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Female circumcision is outrageous, but then so is much of what we do to women in the West.
We are accustomed in the West to the idea that a society -- a culture, a civilisation -- can be judged by the way it treats its women. Decades of feminism have taught us to react vigorously to the remaining vestiges of patriarchal power. Long before that, we had a tradition of respect for women which expressed itself in the code of chivalry -- as well as in the paternalistic excesses of later centuries -- and which survives today in an uneasy relationship with feminism. One does not have to be particularly chivalrous or feminist, however, to find the practice of female circumcision, described in a New York Times article last week, an abomination. It is enough that little girls are subjected to a totally unnecessary, invasive and painful procedure that may affect their health and happiness for a quite ordinary sort of person to feel outraged.
At once, some qualifications are necessary. There are different forms of "circumcision" (which the World Health Organisation prefers to call "mutilation" and others call merely "cutting") ranging from symbolic gestures such as rubbing turmeric on the genitals, through excision of part or all of the clitoris, to the extreme form of removing all external genitalia and stitching up the vaginal opening. The last type, also known as Pharaonic circumcision or infibulation, is estimated to account for "only" 15 per of possibly 140 million women and girls worldwide -- cold comfort considering the gut-wrenching details. According to WHO the most common form (about 80 per cent of cases) involves the excision of the clitoris and labia minor.
Abortion and genital cutting add up to the same thing: women are not well designed, their bodies are not well adapted to the desires of men and the priorities of a male-dominated world.
The pain involved in that must be considerable, even if the girl is sedated during the operation itself. Worse than that, though, must be the terrible sense of betrayal that her mother is handing her over to a frightening and inexplicable procedure. What can a mother tell her four-year-old child, or even an older girl? That it will, according to an Islamic leader quoted in the Times story, "stabilise her libido … make a woman look more beautiful in the eyes of her husband … [and] balance her psychology"?
All sorts of reasons and excuses can be advanced for this custom -- which, by the way, appears to predate Islam (and Christianity) and is repudiated by much of the Islamic world -- but it boils down, ultimately, to a mistrust of woman as she comes from the hand of God. According to the Hebrew Scriptures, endorsed by the Christian Gospel, man and woman are both created "in the image of God" and this is the source of their equal dignity as human beings and their equal human rights. This truth, admittedly, has received variable recognition in the history of Western civilisation, but today's secular version of the doctrine of equality is by no means the last word on the subject.
If we agree today that a woman has the right to bodily integrity, it is not because of some idea of her transcendent dignity, but only on the basis that she "owns" her body. It is her property and no-one has the right to invade it or remove any of it without her consent. In a more general way she has a right to privacy, to conduct her life with minimal interference from other individuals or society. Self-possession, so defined, has led the greater part of the West in the last 40 years to legalise abortion, even up to the moment of birth. Officially, the justification is the woman's health, but for all practical and political purposes it is a matter of mere choice.
Of course, the main argument against abortion is and always will be that it takes the life of new human individual, but if pro-choice advocates are to persist in bracketing the status of the fetus and treating the issue only as one of women's rights, they should at least acknowledge that abortion, too, is an invasive procedure (chemical abortions invade the body in their own way) and that it, too, can take from a woman what she does not want to give: her health, her peace of mind and, even in the "safe" conditions of first world hospitals, her life. WHO does not list cancer as one of the consequences of female genital mutilation, but, despite denials, there is convincing evidence that breast cancer is linked with abortion. So are very premature births, infertility and depression, amongst other pathologies. It is ironic, to say the least, that WHO crusades against FGM at the same time as it champions the scraping of wombs -- so often accepted not as a free choice but to please men or to comply with the wishes of parents or the advice of the sympathetic lady at the family planning clinic.
Furthermore, doesn't abortion show just as much mistrust of women's sexuality as genital manipulation? They add up to the same thing: women are not well designed, their bodies are not well adapted to the desires of men and the priorities of a male-dominated world. Really, there is little to choose, in attitude, between the knife and needle of the African genital cutter and the vacuum aspirator of the Western reproductive health worker or her contraceptive pills.
As our sense of female dignity is displaced by proprietary and pragmatic attitudes to the body, people in advanced societies find other good reasons for "cutting" and remodelling. This time last year the media was buzzing with reports about nine-year-old Ashley X, a disabled American girl who had her breast buds and womb removed -- and was put on high-dose hormone therapy -- at the request of her parents. They feared the complications of her maturing and wanted to keep her a little girl. More recently a British couple wanted their 12-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy to have her womb removed to save them all from the inconvenience of her menstruating. Doctors agreed then changed their minds after public controversy. The rationales for surgical intervention can sound compelling to our ears, but then so must the reasons for genital cutting to those attuned to a different story about the body.
Our story -- that the body it is a piece of property subject only to choice -- has assisted the widespread acceptance of cutting for trivial reasons. From being an isolated practice connected with female earrings, skin piercing has become a fad that has invaded the whole body. Cosmetic surgery, including breast augmentation, liposuction and tummy tucks, is performed on tens of thousands of perfectly healthy adolescents every year. Disturbed young people, in a culture where no-one's body is ever perfect enough, take to cutting and otherwise mutilating themselves.
