Reflections on FGM and Culture: #EndFGM 2020
By Matilda Day
We need to talk about Female Genital Mutilation. We need to talk about FGM as a human rights transgression, as a health concern, and as a form of gender-based violence. We need to talk about FGM as surrounded by an international dialogue that is often reductive, and crude. We need to talk FGM in terms of ‘culture’ and ‘rights’, and how they may be reconciled. Last week, it was reported that a 12-year old Egyptian girl had died from a medicalised FGM procedure. FGM is difficult to talk about, but the ramifications of our silence are too horrific. February 6th, International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, is an opportunity to have these conversations, and to reflect upon the role of the #EndFGM movement in the context of prevailing debates.
FGM is defined by the World Health Organisation as any procedure that involves cutting, altering or injuring external female genitalia, for non-medical purposes. Over 200 million girls and women alive today have experienced FGM - to great psychological, emotional and physical trauma. There are no health benefits, despite widely circulated information on the contrary. Amongst the many health complications that arise from FGM are profuse bleeding and trauma during the procedure, infections, chronic pain in menstruation and intercourse, PTSD, and other mental health problems. The number of women with obstetric complications as a result of FGM is in the millions. FGM is considered an indisputable violation of the human rights of girls and women by the United Nations (UN), WHO and the wider international community, and its eradication is a significant part of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
As a cultural feature, the types of FGM undertaken vary significantly. Amongst countries that undertake FGM, there are immense “variations in terms of the type performed, circumstances surrounding the practice and size of the affected population groups”. There are significant cultural differences in how FGM is practiced, why it is practiced and upon whom it is practiced. Typically, FGM is tied to womanhood and is considered essential preparation for marriage. The WHO categorises four types of FGM: clitoridectomy, excision, infibulation, and a final group of other harmful procedures including pricking and scraping.
FGM is an inherently difficult subject. It becomes an even more fraught dialogue to engage with because it involves matters of gender, culture, religion - and their interplay. The framing of FGM is, accordingly, very contested. FGM is, at once, framed as a harmful traditional practice, a health concern, a type of ‘honour-based violence’, a symbol of patriarchal control and a human rights violation. On the other hand, anti-FGM activism has been critiqued for facilitating western paternalism, failing to exercise proper cultural relativism and using intentionally evocative (and problematic) language such as ‘mutilation’. The central tension that emerges in modern public commentary and academia has been, for some time: how do we address FGM in a way that resists ethnocentrism and the imposition of cultural shame, without compromising our efforts to decisively condemn the practice and preach ‘zero tolerance’?
It is, I believe, necessary to place the #EndFGM campaign within the context of these discussions and consider how it may address the culture/rights tension. The theme of International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation for 2020 is ‘Unleashing Youth Power’. This year is focused upon mobilising youth to educate, inform and usher in a ‘new normal’ for communities - one in which women are accorded bodily autonomy. At its crux, the movement provides a way to steadily erode the normative framework of FGM as a cultural institution, without denouncing ‘culture’ itself. The state of modern commentary today recognises FGM as a persistent cultural institution that will outlive attempts to criminalise and regulate the practice. For instance, Alaka Basu of the United Nations Foundation, she argues that ‘zero tolerance’ has never meant active policing and criminalisation, but involves “new notions of honour and human rights that protect women”. Similarly, many anthropologists have suggested transforming FGM into a symbolic, rather than substantive ritual. That is, encouraging the elements of celebration and feasting that accompany traditional rites of passage, but reducing FGM itself to a symbolic, not substantive performance. ‘Unleashing Youth Power’ to #EndFGM fits well with these approaches - is a concept that encourages collaboration and cultural pride and nuanced discussion. It resists commentary shrouded in shame, or criminalisation and instead seeks to alter norms such that women and girls are protected, celebrated and uplifted. It may well be how we move beyond the cultural relativism vs universality conundrum – at least, it certainly is in line with what many researchers believe to be best-practice in addressing FGM. Dr. Belkis Giorgis, in reflecting on the role of culture in FGM, writes that, “we can have pride in our culture when we use it to empower and liberate—when all benefit from it.” The #EndFGM movement critically analyses a cultural practice without demonizing culture itself – no small feat.
So, let’s talk about FGM, today and into the future - through the #EndFGM campaign and beyond. Let’s examine our own dialogue, and ensure it feeds a world in which all women and girls are free of pain, suffering and coercion. Such a world is certainly possible. Let’s celebrate women, not control them.
*Photo for this post provided by the United Nations
Read more on #EndFGM here:
Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Life of a Desert Nomad, Waris Dirie. Waris, human rights ambassador for the UN and high-fashion model, describes her experience of FGM in Somalia.
The Complexity of Female Circumcision: Your Thoughts, The Atlantic. This article complies readers’ comments on a controversial article discussing ‘voluntary’ FGM. It raises questions of consent versus acquiescence, and the capacity for a woman to pr90ovide true consent when faced with cultural expectations.
Female Genital Mutilation and Social Media, Christina Julios. The author discusses FGM within the context of social media activism. She examines the opportunities and constraints provided by online mobilisation, and the notion of token activism, or ‘clicktivism’, in #EndFGM campaigns.