This article does not aim to say that FGM is a practice that should be perpetuated, but rather aims to reflect on the power relations involved and Keith Vaz's statement itself.
Keith Vaz states that the practice of FGM is not cultural but criminal and not tribal but torturous. Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons (World Health Organisation, 2018). Ethics have been of crucial importance to the sociological discipline through its critical analysis of traditional, social practices and ceremonies that are considered to break ethical guidelines. Therefore, ethics create a debate over what an adequate or inadequate practice may be. This debate becomes increasingly significant when looking at human rights on a universal and global scale. An example of such debate would be the practice of the modification of the female sexual organs, commonly called female genital cutting (FGC), female circumcision (FC) or female genital mutilation (FGM). Determining what this particular modification of the female body entails is fundamental to this examination. Keith Vaz’s discourse draws onto interpretive methods discussing topics such as gender roles, their relations, myths and rituals, politics and cultural relativism, and are all part of the structure of FGM. This article will discuss Keith Vaz’s claim of FGM being a criminal act and reveal that by recognising FGM as being a socially constructed notion, a deconstruction of the notion is possible. Furthermore, it will explore the power relations involved in the contextual structure of FGM and explain the part it plays in the criminalisation of the act. I argue that Vaz’s statement is ethnocentric as it assumes that FGM is torturous and criminal, generalising experiences on a global level. To adequately understand FGM I will hence explore the cultural specificity of FGM rather than a globalised practise.
While different people categorise the practice of FGM depending on the amount of cutting executed; Skaine (2005), illustrates how the World Health Organisation (WHO) divides the FGM practice into four categories:
"Type I – clitoridectomy, involves removing the prepuce with or without excision of part or all the clitoris.
Type II – excision, removes the prepuce and clitoris together with partial or total excision of the labia minora.
Type III – infibulation, removes part of all of the external genitalia and stitches narrow the vaginal opening.
Type IV – unclassified, includes all other procedures such as pricking, piercing, or incising of the clitoris and/or labia, stretching of the clitoris/labia, burning, scraping" (Skaine, 2005:8).
After the establishment of these definitions, intolerance against the practice grew internationally, and numerous authorities condemned the practice around the world (Shell-Duncan, 2008). This intolerance can be illustrated through a change of terminology. Indeed, originally referred to as female circumcision (FC), the practice is now referred to as female genital mutilation (FGM) in order to raise awareness through powerful terminology and influencing the public opinion towards eradication of the practice (Obermeyer, 1999). This awareness and intolerance towards FGM originated from the negative hygienic and health repercussions, but then shifted towards a fight for human rights (Shell-Duncan, 2008). Indeed, the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, considered FGM to be a "violence against women" (Shell-Duncan, 2008). However, Shell-Duncan (2008), argues that the term mutilation is used by militants against the practice, and is described as "involving a variable degree of alteration of the external genitalia" (2008:226). FGM would often refer to the most extreme forms of cuttings, and the fact that the practice is referred to as "mutilation" rather than cutting by individuals who have not experienced or witnessed the act itself (Johansen, 2002), illustrates the existing power relations associated with the practice.
As a counter argument to Keith Vaz's statement, Breitung (1996) claims that labelling a social custom highly valued by most of its practitioners as being torturous may be viewed as an assault to their culture. He argues that such labelling is most likely going to cause resistance rather than putting a term to the practice. This argument is supported by former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, who argues that although punished and considered as criminal under international law, FGM is particularly hard to address because "the culture becomes under attack" (Shell-Duncan, 2008). Consequently, although condemned internationally for being criminal, it is essential to define what is considered as criminal in a culturally-specific context and to look at some of the power relations associated with FGM.
The widespread intolerance towards FGM does not seem to be directed at one specific culture, nor a specific country. Yet again, it is essential to define what a "culture" is and to define what role a "culture" plays in the FGM international debate. Raymond Firth argues that Malinowski understood culture as a whole (Malinowski in Firth and Firth, 1957). According to Malinowski, culture was to be maintained as a whole and a culture's customs and institutions as part of a culture as a whole (Malinowski, Firth and Firth, 1957). In addition, and drawing back onto the debate of FGM, Merry (2001 in Shell-Duncan, 2008) argues that greater importance should be given to "deterritorialised ethnography" to ensure a better understanding of "the culture of human rights" in the context of FGM. With Malinowski's understanding of the notion of culture, human rights consequently become a custom. By using international institutions and authorities to maintain order within the culture as a whole, or the culture of a globalised society sharing universal values, this custom decides on what is considered as an acceptable or unacceptable practice. However, without examining case studies, is it intricate to determine the role female genital mutilation has as part of a culture as a whole.
