The reactionary left on FGM
Sarah Peace on the so-leftwing-it’s-rightwing idea that it’s colonialist to oppose FGM.
I was to find out that my brazen anti-FGM stance is ‘regurgitating the hideous colonial project that imposed itself on the rest of the world on a civilizing mission to rescue the women of the third world from its savage men’. The rationale I am told, is that even as a Nigerian born woman, I cannot speak for other less privileged Nigerian women, how much less, a white woman on behalf of ethnic minorities.
It was at Goldsmiths University that I came to witness this betrayal first hand, which ascribes brutality onto people from other places as part of culture but fashions itself so self-righteously.
Goldsmiths – well of course it was.
Goldsmiths, very much like SOAS seems to be the hotbed of this double standard reinforced by some academics and propagated by a faction of student activists. In December 2015, the feminist and LGBT societies at Goldsmiths left even their own members baffled by their decision to extend ‘solidarity’ to the Islamic society, whose members disrupted human rights campaigner Maryam Namazie’s lecture. They had deemed Namazie a ‘notorious Islamophobe’, for referring to the veil as ‘bin bags’. During the lecture, Namazie backed up her statement and reinforced the importance of continued opposition against traditions such as FGM which are an affront to women’s rights.
When probed on the matter, a representative of the Goldsmiths LGBT society responded that as a white person, she “cannot condemn FGM because of my colonial past.” Is this putative desire to carry the burdens of the past squarely on one’s shoulders echoed among feminists?
Some of them, yes. I wrote a furious post in 2008 about some on the Women’s Studies mailing list.
Back to Sarah Peace:
Germaine Greer once argued that attempts to outlaw FGM amounted to ‘an attack on cultural identity’, stating: “one man’s beautification is another man’s mutilation.” Greer was widely condemned, almost unanimously. Nearly 20 years on, some fields of study in academia including critical race and gender theory are reawakening the same argument albeit from a postcolonial perspective – the difference now being that a generation of ethnic minority students have themselves, bought into this defeating narrative. The narrative becomes upturned, and any cause that contravenes the ugly history of colonialism is one they would sign up to, regardless of the implications.
This pattern of taking an apologetic stance is increasingly expressed on the far-reaching left, reinforcing the idea that concerns of gender based violence become a separate issue to feminism if the perpetrator is brown or black. The issue is deemed as ‘their own problem’, inherent to their culture, which should be left to them.
Rather the way the Final Solution was the Jews’ own problem which should have been left to them, I suppose.
It is possible that lecturers are finding it increasingly difficult to swim against the wave of regressive thought endemic to courses in humanities, nevertheless students should be presented with the plural sides of the debate. There was no mention of African feminists who have dedicated their lives to banishing FGM, such as the [late] Ghanaian activist Efua Dorkenoo, who worked tirelessly for 30 years and pioneered the global movement to end the practice, along with Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi, a vocal abolitionist. In the diaspora, campaigners of African heritage include Mona Eltahawy, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Amal Farah, Nahla Mahmoud, Bogaletch Gebre, Alishba Zarmeen, Jaha Dukureh, Hibo Wardere, Salimata Knight, Mona Walter,Sainab Abdi, Leyla Hussein, Nimko Ali and many others too numerous to list.
Unlike veiling, FGM is not a category to which we can apply surplus doses of cultural relativism or justification by brandishing theories of orientalism and notions of colonial resistance. If we truly stand for universal human rights, we must demand better from our institutions.
Universal human rights of course are what lefties of the Goldsmiths type don’t stand for, and that’s what makes them so right wing under the left wing makeup.
You know, if there were not actual examples of people saying that to be white and to be opposed to FGM is a form of colonialism I would think it was made up by people on the right to discredit the left.
Why do we continue saying these people are on the left?
If a feminist, who happens to be white, who is at all critical in social media or blogs about the treatment of any women of color either abroad or in the west, she is heavily critisized for asserting her “colonialism” and “privilege” in not allowing these women to work out their issues with their own form of feminism (no one has demonstrated adequately in any way that there is a difference in either the goals or methods of a white woman’s versus a woman of color’s feminism…. except by using this artificial difference as a means to divide )
Then, if that same feminist, who happens to be white, writes nothing on her facebook page, other social media or blog regarding a current atrosity towards women of colour either in other nations and/or cultures or the west, she is heavily critisized and verbally abused once again for only caring about “‘white’ feminist concerns.
