FGM, Culture and Controversy

Female Genital Mutilation or Female Circumcision is a topic that is really hard for me to talk about definitively. The problem is that there are a lot of facts that should be taken into account, but at the same time the practice is so polarizing because of the emotional factors involved that these facts are hard to take at face value. I don't really feel like I'm getting at what I'm trying to express, so I'm just going to get into some examples and at times point to how they relate to the texts.

A good place to start is the name of the practice, specifically the fact that it has two commonly used names. Both names are incredibly loaded, so much so that you can pretty much tell someones stance on the issue by how they refer to the practice. I mean FGM just sounds terrible, how could mutilation ever be a good thing? On the other hand Female Circumcision compares the practice to male circumcision, which is a practice of tradition or personal (read: parental) preference with no real implications for the male. I think that both names get at truths located within the issue, but neither really do the issue full justice. For example, if you look at both articles, they both are basically against FGM and both articles have the term mutilation appear first (and in larger text) than circumcision. In fact, the only reason I feel the Bergner article uses the term Female Circumcision at all is in attempt to show non-bias in reporting. The Maple family is always quoted as referring to the practice as FGM. I was kind of surprised when both of the readings were essentially against FGM, i expected one to be in support of it to illustrate both perspectives.

Another issue I have with the FGM/Female Circumcision debate is how the debate seems to be drawn down a line of different academic schools. As suggested in the Daily article, Anthropologists are the primary supporters of Female Circumcision using the argument of cultural relativism. Its a hard argument to make and I'm sure that I'm making some anthropologists fairly upset by generalizing them in with the rest of the anthropologists. But basically an anthropologist looks at Female Circumcision as a cultural tradition and exists within its own value system and to someone outside that value system the practice may seem unethical, however that is simply because those people are acting under a different set of values. And it would be unfair to judge Female Circumcision under a set of values under which it did not originate. On the other side, sociologists are often more critical of FGM due to the practice seeming to promote masculinity and act out a systematic violence towards females.

I take issue with both of these arguments. First of all, cultural relativism has never been an anything goes theory, it does have some conditions. One of those involves human rights, which could quite possibly be being violated here, that is definitely up to interpretation. However, to suggest that our own culture has no history or even current examples of similar practices being acted out towards women is just incorrect. These instances do exist in our past so we do have some sort of cultural comparison and are capable of making a judgement that is not completely bias in this case. Perhaps that has yet to be established, but it is a possibility. On the other side, the sociological arguments make sense, but you're also assuming that all women desire the same thing. There are many different flavors of feminism, and assuming that FGM is a bad thing based on your own brand of feminism does not necessarily mean that the women who have had this done to them feel the same way.

All of that being said, if I had to choose a side it would fall against the practice of FGM/Female Circumcision. However, I think that the best way to deal with the problem would be to improve medical care, education and other aspects that would improve the quality of life in the areas where it still exists.

Film Series Responce - Miss India Georgia

Miss India Georgia is a documentary that follows the lives of four girls of Indian heritage participating in the Miss India Georgia beauty pageant. This pageant exists specifically for women of Indian decent living in Georgia. The biggest question, for me, that this documentary raised is what are the effects, both intended and unintended, of having such a pageant.

The intended effects were rather hard for me to figure out, I think primarily because I'm not a big fan of beauty pageants. I understand there is an argument to be made that they are empowering women, but I honesty think that it is a fairly weak argument. Part of that is because it seems that most women that participate or are involved in pageants who appear in the video media don't come off as appearing very intelligent and are portrayed as having, what I would consider to be, "shallow" values. Though if I attempt to put these biases aside I can see that the goal of the Miss India Georgia pageant could be to promote acceptance and awareness of Indian culture in the Georgian community. Also, it allows for strong Indian women to be recognized in a public sphere where they might not typically be granted this opportunity.

The unintended effects were what really dominated my concerns about the pageant. It did not seem that the pageant was actually promoting awareness of their own culture for the girls who were participating. Rather, they were only concerned with winning. So really the values that the pageant was possibly designed to promote were not actually coming through in the girl's themselves. Also, having a separate pageant from the statewide competition sends an underlying message that these girls are different and do not measure up with normal beauty pageant participants. This only reinforces the sentiments that these girls experience every day at school according to their testimony in the documentary.

Overall I found the documentary fairly concerning. Yes a few of the girls seemed to understand on some level the circumstances surrounding their social interactions, but I do not feel that the pageant was an overall positive force in their lives or was even helpful in widening their perspective or understanding.

Mohanty

In the paper we read for class today Mohanty works to justify the third wave in a different way than we've discussed so far.

Mohanty's concern lies in the universal nature, she claims, that western feminists see the world. She sees that the feminist acknowledgement of the world wide oppression of women as a form of colonialism. This is because, in doing this, these women are homogenized across their gender, culture and class.

I think what this really gets down to is a similar argument that we've seen from hooks, Davis and other black feminists but set on a global stage and using a more anthropological approach. Not that I would want to generalize here and make the same mistakes the article warns against. It is just sometimes easier to draw comparisons when offering a simplified explanation.

