It didn’t stop there
Chapter 2 of the ‘I’m more postcolonialist than you’ follies.
Another respondent:
Why do feminists still have to analyze everything using the concept of ‘oppression?’ Why are -you- using the term as though everything feminist has to be talked about in terms of oppression. There are times when that’s okay, but there are other times when it is not…When feminists label some kinds of behaviour problematic, by naming them oppressive, for instance, they may be putting other women into situations which could be dangerous for them, or which could at least change the course of their lives, and not always favourably, if they decided to act on this new way of perceiving it. What should be respected is the fact that not all women will be able to make positive change in their lives…For starters, referring to female genital cutting as mutilation is a value judgement. Call it FGE. If the genitals are severely mutilated, thats another thing.
When feminists label some kinds of behaviour problematic, they’re doing various things to other women. Uh…yes. And? That is, obviously, always the case with any kind of suggestion or campaign or movement for social change. Abolitionists may have been putting slaves into situations, union organizers may have been putting workers into situations, anti-apartheid campaigners may have been putting South African blacks into situations. That’s always true, and it is as well to be careful. The protests in Kenya over an allegedly stolen election have gone in a very bad direction and I would not at the moment jet off to Kenya to fire people up for more protests. But is it therefore a general principle that no harmful practice should be called a harmful practice because it’s always safer just to let things be? Well, not for the young girls who get their genitals sliced off it’s not!
‘Referring to female genital cutting as mutilation is a value judgement.’ Yes indeed it is, and that is exactly why I and others do it. We’re making a value judgement: chopping off female genitalia is mutilation, it’s bad, it should stop. No I damn well won’t call it FGE: ‘excision’ is the right word to use for a tumor, not for a normal set of genitals. As I rather heatedly said on the list, calling FGM ‘excision’ is like calling footbinding orthopedic surgery. And I’m not going to call it FGE if it’s just a little bit of mutilation – I’m not going to save ‘FGM’ for severe mutilation. I don’t think mild genital mutilation is okay or that it deserves a pass or a dang euphemism.
And more from the first respondent, the one from ‘Ethnocentric feminism’:
I will note that I was careful to add two citations to my response, the James and Robertson volume, as well as Mohanty’s famous essay (and now body of work) on the problematic application of Western feminist concepts, frameworks, and analyses to non-Western locations…Both of these sources and collection of authors are very careful to make nuanced, complicated claims about both Western feminism and female genital surgeries, rather than the broad-brush condemnations of the latter or caricatures of their critique of Western feminism that have dominated the discussion on this list thus far.
You see, Mohanty’s essay is famous (and now it’s a body of work), therefore it’s important. This is the classic argument from celebrity that is all too familiar to those of us who follow the antics of the trendy. They love to tell us how famous their heroes are – the famous Judith Butler tells us how famous Derrida is, and acolytes everywhere tell us how famous Judith Butler is. Then when they’ve finished doing that they tell us how nuanced and sophisticated the famous work of all these famous people is. They never manage to reproduce or imitate any of the nuance or sophistication, they just keep endlessly waving at it. Very careful, very nuanced, very unlike ‘the broad-brush condemnations’ of – of what? Of female genital surgeries? Surgeries? Excision wasn’t euphemistic enough, now we’re talking about surgeries? When the vast majority of them are nothing of the kind, when the vast majority of them are performed with a pair of scissors and no anaesthetic? Surgeries?
It’s scary, isn’t it?
Indeed, critique of problematic moves in Western feminism should be allowable without it being equated with total dismissal of Western feminism, just as the critique of female genital surgeries should be allowable in a register other than self-righteous moralizing condemnation that seeks to rank the relative measure of women’s oppression in the world, “modern industrialized countries” always (unsurprisingly) coming out on top in this type of analysis…
Good point, excellent point, except for one tiny thing: nobody was seeking ‘to rank the relative measure of women’s oppression in the world’; yet again, that’s just self-righteous bullshit. This particular writer (she wrote all the nonsense in ‘Ethnocentric feminism’ too, as I mentioned) specializes in silly hyperbolic inaccurate depictions of claims that never were. Another tiny detail is that no one said anything about ‘modern industrialized countries’ coming out on top, either.