There is no way to win. The end result are women like those at Goldsmiths who find it far safer to embrace a so-called “feminism” that centers around individual autonomy and “empowerment”, rather than a political movement that seeks to free all women everywhere from the shackles of patriarchal culture, and ensure their equal rights. When one is critisized to the point of extreme abuse in the internet age by speaking out politically for women in general and their safety… which generally means speaking out against porn, prostitution, fgm, patriarchal religions, and eschewing cultural relativism… it is no wonder most young women take the safe route and become choosey-choice “personal empowerment” culturally relatavist “feminists” that put all issues, rights and indignities, mainly those of males, ahead of issues that negatively affect females the world over.
I know Johann Hari took a metaphorical pasting a few years back for some not entirely honest journalistic practices, but he’s spot on here, in this article about a Muslim woman who was subjected to a brutal acid attack:
“We ask nervously: isn’t it just their culture that women are treated differently? Isn’t it a form of cultural imperialism to condemn these practices? The only rational response is to ask: whose culture do you want to respect here? Shahnaz’s culture, or her husband’s? The culture of the little girls learning in a Kandahar classroom, or of the Taliban thug who bursts in and shoots their teacher? The culture of Amina Wadud, or of the misogynists protesting outside? Muslim societies are not a homogenous block – and it is racist to pretend they are.”
You can read the whole article here. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-dare-we-stand-up-for-muslim-women-969631.html (The description of the victim’s injuries, in the first paragraph, is pretty upsetting.)
Johann is often spot on. It was so sad that he threw a spanner into his own career, because he does excellent work.
I tried to read Hari’s latest book, and his indifference and laziness around issues of fact made me give up. But those faults were not the product of ideological insanity.
Dark-skinned men’s crimes are NEVER their fault. If Bush and Cheney can’t be blamed, let’s invoke ‘zionism’ as the root cause of everything. These people are beyond reason. Greer DID make an ass of herself, and was roundly called upon it. In the years since, we have overt censorship and deranged stalking directed an anyone who dares ‘trigger’ the Offended Classes.
Apparently ‘White’ people are genetically guilty and responsible for the colonialism and other crimes of their ancestors, what a load of racist crap.
@2 Bernard Hurley,
Excellent question. Perhaps the answer is because there’s not much of the progessive Left surviving in contemporary Western society, so the term is appropriated by anyone with an agenda.
RJW, not so much ancestors only. Colonialism continues economically, with international corporations treating poor countries as a source of natural resources and cheap labor with few regulations, or regulations they can buy their way around. Insofar as westerners buy oil from wells that are polluting Nigeria’s delta, palm oil from plantations from former rain forest areas, chocolate farmed with child labor, etc., we are still complicit in the exploitation.
#8 Samantha Vimes,
“we are still complicit in the exploitation.”
When we benefit materially, but not because of our ‘Whiteness”, which was the point I was making. The fact that I’m an ethnic NW European doesn’t (1) make me genetically complicit, or (2) somehow disqualify me from commenting on the aspects of the cultures of Third World countries that I find morally repugnant. We also have to be careful about the definition of ‘colonialism’ which, so far, only seems to apply to the behavior of Western corporations in developing countries. There’s the capitalist imperative, which doesn’t discriminate, corporations will also exploit people in the First World, when they can get away with it. All they need is a corrupt comprador class. Would the so-called left define the activities of Chinese companies in Africa as ‘neo-colonialist’?
I figure anyone who’s paying enough attention will find some aspect of _all_ cultures–including that allegedly mostly their own–repugnant. It seems to me, however, only to breed ethical paralysis to prescribe that, as long as there is anything lacking about those again deemed their own, they may comment on no other.
RJW @#9:
Also the Chinese subjugation and plunder of Tibet, the Indonesian subjugation, plunder and rape of East Timor and of West Papua, etc, etc, etc.
Europeans have been pretty adept at imperialism and colonialism, but they did not invent it.
Bodily autonomy is so passé.
@11Omar,
“Europeans have been pretty adept at imperialism and colonialism, but they did not invent it.”
Agreed. The idea of the West as the eternal super predator is very difficult to counter. Most civilisations, once they gained a technological/military advantage, exploited it and expanded. I wonder how much time the Indonesians, Chinese or Japanese give to the discussion of their 20th century or earlier imperialist histories, not much I’d bet.
