Last updated on June 17, 2012
Most of you will probably be familiar with the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), in which a woman’s external genitalia is partially or totally removed. As per Wikipedia, there are four types of FGM:
The main three are Type I, removal of the clitoral hood, almost invariably accompanied by removal of the clitoris itself (clitoridectomy); Type II, removal of the clitoris and inner labia; and Type III (infibulation), removal of all or part of the inner and outer labia, and usually the clitoris, and the fusion of the wound, leaving a small hole for the passage of urine and menstrual blood—the fused wound is opened for intercourse and childbirth.
The fourth type of FGM covers procedures that do not neatly fit in the above three categories.
I am currently working on a paper on FGM with a former student of mine, Tara Steinmetz. But because we are planning on submitting our paper to a medical journal (and because medical journals are serious about researchers not posting their findings anywhere pre-publication), you will have to wait until our paper is published to hear about our findings.
Rather, the reason why I bring up FGM is because Linda Raftree had an excellent write up on her blog last week about another similarly disturbing practice which I had not yet heard of — breast flattening:
“Breast flattening,” also known as “breast ironing” or “breast massage,” is a practice whereby a young girl’s developing breasts are massaged, pounded, pressed, or patted with an object, usually heated in a wooden fire, to make them stop developing, grow more slowly or disappear completely.
(…) [B]reast flattening is practiced out of a desire to delay a girl’s physical development and reduce the risk of promiscuous behavior. Proponents of the practice consider that “men will pursue ‘developed’ girls and that girl children are not able to cope with or deter men’s attention. They see that promiscuity can result in early pregnancy, which limits educational, career, and marriage opportunities, shames the family, increases costs to family (newborn, loss of bride price, health complications from early childbirth or unsafe abortion).” In addition, there is the belief that girls are not sufficiently intellectually developed to learn about puberty, and therefore should not yet develop breasts. Another reason given for the practice is the belief that girls who develop before their classmates will be the target of teasing and become social outcasts. There is also, for some, the belief that large breasts are unattractive or not fashionable.
My colleague and mentor Don Taylor claims that the existence of FGM can serve as a litmus test to assess whether someone is a true relativist — a true-blue relativist would be okay with FGM.
While I agree that promiscuity can result in very bad outcomes for young women, I find the argument that girls are not sufficiently intellectually developed to learn about sexual and reproductive health particularly repugnant, especially when it leads to practices such as breast flattening. But then again, I am most definitely not a relativist.
I’m not a true-blue cultural relativist, I don’t think, but it’s hard for me to tell sometimes. I try to separate what *I* think is right and wrong from other contexts where reality and morality might look different. I think other societies should be free to operate as they wish, with the usual caveats; but also with the understanding that those societies are not monolithic, either. If there is injustice or abuse, I think the fight against it has to be led from within and, maybe, supported by outsiders. These can be tricky problems to tackle, and cultural misunderstandings when well-meaning outsiders come in to help can abound.
Not saying you’re doing this, but I think it can be problematic to conflate all four types of FGM, as some are drastically more extreme than others. I also think it all has to be put in a global context; I’ve read about some African immigrants to Sweden who were required to have their surgeries undone as part of their emigration, but who then found out that it’s not uncommon for Swedish women to have basically the same surgery done for cosmetic purposes. (There’s also a long history of mixed messages on women’s rights in Africa; for example the French banning the veil in the name of women’s rights in Algeria, at the same time French women in France were not allowed to vote. The irony of the colonial women’s rights discourse was not lost on Algerians.)
The debate over FGM goes at least all the way back to the 1920s when it became a religiously and politically contentious issue in Kenya. So it’s not just a cultural litmus test, it’s a religious and political one, too; though we in the West don’t seem to see it that way. I think those of us that want to fight against it need to keep that in mind.
Now I, Carol Jean Gallo, am of course repulsed by the practice of FGM and find it very hard to understand. But if I want to do something about it, I first have to A) figure out *why* it makes sense in a certain context and B) figure out who I can support in a fight against it. I have to take myself out of the equation to the extent possible.
When I do that, I can see that the elder women who arrange these initiation ceremonies are not sick and depraved slaves of patriarchy; they are guardians of knowledge, and initiation is the key to social and political standing for young women. (In some contexts, anyway. Just as conflating all forms of FGM is problematic, so is conflating all the cultural contexts in which it operates.) Some girls look forward to this day, as the state of womanhood that follows an initiation ceremony is usually accompanied by new forms of respect and social power.
