The concept of “choice” in a community that has long traditions about the subject of that choice, particularly ones connected with religion, is problematic. How many women “choose” the hijab or burqa in countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Afghanistan, where such clothing is not only connected with religion, but mandated by the government? The fact that places like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have morality police to enforce covering, as well as the absence of covering before those countries became theocracies, suggest that many women would not cover themselves without the legal requirements and threat of beating. And even where covering is optional, as in Egypt, many women must cover themselves for fear of looking “non-Muslim,” of disobeying their husbands, or of defying community standards and being ostracized.
So when I read a new piece in The Atlantic, “Why some women choose to get circumcised?” I was wary. How do we know that without religious and social pressure, female genital mutilation (FGM) is a “choice” in the sense of something that would be elected without that pressure? While FGM has been around for a long time, and is practiced by non-Muslims, it’s been institutionalized (as has veiling) by many branches of Islam. If you think that FGM has nothing to do religion, read Heather Hastie’s column on the Islamic connection.
Khazan is an associate editor of The Atlantic, covering health and gender issues, and she interviews Sheila Shell-Duncan, a professor of anthropology at The University of Washington. The curious thing about the interview is that while Shell-Duncan is part of an initiative to reduce FGM by 30% in ten countries over the next five years, she proceeds to more or less excuse the practice in her interview. And I do mean “excuse”, not just “understand”.
First, an introduction by interviewer Khazan:
For starters, Bettina Shell-Duncan, an anthropology professor at the University of Washington who has been studying the practice in many countries for years, suggests using the term “cutting” rather than “mutilation,” which sounds derogatory and can complicate conversations with those who practice FGC.
She also challenges some common misconceptions around FGC, like the belief that it is forced on women by men. [Not so, though; see below.] In fact, elderly women often do the most to perpetuate the custom. I thought African girls were held down and butchered against their will, but some of them voluntarily and joyfully partake in the ritual. I thought communities would surely abandon the practice once they learned of its negative health consequences. And yet, in Shell-Duncan’s experience, most people who practice FGC recognize its costs—they just think the benefits outweigh them.
Actually, I don’t care who perpetuates the custom, whether it be women or men; I care that society forces the practice on young girls, and that religion not only allows it but in some cases urges it. And changing the word to “cutting” rather than “mutilation” is just semantics. Yes, those trying to eliminate it should just call it “cutting the genitals” to those they’re trying to persuade, but we should realize that it’s still mutilation. It’s as if we tried to sanitize the throwing of gays off rooftops by extremist Muslims as “involuntary defenestration of homosexuals” rather than “homophobic murder.”
And of course if doing something inculcates and integrates you into the culture, you may do it “joyfully”—after all, you’re joining the pack—but do you do it “voluntarily”? In a culture where it’s the norm, and rejecting it leads to ostracism, what does “voluntarily” even mean?
If that barbaric cultural practice didn’t exist, as it doesn’t in the West (which outlaws FGM), women wouldn’t elect it. Now you’ll say, “Well, of course: if there’s no FGM culture, why would any girl want to do it?” But that’s precisely the point. FGM is a reprehensible practice that is not only medically dangerous, resulting in both short- and long-term health problems, but also, by excising the inner labia and clitoris, severely reduces the possibility of sexual pleasure for women—which is of course its point. (This is the form of FGM that Khazan and Shell-Duncan are discussing.) A misguided cultural relativism has tended to overlook these issues (and this article shows it), but that kind of relativism isn’t acceptable—not when there are health and sex issues as well as harm to women.
Here’s some of the statements that Shell-Duncan makes in celebrating, or at least excusing, FGM:
The bride came out and joined the dancing. I almost died. I thought she must be on codeine, but she wasn’t. She was joyful. I didn’t understand the joy about this.
But later I remembered that when I gave birth to my first son, I had a very difficult delivery. After my son was born, everyone in the delivery room popped a bottle of champagne. I felt like I had been hit by a Mack truck and they were toasting champagne. But it was a good pain, and that’s what this was. This girl had become a woman.
When I went back two years later, the girl came to me and gave the [pain] pills back. She said, “You don’t understand, this is not our way. And if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be a woman now.”
I understood why. And I respected her.
Well, Shell-Duncan’s pain didn’t presage a life without sexual pleasure, either! And as for “respect”, well, that’s a double-edged sword. Admiring someone for withstanding a painful and barbaric practice doesn’t do anything to eliminate the practice. No, you don’t have to shame the girl—that would be counterproductive—but do you “respect” those hyper-Orthodox Jewish women who shave their heads and purify themselves in ritual baths after menstruating? Or those Muslim women who put themselves in cloth sacks, and won’t go out without a male guardian? I’m not sure “respect” is the right word here.
And here’s the rationale:
Khazan: Yeah. So, wow. I guess the biggest question for me is what do they see as the benefit? Are there any benefits?
Shell-Duncan: This is not true everywhere, but there, there it’s not about virginity. It’s not about modesty. And it is in some other cultures. The Rendille are sexually active before they’re married, both men and women. And it’s completely culturally acceptable.
The woman is going to go live with her husband’s family, and it’s part of inclusion among other women whose identity is as a circumcised woman. She’s reliant on her mother-in-law and her husband’s kin. So it’s part of becoming inducted into this female network that’s really important.
Also, for us, we believe that bodies are natural and perfect. Not everybody believes that. Some people in Africa believe that bodies are androgynous and that all male and female bodies contain male and female parts.
So a man’s foreskin is a female part. And for a female, the covering of the clitoris is a male part. The idea of becoming a wholly formed female includes being cut—having any part that is somewhat male-like removed from the body.
