Hero surgeon reversing female circumcisions

This doctor is just an awesome human being for doing what she is doing.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/218692/page/1

That is amazing, I didn't think that anything could be done to reverse mutilation like that. I wish I wasn't so old and dumb, that article makes me wish I could be a doctor doing such great work.

awesome, amazing, incredible

kinda at a tangent, but there's an amazing chapter in the means of reproduction by michelle goldberg about FGM, and the massive duality in criminalising a practice while respecting heritage and avoiding alienating those affected to whom it's a part of identity and history.

while respecting heritage

I dunno. Both cannibalism and slave owning have qualified as heritages passed down from generation to generation. With a little thought I'm sure I could name some more heritages like that.

many african women are strongly in favor of FGM though, other cultural body modification practices such as Victorian corsets or Chinese foot binding may offer a better analogy

the means of reproduction by michelle goldberg

Currently on reserve for a course at the library I'm working at. Am keeping it in mind to look at after the quarter's over.

Echoing all the praise for Dr. Bowers, but my words feel too weak.

somehow it doesn't seem the same, xp

also amazed at this, never occurred to me that it could be reversed

yeah, those are bad, but maybe lower on the scale

other cultural body modification

I would say FGM goes beyond modification.

everyone so amped for their self-righteousness missing the best part:

"She arranged an appointment, but the cost of the trip was high and French health care wouldn't cover an American patient. She found a small nonprofit organization on the web called Clitoraid, which had helped to fund Dr. Bowers's training in France. The organization has unusual backers: it is run primarily by volunteers of the provocative French Raelian movement—the pleasure-promoting "UFO religion" whose members believe life on Earth was created by a race of advanced aliens and who emphasize human sexuality."

wow, i teared up reading that article.
really, really amazing.

it would have been nice to include the second half of the Ciltoraid mention

Clitoraid, however, reaches out to women of all religions and focuses solely on connecting women with trained surgeons in order to "create real, long-lasting changes for women who have been forced to experience clitoral excision or genital mutilation against their will" according to its mission statement.

and i don't think anyone was being particularly self righteous here...

Dr. Bowers cut away the thick scar tissue that had formed over Sila's wound and had obscured the remains of her clitoris. She then scraped away layers of a black, sooty material—the decades-old remnants of the ash poultice the local women had used to stop the bleeding. It had caused a low-grade infection that still hadn't healed—one reason Sila was always in pain.

ARRGGHHHASGHKASFHKGSZAHJHJGGFASHHGHAarrrrjkjkjk!!!!!!!!!fff!!

I dunno. I hate to be trolled, but I've given it ten hours, and I'm still fucking appalled by some of the reactions to this. self-righteousness? WTF? WTFF?

john that was cool, thanks for posting

abbott otm!!!!!!!

xxposts - Soukesian, can you elborate on your comment? Am a bit confused.

kinda at a tangent, but there's an amazing chapter in the means of reproduction by michelle goldberg about FGM, and the massive duality in criminalising a practice while respecting heritage and avoiding alienating those affected to whom it's a part of identity and history.

I have a friend who has done a lot of work on the ground with women and girls in Africa surrounding exactly this. It's really complicated and difficult to address it this way but they've had some success with replacing FGM with less harmful ceremonial practices to mark that transition/time in a girl's life.

I personally love the Raelian connection but then again I am pro-cult in general, the world needs more cults like the Raelians & less smart people sitting on their hands barking from the bleachers imo

OK. People seem to be saying that feeling FGM is, well, mutilation, is 'self-righteous' and a BAD THING.

J0hn OTM re barking from the bleachers. Happy to add my money to the Raelians.

the book "infidel" by ayaan hirsi ali had some pretty devastating parts about FGM and her own circumcision, honestly i can't even really be objective about it after reading it. disgusting practice imo. and from her first person account i sort of doubt the whole "a lot of african women are in favor of it"...the age at which it's usually done is early enough i think that it's hard to say they are making some sort of conscious decision and not just being forced into it or strongly pressure by older ppl

Hey I don't really think that's what anyone was saying but maybe I didn't read the thread closely enough. I think you'd be hard pressed to find many ppl who didn't grow up in cultures where FGM is commonly practiced who don't think of FGM as mutilation. However it is a copmplicated issue which is one of the reasons many anthropologists/cultural relativists have avoided getting into the debate at all.

Here is a pretty interesting article by a native of Sierra Leone who grew up in American but returned to SL as an adult to take part in a female circumsision rite. She rejects the zero tolernace stance and the FGM label in general.