The deliberate disfigurement and maiming of the female genitalia is horrible, inhumane and highly offensive to women's dignity, but at least it is on the decline as countries respond to international pressure to outlaw it and make their bans effective. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about our own dreary attempts to reinvent the female body.
Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.
Adebowale Oriku, of course your right.
David
David, I think this person, Sherlock, should be ignored. S/he’s getting things mixed up - s/he seems too clueless to be engaged with. In the same breath she described me as Westernised and couldn’t stop clucking about his/her worship of Europeans. The confused appeals to ‘we’ and ‘them’ in her/his comments are too infantile to be taken seriously.
Please David, ignore him/her.
Sherlock, whoever you are, what is the relation between female genital mutilation and abortion? I’m confused. You pretend to answer my question by asking a series of questions on an unrelated subject (I.E. abortion). Then you call me emasculated because I disapprove of mutilating women. Save me from your authentic masculinity. (whoever you are)
5) What is your opinion on the likelihood that babies before 26 weeks gestation can actually feel pain within the womb and therefore some babies aborted under 26 weeks gestation can in fact feel pain? Or don’t you care?
6) What is your opinion on the dramatic decrease in both legal and illegal abortion in Poland since Poland made it illegal for abortion to be procured for reasons other than rape/incest, foetal abnormality? (This clearly destroys the rhetoric from radical feminists and their effeminate male counterparts that abrogating the legality of abortion would lead to an increase in back street abortions)
7) What is your opinion on the fact that Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parent, outright stated it was her aim to lessen the Black American Population by placing as many Planned Parenthood mills within Black American neighbourhoods? (Is this not genocide?)
8) What is your opinion on the fact that that most Planned parenthood centres are in Black American areas, although Black America only make up 12% of America’s population and Black Americans have been documented to display higher levels of disapproval to abortion than white Americans?
I urgently hope you rethink your imperialistic and colonial attitude that you’ve put on show for all to see. Take the log out of the eye of the west before you point the speck in the eye of Africa.
Believe it or not, David Page, but there are many women who find ‘males’ with attitudes such as yourself effeminate and weak and are not flattered by your ‘support’ for women’s causes, I am one of these women along with many others (http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/whos_oppressing_who/P75/) .’Psychologically castrated males’ is a perfect term for men who spout such rhetoric and quite frankly I’m tired of it and am eager to see more men with authentic masculinity on this site.
David Page,
In answer to your question, I’m not in support of it. However, I wish Europeans such as yourself would decline on opining on the topic as you clearly know nothing on the topic, but are simply here to further your radical feminist/ progressive/ pro moral decadence causes which is already reaping destruction amongst your own lands. Clearly, colonialism isn’t dead within the west and clearly liberals are taking up that flag of oppressing and imposing your corrupt values upon the African continent.
Questions to you, David Page:
1) What is your opinion on the proven and documented facts on the mental and emotional harm women who have had abortions suffer from?
2) What is your opinion on the millions of western women who feel it is their right to end the lives of unborn children which they conceived through poor choices they’ve made, yet deny their childrens right to life?
3) What is your opinion on the numbers of children who are aborted at gestational periods at which they can actually survive?
4) What is your opinion on the clear discrimination towards people with disabilities that pro abortionists inadvertently expose? Is a child with Down syndrome of less value than an able bodied baby and therefore less worthy of granted the right to life? (Pro abortionists clearly follow this mode of thought as their eugenics fuelled reasoning is often cited for their belief that abortion should be a choice considering disabled children are undesirable).
Sherlock, what’s your position on female genital mutilation? Your post above is unclear.
Dave Page said:
“Nothing has changed. The Church doesn’t really trust women. Women cannot be priests”
Dave Page, I really wish you’d stop spouting such ignorance about religions you know nothing about. I’m a female yet support and fully defend the Catholic Church’s prohibition of female priests. If you knew the reasons behind the prohibition, you’d understand why.
There is nothing ‘sexist’ about it. Please educate yourself before you comment.
Dave Page said:
“Unfortunately, I think religion, in so far as it is a vehicle for the suppression of girls and women, is part of the problem. Most religious traditions simply don’t believe that women are the equals of men. Anyway, let’s agree that the brutal practice of female genital mutilation should end.”
Again, more ignorance. Try educating yourself on various cultures before you comment.
A Oriku, when you say abortion has become a norm would you object to my interpretation-
Is it natural for a child/ fetus to suddenly die???? Do the circumstances make the fetus any less a living organism? eg. one mother loves it the other hates it or loves herself more?
If it is or, according to what i am hearing you say, natural for a human baby to suddenly die, then because it is happening frequently and with widening acceptance by educated, civilized, socialized human beings then it has become a norm. It has become ‘right’. No, that’s going too far. May it’s not wrong, maybe it’s not right. What are you saying? Here I would like to say I am religious. If you don’t have absolute values and attribute the power of taking and giving life to a actual ‘Power’ then what is genocide but a very honest, practical means of controlling a ‘unwanted’, ‘inconvenient’ circumstance.