@11, 13
Islam has been seen by some historians as largely Arab imperialism, most emphatically in its push westwards across the Middle East and northern Africa, with the familiar detour into Spain, and certainly its religio-cultural guise. Not to mention the Muslim slave trade in Africa and parts of Europe, certainly longer and by some measures larger and more brutal that the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
@14 Helene,
Yes, it’s remarkable how many people, academics as well, who really should know better (perhaps they do) ignore the fact that for 1000 years, Europe was the victim of Islamic imperialism. ‘It all started with the Crusades’ is a myth that should be busted.
RJW @#13:
The Reactionary Left (RL) is the bastard offspring of the Original Left (OL), which dates back at least as far as the time of the Roman gladiator-slave turned rebel leader Spartacus. Prior to him there were tribal wars galore, no doubt going back to the very dawn of prehistory, but Spartacus as far as I can tell led what was arguably the first in-its-own-right rebellion against power as an institution. (Perhaps it was not initially intended as such, but it was certainly headed in that direction.) That one has since served as a cause celebre and prototype rebellion for the Left generally.
But the RL has made two seriously fatal assumptions IMHO. The first is the old one: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend. ‘Capitalism’ is the traditional enemy, embodied by Wall St and the US Government; Islamists symbolically attacked all that via the 9/11 World Trade Centre atrocity in NYC. Ergo, Islamists and therefore the Islam they base themselves on, is on side, and a suitable ally. So a de facto Islamic institution like FGM gets not only a tick, but endorsement as solid as it needs to be from the RL, which arguably includes the likes of Germaine Greer.
The second fatal Left assumption is that power corrupts – except when the Left gets it. One needs look only to the history of the Russian Revolution of 1917 to see where that one leads. The Left got itself caught in the trap best identified by the historian Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus
http://www.acton.org/research/lord-acton-quote-archive
Omar@16
“the enemy of my enemy is my friend. ‘Capitalism’ is the traditional enemy, embodied by Wall St and the US Government;”
Yes, that’s a significant point, I agree. It’s a long tradition with the Left. During the 1930s various ‘progressives’ visited the Soviet Union and seemed blind to the totalitarian reality because the Soviets were ‘building socialism’. The next generation of ‘leftists’ worshipped Mao because he was “anti-imperialist”.
The other problem with today’s left is the tendency to shoehorn every political problem into neat ideological packages. ‘Racism’ i.e. Western racism, is designated as the underlying cause of all the modern world’s problems, it’s so intellectually lazy.
One “leftist” blog editor became tired of my constant scepticism in regard to the claim that Muslims were members of a race. He wrote “it’s settled, Islam is a race”. The sentence is grammatically incoherent of course, but I knew what he meant.
RJW:
Yes, I’d go along with that.
Islam is a race, Anglicanism is a race, Presbyterianism is a race; Buddhism is a race…
It’s not hard once you get the hang of it.
;-)
I think it’s worth addressing intentions as well as literal meanings. Although Islam is NOT a race, people who have names that suggest Muslim heritage or who “look the part” to people who hate them all suffer in the same way as victims of racism generally do. Indeed, wrath may be turned against a Sikh, any woman with a wrap on her head, or a Hispanic man who looks kind of foreign. Meanwhile, a white Muslim, provided they aren’t obvious about it, is unlikely to be scrutinized.
So yes, Islam is not a race, but actual Islamophobia– not criticism of the religion or politics involved, but an expressed fear of Islam in general and hatred of Muslims– is best described as racism because skin color is so much involved in who they think is Muslim.
I know that the leftists of the 90s would have called Chinese exploitation of less powerful countries colonialism or economic imperialism. At that time, multiculturalism hadn’t gone so bizarre… or instance, appreciating other cultures was considered good, not appropriation. I’m out of touch with the extremes of today.
Samantha:
Good points. Conflation of Islam with Muslims is a problem, mainly because it is so often done deliberately in order to foster confusion.
In my opinion, Muslims cannot be blamed for the religion that the overwhelming bulk of them were born into.
Islam, on the other hand is a religion: ie a creed based on certain underlying assumptions.
If a skyscraper was found to have rotten foundations, the occupants would be properly informed, and the building evacuated and duly demolished.