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/a-compromise-on-female-circumcision/?apage=2

trying to remember the name of an article i read about this in my gender & the law textbook (which i sold :() that was really good.

Nice comment on that article: "Some things are just WRONG. Holding children down and sawing away at their genitals with pieces of broken glass is WRONG." I don't see much of a counter-argument.

otm

My friend was just describing this. (The circumcision) I'll tell her about teh article. :-)

kinda at a tangent, but there's an amazing chapter in the means of reproduction by michelle goldberg about FGM, and the massive duality in criminalising a practice while respecting heritage and avoiding alienating those affected to whom it's a part of identity and history.

christ. is there any practice, no matter how repulsive and inhumane, that someone somewhere won't try to justify in the name of "respecting heritage"?

yeah fuck that times a million

M@tt He1ges0n, the Demographic and Health Survey of Egypt. (1995) shows that the majority of women are in favor of circumcising their daughters additionally women in Sierra Leone have staged protest against against condemnation of female circumcision in their media

Soukesian, many people have the same gut reactions on other issues, for instance you can hear similar sentiments on the issue of abortion "Some things are just WRONG murdering unborn children is WRONG". Like the blog says: "I hope we can get beyond angry generalizations and expressions of personal revulsion" Nowadays such issues are often used as ammunition by advocates of imperialist wars such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the do-gooders should be careful lest their efforts against one painful custom result in an even greater oppression

shows that the majority of women are in favor of circumcising their daughters

alright because i don't have 50 other accounts to make this easier im just gonna

1) "a majority of americans are against gay marriage"
2) what did the survey of the DAUGHTERS, not the mothers, say? right, no one asked them
3) how many of those women who responded did so out of fear of going against their husbands or religious leaders? who knows
4) fuck you

http://j9marshall.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/tearing-hair-out.gif

^^^^ really real

dude wssp it's one thing to be aware of the problems with saying something like this is "wrong" and wanting to criminalize it. because i agree there are issues of respecting cultures, which doesn't mean it's justified but it's there. it's another thing entirely to say what i think you're saying, which is that we should withhold judgment? if women are seeking to have the mutilation undone, i think it's safe to say they, who are in the position to judge, think it's wrong and don't approve of it. that's enough for me. who cares if your survey says even 99% of women think it's ok. (also keep in mind there is more than one type of FGM)

in addition you can be against:
(1) imperialist wars,
(2) ayaan hirsi ali/exploitation of people like her by right-wing interests, and
(3) mutilating someone's genitals without their consent
all at the same time

Nowadays such issues are often used as ammunition by advocates of imperialist wars such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the do-gooders should be careful lest their efforts against one painful custom result in an even greater oppression

― Obamacare Death Panel for Cutie (wssp), Thursday, October 22, 2009 9:54 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i saw some of the blurbs on the book and figured it had been picked up by some right wingers...but that said you should read it...she comes off as very anti-islam but it's more similar to the path i think a lot of ppl i knew IRL came out of really christian upbringings then suddenly starting to question everything she was raised around....

she's certainly not advocating some sort of xian crusade or even - as i read it - bush and co. policies whatsoever...more like a aetheist euro liberalism....that said, she is VERY anti-islam and no doesn't really respect the traditions anymore from what i could tell...

...still...reading her personal story (which the book is very much a personal story not a political text) it's hard not to understand why she feels that way...

i thought lots of it was pretty powerful.

yeah i kinda got the impression she was ok but her message gets warped by conservatives

as far as the right wingers that love her, i don't really know that much about it...maybe they've sorta used her in a way. or maybe she's allowed them to co-opt her for publicity...i should look more into that i guess. but the book itself is a pretty damning look into growing up an islamic culture IMO.

i read malkin every day ^_^. i'll check out the book though.

kinda at a tangent, but there's an amazing chapter in the means of reproduction by michelle goldberg about FGM, and the massive duality in criminalising a practice while respecting heritage and avoiding alienating those affected to whom it's a part of identity and history.

christ. is there any practice, no matter how repulsive and inhumane, that someone somewhere won't try to justify in the name of "respecting heritage"?

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, October 22, 2009 5:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

I think there's a difference between recognizing the complexities involved in the condemnation of certain cultural practices and "justifying" them.

