what "civilization" was, and figured out how and when to force it on people who did not ask for it.[5]
Ugandan law professor Sylvia Tamale argues that early Western opposition to FGM stemmed from a Judeo-Christian judgment that African sexual and family practices – including dry sex, polygyny, bride price and levirate marriage – were primitive and required correction.[6] African feminists "do not condone the negative aspects of the practice," writes Tamale, but "take strong exception to the imperialist, racist and dehumanising infantilization of African women."[6]
The debate has highlighted a tension between anthropology and feminism, with the former's focus on tolerance and the latter's on equal rights for all women. Anthropologist Christine Walley writes that a common trope within the anti-FGM literature has been to present African women as victims of false consciousness participating in their own oppression, a position promoted by several feminists in the 1970s and 1980s, including Fran Hosken, Mary Daly and Hanny Lightfoot-Klein. It prompted the French Association of Anthropologists to issue a statement in 1981, at the height of the early debates, that "a certain feminism resuscitates (today) the moralistic arrogance of yesterday's colonialism."[7]
A series of 13 photographs of an FGM ceremony in Kenya won the award:
Photograph 5
Photograph 7
Photograph 10
Photograph 13
— Stephanie Walsh, Newhouse News Service[8]
As an example of the disrespect arguably shown toward women who have undergone FGM, commentators highlight the appropriation of the women's bodies as exhibits. Historian Chima Korieh cites the publication in 1996 of the Pulitzer-prize-winning photographs of a 16-year-old Kenyan girl undergoing FGM. The photographs were published by 12 American newspapers, but according to Korieh the girl had not given permission for the images to be taken, much less published.[9]
Comparison with other procedures
editObioma Nnaemeka argues that the crucial question, broader than FGM, is why the female body is subjected to so much "abuse and indignity" around the world, including in the West.[10] Several authors have drawn a parallel between FGM and cosmetic procedures.[11] Ronán Conroy of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland wrote in 2006 that cosmetic genital procedures were "driving the advance of female genital mutilation" by encouraging women to see natural variations as defects.[12] Anthropologist Fadwa El Guindi compares FGM to breast enhancement, in which the maternal function of the breast becomes secondary to men's sexual pleasure.[13] Benoîte Groult made a similar point in 1975, citing FGM and cosmetic surgery as sexist and patriarchal.[14]
Carla Obermeyer maintains that FGM may be conducive to women's well-being within their communities in the same way that rhinoplasty and male circumcision may help people elsewhere.[15] In Egypt, despite the 2007 ban, women wanting FGM for their daughters discuss the need for amalyet tajmeel (cosmetic surgery) to remove what is viewed as excess genital tissue for a more acceptable appearance.[16]
The WHO does not cite procedures such as labiaplasty and clitoral hood reduction as examples of FGM, but its definition aims to avoid loopholes, so several elective practices on adults do fall within its categories.[17] Some of the laws banning FGM, including in Canada and the US, focus only on minors. Several countries, including Sweden and the UK, have banned it regardless of consent, and the legislation would seem to cover cosmetic procedures. Sweden, for example, has banned "[o]perations on the external female genital organs which are designed to mutilate them or produce other permanent changes in them ... regardless of whether consent to this operation has or has not been given."[18] Gynaecologist Birgitta Essén and anthropologist Sara Johnsdotter note that it seems the law distinguishes between Western and African genitals, and deems only African women (such as those seeking reinfibulation after childbirth) unfit to make their own decisions.[19]
Arguing against suggested similarities between FGM and dieting or body shaping, philosopher Martha Nussbaum writes that a key difference is that FGM is mostly conducted on children using physical force. She argues that the distinction between social pressure and physical force is morally and legally salient, comparable to the distinction between seduction and rape. She argues further that the literacy of women in practising countries is generally poorer than in developed nations, and that this reduces their ability to make informed choices.[20]
Several commentators maintain that children's rights are violated with the genital alteration of intersex children, who are born with anomalies that physicians choose to correct. Legal scholars Nancy Ehrenreich and Mark Barr write that thousands of these procedures take place every year in the United States, and say that they are medically unnecessary, more extensive than FGM, and have more serious physical and mental consequences. They attribute the silence of anti-FGM campaigners about intersex procedures to white privilege and a refusal to acknowledge that "similar unnecessary and harmful genital cutting occurs in their own backyards."[21]
References
edit- ^ Nnaemeka 2005, p. 34.