As many within the literature on transnational feminisms have also shown, the contest to prove some cultures or places or religious communities as “more” oppressive toward women than others is one of many longstanding ways of measuring savagery and barbarism more generally, and was a common strategy used to justify colonialism (e.g., “just look at how they treat their women!”).
Yes…we know imperialists often condemned practices that involved women (like sati for instance, and they were right, even if not all of their reasons were), that is not a newsflash, but so what? Does it follow that contemporary feminists are being imperialist in calling FGM FGM rather than ‘excision’ or (pardon me while I swear) ‘surgery’? No it does not. The ‘feminists’ who call FGM ‘surgery’ are being soft-headed at best and conceitedly self-serving at worst.
Speaking personally, I thought I was quite careful to make specific and nuanced claims which, in this previous email at least (see below), were chopped up (another kind of “cutting”?) to suit the poster’s polemical purposes of caricaturing me as advocating for a nihilistic world wherein nothing – not even hierarchy and women’s oppression – means anything anymore.
That was me – I chopped up the ‘nuanced claims’ – that is to say, I excerpted them, with ellipses to show where the cuts were, in the usual way when one quotes someone else. Yet our commenter is so vain and so self-obsessed and so self-important that she apparently thinks it’s droll to pretend that my excerpting something she wrote is the same kind of thing as an adult gouging out a child’s clitoris and cutting off her labia. She wants me and others to talk of female genital surgeries, as she does, instead of female genital mutilations, yet she’s not embarrassed to compare excerpting from something she wrote (while the original remains in the archive and everyone’s Inbox as opposed to being thrown in the garbage like the child’s bleeding pieces of flesh) with the carving up of a child’s crotch. That’s what I call a healthy sense of priorities!
I am surprised by the responses to my original post, which I thought was a fairly mundane (and even rather dated) argument in the feminist literature; moreover, I am stunned at the level of anger and defensiveness on this issue. If such critiques are still this threatening to the USAmerican feminist establishment, there is much to be worried about. It seems to me a more appropriate response to positions about which we feel strongly, but which have nevertheless been demonstrated by a substantial body of non-Western feminists and feminists of color to be problematically racist or colonialist, is (at a minimum) interest, curiosity, openness, (self-)reflection, and thoughtfulness.
Hmmmmmmmmyeah, except maybe when it’s been presented in such a preeningly self-satisfied yet energetically prosecutorial way, we don’t actually feel all that interested and thoughtful, we feel more like repelled and incredulous and deeply alarmed that this buffoon actually teaches.
F.m.g. is a value judgement of course it bloody is! people that engage in this practice are barbarians and should be refered to as such, give em hell O.B.
Hello, children. Today we’re going to talk about privilege.
Can you say “privilege”?
I knew you could!
Now… Who can tell me how many post-modern Theory-mongers grew up in poverty conditions, or even blue collar families?
…
No one? Are you sure? Are you all having trouble thinking of even one person who says the word “Theory” with a capital “T” who isn’t a child of privilege?
That’s okay, children. It was a trick question. There aren’t any.
And now let’s visit the Land of Make-Believe, where horrible mutilations never occur and everyone is happy and equal…
People like this will never make anyone’s life better; except their own, when they get tenured at some ‘fashionable’ college. They have turned the notion of a critique of ‘Imperialist’ values into an excuse to make rhetorical claims that specifically exclude the potential for meaningful recognition of shared subjectivity – even at the most basic level, where we can acknowledge fellow-creatures as susceptible to pain.
Yet one wonders how many of them are vegetarians, or even more militant opponents of the denial of animals’ ‘rights’?
Incidentally, the piece on Zizek [can’t do diacriticals] on the front page – is the author saying that there is a kernel of meaning beneath this preposterous poseur’s ramblings? His thesis as stated is hardly new; authoritarian action for the ‘public good’, as judged by some class of philosopher-kings, presumably. Rather the sort of thing which, if said out loud, would lead people to call you a fascist…
The tip off was in your first post, when this person used the word “problematize.” That’s a sure sign of academic gobbletygook to come.