M@tt He1ges0n, the Demographic and Health Survey of Egypt. (1995) shows that the majority of women are in favor of circumcising their daughters additionally women in Sierra Leone have staged protest against against condemnation of female circumcision in their media

Gee, I bet if there was a culture somewhere with a heritage of chopping off their childrens' left arms in the service of patriarchal socio-cultural-religious whatnot, mothers there would be v.v. in favor of their child's arms being chopped off, too. Quelle fucking surprise.

I'm not denying that this is a complex issue, but I was kind of disgusted at the way people were jumping on folk for posting: "yay, these women can get their clits back" Surely, that has to be good news.

And it's a complex issue only in that addressing it in practise is complex. I find nothing complex at all about condemning a non-voluntary procedure involving "Excision of the clitoris with partial or total excision of the labia minora.", regardless of ash poultices or broken glass.

. . and even if it were voluntary, wouldn't you try to talk a friend out of it?

. . is the idea that this is about controlling women by desexing them entirely a conspiracy theory?

hey guys denying children blood transfusions because their idiot parents believe prayer will heal them is also part of some people's cultural heritage, did u kno

i think we only have to respect other countries' retards

also if you ask a kid who ~didn't~ go to the hospital but ended up living anyway if they believed in the power of prayer, they'd likely say yes.

the other kid, the one that might say no, is dead

its the way god wanted it igo

^^^ if god had wanted that kid to have someone else's blood in him hed have made him a vampire

k3vin k.
1. Would it kill you to try to avoid alienating them?
2. In most cultures of the world, parents make decisions for their children, many times these decision have long term physical and mental consequences. These include initiation into

various religions, cults, ideologies etc. who is to be the ultimate moral arbiter of exactly how much parent can decide for their children? The Kayan people put brass collars around

the necks of their little girls, I wish they wouldn't do that but who am I to try to stop them from doing it? I think that the fact that these women would put their children through a painful

procedure that they were themselves put through as a child, says a lot about its acceptability to women.
3. I don't know, you tell me Kevin, what percentage of Egyptian woman do you think would lie to (female) DHS interviewers? btw Egypt is a country where some of the top clergy

(including past and present heads of al-Azhar) have spoken out against the practice
4. No thanks

Harbl

Unfortunately the power asymmetry among nations often means that the opinions of the people of the more powerful nation or just a highly motivated and organized lobby in a

powerful nation are often enforced upon the people of weaker nations against their will. The British and Australian people where overwhelmingly opposed to the Iraq invasion just

think of how much more helpless the people of Africa are in the face of western pressure. In this issue the opinions of the Africans of traditional African societies is given no weight at

all compared to the opinions of some of the African immigrants to the west. People are concerned about the sexual anxieties of the African immigrant women, what of the anxieties

of the African woman who might imagine she had some sort of vestigial penis on her which she needs to remove?

in addition you can be against:
(1) imperialist wars,
(2) ayaan hirsi ali/exploitation of people like her by right-wing interests, and
(3) mutilating someone's genitals without their consent
all at the same time

Agreed

re: Ayaan Hirsi as far as I know she is someone from a very privileged background, belonging to the ruling class of Somalia, her opinions are probably a result of disdain for the commoners and their beliefs and practices rather than anything else.

hey guys denying children blood transfusions because their idiot parents believe prayer will heal them is also part of some people's cultural heritage, did u kno

― how rad bandit (gbx), Thursday, October 22, 2009 7:58 PM (1 hour ago)

i'm sort of doing a public health presentation on this type of thing, fuck these motherfucking people imo

*sigh* like why bother but...can't see why you would be so critical of the power of strong nations over weak ones while if the weaker group happens to be young women (compared to clerics, tribal elders, their mothers, whatever), cool. if they ask for help they should have it, even if they're wealthy african immigrants instead of people who still live there. either way.

not nice to call them retards though. they're all humans capable of self-determination.

The Kayan people put brass collars around

the necks of their little girls, I wish they wouldn't do that but who am I to try to stop them from doing it?

you'd be a person who cares about helpless little kids being forced into painful and negatively life-altering customs they may not want to be a part of. some cultures sell their kids into sexual slavery, who are we to stop them?

it's a troll, guys

ugh, yeah :(

it's a trap

this lady is dr. harbl

Agreed

re: Ayaan Hirsi as far as I know she is someone from a very privileged background, belonging to the ruling class of Somalia, her opinions are probably a result of disdain for the commoners and their beliefs and practices rather than anything else.

