Female Circumcision and its Abolition - Research Paper Example

? Female Circumcision and its Abolition of Female Genital Mutilation refers to the introduction of changes to the genetic parts of a woman. This is practiced in many parts of Africa and in many Muslim societies where it has now become a part of the traditions of this society. This paper shall seek to look at the different aspects of female genital mutilation and the relations of power that it is connected with. It shall do so through analyses of the legal and social aspects of it. In doing so, the paper shall mostly adopt a feminist approach towards the issues at hand. The paper shall also at times adopt a postcolonial approach to demonstrate the different forces that affect the creation of social forces the way they are. The paper shall, in the ultimate analysis, denounce the practice of female genital mutilation as it is a corrupt practice that impinges on the freedom of women. It shall look at the views of various theorists of Female Genital Mutilation. It shall also look at theorists like Michel Foucault, Amartya Sen, Edward Said and Ngugi wa Thiongo so as to understand the sociological and symbolic, economic, cultural and postcolonial aspects of the problem that Genetic mutilation presents. The problem, finally, needs a holistic solution that shall talk of the need to delink power from sexuality as much as possible. It shall also argue for an altered means of production in postcolonial societies. This is what shall lead to freedom, sexual and economic. Female Circumcision and its Abolition Female circumcision is practiced in many cultures across the world. There are many reasons that are often advanced in favor of this practice and many of them are considered to stem from customary practices of a particular community. However, there are several aspects of this issue that make this situation a complex one. An analysis of this issue needs to take into account what is religiously sanctioned and what is the result of customs that are peculiar to a certain community. For this purpose, it is important to note the differences that arise in different communities that practice circumcision. It also becomes necessary to look at the importance of the differences between the practices of female and male circumcision to understand the impact that patriarchy has upon the custom. This institution has persisted in times of modernity as well. This modernity was inspired largely by European notions of the same. Discussions into the practice of female circumcision shall also lead to a discussion of this modernity. Since much of these notions were introduced into non-European cultures through the process of colonization, it is also important to analyze the impact of colonization on the processes of the culture formation in nations that were erstwhile colonies. The persistence of this phenomenon despite the introduction of so many changes to the culture of a place speaks volumes about the entrenched quality of patriarchy in these parts of the world. The phenomenon of genital mutilation can thus be linked to patriarchy and the protests against it can be looked at through a feminist perspective. This may seem like a very obvious point but it needs to be made. This is because it enables one to employ feminist perspectives to critique the practice of genital mutilation. These perspectives would enable one to present one’s critique in a systematic fashion. This paper shall attempt to do so and argue in this context that corrupt practice such as circumcision of Muslim women should be abolished. Female Genital Mutilation and the Youth of a Nation One of the most important aspects of the abolition of female circumcision is the fact of it happening through the youth of a nation. This would fuel a larger change in the society where it happens by effecting a collective change that would lead to not just legal changes but also to changes in the mentalities of people (Palmieri and Mottin-Sylla, 2011). The change in female circumcision needs to come through a radical change in the mentalities of people. This cannot come through a change of heart that a certain person may experience in a sudden moment of epiphany. Individual and Collective Responsibility This moment may never arrive in the consciousness of a person. However, even if it arrives, it would be an individual change. This would not be sufficient to change certain realities that are a part of the social fabric which has seeped into the unconscious of the collective society. There is thus a need to analyze how the change occurs. This also needs to look at whom the change shall come from. The revolution thus stays at the level of an individual one. The very fact that circumcision is done at a stage where the individual is not old enough to decide certain aspects of his or her own body points to the depth to which the cultural sign has percolated to. There is thus a need to analyze how the change occurs. This also needs to look at whom the change shall come from. The aspect of the youth gaining certain forms of knowledge regarding the regressive nature of female circumcision also has a lot to do with the fact that when a child is circumcised, its parents are likely to be at a young age (in most cases). Their awareness regarding the choices that are to be offered a child shall be vital in deciding the speed at which the circumcision of children can be abolished. Female Genital Mutilation and World Orders This has implications for the ways in which patriarchal societies work and the symbols that the work through. The patriarchal notions that the society is invested with can be erased and abolished only is there is a certain cohesion to the resistance that is offered. For this, a concerted action needs to arrive from the youth of a society