Multi-Culti Nonsense

What do the cultural relativists say about FGM?

V. What should be done about Female Genital Mutilation?

There is little consensus about the continued practice of FGM in some countries. Many international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and Amnesty International, call for the erradication of FGM as a human rights abuse. Supporters of FGM call for the consideration of FGM within a cultural framework much different than the cultural framework of the United States or Europe. For instance, Adeline Apena argues that addressing female circumcision as a travesty of individual human rights ignores the importance of community and group rights in African culture. Apena and Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka criticize Alice Walker and others of portraying circumcised women as helpless victims of human rights abuses, instead of subjects who can create their own solutions.

Both sides of this issue have valid points. Female genital mutilation violates a female's right to bodily integrity and freedom from violence. FGM, especially as practiced to control a woman's sexuality or to initiate a woman into strictly defined gender roles, is a violent method of socializing women into a subordinate role in society. However, treating women as victims or as people without a culture only perpetuates the subordination of women -- they now must be subordinate to the desires of Westerners instead of men in their culture. Better solutions can be found that empower African women to create and implement their own solutions to female genital mutilation.

There is a black and white on this issue. If you are 18 and want to have this barbaric procedure done, go for it! If you are under 18, I don't want to hear about your culture, your rights, your religion - or any other inane logic used to defend this.

This sentence is ridiculous: However, treating women as victims or as people without a culture only perpetuates the subordination of women -- they now must be subordinate to the desires of Westerners instead of men in their culture. Using this same logic, we should treat suicide bombers as something other than the criminals and terrorists that they are. Would certainly hate to foist western traditions on the fine Muslim men and women of Africa or the Palestinians. . .

Bottom line: If you don't ask anything from us (no loans, no freebies), don't threaten our security and don't live on our soil, you can do what you want. But if you have your hand out, assistance comes with a few strings. And everyone has their hands out.