If breast flattening (which is news to me, too) is an attempt to keep girls away from the knowledge of sex and reproductive health, FGM is a part of a process that is the opposite. FGM is the entryway into womanhood; it is a time when a girl and her agemates are told by their elders about all of that stuff. FGM basically accompanies sex education (among other forms of knowledge). Not that I think either breast flattening or FGM are okay. But it sounds to me like the social contexts are different.
There are two good pieces (I have PDFs of both) out there that made me go from Outraged Western Feminist Against FGM No Matter What to an area studies student with a slightly more nuanced perspective:
Christine Walley, “Searching for ‘Voices’: Feminism, Anthropology, and the Global Debate over Female Genital Operations,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 12 No. 3, August 1997; and
Fuambai Ahmadu, Chapter 12, “Ain’t I a Woman Too?: Challenging Myths of Sexual Dysfunction in Circumcised Women,” in Y. Hernlund and B. Shell-Duncan (eds), Transcultural Bodies: Female Genital Cutting in Global Context (2007), pp. 278-310.
There is also Jomo Kenyatta’s chapter on the subject in Facing Mount Kenya. (I have a PDF of that as well.)
This is purely from the cultural relativity end of things. I know some, but very little, of the public health implications, which I imagine is the focus of your article with Tara. So these are all thoughts, mostly off the top of my head, which address the cultural relativity stuff. Just some food for thought, really.
Thanks, Carol, for this incredibly thoughtful comment, and thanks for those additional references. I knew Jomo Kenyatta talked about FGM in his dissertation, and I’ve looked at the Hernlund and Shell-Duncan edited volume, but I hadn’t come across Walley’s article.
As an economist who believes in individual rationality, I agree with you that the practice of FGM is rational. That is, in societies where FGM is widespread, those who perpetuate FGM are better off doing so than not, if only because they would face serious consequences (social and perhaps physical) for not sustaining the social norm. Likewise, in societies where FGM is widespread, those who undergo FGM could be better off that way, if only because they would also face serious consequences for not abiding by the social norm.
But individual rationality can lead to inefficient institutions. Though social norms like FGM are there to minimize transaction costs and maximize the wealth of the group to which they apply (if you haven’t already done so, read Ellickson’s “Order without Law,” which is one of the best social science books I’ve ever read), this doesn’t mean that there does not exist some other equilibrium where no one would be worse off. The problem might be to move from one equilibrium (widespread FGM) to another (little to no FGM). And that’s where convention theory comes in — see Gerry Mackie’s 1996 paper in the American Sociological Review for a fascinating discussion of FGM as well as of the practice of footbinding in China.
So you are absolutely right that social contexts matter, in the sense that context is key to supporting conventions. But the real difficulty is in moving from one convention to the other. That being said, I think I’ll eventually write a post in which I speculate about the reasons why FGM might have emerged, in the style of Ellickson.
Thanks, Marc! I’ll try to check out Ellickson, maybe I could use some of that. At the moment I’m being heavily influenced by Geertz. Which is okay- I love Geertz- but I should read around more. Will check out Mackie too.
Funnily enough, I only half-accept the idea of individual rationality because I see people do things that are terrible for them or make no sense all the time; as well as making choices they know at the moment they are making them are probably not in their best interests. I think the same can apply to societies and cultural conventions. So I’m not so sure…. I’m sure the individual rationality theory has explanations for that kind of stuff, though.
I like your approach, the idea of replacing one equilibrium with another. I’d be interested to see what that would look like. Similar things have been tried before, though not exactly on the kind of model you’re talking about. The colonial state (in Kenya, if I remember right) tried to get people to have the initiation without the circumcisions, but people found it impossible to separate the practice from the rite. There is also the public health response of some NGOs who help people do it in a way that’s not so dangerous or painful. (Sterilizing equipment, etc.)
The only questions I’m still left with (since I started reading about this in 2008), which I don’t know I will ever be able to find answers to, are things like why are we in the West so repulsed by this practice, even in hypothetical cases where it’s a mild version done properly surgically etc., in girls but not boys? I know there’s supposed to be public health reasons for circumcising boys, but that doesn’t explain the gut reaction of being horrified when it’s girls being circumcised but the same reaction isn’t there when it’s boys.
That’s kind of related to the other question which is, who gets to decide when there is a need to move from one convention to another? I, Carol Gallo, completely agree that there is a need for moving to another convention in most of these cases. But that’s not based on a whole lot outside my gut reaction to it. And just because I think it’s wrong doesn’t mean that it is. That doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as right and wrong– but who gets to decide? That choice would probably be made differently not just between my society and someone else’s, but between different actors within societies as well. (Maybe convention theory talks about this?)