and culture. While this shall lead to a great deal of opposition from the old order of that very society, it is important to see the larger picture. This larger picture requires that genital mutilation in women is not a part of the society. Female Genital Mutilation and Freedoms The empowerment of the youth of a nation also leads one to see the fact that certain freedoms need to be given to individuals and groups so as to enable them to reach a developed state of being. The importance of this can be understood once one takes a look at Amartya Sen’s ideas of freedom and development. What is done through female circumcision is a limiting of the sexual freedom that a person has. This has implications upon the other aspects of that person’s life as well. This includes a sense of self-sufficiency that may affect the economic freedoms of the woman as well. This would then hamper the growth of the state into a better and more developed one. This view that Amartya Sen holds changes the very paradigms of economic development that are held in the modern world. Sexual unfreedom then becomes a part of the greater shackles that are imposed upon people so as to elicit their consent to other structures (Sen 2004). Sexuality and the Control of the Society This analysis also needs to lead into how sexuality and mutilation are connected to the control of the society and the maintenance of status quo. This can then be analyzed through Michel Foucault’s ideas as to how sexuality is employed for the purpose of controlling people. He argues that sexuality was employed by the state for the purpose of making its power more pervasive. This was done through the creation of norms within the society that would then be used to elicit obedience. These sexual norms would be tied to social institutions such as marriage and the family (Foucault, 2001). One may argue in this vein that female circumcision is a form of control that patriarchal social structures seek to exert over the women of society. By establishing a very crude form of control over the sexuality of a woman, patriarchal societies channelize it into normative structures such as the family and marriage, thereby seeking to maintain a status quo in the society that they are a part of. This then enables people to retain control over certain areas of the society without sharing it with women. This is then an unacceptable state of affairs as it would lead to one half of humanity being subjected to the other without any proper reason. Purity and Pollution The reason as to why it is practiced can be seen from the essay that Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf writes. It is, the writer opines, the result of the society’s wish to purify in a ritual manner what it feels is the polluted part of a woman (2006). This is clearly not the logic that is employed to describe the situation that men find themselves in. Here too, it is the woman of a community that finds itself within a problematic situation that invests her with the job of safeguarding the honor of a community. This again follows the logic of a woman as a pitcher which bears the fruit of the man’s seed. This faulty logic is then employed for the purpose of perpetuating systems of oppression. Right at the beginning of a woman’s life, she is forced to wear the mantle of the impure one. Colonial Discourse and Female Genital Mutilation Such discourses are often thought to be present only in backward societies. The forces of patriarchy that leads to female circumcision are then attributed to societies that are marginalized in the larger scheme of events. This is however, a problem that has happened as a result of the machinations of colonial modernity that as resulted in the Other always being made to feel inferior. There is also a certain amount of propaganda that is employed for the purpose of making this very othered community feel a certain way about itself and its practices (Said, 2002). This should not, however, work in a reverse manner and make one say that it is colonial modernity that has led to the denigration of the practices of the native culture. Such logic can be seen in the works of certain proponents of decolonization like Ngugi wa Thiongo. Such theorists talk of the necessity of uprooting and throwing away the influences of the colonizers and returning to a precolonial society (Thiongo, 2003). Realtions of Production and their Impact Such assertions of precolonial identities have led to a great increase in rituals such as female circumcision. This then signals a need to analyze the relations of production that have affected the divisions of labor among the African societies that are under discussion. Many of these communities even before colonization had certain forms of social arrangement that made protest against certain social practices impossible. There is then a need to look at the means and relations of production in a society. An analysis of this would reveal how genital mutilation and the economic oppression of women is concerned. Feale Genital Mutilation in Muslim Societies Daniel Njoroge Karanja talks of this while he analyzes the ways in which the societies in Africa which are mostly Muslim have always sought to appropriate the sexual and manual labor of women. The very nature of their work was decided by their gender and this could be seen in the way they were expected to socialize. The male members of the society expected the women to be subservient. This subservience included an acceptance on the part of the woman that she would do the domestic chores of the house. This deprivation would begin right at birth through genital mutilation and would determine the relations between the sexes for the time to come in the lives of the people of this society (2003). This again ties in with Foucault’s ideas about the