For the Love of Egads..More Cultural Mutilations

Welcome to the world of "breast-ironing"

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/07/07/cameroon.breastironing.reut/index.html

 

JAYSUS!

Sexual assault is common in these countries, but, it is probably used as an adjuct to FGM. What is wrong with some people in certain areas? FGM, breast ironing, torture, SLAVERY? (yep, West Africa is actually the place which introduced black slavery to the Industrialized world.) A lot of repression in this area. Sad.

The one mother was "shocked" when the doctor told her to "never do it again?" "Gee, I shouldn't place red hot stones on my kid's breasts. I didn't know that!"

WTF? (Please, I do not want to hear, "But, it's part of their culture." Shit which sucks still sucks if it is damaging, whether it is "part of someone's culture" or not.)

 

Aren't eating disorders, low-self-esteem, the romanticization of codependence, high heels, restrictive and/or revealing clothing, make up, and dangerous chemical "beauty" products part of our culture? We have no right to judge another culture as oppressive to women, or anybody. Oppression begins at home.

Slavery has been with us in one form or another since the dawn of "civilization". It is still with us today, throughout the world. Yes, even here.

 

I don't hear anyone judging another culture. I hear people saying, "Ignore your culture and stop wounding young women."

 

Exactly Mike. Human rights from inflicted pain and suffering from another supercede cultural practices and tradtions.

Might I also add, that I find it disgusting and disturbing to compare make-up, high heels, and self-inflicted eating disorders compared to forced, violent, and permantly damaging mutilations like FGM and breast-ironing.

I suppose high heels equal punishing women in the court of law for being raped(in sharia law)....stoning unwed mothers equals chemical peals??

That's a whole lotta WTFery.

 

Well, I personally think this is disgusting.
Breasts are a natural part of our bodies and should a woman want to carry out these practices for their cultural purposes, they should do it themselves, not have if inflicted upon them!
The same goes for circumcision and femal genital mutations that babies and young children are forced to go through. It's sick!
We were born with our bodies the way they are for a reason!

 

Just to lighten the mood for a moment, that cracked me up.

Remember kids, don't go swimming in the ponds infront of power plants!

Thanks BK.

 

No one can remark on someone else unless they themselves are flawless? No, "culture" is never an excuse for horrid treatment of anyone. Whether it is one's own country, or an other one. We do have a right. We just did it. <shrug> I don't think high heels compare to being stoned to death if one doesn't wear one's Burka. Some cultures are really more nasty to womyn than others. No one said ours was perfect, but shit, eating disorders are awful, but it isn't the same as having your vagina sewn shut, and your clit sawed off with a bit of broken glass, against your will when you are five years old, with your MOM thinking it's OK, really. The mothers of most girls I know with EDs really want them to get better. Not so in FGM societies.

AND, womyn in our society have a CHOICE of whether to wear high heels, get chemical peels ect. Womyn in most cultures like the above have NO choices. Girls in our culture CAN get medical and psycholgical help for eating disorders, girls in some cultures cannot get help to prevent or treat breast ironing or FGM because NO ONE thinks that there is anything wrong with the oppresions. At least SOME in our society notices the oppressions and does something about them. Not true in all places.

 

This is pretty much my favorite part of this entire thread.

 

opps:& maybe i should have used a better "term" lol

 

Amen to kitty fabulous.

Why aren't parents here who behave as JonBenet Ramsey's parents held up for scrutiny as mutilating their children? What about those parents who allow 16 year old girls to mutilate their bodies with silicone implants? What about those parents who mutilate their male children's genitals (which is equally damaging to sexual pleasure as the most common types of female circumcision, which involves only a nip of the tip, not sewing shut)? What about those mothers who indoctrinate their daughters to believe that anything over a size 4 is fat, thereby creating an ED, even if they later claim to not want their child to have an ED?

Allowing qualified, knowledgeable people educate women on the risks involved in this process is unquestionably a good thing. But sitting back home, going "oh my gawd, what horrible people, look at that other disgusting practice those backwards Africans do" is not helping anyone. I'm not sure what it does except reinforce our prejudices that those Africans over there are so far behind us. Especially when we, in the same breath, rationalize our own practices that often involve little more choice (parents have an amazing abilities of persuasion, even if they're not holding the child down) and quite significant risks of harm.

