excerpt from wiki concerning female genital cutting/circumcision
Was reading up on this issue when I noticed that the approach a applicable to other issues as well. First thing that comes to mind: honor killings.
Despite laws forbidding the practice, FGC has proven to be an enduring tradition difficult to overcome on the local level with deeply held cultural and sometimes political significance. For instance, prohibition by the British of the procedure among tribes in Kenya significantly strengthened the tribes' resistance to British colonial rule in the 1950s and increased support for the Mau Mau guerrilla movement. Thus, colonial efforts to stampe out the practice had the contradictory result of making it even more common, as it was seen as a form of resistance towards colonial rule.
A significant difficulty lies in the fact that the practice, as an identifying feature of indigenous culture, is intimately associated with the endogamous potential of young women. Thus for only one or a few families within a given locale to "deprive" their daughters of the operation is to significantly disadvantage them in finding husbands. This damages the survivability of their culture in a hostile, "globalizing" social environment.
Because the practice holds such cultural and marital significance, anti-"circumcision" activists increasingly recognize that to end the practice it is necessary to work closely with local communities. What must happen, some have noted, is that members of a marriage network must all give up the practice simultaneously so no individuals are handicapped, as happened, for example, under similar circumstances with the rapid abandonment of foot binding among the Chinese early in the 20th century.
Often activists working for the practice's elimination offer a universalizing psychological rationale. Working from an axiom of a "normal" psyche, they commonly assume that female genital cutting rituals represent deviance from a transcultural behavioral norm. Of course, these rituals are seen in these cases as violent disfigurement, likened to child abuse and rape. They seek to bring practitioners and "victims" of such "barbarism" to reason by convincing them that the practice is indeed a wrong-doing. This attitude is an echo of the colonial and missionary campaigns against the practice in the first half of the 20th century.
An example of successful efforts to end the practice is occurring in Senegal, initiated by native women working at the local level in connection with the Tostan Project, directed by Molly Melching.[36] Since 1997, 1,271 villages (600,000 people), some 12% of the practicing population in Senegal, have voluntarily given up FGC and are also working to end early and forced marriage. This has come about through the voluntary efforts of locals carrying the message out to other villages within their marriage networks in a self-replicating process. By 2003, 563 villages had participated in public declarations, and the number continues to rise. By then, at least 23 villages in Burkina Faso had also held such community wide ceremonies, marking "the first public declaration to end FGC outside of Senegal and showing the replicability of the Tostan program for large-scale abandonment of this practice". Molly Melching of TOSTAN believes that in Senegal the practice of female genital mutilation could be ended within 2–5 years. She credits the approach of education versus cultural imperialism for the rapid and significant changes which have occurred in Senegal. The approach going into Senegal was one of non judgment which allowed the men and women of Senegal to question their own traditions and make change as opposed to being put in a position where they would have felt the need to defend their traditions against the criticisms of others.
This indigenous movement began with a few women who had participated in a literacy program that taught women skills in research, project management and social advocacy. The program also included neutrally presented facts about female reproduction and the health effects of female circumcision (see Obermeyer above for counter-point to presumed "neutrality"). Students did group projects as the culmination of their 18-month training and one such group chose the topic of FGC for their project. Having received assurance from their local imam during their research that the practice was a custom and not a religious requirement, they went on to create dramatic reenactments of the suffering and deaths the practice had brought to their own lives and to share them throughout their village. At the end of a year, their entire village of some 15,000 people joined in a public ceremony to collectively reject the practice for their daughters and prospective daughters-in-law. From there, the imam and other leaders in their village began visiting other villages within the local marriage network and sharing their story. As a result, the new practice began to spread.
Despite laws forbidding the practice, FGC has proven to be an enduring tradition difficult to overcome on the local level with deeply held cultural and sometimes political significance. For instance, prohibition by the British of the procedure among tribes in Kenya significantly strengthened the tribes' resistance to British colonial rule in the 1950s and increased support for the Mau Mau guerrilla movement. Thus, colonial efforts to stampe out the practice had the contradictory result of making it even more common, as it was seen as a form of resistance towards colonial rule.
A significant difficulty lies in the fact that the practice, as an identifying feature of indigenous culture, is intimately associated with the endogamous potential of young women. Thus for only one or a few families within a given locale to "deprive" their daughters of the operation is to significantly disadvantage them in finding husbands. This damages the survivability of their culture in a hostile, "globalizing" social environment.
Because the practice holds such cultural and marital significance, anti-"circumcision" activists increasingly recognize that to end the practice it is necessary to work closely with local communities. What must happen, some have noted, is that members of a marriage network must all give up the practice simultaneously so no individuals are handicapped, as happened, for example, under similar circumstances with the rapid abandonment of foot binding among the Chinese early in the 20th century.
Often activists working for the practice's elimination offer a universalizing psychological rationale. Working from an axiom of a "normal" psyche, they commonly assume that female genital cutting rituals represent deviance from a transcultural behavioral norm. Of course, these rituals are seen in these cases as violent disfigurement, likened to child abuse and rape. They seek to bring practitioners and "victims" of such "barbarism" to reason by convincing them that the practice is indeed a wrong-doing. This attitude is an echo of the colonial and missionary campaigns against the practice in the first half of the 20th century.
An example of successful efforts to end the practice is occurring in Senegal, initiated by native women working at the local level in connection with the Tostan Project, directed by Molly Melching.[36] Since 1997, 1,271 villages (600,000 people), some 12% of the practicing population in Senegal, have voluntarily given up FGC and are also working to end early and forced marriage. This has come about through the voluntary efforts of locals carrying the message out to other villages within their marriage networks in a self-replicating process. By 2003, 563 villages had participated in public declarations, and the number continues to rise. By then, at least 23 villages in Burkina Faso had also held such community wide ceremonies, marking "the first public declaration to end FGC outside of Senegal and showing the replicability of the Tostan program for large-scale abandonment of this practice". Molly Melching of TOSTAN believes that in Senegal the practice of female genital mutilation could be ended within 2–5 years. She credits the approach of education versus cultural imperialism for the rapid and significant changes which have occurred in Senegal. The approach going into Senegal was one of non judgment which allowed the men and women of Senegal to question their own traditions and make change as opposed to being put in a position where they would have felt the need to defend their traditions against the criticisms of others.
This indigenous movement began with a few women who had participated in a literacy program that taught women skills in research, project management and social advocacy. The program also included neutrally presented facts about female reproduction and the health effects of female circumcision (see Obermeyer above for counter-point to presumed "neutrality"). Students did group projects as the culmination of their 18-month training and one such group chose the topic of FGC for their project. Having received assurance from their local imam during their research that the practice was a custom and not a religious requirement, they went on to create dramatic reenactments of the suffering and deaths the practice had brought to their own lives and to share them throughout their village. At the end of a year, their entire village of some 15,000 people joined in a public ceremony to collectively reject the practice for their daughters and prospective daughters-in-law. From there, the imam and other leaders in their village began visiting other villages within the local marriage network and sharing their story. As a result, the new practice began to spread.
posted by Mignon Chang at 10:07 PM
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