Drawing from the case study of circumcision in central Kenya (Leonard, 2000), the adaptation of a cultural practice in order to maintain the practice in itself can be considered as a way to maintain order through culture. Indeed, after a colonial intervention, circumcision was banned in Kenya. Kenyan girls, however, defied the ban and adapted by circumcising themselves as an effort to maintain an age-based system of social hierarchy and organisation (Leonard, 2000). These girls were then eventually re-circumcised by older women, to reassert "the hierarchy and to regain control over their positions within it" (Leonard, 2000:174), and consequently to reassert order and be assured of its maintenance. Another interesting example of FGM can be seen with the Sara adolescent girls in Southern Chad, who practised circumcision as a mean to adapt to modern practices and by copying other villages' traditions (Leonard, 2000). The Sara girls also seemed to be motivated by an increasing peer pressure from girls who have undergone the “cutting”. Although similar to some extent and with a certain degree of universality, each culture consequently carries varying forms of interconnected meanings of FGM. Specific cultures therefore require a structure, control and order the same way institutions make use of human rights to maintain order within "the globalised society". By making certain ideas about female genital cutting universal, international institutions do not consider any culturally specific meaning of FGC, and instead socially construct the universal idea of female genital cutting being a torture and mutilation. The social construction of female genital cutting as a mutilation is thus enabling power relations to be created, just as notions such as gender can be constructed to act as means of power relations in social, geographical, economic and political contexts.
Bell (2005) argues that male circumcision is widely and globally accepted, whereas female circumcision is rejected, and not tolerated and deemed as torturous. These days, individuals are increasingly aware of the range of cutting practices and their unique and specific meaning in the social construction of FGM. However, inequality regarding certain practices and the views on circumcision can be argued to originate from ideas of what notions such as sexuality and gender are. Bell (2005) suggests that the "globalised society" and its "globalised culture" favours a Western understanding of sexuality and sex and their ideals, rather than ideas of structural coherence and order, such as in central Kenya (Leonard, 2000).
Human rights have been criticised for being ethnocentric and not considering the fact that they are incorporated into other cultures (Shell-Duncan, 2008). By presenting women as helpless and forced to follow traditions, human rights construct this idea of inferiority upon women practising circumcision. This western ethnocentricity and superiority can be argued to be hypocritical, knowing that forms of genital cuttings were and are still performed in the west.
Sheehan (1997), argues that in western societies, FGM was a common practice. Indeed, she suggests that FGM was used as a treatment for women with hysteria, which was associated with masturbation and promiscuity. Ideas that the female genitalia was the cause of various physical and mental health problems live on for many decades. Although FGM may not be used as a treatment for hysteria in society today, other practices such as female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS) are now performed, to reduce a prominent labia (Pedwell, 2007). In this sense, there is also a history of female genital cutting in the west, established under socially constructed ideas in comparison to non-western societies, where the practise of FGM is being criticised. Why is it then, that similar western practices are not falling into the category of mutilation?
Surgical procedures on intersex new-borns – or individuals who have characteristics such as the appearance of the genitalia and its function that cannot be classified as female or male (Chase, 2002) – raise concerns on what is considered as a mutilation or as torturous in the West. Due to these characteristics, surgeons will operate on these infants and assign them a sex and "correct" their genitals (Chase, 2002), deciding on a gender categorisation and sexual identification constructed by western countries. The physicians not only assign a binary sex to the child but also the gender attached to it, which can cause severe psychological distress to the child later in life. Indeed, the child may identify as a homosexual and experience it negatively as his sex and gender were defined at his birth for him, and he may have been the opposite sex (Chase, 2002). The infant can never consent to the surgery due to his young age, and his rights to physical integrity are thus not respected. Surgeries such as intersex surgeries are common in the West, but widely accepted due to their pretended surgical and clinical context, thus giving them the right to be practised, unlike FGM in non-Western societies. FGCS as well as intersex surgeries consequently hide behind the "surgical and medical" label and fit into the Western views of sex and sexuality, making them superior to the FGM practised in non-western societies. It is thus important to now examine Western ideas of sex, gender and sexuality.