Maybe I *am* a bit of a relativist, LOL. I think “right” and “wrong” are socially constructed, and, within a broad frame, are individually/intra-group determined (see pro-/anti- gay marriage arguments in the US; both are based on normative arguments). If you want to change a broad societal construction of right/wrong, it’s really hard work because it can be so deeply ingrained in us that we can only see it as being “natural.” Why is it wrong to kill someone? You can get into a whole ethical theory behind it, but you always end up with the answer “it just is.” It just is because we have all agreed as a society that it just is, with exceptions like self-defense and a whole host of other caveats. I get into a lot of trouble when I talk like this, but I haven’t been able to come up with any intellectually honest alternative. The less extreme the example gets, the more blurry and uncertain it becomes.
This is, I think, why anthropology is so important for human rights and development work. It shows that you can’t just walk into a community and say “our version of right and wrong is the correct one, and you guys are doing it wrong.” It has to be more complicated than that.
I’m in the process of trying to see what kinds of metaphors shape my own understanding of reality (reading Lakoff and Johnson’s “Metaphors We Live By.”) “Argument is War,” or a battle, for example. We attack someone’s position, we gain ground in a debate, we describe arguments as weak or strong, our criticisms are right on target or miss the mark, someone can shoot down our argument, and someone’s claims can be indefensible. We take this way of seeing and talking about argument for granted, but not all societies see it through that metaphor.
On a deeper level, I think, things like FGM don’t always exist in isolation from broader ways of seeing. They’re not always actions based on what the consequences are, but are part of a broader ontological logic. One study of the most severe kind of FGM, in Sudan, shows how integrated they can be. I’d recommend reading it, too:
Janice Boddy, “Womb as Oasis: The Symbolic Context of Pharaonic Circumcision in Rural Northern Sudan,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 9, No. 4, Symbolism and Cognition II (Nov., 1982), pp. 682-698.
Just to be clear, she does not try to justify the practice, but tries to explain how it makes sense in the society where it’s practiced (and dispels some of the myths surrounding it in the process). This is the kind of stuff moving from one convention to another would have to take into account. (To say nothing of that question about who should decide when a convention is “wrong” and should be changed.)
That’s a lot of random, off the top of my head stuff again. I can’t tell to what extent I’m being too philosophical; but they’re questions I can’t help asking myself, at least in a Devil’s Advocate kind of way. The best answer I can come up with is in line with the Walley article; that listening is key. It cannot be the fight of Western Feminists. It has to be led from within, and the best we can do is support those actors that want to change it.
Carol,
I think the issue the “West” (by the way, I dislike that word as much as the “North” in the development discourse of yore) has with FGM, beyond the fact that it has very real consequences on the physical and psychological health of the women affected, is that it also significantly limits their enjoyment of sexual activities. The same thing cannot be said of circumcision. There is also the fact that most FGM occurs at a time where girls are acutely aware of what’s going on, whereas most circumcisions take place in the first few months of life.
I agree with you that nothing is hardly ever equal, and that practices like FGM don’t occur in a vacuum.
I have a post tomorrow (Monday) in which I discuss your conception (the common misconception, really) of “individual rationality.” This is really not directed at you in particular — more at the media and commentariat in general.
Thanks Marc,
Yes, point taken on “The West.” Have to say I agree. There are lots of traps like that I still fall into as I’ve been sucked into a certain kind of discourse. I got called out recently for saying “international community,” too, LOL. (I have similar beef with the word “development,” but that’s another story.)
I think the sexual enjoyment aspect is dependent on what kind of circumcision it is. Ahmadu (“Ain’t I a Woman Too”) is a circumcised Sierra Leonean woman who spends her whole book chapter refuting that notion, and some Kenyan women classmates of mine I talked to said that it hasn’t been the case for them, either. But those are not type IV or pharaonic kinds; in those cases you’d be right. (In many instances of male circumcision at initiations, also, it is a very painful and traumatic experience for boys as well; it’s done around the same age as it is for girls and under much the same circumstances.)
I will very much enjoy reading your post tomorrow! I’ve read a little bit about that misconception of rationality, but it would be good if I could be able to articulate it to someone else; right now it’s just more or less my intuition that it’s a misconception. Based on things like different priorities, I’m guessing? Someone that decides to smoke may be making an obviously irrational decision, but in an individual value system where enjoying the moment is more important than risks or consequences, the decision is totally rational. Something like that?
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