On Mon, 7 Feb 2005, Miles Jackson wrote:
> It's pretty easy for us to rhetorically strut around assuming our moral
> superiority, but anybody's who has seriously studied FGM knows it's a
> convoluted tangle of ethical ambiguities.
>
> Consider:
> 1. The practices are accepted by, carried out by, and encouraged by the
> vast majority of women in these societies. It is not something men "do"
> to them; it is part of what these women identify as womanhood. Yes, it's
> hard to us to believe, but mothers do this to their daughters willingly:
> according to their cultural standards, this is what it means to be a good
> mother.
>
> 2. Our condemnation of this practice is, as a number of women in these
> societies have pointed out, yet another example of how Western values and
> beliefs are positioned as the standards by which all societies should be
> judged. It's more or less the kissing cousin of the "Africans don't
> really have civilization because they don't have cities like we do"
> argument. For a number of African activists, the major problem here is
> Western ethnocentrism, not FGM.
I think this criticism is a bit behind the times, Miles. It is true that in the first wave of FGM activism in the 1980s, most western activists seemed to speak as if the best way to proceed was by sanction and imposition. But, since then, there has been a period of learning (in part because that didn't work and set off a backlash), and the approach has evolved a lot, especially in relation to the countryside, which is mostly where your first point about female secret societies is relevant. (In cities, things seem to be quite different.)
As I understand it, the main approach now is not to bring in outsiders or representatives of the state and force villagers to change their ways, but rather to gather together women from these villages who have changed their minds, and give them the financial and other support necessary so they can devote themselves proselytizing their new anti-FGM views in terms that make sense within the village culture they came from. And then supply support of other necessary kinds to women they win over. Another prong is to support a constant stream of radio and television broadcasting by national religious authorities to hammer home the message that such FGM is unIslamic. Another is to organize similar attempts by men to persuade village headmen and local male religious figures.
This doesn't make everything easy. It can still be quite a traumatic process and face violent opposition. But western ethnocentrism does not seem to be a central problem anymore. Not where the actual activism is going on in Africa.
BTW, a tremendous movie on this subject, which is simultanously didactic, subtle, and moving, is Ousmene Sembene's recent _Moolade_. Best movie he ever made, IMHO.
And just as a special note, he's very good on the relation between the power of the women's ritual societies and the hierarchy of male power in the village. It's not an either/or thing.
Michael