Khazan: That actually makes logical sense to me. We have shaving your legs, or wearing makeup. We have weird things that we do that are less painful. But the pain in their case is kind of the “proving yourself” aspect.
Shell-Duncan: Right.
“Sexually active” doesn’t mean, “getting pleasurable sex,” of course. And really, getting inducted into a network via means that are harmful, painful, and dangerous, while understandable, is not necessarily admirable. In some cultures men need to kill an enemy before they’re fully accepted. Is that okay? Further, comparing FGM with shaving one’s legs or wearing makeup is seriously misguided. While those practices may be culturally enforced (I grew up in an era when many women didn’t shave their legs, and I don’t care about that), they aren’t nearly as harmful to the practitioners as is FGM.
Here’s Shell-Duncan’s critique of the feminist argument against FGM:
Khazan: And where is the support for this practice coming from?
Shell-Duncan: The sort of feminist argument about this is that it’s about the control of women but also of their sexuality and sexual pleasure. But when you talk to people on the ground, you also hear people talking about the idea that it’s women’s business. As in, it’s for women to decide this. If we look at the data across Africa, the support for the practice is stronger among women than among men.
So, the patriarchy argument is just not a simple one. Female circumcision is part of demarcating insider and outsider status. Are you part of this group of elder women who have power in their society?
Yes, it’s part of insider versus outsider status, but many barbaric religious practices are. Many see circumcision of Jews as another one of them, as well as putting women in burqas or, in some Mormon sects, marrying young girls and taking multiple wives. And, of course, the religious dictates in favor of FGM come from men, even if women are the “enforcers.” In fact, later in the piece Shell-Duncan admits that men are involved:
Shell-Duncan: If I decide I don’t want to circumcise my daughter, that’s not an individual behavior. I would have to answer to my husband, to my mother-in-law, my mother-in-law would have to answer to her friends throughout the community, my father-in-law would have to answer to people in the community, so there’s societal pressure. So understanding what is a collective decision versus individual is really important. You can go and tell an individual mother what the health risks are and she can believe you, but it doesn’t mean, first of all, that she has the power to make that decision, or even that she has the authority to impart that information to her mother-in-law and other senior people in the society who are the decision-makers. Who wants to be the first one to change? Who wants to be the odd man out?
And there’s this, where Shell-Duncan admits that trying to get women to stop cutting their daughters is a tactic that doesn’t work:
Shell-Duncan: What we’re coming to realize is that programs that target individual mothers are completely ineffective. Mothers are not solely in charge of the decisions for their daughters. We need to be targeting people who are in the extended family, and we know that we need to figure out who are the figures of authority in these families, and who are the influences on them in the community. We need to do male elders, but also female elders.
So why on Earth does Khazan call her piece “Why some women choose to get circumcised?” And why does she have an introduction saying that “elderly women often do the most to perpetuate the custom”? Shell-Duncan admitted it’s not a “choice” in the conventional sense of the word. There are serious repercussions to not getting cut. Why, then, do both women maintain that it’s older women who are really in charge of FGM? Shell-Duncan seems deeply confused, and her arguments are conflicting.
And here’s her bogus arguments against the medical dangers:
Khazan: What, medically, are the harms? Why are people trying to stop this?
Shell-Duncan: The WHO was able to show a statistically significant association between FGC and certain risks from obstetrical outcomes. Things like infant death, hemorrhage.
There was a study that was done in Gambia—they were looking at the chances of having sexually transmitted infections and pelvic inflammatory disease, and it was positive, but of course, you can’t prove that being circumcised is causal.
Khazan: Do these communities know about the medical consequences?
Shell-Duncan: One of the things that is important to understand about it is that people see the costs and benefits. It is certainly a cost, but the benefits are immediate. For a Rendille woman, are you going to be able to give legitimate birth? Or elsewhere, are you going to be a proper Muslim? Are you going to have your sexual desire attenuated and be a virgin until marriage? These are huge considerations, and so when you tip the balance and think about that, the benefits outweigh the costs.
Let’s not forget the loss of sexual pleasure, which of course these girls won’t know about because they never learn what they’re missing. But do review the World Health Organization’s list of medical harms caused by FGM. When you get a chronic infection or painful scar tissue (and possible obstetric fistulas) from cutting, is Shell-Duncan going to say, “Well, that’s just a correlation; you can’t prove it’s causal.” That is an invidious and willfully ignorant way to excuse FGM. What does it take for her to accept that an infection in the genitals after cutting, which won’t occur in those that don’t have FGM, is caused by FGM?
After all this, Shell-Duncan admits why she’s trying to reduce the incidence of FGM:
Khazan: Do you think it’s a global-health imperative that we work to stop this?
Shell-Duncan: There’s no question this is a global-health issue. In the U.S., adult women are capable of giving consent for surgical procedures. But what would it take to get a woman in an African country to the same position of being able to give consent? Social pressures [in the nations that practice FGC] are so strong that no woman could ever opt out. Everybody would come down on her. That’s the problem. Why can we give consent and they can’t?
There’s more, but you get the ambivalence. We have a conflicted feminist who sees that FGM is harmful, and is trying to stop it, but at the same time is trying to justify the practice, as well as distort its origins and how it’s enforced. Interviewer Khazan, of course, plays right into this, and doesn’t ask Shell-Duncan the hard questions. I applaud Shell-Duncan’s initiative to reduce FGM, but one can see her being drawn into a form of cultural relativism that has the danger of diluting her opprobrium of FGM. At least she’s doing something about it.
