|
COPYRIGHT 2004 Berkeley Electronic Press
Abstract
The issue of Female Circumcision is usually discussed in the framework of extreme human rights violations victimizing non western women. This paper questions this approach by broadly comparing Female Circumcision with similar "cutting" practices routinely performed in Western societies. An integrative approach to comparative law is suggested in order to understand phenomena in context and to avoid ethnocentrism.
KEYWORDS: Human Rights, Hegemony, Female Circumcision, Breast Augmentation, Male Circumcision, Comparative Law
1. Introduction.
Many contend that the very notion of human rights is a western concept (1) and that the U.N. Declaration of human rights is the expression of its predominantly western constituency (2). These and similar approaches see the human rights discourse as part of a Western discourse or even a Western hegemonic discourse, affected by what Edward Said called positional superiority (3). The issue of female circumcision (hereinafter F.C.) shows in action the robustness of Said's critique. It is a powerful example of the double standard that affects much of the internationally dominant human rights discourse, whose proponents advocate the eradication of these practices. It also suggests the importance of conducting any work related to human rights from both the perspectives of "we" and the "others", "insiders" and "outsiders", "Westerners" and "non-Westerners", "helpers" and "helped", in a word from a broad comparative law perspective, in order to avoid ethnocentrism and cherish respect for difference (4). A genuinely universal approach to human rights work requires a communication among cultures that can only be achieved following the lesson taught by both anthropologists and comparative law scholars: "participant observation" (5) or "cultural immersion" (6) are the keys for understanding and communicating. In this paper I claim that the international approach against F.C. has not engaged in a "dialogical dialogue" (7), i.e. a dialogue among cultures that gives "them" and "us" a third eye, making possible a critical understanding of each one's attitudes, beliefs and practices; a dialogue that requires us to "look in the mirror from the start" (8). Only a serious and comprehensive approach towards all modifications of sexual organs, African and Western, "theirs" as well as "ours", using a single, not a double, standard to evaluate all body modifications related to human sexual apparatus, will make the human rights discourse on sexual organs' modifications or mutilations (whatever we want to call them) less imperialistic, more effective and less assimilating. A more inclusive notion of human rights, a notion that includes "us"--the Westerners--as well as "them"--the "Others"--, serves, indeed, to reduce hypocrisy and gives credibility to the "human rights spirit" (9).
Because of the current ethnocentric nature of human rights discourse, Western observers generally use a double standard in the evaluation of the various practices that modify the sexual apparatus. In this paper, I use the legal attitude of Italy and the United States towards these kinds of sexual "cutting" to show the importance of a more inclusive and self-mirroring perspective to sexual modifications. I will expose the double standard used in three different sexual organ modification practices, not only F.C. but also male circumcision (M.C.) and breast augmentation (B.A.). Similar legal reactions based on double standards are found everywhere in the western world.
This comparative work should offer the opportunity to reflect on the grounds we use to justify the different treatment reserved to F.C. when compared to other modifying practices concerning sexual organs. What makes F.C. a human rights' violation while M.C. and B.A. are considered acceptable and even respectable cultural practices? Trying to find the reason for singling-out F.C. as a human rights' violation, I will briefly address a number of issues, including health concerns, patient's consent (choice), sexual fulfillment limitation, and beauty-femininity requirements in different cultures. Comparing the different practices from these points of view, will allow me to argue for the abandonment of the positional superiority that affects Westerners in their approach to sexual organ modifications and advocate the adoption of a single standard in the ethical and legal evaluation of cutting practices.