Prior to the Enlightenment period, individuals looked at the human body with the idea of a "one-sex model" (Shell-Duncan, 2008), which categorised sex through a scale of heat and where the female genitalia was seen as an inverted, less developed version of the male's own, making women lesser men (Laqueur, 1990). This perception of sex can be seen in Somalia, where Talle (1993), suggests that the clitoris is associated with the penis and after the infibulation,
"the constructed genital resembles the male organ by its straight scar/seam and small orifice at the lower end. It suggests that the surgery changes the outer sex of a woman and makes her into a man […] it is the privilege of the husband of the girls to open her and "make her into a woman"" (Talle, 1993:98).
The sex of a woman is thus socially constructed, as Simone de Beauvoir argues, "one is not born a woman; one learns to be one" (De Beauvoir in Alexander, 1994:128). Thus, although some differences may be noticed at birth, gender and the order it creates, serve as a mechanism of society and is learned and created through social acts. FGM is the case of Somalia thus symbolises these doings through traditional rituals and are to some extent comparable to the pre-enlightenment one-sex model.
With the scientific development during the Enlightenment period and autopsies, scientists began to understand the bodies of women and men as different and not as a lesser or superior version of the same body (Laqueur, 1990). Inequality was consequently present at the birth of the child. Freud in the 20th century suggested that a woman's sexuality resided within her vagina (Bell, 2005). According to Bell, it is precisely due to the importance given to the vagina that the clitoris of a woman was desexualised (Bell, 2005). The important of the clitoris in a woman's sexuality and sexual satisfaction is of major concern in the debate around FGM. Yet male and female circumcision are not understood as equivalent due to the belief that the clitoris is the female equivalent of the penis, and a major source of pleasure for the woman (Bell, 2005). Male physiology would thus still be comprehended as the norm and female physiology would be comprehended in relation to it (Bell, 2005). However, Bell argues that female sexuality cannot simply be understood through this particular understanding of the female body, that he calls a "phallicization" (2005: 135). Although there is an equivalence between the clitoris and the penis, there is still a difference maintained, based on the anatomy of both genitals and the perceived role of each one of them in relations to the other between the female and male orgasm (Bell, 2005). As a result of this framework, there is a widespread inability in the "globalised society" and the "culture as a whole" to understand male circumcision as anything else than beneficial; and female circumcision as anything else but a form of sexual mutilation with underlying ties to a patriarchal domination.
When looking at case studies such as in Somalia, "circumcision" is seen as a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, as a "confirmation of women's inclusion in an agnatic family" (Talle, 1993: 98). A similar rite of passage can be observed in the Maasai culture, in which a woman is transactable and ownable from the moment she is cut (Llewellyn-Davies, 1981). From an African perspective, "circumcision" is thus a custom, maintaining a social structure. The act of cutting has been created and constructed to shape the concept of FGM, perpetuating inequalities from the political, economic and social realms within specific geographical, social, political and economic contexts around the world. Vaz's argument that FGM is not cultural can thus be questioned and discredited.
In conclusion, the debate on the socially constructed notion of FGM has proven to be gendered and to portray Western ideas of sex, gender and sexuality. These ideas seem to be expanded on an international scale through a “globalised society” by casting a negative image of cultures where the act of cutting the female genitalia is a custom used as the foundation of their social structure. Keith Vaz’s statement portrays the values and customs of the society he lives in. Thus, the debate surrounding FGM seems to be based on a socially constructed understanding of a “globalised society”. Although Keith Vaz states that FGM is torturous, it can be argued that male circumcision is equivalent to FGM. Issues of consent can be brought up when considering male circumcision and surgical procedures performed on intersex babies, raising the question whether or not male circumcision should be considered as torturous and deemed criminal. Although FGM is cultural it can be argued that research into this topic is ethnocentric as research on FGM is focused on a global level rather than being culturally specific.
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