When the dust settles, the question is whether we really ought to think it’s OK to cut off the genitals of your girls. Well, let’s see, should we cut off their right hands? Cut out their tongues? What can you cut off, and what is just off limits? I think cutting off genitals is off limits. If I worry a lot about sounding too colonialist- imperialist-blah-blah then I wind up colluding with bad people who want to control women by stealing their sexuality. These oh-so-careful academic feminists should be bothered by that.
All that being said…sure, it’s a good idea to try to enter into the perspective of the culture. What does it feel like to be them? It would be arrogant not to care. From what I’ve read, it doesn’t feel to them like stealing and abusing and all that. So a dialogue would certainly have to be conducted with “nuance.”
As for the word–if two people are going to talk about something, they have to have a common vocabulary. I’m not going to debate the ethics of “partial birth abortion” because that language predetermines the outcome. So if someone wants to defend FGM, they will naturally not want the M to stand for “mutilation.” I suggest a compromise. Let’s keep the M. For me it means “mutilation.” For defenders of the practice it means “modification.”
I’m leery of acronyms that expand differently depending on who is speaking, especially as it may not be clear who is an opponent and who a proponent of FGM. ‘Female genital cutting’ might work as an alternative; there’s no value judgement inherent in the phrase but because ‘cutting’ is a more concrete term than ‘mutilation’, it has more of an impact at least on me. (Abbreviated to FGC, however, it could be taken to refer to circumcision, which we obviously don’t want.)
It does fill you with a kind of despair, the kind that sighs “where do I start?” when trying to point out all the offences against rational thought, common sense and civilised prose that this kind of academic writing commits. And that stupid, pointless punning that you get in such writing – does she think it actually means anything in that context?
But I think we ought to keep the value judgment; it is a mutilation and (I think) it ought to be called a mutilation.
I know, about the ‘where do I start?’…That would explain why that post got so long (and yet barely scratches the surface).
You can really tell the sort of person you’re dealing with here from that last paragraph you quote – ‘gosh, how telling your hostility to my position is, nudge nudge, wink wink’, Freud would be proud.
I make exactly the same value judgment you do, but do we really have to embed the judgment in the very word we use to refer to the practice? I mean, abolitionists called slavery “slavery” just like people who wanted to preserve it. A value-neutral term for “FG?” wouldn’t stop people from condemning it.
There’s something a little annoying about packing arguments into words, so that nobody can even have a discussion without implicitly buying into certain judgments. Arguments should be out in the open, not insidiously packed into words. That seems insidious, like the goal is to creep into people’s way of thinking about things. It’s insidious to talk about “partial birth abortion,” for example.
So if there were a neutral word, I’d probably use it. With that word, I’d continue to say very “judgmental” things about “FG?”–despite all the accusations of colonialism and imperialism…which I must say, I find very amusing.
I’m not sure this argument is really about imperialism anyway – I read it as being analogous to the question of prostitution (or even stripping or pornography), most prostitutes don’t want to be prostitutes and are forced into it by circumstances, but a minority of women claim that it is an empowering positive choice, and perhaps for a minority that is even true.
But just because a small minority of women find it empowering that doesn’t overule the suffering of all the other women who’d really rather not do it thanks very much.
i.e. some people will pick up on the strident views of a minority and then act as if that represents everyone because it makes them feel all transgressive and radical.
Hmmmm. I don’t like insidious smuggling either, in fact I spend a lot of time pointing it out, but is that what this is…? I think it’s just accurate rather than insidious or even tendentious. Is it insidious that footbinding was called footbinding? (It could have been called something far more drastic – footbreaking would be more accurate, really.)
I don’t know…I can’t help wondering…if there were a common ‘cultural’ practice somewhere of cutting off young boys’ penises, would there be a neutral word for the practice?
PM, yes, some people did talk about the issue as one of agency, but the stuff about imperialism colonialism orientalism was the more common and central one. Some people combined the two in a fairly incoherent way.
As in the comment I left on the other post?
“‘yes, you’re right that practice is very bad, but by pointing out that it is bad you reveal that you are in fact an evil cultural imperialist, which is worse’.”
Which as a position is not even coherent, at least the agency argument makes sense as an argument.