As far as there being a global sisterhood, I think that Mohanty would be guarded against any such claims. She would assume this belief would take on similar characteristics of other western feminist campaigns and end up marginalizing the women the collation was claiming to include and support.

Angela Davis

I was actually pretty excited when I heard Angela Davis would be speaking at Willamette. She's pretty cool and very outspoken. We usually don't get speakers as "controversial" as Angela. Before she spoke, we read and discussed an interview and a selection of her auto-biography. A lot of what we read and discussed touched on facts that I already knew about Angela Davis.

-She was a part of the 3rd wave feminist, specifically the black feminist movement. So she was concerned with not generalizing the female population and its diverse issues. That the feminist movement must broaden its horizons and realize that it must respond to a greater number of issues. In other words the movement must not shy away from complexity, after all feminism is a complex issue. (I really don't like referring to feminism as an issue, I think it's misleading, and makes you sound like you're taking sides. I prefer to think of it as a perspective, I'll probably talk about that a lot in this blog.)

-She also held communist beliefs and taught at UCLA. However, this was very controversial and Californian government officials, including Governor Regan, tried to stop her from teaching.

-She was associated with people involved in some violent civil rights acts, I think someone was even killed, and she was arrested and spent over a year in prison after being charged with being an accomplice. There were national/world wide campaigns advocating for Angela's release.

So these were the things I did know, but one thing that she talked about in her interview was her childhood.

-Angela's parents were both very politically active and were members of the communist party themselves. In fact there were times at which they had to go into hiding. Also, she grew up during the McCarthy era and attended a progressive New York school that even taught Marx without anti-Communist sentiments. This background information really gave me a better context for the rest of Angela's life, the things I already knew a little about.

When I went to Smith Auditorium to see Angela speak there was a large line outside even though I had elected to show up 1/2 an hour early. It was pretty cool to see so many people there, looking around at the audience it was possible that there were even more visitors than Willamette students. That kind of surprised me a little, not because so many people would come to see Angela Davis, but because more people didn't come to see her speak. I mean I've been to a few MLK celebrations in Smith in the past and they are not always so exciting, but this is Angela Davis, I can't think of a better known speaker that has come to Willamette. I guess that she may be less known to people my age as most of her newsworthy activity happened well before I was born.

She started out talking a lot about the civil rights movement, which honestly wasn't that exciting. I think she felt the need to pay tribute to MLK which is understandable. While history is important and always relevant to what's happening today, I definitely didn't come to hear Angela just give a history lecture. Fortunately she soon transitioned into talking about prison structures. Her set up was pretty typical, and mostly based in her structural philosophy. She noted as well that military structures function in a similar way, drawing comparisons between the two structures. They target low income people with few options but to turn to crime or join the military. They also are involved with large amounts of capital and are privatized in order to generate profit. They are seen as necessary structures in our society and are not usually criticized of being oppressive structures. The similarity to slavery was distressing.

I think this is where she got to the theme of her speech, maybe it was slightly before this, I don't remember exactly, "Justice is Indivisible." Which is a fairly obvious concept but really applies to what she is talking about. We often turn a blind eye to prisons and the military and don't really acknowledge that they are unjust institutions. In fact we accept that they are necessary and that they must exit. This gets kind of crazy when you look at how incarceration rates have grown so rapidly. I mean to think that we really need to be locking this much of our population up, that this is the only option, is a little scary when you realize it was not that long ago that we had significantly less people behind bars. Clearly there must have been some better solution that we've forgotten about, as it is now it seems pretty dysfunctional.

She went on to give a really interesting anecdote about coal miners in Columbia who were having their land taken away from them. I guess by interesting I meant terrible and really sad, but it was interesting how interconnected it all was and how it related to this injustice that we just don't acknowledge.

When she got to questions I was pretty nervous, usually when speakers come people just ask the worst questions. Really they are just talking and stating their opinion, but fortunately this time there were some pretty good ones and Angela became even more animated and gave some pretty candid responses that were really awesome. I think that a lot of what she was saying during her talk, she was kind of censoring herself, but she let a little of that go during Q&A. Here were some highlights:

-She talked about victims of structural racism and accountability, which is always something that I have a hard time figuring out. In a nutshell she says that we shouldn't ignore accountability, but we must also keep in mind that some individuals have a vast terrain of choices and other have a much more limited terrain.

-On Obama she said that it is possible to be critical of some things but be supportive of others. I thought this was a much more productive way of looking at the presidency than he's doing a good/bad job. It also goes to the idea that we need to encourage complexity rather than simplicity.

-Prison is the default solution to all of our problems we should be dealing with substantively.

Anyways, Angela Davis is so cool and has definitely been the best speaker that's come to Willamette that I've seen.

A blog

Sorry I'm a little late in getting this started. I had been taking notes in my journal and was putting off getting this going and transferring my writing to this space.

Here I will record my thoughts, responses and reactions to different feminist voices that we will encounter throughout the semester. I'll try to keep things exciting and creative.