sexual forms of control that were exercised by the state. One of the reason as to why such practices are not stopped with the force that it should may also be the fact that the state derives certain benefits from the ways in which the society is arranged. The status quo in African Muslim societies, one would have to believe, is something that benefits even an institution of modernity such as the state, it would seem. This is because the nation state as an institution yields great benefits to the process of development. If certain changes in its structures and forms of working can lead to a change in the ways in which the benefits that have just been referred to are distributed, then it would be worthwhile to look into it. To summarize, it would be useful to introduce changes in the way in which the state works so as to ensure that women are a part of the process of development. Practices such as female genital mutilation will only ensure that women feel left out of this entire process. This would then lead to one half of the potential workforce of a country feeling unmotivated and listless. This would again put a spanner in the works of the developmental processes of a state. Such a process in turn should then lead to a situation where the forces that lead to genital mutilation are nullified and made to disappear from the society that one is a part of. The Modern State’s need to Intervene Anika Rahman and Nahid Toubia too invest the modern state with the power to change the laws regarding female genital mutilation. The affirmative action that the state is capable of in this regard is something that needs to be looked into for the purpose of the upliftment of women. The critics feel that such systems should be looked at through the lens of international law that would then allow a certain kind of parity between the gender relations all across the world. This would then lead to an equalization of the statuses of women. It would also lead to greater political power for women as they would then be able to mobilize themselves into collectives (Toubia and Rahman). Such collectives can then present a united front which would have the power to lobby for rights. It is this discourse of rights that Rahman and Toubia employ for the purpose of understanding the relations between men and women in Muslim states of Africa and elsewhere where genital mutilation of girls is a common practice. Diversity and difficulties in Project Implementation Another reason as to why programs of eradication are unable to function properly is the sheer diversity of the communities that are to be dealt with. There are marked differences between the practices of different communities that practice female genital mutilation. This prevents the formation of any single framework through which programs of eradication of this practice can work through. The importance of this lies in the fact that this complexity increases the economic burden of creating such programs for the upliftment of women. There are also issues that arise out of cultural dislocation. For tis, one needs to look at communities like the African American who may feel a certain sense of belonging to cultures that practice genital mutilation. To take the example of Alice Walker’s novel Possessing the Secret of Joy, one can say that the protagonist is an instance of how culture defines what one finds liberating and otherwise. The importance of genital mutilation to Tashi lies in her ability to reconnect with what she feels is a lost culture. This does not win her peace and leaves her as disturbed as before (Walker, 2000). This demonstrates how it is not possible to go back to a precolonial culture or for that matter, any culture that defines one’s gender in narrow prescriptive terms. Conclusion Only a concerted and holistic approach to this problem would lead to any solution of it. The significance of the problem needs to be realized in a manner that is time-bound so that the state is made to assume a sense of urgency in tackling tis problem. The aspect of religious orthodoxy must also be taken into account. The fact that people are to be given a choice as to whether they wish to remove a part of their own physical self needs to be accepted by every single religious group on the planet. This ties in with larger concerns of secularism where every religion would be given respect without its principles impinging upon the general rights of the citizens of that state. The importance of this secular principle must be acknowledged while looking at the differences between different frameworks within which the lives of people are supposed to operate. In a world that has been made small through the operations of multiculturalism and globalization, it is important to respect the beliefs of others. At the same time, it is also important to not marginalize groups within one’s own culture. Female genital mutilation represents one such marginalization and needs to be abolished. References. Said, Edward. (2002). Orientalism. New York: Penguin. Print. Thiongo, Ngugi wa. (2003). Decolonizing the Mind. New York: Heinemann. Print. Foucault, Michel. (2001). The History of Sexuality-Vol. 1. New York: Random House. Print. Sen, Amartya.(2004). Development as Freedom. London: Random House. Print. Karanja, Daniel Njoroge. (2003). Female Genital Mutilation in Africa. USA: Xulon. Print. Palmieri, Joelle; Mottin-Sylla, Marie-Helene. (2011). Tr. Mamsait Jagne. Nairobi: Pambasuka. Print. Mustafa Abusharaf, Rogaia. (2006). Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Print. Rahman, Anika; Toubia, Nahid. (2000). Female Genital Mutilation: A Practical Guide to Worldwide Laws & Policies. London: Zed Books. Print. Walker, Alice. (2000). Possessing the Secret of Joy. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Print. Read More