Islam is just such a skyscraper. It is the second largest religion in the world by number of adherents, but to my knowledge is the only one to prescribe the death penalty for religious offences like blasphemy and apostasy. That I take to be an indicator of its clerics’ lack of confidence in its doctrines and philosophy, and of their lack of confidence in its ability to withstand critical scrutiny.
It is in short, a terrible religion: one moreover that fosters intellectual stagnation wherever it takes root.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations
I agree with Samantha Vimes (#19). Islam is not a race but it is mapped onto racial/cultural features – often inaccurately, for example: mid brown skin, beard, often long, turban etc. Where I come from that more accurately describes men of the the Sikh community but you can’t expect intelligence or nuance from the people who peddle this type of racism.
And I’m getting a bit hacked off with the idea of “cultural appropriation” which, like so much modern left rhetoric, has been stretched so far beyond it’s original political meaning as to become a meaningless signifier. Especially when used by people who are addressing cultural fashions and practices with no understanding of their history or context. Let’s celebrate each others cultures, not wall them off behind barriers of purity and possession.
I fail to see how, as a white woman, dressing my hair in little plaits is materially affecting the well being of black women but I have heard this described as “cultural appropriation” because standards of western beauty are white and… something I failed to understand then and don’t now.
@ Ophelia
Great article as usual – though I think the Jewish analogy is inaccurate. The Final Solution was not something imposed on Jews by other Jews but by a more powerful culture they were not considered a part of.
Goldsmiths seems to have a group of student activists drawn from the loonier extreme of the modern left. I imagine this is a self reinforcing situation – like minded extremists recruited, moderates forced out etc.
The only thing I hope is that much of this is part of young people trying on identities and belief systems – a normal part of teen/young adult development – and they will grow out of it/have it knocked out of them as they get older.
I agree with Samantha Vimes (#19). Islam is not a race but it is mapped onto racial/cultural features – often inaccurately, for example: mid brown skin, beard, often long, turban etc. Where I come from that more accurately describes men of the the Sikh community but you can’t expect intelligence or nuance from the people who peddle this type of racism.
I find it odd that White people tread every so lightly when criticism of Islam is called for merely because most of its adherents are non-White.
The vast, VAST majority of Christians are non-White as well, but that hasn’t stopped critics of Christianity having a go at its theological tenets with full guns blazing, has it.
For example, I’ve often criticized the Roman Catholic Church, but no one has ever accused me of being ‘Latinophobic’ for doing so.
People counter this with a big ‘YES BUT’ by arguing that Christianity was a vehicle for White colonialism and imperialism, all the while conveniently ignoring the fact that Islam was the vehicle, par excellence, of Arab colonialism and imperialism.
That the vast majority of Christians are now non-White echoes the fact that the vast majority of Muslims, too, are now non-Arab.
Imperialism is as imperialism does.
It would seem, then, that both deserve an equally robust critique. To portray criticism of Islam as being somehow racist, as out of bounds as many clueless progressives do, is tantamount, then, to aiding and abetting the current upsurge in Arab imperialism, a very privileged and assertive imperialism that is oppressing millions of people, and which is backed by trillions in oil revenue.
FGM is gaining ground.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/us/genital-cutting-cases-seen-more-as-immigration-rises.html?_r=0
I think it’s partly that local or national context =!= global context, maybe? Islam is of course just as much a crock of shit as xtianity or any other religion; if I want to talk about it, though, it’s still important for me to consider the EDL-ridden context in which I’m speaking. And maybe that’s why it’s all the more important to point as much as possible towards voices like Namazie’s, I guess.
To be fair (though I’m fine with being corrected), Islam itself doesn’t require FGM it’s just the continuation of the existing practice amongst cultures that are now predominately Islamic that is. These cultures come from places where brown people are either the majority or the entire population, so the conflation of acceptance of FGM and anti-racism is the real problem.
Genital mutilation of parties that cannot give consent is unacceptable, regardless of cultural context. Girl children especially, but of course boy infants as well.
I’m left wondering how far the Goldsmiths logic goes. White people can’t criticise FGM because that’s racist. Black people can’t, because that’s regurgitating the colonialist project (whatever the hell that means). Who else is going to be barred from launching a criticism?
What’s left, then, is a situation in which the only people who’re allowed to criticise FGM are those who practise it.