[lbo-talk] Female Genital Mutilation

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Feb 8 14:59:26 PST 2005



>On Tue, 8 Feb 2005, Michael Pollak wrote about FGM:
>
>> 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.
>
>I agree, it's not a practical problem in Africa. However, I still
>hear calls from Western feminists that people in the U. S. should
>"do something" about these vile practices (sanctions, cutting
>diplomatic relations, etc). That's what I'm ambivalent about:
>Westerners strong-arming other societies to bring them in line with
>our cultural practices. (And note the term ambivalent here: I am
>not rejecting the argument that this is a human rights issue, but
>I'm noting some reservations and underappreciated complexity.)
>
>Miles

The US Department of State's Office of International Women's Issues <http://www.state.gov/g/wi/> has done its share of propaganda for US imperialism, e.g., concerning Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Office's "Report on Female Genital Mutilation as required by Conference Report (H. Rept. 106-997) to Public Law 106-429 [Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2001]" (<http://www.state.gov/g/wi/rls/rep/c6466.htm>), however, doesn't strike me as a problem (provided what's in the report is all it is doing and will ever do).

Fear of being subjected to female genital mutilation has been a ground for gaining political asylum in the United States since 1996: "U.S. Grants Asylum to Woman Fleeing Genital Mutilation Rite," <http://peacecorpsonline.org/crossroads/mutilate.html>. The State Department says that "[e]stimates of the number of females who have been subjected to this practice range from 115 million to 130 million worldwide and an estimated two million girls are at risk each year" ("Report on Female Genital Mutilation," <http://www.state.gov/g/wi/rls/rep/c6466.htm>, p. 4). What if millions of women began to use the issue for an immigration purpose? That's not very likely, but it would be interesting to see how the Immigration and Naturalization Service would react. -- Yoshie

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