2. Some comparative data.
In describing the reactions that the legal system of my country (Italy) and that of this country (U.S.) have to three different practices that in various ways end up in modifying human sexual organs, let me consider the following three cases:
1) In Italy and the U.S., M.C. is routinely performed, for no therapeutic reason, in public hospitals right after the baby is born (in the second mentioned country to the extent of at least 60 % of the newborn male population (10)) and it is a practice that the law fully accepts. M.C., as everyone knows, consists of removing the foreskin or prepuce, the natural sheath of skin that covers the penis. In the same two countries, however, F.C., even the less extreme of its forms, the so called Sunnah circumcision, is outlawed and criminally sanctioned (11). Sunnah circumcision, as very few would know, in its mildest expression is a largely symbolic circumcision that entails a small cut in the prepuce (the hood above a girl's clitoris). It removes no tissue and leaves only a small scar. It is far less invasive than M.C.. Nevertheless, proposals by doctors at medical centers in the two countries that sought to perform this light form of F.C. at parents' request (or even with the girl's informed consent) have produced a major uproar of the anti--F.C. movements and have been deemed unacceptable by the law itself. (12)
2) In Italy and in the U.S., B.A. surgery is a sexual organ modifying practice generously allowed by the legal system even on minors, who by giving consent can have their breasts augmented as long as they give consent together with but one of their parents. In the same two countries F.C., no matter how mild, performed on a minor is punished as a serious crime. Minors' and their parents' consent is no excuse, nor is their belief that the operation is required as a matter of custom, ritual, or religion. In Italy, the minor age of the recipient of F.C., no matter how strongly she consents, is an aggravating factor that increases the sentence to be imposed on perpetrators and their accomplices.
3) Finally, in Italy and in some U.S. States, but not at the Federal level (thanks to African immigrant women activists that strongly opposed a situation in which adult immigrant women would have been treated as legal minors), an adult woman, i.e. a woman over 18, cannot validly consent to F.C. surgery although she can consent to have her breast augmented.
A similar legal framework is nowadays found everywhere in the Western world, and consequently is starting its spreading march, as a token paid to civilization, in African legal systems. F.C. in fact, became the object of a massive attack at the international level since 1979, when the WHO (World Trade Organization) sponsored the first Seminar on Harmful Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children, in Karthoum, Sudan. The efforts in eliminating F.C. (eradication is the term employed) earned the support of the international community and F.C. was later framed as a human rights violation and addressed as such in many international settings. As a result many countries, Western as well as African, passed criminal laws specifically addressing F.C. within the mentioned framework. (13)
Yet, despite this "common core of civilized nations" the question remains: why is F.C. treated differently than other "cutting" practices? What makes only F.C. a human rights violation? On what grounds (other than cultural bias) can we justify the singling-out of F.C. among the different sexual organ modifying procedures practiced in the world?
3. Health concerns and the double standard.
The first answer that comes to the mind of an unbiased observer relates to health concerns. Does F.C. raises more serious health concerns than M.C. or B.A. procedures? It is difficult to answer this question without paying attention to the large variety of practices that the term F.C. involves. According to the WHO's classification, F.C. ranges from the very mild form of Sunnah, to the most radical practice of infibulation (also known as Pharaonic circumcision). According to the same source, however, the latter practice--which involves the complete removal of the clitoris, labia minora, and part or all of the labia majora, then suturing to narrow the vaginal introitus--accounts for only 15% of all F.C.. Sunnah F.C. in its various forms (total or partial removal of the prepuce), excision (that involves excision of the prepuce with excision of part or all of the clitoris)--and clitoridectomy (excision of the prepuce and clitoris together with partial or total excision of the labia minora) account for the rest of the female circumcisions that are practiced in Africa (in 28 countries) , as well as in some Middle East countries (including the Oman, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates) and some Asian countries (including Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and India--where a small Muslim sect, the Daudi Bohra, practice clteridectomy).
Acknowledging that it is with a great approximation that we can address F.C. as a unitary category, it seems that many forms of F.C., with the sure exception of infibulation, if performed in the same non-septic, safe and hygienic setting of a good hospital, would not entail greater health risks in terms of short-term and long-term complications than M.C. or B.A. (14). Surgery routinely performed in our countries in case of congenital adrenal hyperplasia, i.e. cliteridectomy for those newborns who have been labelled "intersex babies"--while incidentally raising the question regarding why we can blamelessly satisfy our social sexual taxonomy by a genital organ removal--, can prove...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