 

Huh, never thought of it that way, but I suppose you're dead on. Women go through rediculous lengths to make themselves look and feel beautiful. I hate to see a pretty woman grimacing in the mirror. Most times, though, it's myself looking back at that grimacing woman. And that's pretty sad. My boyfriend thinks I'm pretty. I know I am pretty. But when one thinks of the diets, exercises, lack of sleep, abuse and harm we put ourselves through, it's a wonder we get so upset at these cultures who try to control a woman's appearance. Think of the drastic things parents do to their children to make them pleasant to the public's eye? With plastic surgery, low-fat cookies, control top pantyhose and the push-up bra, it's a wonder men don't go screaming in the opposite direction when a woman actually gets naked before him. What she appears on the outside is 99% not what she appears once Victoria's Secret and Calvin Klein have been taken away.

They're doing a study now that says elderly women are having more problems with their lower legs these days because they wore high-heeled shoes for so long. Remember those pictures of housewives in their high-heeled pumps sweeping floors and washing dishes? Those women can't walk properly without tearing ligaments in their legs because they wore high heels so much.

Having said all that, it still doesn't make any of it right. The abuse of the human female for the sake of one's appearance is horrendous. I find it ironic that in the majority of the animal kingdom, it's the male who has to work hard in appearance in order to attract the plain, dowdy females. Look at the lion's mane, the peacock's feathers, or the beta's fins. The brighter the male, the more likely he is to attract a mate. And yet in the human world, men can go in jeans and a grease-stained t-shirt and be considered sexy. Yet a woman must squish her breasts, shorten her skirt, paint her face, mutilate her hair, starve herself and strain her muscles to a bloody pulp before she can be considered "ok-looking".

I wonder what it would take for the "healthy" look to be sexy and the "supermodel" look to look sickly.

 

If harmful behaviors are a part of other cultures, we need to be mindful of that culture when we try to change those behaviors. An appeal to different parts of that culture will be more effective than asking people to abandon their beliefs. "Your mother did bad things to you" is a hard sell when mom didn't do anything unusual.

Also, we must be aware of harmful behaviours that are a part of our culture. Those are the behaviors that WE have to avoid. Those are the things that were done to us and which we regard as "normal" or "part of growing up" and which we might perpetuate on our children.

 

Ok...again...wearing fucking high heels and wearing makeup is nowhere near the same as cutting an 8 year old's clitoris off or mutilating her breasts to the point where babies are starving or near starving to death because the "protection" given by mothers killed the glands in the breasts!!

It doesn't fucking compare! Even putting a kid in a beauty pageant doesn't compare!

There has to be a cultural revolution in the world. It amazes me to hear people defend fucking cows from being slaughtered for food(in other threads) but then say we should just ignore FGM and breast ironing? Is a cow more innocent then a child? Is a cow more entitled to a life free of fear and pain? Hells no.

Women in American CHOOSE to wear high heels, they CHOOSE to conform to ridiculous and unhealthy ideas of beauty, they CHOOSE to have plastic surgery and botox, they CHOOSE to do the frivolous things they do.

These girls did NOT CHOOSE to have this done to them.

Not only do these people need to be taught that this is wrong, they need to be taught about rape.Period. They need to be taught why it occurs. The men need to be taught that raping virgins will not cure AIDS, while we are at it.

 

The entire Choice Factor makes this certainly worthy of discussion. No one is saying that EDs and baby beauty pagents and high heels are good cultural traditions, but, that doesn't mean that one's house has to be immaculate to comment on a fire or rats in someone else's.

BOTH situations can be discussed. I'd rather live in a culture that "prefers" high heels (and exercise my right NOT to ever ever wear them) than have my clit sawed off when I was 3 and not have any say in it. That's all I'm sayin, and I think Otter is saying the same thing.

 

On the other hand, its the boys in our culture who have no choice about genital mutilation.

 

Exactly. Too many of the people running around, going on about how bad some practice is, fail to take the time to actually understand what is behind that practice. Then they make some dramatic effort to stamp out that practice, which utterly fails due to the activist's cultural ignorance.

One example of the problems stemming from this relates to female circumcision. Western activists made such a huge deal out of it, screaming about how horrific it is, that it put some of the people who practice it on the defensive. I forget which country it is, but in one African country, female circumcision has become a powerful symbol of African-ness in opposition to white oppression. Wonderful. So now, instead of being able to go in and at least get some harm-reduction measures in place (sanitary utensils, anasthesia, etc.) until culturally sensitive education efforts work, no, people are clinging to female circumcision done in traditional ceremonies (no anasthesia) even more strongly.

Congrats to the activists, you sure helped the situation.