― Obamacare Death Panel for Cutie (wssp), Friday, October 23, 2009 12:42 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

like you know you could actually read the fucking book...her father was very well known in one tribal, he was from a respected family in that tribe....thing is, he basically ends up abandoning the family and moving to another country, leaving her with her grandmother and mother and siblings...they are not living the high life by any means, and actually her background results in them having a lot of problems because her father and his clan basically falls out of favor with some factions...

given the descriptions of the homes and style in which they are living it's fucking RICH for anyone from a first-world western country to say they were living "priveleged" is fucking STUPID.

2) she was not involved in "ruling" anything in somalia

3) shut the fuck up and either read the book or can it.

and i'm not trying to say that she's like some crazy genius person that you should adopt her whole worldview with no questions asked, i'm sure she has her biases and everything else, but like it's a book worth reading...the first person accounts of her experiences are pretty amazing, and she's a brave person....i'm not cosigning everything she's ever done or said, but it's pretty goddamn stupid for you to trying to front like you know so much more about "real somalis" and shit like gtfo really.

you know who else is a bunch of asshole neocolonialists is anybody who tries to bring running water to remote villages, fuck that, if malaria was good enough for grandpa it's good enough for me

the neocolonialists with neopets are cool tho

technically running water doesn't really have a whole lot do with malaria, but yeah

/pedant

which one has to do with standing water

oh i see what you mean

thought you meant ingestion of, etc.

(3) mutilating someone's genitals without their consent

what about the Jews? Oh and like all the non-Jews who have their infant sons circumcised? Obviously it is a quite different situation than FGM but should the Jews go fuck themselves, too?

i thought judaism was generally ok with masturbation

otherwise wed never have aipac

ัำฟ้ ๆีรืแรำ ณ​กนืงะ าืนไ รด ันีงอำ ้ำฟพก ิีะ ะ้ำพำ ฟพำ ฟสนะห นด ยำนยสำ ไ้น ะ้รืา ทฟสำ แรพแีทแรหรนื รห ดีแารืเ ิฟพิฟพรแ ฿ ะ้ำ เสนิฟส ะพำืก รห ฟไฟั ดพนท ะ้ฟะ

you know what I mean?

ัำฟ้ ๆีรืแรำ ณ​กนืงะ าืนไ รด ันีงอำ ้ำฟพก ิีะ ะ้ำพำ

OTM

ดีแารืเ ิฟพิฟพรแ ฿ ะ้ำ เสนิฟส ะพำืก รห ฟไฟั ดพนท ะ้ฟะ

totally talking out of yr ass here tho

what about the Jews? Oh and like all the non-Jews who have their infant sons circumcised? Obviously it is a quite different situation than FGM but should the Jews go fuck themselves, too?

― quincie, Friday, October 23, 2009 1:09 PM (53 minutes ago)

tbh that's been the elephant in this room no one's brought up simply because there's little the two have in common

besides the mutilation part

andrew sullivan gets all retarded about the issue of circumcision

i don't know if it's mutilation, my mom tipped the doctor a $20 and my dick looks fantastic

think about how awesome your dick looked before it was all fucked up with a scapel!

http://www.norm.org/faq.html

think about how awesome your dick looked before it was all fucked up with a scapel!

― Mr. Que, Friday, October 23, 2009 6:29 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ah i'm not gonna fret over it...the dick's always greener on the other side, etc

lol kinda tmi maybe but: my grandparents had a HUUUUGE fight w/my hippie parents over me getting circumcised my mom ended up giving in to tradition~~~ its still pretty barbaric but thats the cost u pay for running the media and international banking i guess

it was long thought to be about cleanliness, though, no?
as opposed to, say, making it impossible for a woman to experience sexual pleasure so she won't stray.

It's even worse than keeping her from straying, tbh, it's like maintaining complete control over her sexual pleasure even to the extent of denying her any. If she liked it, she would have something of her own, a private pleasure or satisfaction. For her own purity of spirit and our purity of power, we must deny her that.

So much badness, I just stop being able to compute it after about three minutes of thought.

I am in no way saying male and female circumcision are in the same ballpark but there are in fact some common themes (cultural identity, non-consent, etc.)

balls

balls is actually not a common theme in this case

What I'm saying is that FGM is actually closer to castration than circumcision, with similar patriarchal driving forces and an equivalent 'traditional' status. This is about desexing, rather than body modification.

I'd put adults who voluntarily put themselves through "Excision of the clitoris with partial or total excision of the labia minora." in the same category with male masochists who voluntarily submit themselves to castration. (And, yes, this does happen.)