December 3, 2007, - 1:51 pm
American A(nthro)POLOGISTS’ Insanity Continues: “What’s Wrong w/Female Genital Mutilation?”
By Debbie Schlussel
Last week, I told you about how the American Anthropological Association defamed and condemned America’s troops and told anthropologists who help our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan avoid harm that they are “unethical.”
Now, there’s more pan-Islamist absurdity courtesy of the national trade group of this overrated group of people who dedicate their careers to studying how many times someone in ancient Rome went to the bathroom and whether Saladin’s fighters wore boxers or briefs.
Reader Ari alerts us that the AAA (as I wrote before, the automotive AAA should sue for defamation) now claims that those who condemn female genital mutilation–practiced mostly by Muslims–are “guilty of ignorance and cultural imperialism.”
Yes, we all misunderstand this barbaric practice against women because we–not they–are backwards and intolerant. The New York Times resident libertarian, John Tierney writes that, Saturday, the AAA hosted two African Muslim women who underwent and support female genital mutilation and will “debate” the matter:
Should African women be allowed to engage in the practice sometimes called female circumcision? Are critics of this practice, who call it female genital mutilation, justified in trying to outlaw it, or are they guilty of ignorance and cultural imperialism?
Those questions will be debated Saturday morning in Washington at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting. Representatives of international groups opposed to this procedure will be debating anthropologists with somewhat different views, including African anthropologists who have undergone the procedure themselves. As the organizers of the AAA panel note:The panel includes for the first time, the critical “third wave” or multicultural feminist perspectives of circumcised African women scholars Wairimu Njambi, a Kenyan, and Fuambai Ahmadu, a Sierra Leonean. Both women hail from cultures where female and male initiation rituals are the norm and have written about their largely positive and contextualized experiences, creating an emergent discursive space for a hitherto “muted group” in global debates about FGC [female genital cutting].
Surprise!–and not noted by the NYTimes’ Tierney or the AAA–both Njambi and Ahmadu are Muslim.
Dr. Ahmadu, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, was raised in America and then went back to Sierra Leone as an adult to undergo the procedure along with fellow members of the Kono ethnic group. She has argued that the critics of the procedure exaggerate the medical dangers, misunderstand the effect on sexual pleasure, and mistakenly view the removal of parts of the clitoris as a practice that oppresses women. She has lamented that her Westernized “feminist sisters insist on denying us this critical aspect of becoming a woman in accordance with our unique and powerful cultural heritage.” In another essay, she writes:
It is difficult for me – considering the number of ceremonies I have observed, including my own – to accept that what appears to be expressions of joy and ecstatic celebrations of womanhood in actuality disguise hidden experiences of coercion and subjugation. Indeed, I offer that the bulk of Kono women who uphold these rituals do so because they want to – they relish the supernatural powers of their ritual leaders over against men in society, and they embrace the legitimacy of female authority and particularly the authority of their mothers and grandmothers.
Gee, I can’t wait until the American Anthropological Association’s next “debate”: “The Joy of Jewish Cooking: Was Gassing of Auschwitz Inmates a Misunderstood Humanitarian and Sanitary Practice?”
Sadly, the normally reasonable Tierney (although he is against immigration reform) agrees with these intellectually-challenged apologists, er . . . A(nthro)POLOGISTS:
If I were asked to make a decision about my own daughter, I wouldn’t choose circumcision for her. But what about the question raised by these anthropologists: Should outsiders be telling African women what initiation practices are acceptable?
Well, John, if I had a daughter, I wouldn’t choose the ovens for her. But what about the question raised by the anthropologists: Should outsiders have told the Nazis what national “sanitary” practices were acceptable?
Should outsiders tell Saudi Arabia that it’s wrong to sentence a gang-rape victim to lashes? I mean, don’t they have a right to choose their own discipline of the “whores who asked for it”?
Should outsiders judge HAMAS and Fatah on homicide bombings at pizza joints and cafes?
We can tell Israel what to do with its borders and national security–important national sovereignty issues. But on female genital mutilation, we must remain mum? HUH?
Let’s be intellectually honest about this. A group of American academics is legitimizing forced, barbaric Islamo-fascist castration of women. Period. These girls are very young and don’t have a choice. Most of them don’t want to be “circumcised.” Just ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It is torture, plain and simple.
Remember, the most famous anthropologist in history was Margaret Mead. And she fabricated that for which she was most famous–her entire study on Samoans’ uninhibited sexual practices. A complete fraud.
Some things never change. Phony, yesterday. Phony and apologist for America’s enemies, today.
Tags: Afghanistan, America, American Anthropological Association, anthropologist, Circumcision, Debbie Schlussel Last, Fatah, female circumcision, female genital mutilation, Fuambai Ahmadu, Hamas, Iraq, Israel, John Tierney, Margaret Mead, Njambi, Rome, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, The New York Times, the University of Chicago, Washington
“Female circumcision” is barbaric, pure and simple. I hate it when intellectuals start examining violent acts from a purely academic standpoint. It just makes them look foolish.
Norman Blitzer on December 3, 2007 at 2:52 pm