In another example, a friend of mine (who is also a grad student in anthropology and who works in Mauritania and Morocco) did a presentation in a class we both had, discussing slavery in northwest Africa. Slavery practices there were traditionally nothing like what we think of as slavery in the US. Basically, the slave was treated as a member of the family, but their status was relevant in times of hardship, as they were the first one to be sold off when there was a lack of food for the family... Of course, if it got too bad after all the slaves were sold, a family member may be sold off to a wealthier family as well.

It wasn't good, but not the image we tend to have of slaves on a plantation. Still, it's better to be free, right? Unfortunately, slavery was abolished without any consideration for the social networking that once occurred. So now, all of these former slaves have been freed, but have no one to turn to for economic assistance. Their standard of living has dropped as a result of their gaining freedom. And I'm not talking merely of economic measures of standard of living. Apparently they claim that their lives were better before the were given freedom, set adrift on their own. While it's easy to sit here and say, well of course slavery is bad, simply abolishing it without putting any safety net in place to replace it is not a good solution.

Again, I'm not suggesting such practices are good. Merely that sitting here going "egad, how horrible" without making any effort to understand the cultural context of the practice often does more harm than good in the grand scheme of things. As an analogy, my fiance's sister firmly believes that we should just do away with abortion. Not criminalize it, but get rid of it all together. That would be wonderful in my opinion -- if nobody had a reason to seek out abortions anymore, if everyone had ready access to contraceptives and if there were the social services (universal health care, free child care, etc.) available to allow any woman to be able to afford a child... Unfortunately, the solution is never that simple.

And, yes MikeE, it is quite sad that boys in our own culture often have no choice in whether to be subjected to MGM, male genital mutilation. Isn't it amusing how, when we do it, it's circumcision, yet when others do it, it's mutilation? Girls on the love & sex forum can chat about how ugly an uncut penis is, yet we fail to understand the social pressure in favor of female circumcision??????? (which trivializes the practice, the beliefs behind the practice are far more important than the asthetics, but I hope you all get the point I'm going for...)

 

A LOT of people in the US refer to male circumcision as mutiation.I think it is, I'd never cut the end off of a baby boy's penis for anything. Horror.

Also, taking away a little girls COMPLETE ability to enjoy sex, via removal of her clitoris, and often SEWING UP the vagina and removing the labia,inner and outer, is reprehensible, I don't give a damn who says it "defines" them. If you've never had an orgasm, and have your vagina sewn shut, maybe you don't know what you are missing, but it IS still a symbol of female oppression, and THAT is not a "a powerful symbol of African-ness in opposition to white oppression." THAT is just an excuse for people who want to continue doing it. West and subsaharan central African countries have been FGMing since LONG before there were any white people in that area. It isn't due to Islam, it isn't due to "white oppression" it is due to the idea that OWNING an other person is fine and dandy. Which is why slavery was introduced to the Dutch by the same people who brought you FGM, and these areas were doing BOTH (and both are significantly oppressive "traditions") LONG before any white people went into those parts of Africa.

Yeah, every country needs to clean up their own house, but that doesn't mean that anything anyone else does is OK because it's "part of their culture." In the early days of this country, cefore the Civil War, MOST of the slave owners used the "they're just part of the family" bullshit excuse. Slavery is reprehesible. ALso the "we can't free them, they won't be able to get jobs and they will all starve to death" excuse was also a big ones for ProSlavery forces in the US before African Ameicans were given their freedom. It was rationalizational bull then and it is now. No one can hold an other human being against his or her will and say "It's OK, they don't mind. They are just like my children, and can't think for themselves. Besides it's part of our culture." No, that is just rationalizing horror and oppresssion, and those who perpertrate horror and oppression on others are really good at rationalizing it. I'm sure it is the only way they can get any sleep at night.

 

Please keep in mind that the version in which the vagina is sewn shut is vastly in the minority. The majority of female circumcision procedures simply remove the outer labia. Often, the only snip is the the very tip of the clit -- not even the lips are removed. This focus on the absolute worst case as the example is similar to Bush focusing on BinLaden as the example of what a Muslim leader is all about. It's powerful rhetoric for those who don't want to take the time to understand the cultural background. No, I would not want to see anyone forced to endure such procedures without being given a choice, yes, I agree it sounds incredibly unpleasant, but let's not exaggerate the facts.

