I was accused yesterday of “supporting” this custom, and because it is a subject about which I feel strongly, and because I am never without awareness that this is a public board and there may be lurkers with a sincere interest, I will say a few words about it.
First of all, there are some westerners who through their funding and support of indigenous campaigns and education projects aimed at changing the custom, there are every day mothers who choose not to have this done to their daughters, and in some cases, in cultures where it is performed when a girl is older, every day some girls refuse to submit to it in its traditional form.
These westerners are sincere in their desire to see the custom changed, not because they consider its practitioners barbarians, not because they consider their own modalities of oppressing women to be superior, and demand that all others must adopt, for example, the wearing of crippling high heeled shoes, but out of genuine concern for the girls who are harmed by the practice as it has existed for so long.
Therefore, if you ask them, they will tell you that before one can seriously address the issue, first it will be necessary to learn, to listen to the women themselves, and become educated about this custom, what it means, what are the beliefs and traditions behind it, and of course in order to do this, it is necessary to respect the women, to respect their beliefs, their culture, so that one will be able to do this listening and learning with open mind and open heart.
It will be necessary to have honest dialogue with oneself. For instance, a western mother might ask, what if someone from this culture came to me and told me that by not having my daughter cut, I am harming her? That not having her cut will ruin her life, her chances for marriage, make her an outcast in her tribe, her community, even her family? What kind of argument could they make that would persuade me to do this to my daughter?
What if someone from another culture suggested I send my daughter out, at the age of six or so, to sell her body? What sort of credibility would that have?
In other words, it is necessary to see the situation through the eyes of the mothers, and understand that this custom is thousands of years old, older than Islam, older than Christianity, older than Judaism, older even than Hinduism. It is a very deep belief, and to simply say to the mothers, this is wrong you should not do it, it is barbaric, you are barbarians, you are abusers, is to them, no different if they were to say these things to you about your own customs. In the belief of some, a girl who is not cut is as a prostitute, so to tell the mother not to do it, is as if someone tells you to sell your daughter to men for money.
This is not the only custom in the world that is harmful to women. And it is not the only one that some women themselves, women indigenous to those cultures, are working to change. This is not about becoming more western or obeying the white people or admiring them, it is about improving the lives of women, wherever they live.
The indigenous methods that are most successful with this and other harmful customs involve education, and custom tweaking.
For example, instead of cutting, there is a hope that some mothers will choose to adopt a tweaked custom that involves pouring blessed water on the girl, or special prayers, dances, even animal sacrifices, there are any number of tweaks that can be aspired to depending on the particular cultural tradition.
A custom that is thousands of years old and so deeply rooted will not change overnight. It will take generations before the tweaked custom is widely accepted.
This means that even if they move to the west, where different mutilation customs are practiced, they will not abandon the practice just because they have moved to London or Los Angeles. Even though their new western neighbors find it horrifying, these mothers are going to cut their daughters. If even one is persuaded to adopt a tweaked ritual, that is a great victory. Most of them will not.
There is a better chance, perhaps that their daughters who are little girls today will adopt a non-cutting version if they are alive and healthy when they have those daughters.
This is reality, and reality does not always have a relationship to what you or I would prefer. So the reality is, the mothers will have their daughters cut.
Now if they live in the west, the one thing that the west can control in this situation, at least to an extent, is whether the procedure is done under anesthesia, by a surgeon, in a hospital, under sterile conditions and in such a way that she will not be doomed to a life of pain and constant medical problems.
Or it can be done in most likely a small, crowded apartment, with dozens of relatives chanting, coughing, sneezing, on a mat on the floor, surrounded by chanting aunts, with no anesthetic, and the cutting itself performed with some dirty and probably not very sharp instrument by a woman who is as likely as not to completely butcher the child, ushering in a lifetime of complications, no follow-up care, at least in the sense of trained medical follow up care, not even an antibiotic to lessen the inevitable infection of the wound. For that she may receive some herbal remedy, which may or may not work.
However, this is the preference of some westerners who oppose letting the little girls have the hospital option. They have nothing but contempt, certainly no knowledge or respect for the families themselves, their culture or their traditions, and their position is that if the parents will not submit to their opinion, then they wish to make sure that the little girl suffers as much as possible.
Do you think that this kind of attitude is a help to the people who sincerely wish to see the custom change, and are working to do so? It does not. In fact, it makes the work of the brave women, many of whom have dedicated much of their lives to the goal of having as many girls as possible have a tweaked ritual that does not involve cutting even more difficult than it already is!
On the one hand, the message is, that they are being encouraged by their own tribeswomen to choose a ritual that is tweaked to omit cutting, to keep intact the culture and the tradition, but to spare the girl the pain, and if they say, I don’t think I am ready to go that far, but I have thought about the pain, and I would rather have it done in a hospital, the message from the west is, no, your daughter must suffer pain because you refuse to obey us.
So I would ask those westerners to please, look into your hearts and ask if your true goal is to see the custom changed, or to impose your will on people you consider inferior. And if it is the latter, I would beg you to at least try not to make more difficult the work of those who have the former view. They are just little girls.
Note: I have not yet finalized a decision regarding my participation here. However I feel that this particular issue is ill-understood and it is possible that people may not intend to be making the problem worse and maybe just as there are efforts to encourage women to choose the tweaked ritual for their daughters, maybe some westerners can be persuaded to choose a different outlet to express their feeling of cultural superiority.