Not 100% relevant to anything, but this passage from wikipedia is interesting–
“Castrati were rarely referred to as such: in the eighteenth century, the term musico (pl musici) was much more generally used, though it usually carried derogatory implications[1]; another synonym was evirato (literally meaning “unmanned”).”
Important parts of the male genitalia actually were once, er, excised. The example actually shows something interesting. Even if you choose a purely descriptive, accurate term (“castrati”) it acquires a very unpleasant aura from what it refers to. So apologists will always look for another, and another term.
Jean what is wrong with the term p.b.a it acurately describes the practice that it refers to as does f.g.m.
Richard,
“Partial birth abortion” strikes me as tendentious, not descriptive, because women give birth to babies, and it’s highly controversial whether what’s aborted even at that late stage is a baby.
One other consideration as far as nomenclature goes–I think “female genital mutilation” may very well be a phrase that’s offensive to victims of the procedure. That’s what a recent handbook in gynecology says, without defending the procedure. The victims are not keen on thinking of their genitals as “mutilated”–which is aesthetically pejorative. This is a consideration that has nothing to do with all that poppycock about colonialism and imperialism. I had never thought about it from that angle when I read the handbook.
Jean my understanding is that the baby is born apart from the head with p.b.a so how is it cotroversial to refer to the practice as partial birth? I think your distaste for the term comes from the fact that anti abortion zealots have used this term to great effect(mainly in the U.S)to restrict abortion that does not make the term inacurate. I also dont think that the victims of f.g.m should define the terms we use to describe the practice.
I think if we are agreed that its a horrible violation of the human rights of every person its done to, I will be content with any term. When some slime-ball wishes to smuggle that fact out of the discussion, the term becomes important.
I suggest that framing the act in language that has lower moral condemnation, can allow the thing to be discussed with ‘stakeholders’. When apologists and perpetrators are to be persuaded, the activists morally-loaded language precludes finding common ground from which to move forward.
If one could just mandate death or jail for perpetrators, no common ground would be needed.
“If one could just mandate death or jail for perpetrators,”
I am totally against the death penalty. Countries who have this mandate should abolish it. What good would going to jail do to these people? Upon release would they not do the same things over again.
Education, in my estimation, in the long run, is all that counts!
In principle, of course, if people want to have this procedure done that’s fine. In practice, as various B&W articles have shown us, it is performed on young girls without any consideration of consent. We could presumably offer the cultural relativists the compromise of banning it for anybody under 18…
A bit off-topic, but relating to the last quoted passage in Ophelia’s piece. Can anyone explain to me why it is all right (or should I say de rigeuer) to use the expression “people of colour [color]”, whereas if someone says “coloured people” (at least in the UK) it is taken as evidence that the person is culturally insensitive (at best), or an indication of racist inclinations (at worst)?
No. At least not in terms of anything strictly rational. I think it’s just arbitrary albeit based on genuine historical associations. ‘Coloured people’ just does have the association that it was the somewhat disdainful term in the pre-Civil Rights movement past. It was more arms-lengthy than the approved ‘Negroes’ then, while not being as hostile as various other epithets (the ‘j word’ as well as the n word). People of colour is post-Civil Rights and thus its intentions are different, and seen to be different, so that’s why it’s acceptable. It’s irrational in the sense that the meanings are identical, but not irrational in the sense that the connotations are genuinely different. I wouldn’t say ‘coloured people’ (it would be too much an echo of a racist relative, for one thing) – but then I wouldn’t say ‘people of colour’, either: it sounds unendurably pious.
“In principle, of course, if people want to have this procedure done that’s fine.”
I wouldn’t go that far. If people wanted to have their penises cut off, would that be fine? No, I think if people want to have this procedure done there should be all sorts of asking why and what is going on here before anyone blithely goes ahead and chops. Apart from anything else who is going to do it? Medical practitioners, surely – and they are bound by an oath that says first do no harm. People (meaning, women) who actually want FGM are in a category similar to people who want to have limbs amputated, and that is a very controversial subject. Some doctors are willing to do the amputations in certain circumstances, but not cheerily the moment they’re asked, and they don’t claim that it’s ‘fine,’ they cautiously say that it seems to provide relief for people with very intractable cases of body dysmorphic disorder.
[…] It didn’t stop there […]