It’s a crime that any human being created in God’s image should suppose that we have the right to dictate another what to do, but in the end don’t the most agnostic, free-thinking among us say we are responsible to humanity in general to keep ‘balance’. Good God! What is balance to some if not popular thinking and carefully rationalized logic to support our selfish,comfortable ways of life which all end in death. Can any one of you reading this deny death will take us all? But how dare we bring it one one another so selfishly whether literally or spiritually/emotionally?
Love this site- it’s the best.
Although I believe that an abortion is not good enough for me personally I could not tell another one that she can not have one.
Had the likes of Andrea Yates had abortion their children would not have been born just to suffer at the hands of one of the people who were supposed to love them most. Abortion is not an answer but a very last resort. I think that women who know they either have NO desire to have children or are not mentally stable enough to raise a child without possibly harming, maiming, torturing or murdering him or her should seek permanent forms of birth control.
If we were all created ideally, women who would see their daughters for crack, or their sons for a car would be infertile and women who had love just oozing out of their pores for a child that may never be would be natural mothers.
However FGM is not biased, it is never good, it serves no purpose other than to cause blatant harm upon a little girl for no other reason than because she is not allowed to enjoy intercourse. How does one relate to the other?
Abortion is brutal, no doubt. But in comparison being FORCED by your parents to endure mutilation and shame for your gender is vastly different than making the ill reached decision to abort your embryo (as the majority of all abortions occur before the baby is a fetus). The latter requires a LOT more personal responsibility.
A Oriku, thanks.
Again the recital of the usual line regarding the importance of the woman’s rights and that the mother should be allowed to do whatever she wants with her body. This recital is ironic in the light of the comment made by
I agree with David Page in his remark that it is just too convenient to say that God owns a woman’s body because it then allows religious leaders to choose what they want to happen with it. Each woman, and man for that matter, is the owner of his or her body and makes their own free decisions about what they should do with it. But irony lies in the fact that on occasions some decisions are not made freely, but under pressure, or even worse, by court order. Where is the freedom in this? Where is the choice?
Further, where is the choice for the growing human in the womb. These arguments flying back and forth about equality...but as usual no mention of the rights of the child in the womb. It is apparent that some women see this job and this duty and service to mankind of carrying the child as a curse, but obviously there are no real alternatives (and I am not saying this in ignorance of test tube babies).
And you know what, I own my house, and I have decided that because I own absolutely every piece of it, and there is no other owner, even God cannot claim ownership of this, I have power over everyone who lives here to do as I please…
David Page, From my comments I guess it is apparent that when it comes to the issue of abortion I may choose to gather with the pro-choicers. This no doubt informs my opinions on abortion. Now if I have to repeat the riff: I do not see why a woman should not have the right to do anything - within reason - with what she is carrying inside her. Although my feelings about aborting a foetus might come across as breezy when I described it as an ‘aberration,’ I certainly would not be cavalier about the issue of abortion. Flippancy was not my intention. However, I meant ‘aberration’ in the simplest sense of that word. I would not use the word ‘anomaly’ because that would be too strong for something that is engaged in often willingly and for useful reasons. For one, I am not religious enough to describe abortion as a sin, and I am not reactionary enough to see it as a crime. And if I’d called it a norm, even my libertarian friends would have thought I’d gone beyond merely ruffling the cassocks of Catholic priests. There is no normalising abortion, I mean it’s something that should be avoided if that is possible. But considering the way millions of abortion are carried out every year, it’s even become a norm by default; but to satisfy those who would be only too happy to cruficy me if I declared it a norm I had chosen a midway house, a tolerable word that seems to slot itself sensibly between a norm and an enormity.
This is hardly a clear way of parsing the word ‘aberration’ in the context that I used it but I think this will do.
“. A mere textual reading of the word will do.”
no it won’t…
“I think abortion is more of a global aberration (it’s not a problem, actually), rather than that of the West only.”
Of course abortion is an aberration if by aberration you mean the definition given by David Page the expected norm is that a pregnancy be carried to term when an aberration is made by law into the norm like it is in many countries today then there is a problem. Abortion is a problem because people do no see it as an aberration.
Of course we all know that Abortions are done in Nigeria and I’m sure Nwachukwu knows that. But one thing is certain: in Nigeria it is punishable by law to procure an abortion or to carry it out despite the well organized lobbying especially in recent times by some organisations. To the Nigeria abortion is generally seen for what it really is a grave injustice.
The dimension Carolyn brings into the debate is that people are condemned (and rightfully so) for seeing an aberration as hideous as FGM. The same should also be the case for other aberrations like abortion
A Oriku, an aberration is a deviation from the expected norm. I would also like to know what you mean by it in the context that you used it.
Hi Ikenna. Would it not amount to professorial condescension if I began to explain the word aberration, even in the context that I used it? I’d rather you vent your own feelings about my usage of the word, for better or worse. Let’s not allow ourselves to be carried on the surf of Derridean casuitry. A mere textual reading of the word will do.
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