- ^ Silverman 2004, pp. 420 (for the quote), 427.
- ^ Vicky Kirby, "Out of Africa: 'Our Bodies Ourselves?'" in Obioma Nnaemeka (ed.), Female Circumcision and the Politics of Knowledge: African Women in Imperialist Discourses, Westport: Praeger, 2005, p. 83.
- ^ Obioma Nnaemeka, "African Women, Colonial Discourses, and Imperialist Interventions: Female Circumcision as Impetus," in Nnaemeka 2005, p. 33.
- ^ Nnaemeka 2005, pp. 34–35.
- ^ a b Tamale 2011, pp. 19–20.
- ^ Christine J. Walley, "Searching for 'Voices': Feminism, Anthropology, and the Global Over Female Genital Operations" in James and Robertson 2002, pp. 18, 34 (for false consciousness), 43.
For the statement, Bagnol and Mariano 2011, p. 281; for Hosken, Daly and Lightfoot-Klein, Robertson 2002, p. 60.
- ^ "Stephanie Welsh", 1996 Pulitzer Prize winners
- ^ Chima Korieh, "'Other' Bodies: Western Feminism, Race and Representation in Female Circumcision Discourse," in Nnaemeka 2005, pp. 121–122.
For the photographs, "Stephanie Welsh", 1996 Pulitzer Prize winners; for other examples of the same argument, Nnaemeka 2005, pp. 30–33.
- ^ Nnaemeka 2005, pp. 38–39.
- ^ Sara Johnsdotter and Birgitta Essén, "Genitals and ethnicity: the politics of genital modifications", Reproductive Health Matters, 18(35), 2010 (pp. 29–37), p. 32. PMID 20541081 doi:10.1016/S0968-8080(10)35495-4
Samar A. Farage, "Female Genital Alteration: A Sociological Perspective," in Miranda A. Farage and Howard I. Maibach (eds.), The Vulva: Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology, New York: Informa Healthcare USA, 2006, p. 267.
Marge Berer, "It's female genital mutilation and should be prosecuted", British Medical Journal, 334(7608), 30 June 2007, p. 1335. PMID 17599983 PMC 1906631 doi:10.1136/bmj.39252.646042.3A
- ^ Ronán M. Conroy, "Female genital mutilation: whose problem, whose solution?", British Medical Journal, 333(7559), 15 July 2006. PMID 16840444 PMC 1502236
- ^ El Guindi 2007, p. 33.
- ^ Lora Wildenthal, The Language of Human Rights in West Germany, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, p. 148.
- ^ Obermeyer 1999, p. 94.
- ^ Rahim (Tahrir Institute) 2014.
- ^ WHO 2008, p. 28.
- ^ Johnsdotter and Essén 2010, p. 33.
- ^ Johnsdotter and Essén 2010, p. 33; Essén and Johnsdotter 2004, p. 613.
- ^ Nussbaum 1999, pp. 123–124.
Also see Yael Tamir, "Hands Off Clitoridectomy", Boston Review, Summer 1996.
Martha Nussbaum, "Double Moral Standards?", Boston Review, October/November 1996.
- ^ Nancy Ehrenreich, Mark Barr, "Intersex Surgery, Female Genital Cutting, and the Selective Condemnation of 'Cultural Practices'", Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 40(1), 2005 (pp. 71–140), pp. 74–75.
Also see Cheryl Chase, "'Cultural Practice' or 'Reconstructive Surgery'? US Genital Cutting, the Intersex Movement, and Medical Double Standards," in James and Robertson (eds.) 2002, pp. 126–151.