As for COMPLETE ability to enjoy sex: According to women who have had the procedure, including a woman who was educated in American universities (undergrad and graduate levels) and who chose to return to her native village to undergo the procedure, the version in which the lips are removed but the vagina is not sewn shut does not destroy the complete ability to enjoy sex. I wouldn't know, all I have to go on are the reports from women who have had the procedure and who still get great pleasure from sex... I don't trust the assumptions made by women who have not experienced the procedure, which would be a logical fallacy of the "if I were a horse" variety.

I never said anything about the cultural claims behind the practice. Therefore, the fact that it's been going on since long before whites were present is irrelevant. I said that, as a REACTION to white oppression, as experienced since colonization, and as a REACTION to whites going in and telling them that their cultural practices are barbaric, a practice that has been African since before whites were present and which whites dislike has BECOME a symbol of African-ness in opposition to white oppression.

And, well, in terms of it being a symbol of female oppression -- it is the women who force their daughters into it. It is the mother of the groom, not the groom himself, who cares whether the potential bride has been snipped, at least in the cases I've read about. So it's a symbol of oppression by women against women? But somehow it's the men's fault, right?

As for the reasons, in the culture I've read a thorough account about, it is a matter of making a woman fully female, while males are circumcised to make them fully male. It is done around the beginning of puberty, as children are leaving their child-like gender neutrality and becoming fertile adults. The outer, dangly bits are perceived as male, while being hidden and internal is perceived as female. So, the outer labia, the male bits, are removed from females, while the penis sheath, which makes the penis inner and hidden, therefore female, is removed from the males. I forget the more complex cosmological aspects that go along with this cultural logic.

But, then, women suffer the mutilation far more than men, though they are subjected to genital mutilation as well, since of course the whole culture is based on the oppression of women...

When did anyone say that anything anyone does is OK? If you got that from my post, you seriously twisted my words. However, going in and trying to change things without taking the time to do your best to set your biases aside, to try to understand the cultural logic behind a practice, to try to understand how it benefits the people while being harmful in other ways -- that's just going to make the situation worse. Which was my point of bringing up the above issue of female circumcision becoming a powerful symbol of African-ness -- that occurred as a defensive reaction to activists who never bothered to understand WHY women would put their daughters through this.

Again, sitting here going on about how bad some practice is, without considering the reasons behind it or the ways it may benefit people (again, while doing more harm than good), is not doing any good for anyone.

When I mentioned the issue of slavery in NW Africa, I was not talking about the rationalizations used by the slave owners. I was talking about the things former slaves told anthropologists. There is a BIG difference there.

And, again, the point was not "hey, slavery was a good thing there". I never said such a thing. The point was that many of the practices we find objectionable, which may often do more harm than good, often do involve some benefit. When you abolish that practice that does harm, you need to find a way to replace the benefits it used to provide, because simply removing harm does not necessarily equal improvement.

One can kill an alcoholic by merely removing his access to alcohol -- it removes the harmful addiction, but the withdrawls can be fatal without medical supervision. This doesn't mean that we should just leave him to his addiction until it kills him -- it means we should understand that his daily fix provides the benefit of preventing his death due to withdrawls, and therefore take measures to provide the medical supervision needed to get him safely through the withdrawls.

I was not rationalizing slavery or female circumcision. I was suggesting that we take the time to understand so that we may provide a greater good. Rushing in head first without understanding the cultural context often does more harm than good. That doesn't mean don't do anything, it means do your research and devise a better plan to act upon.

 

Just a quick point because I honestly don't know a whole lot about the subject. After reading the article, it does not appear to have been adressed on the thread, that the mothers and other elder women really do think that they are helping. Don't roll your eyes or not believe that when the doctor told them what they were doing is harmful they didn't know. They don't have the same means of education about things here. They simply didn't know any better. I really don't believe that is their fault. There are so many practices that people have done here for years (some not done anymore) but we think back and we are like WTF were they thinking? Duh! And ok, some might not compare, but think back, did your mother do something that she thought was for your own good and turned out to be completely wrong? Maggie and Otter, I know you can both relate to wanting to protect your children. That is what these women believe they are doing. They are not trying to oppress them or hurt them, they want to keep them from being raped. At least that is what the article said. What goes on in other situations is different of course.

I think the way to help in this situation (like almost any) is education, which is what the original article adressed. I mean it would be comepletely different if females weren't being raped, and it would be different if they knew that it was actually doing more harm than good. But I don't think they understand that yet.

But rather than sit around our computers and argue with each other about it, wouldn't it be better if we did something about it. Tried to get them the education they need? I think that would be a little more helpful. Then again we might think we are helping and we could actually be hurting the situation.