{"id":10837,"date":"2015-04-15T05:00:30","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T09:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=10837"},"modified":"2015-04-12T13:28:06","modified_gmt":"2015-04-12T17:28:06","slug":"interview-with-bettina-shell-duncan-pioneer-of-research-on-female-genital-cutting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/10837","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Bettina Shell-Duncan, Pioneer of Research on Female Genital Cutting"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past week, the Atlantic<\/em> published an interview<\/a> with Bettina Shell-Duncan<\/a>, an anthropologist and a pioneer of research on female genital cutting. Among interesting excerpts (the emphasis is mine):<\/p>\n

So what can foreign activists\u2014as well as locals who oppose female genital cutting\u2014do to curb the practice? 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.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is exactly why Lindsey Novak, Tara Steinmetz, and I decided to refer to the phenomenon as FGC rather than FGM in our\u00a0paper<\/a>, nothing\u00a0in footnote 1 on page 2 that<\/p>\n

[m]any terms are used to describe the procedure examined in this study, including “female genital cutting,” “female genital mutilation,” and “female circumcision.” “Female genital mutilation” is largely used by opponents of the practice, and carries with it an underlying negative judgment of the tradition, a moral judgment outside the scope of our empirical investigation. “Female circumcision” tends to imply a tradition similar to the more familiar male circumcision, a comparison that can be misleading depending on the type of cutting referred to. Therefore, except when directly citing other sources, we favor the term “female genital cutting” throughout this study.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately, whoever came up with the article of the Atlantic’s article clearly did not read the article–the title talks of “circumcision.” More importantly,\u00a0the article notes that\u00a0Shell-Duncan<\/p>\n

… challenges some common misconceptions around FGC, like the belief that it is forced on women by men. 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\u2014they just think the benefits outweigh them.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Music to an economist’s ears, obviously, though it is important to note for people who are not economists that the “benefits” often include “not being an outcast in your household\/extended family\/community\/etc.”<\/p>\n

ht: Marie Baguet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past week, the Atlantic published an interview with Bettina Shell-Duncan, an anthropologist and a pioneer of research on female genital cutting. Among interesting excerpts<\/p>\n

Continue readingInterview with Bettina Shell-Duncan, Pioneer of Research on Female Genital Cutting<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-2ON","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10837"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10844,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10837\/revisions\/10844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}