Robert Daniels, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, took part in a lecture on Female Genital Mutilation on Thursday, April 7. He applied the concept of cultural relativity to the practice female circumcision.

"Cultural relativity involves suspending one's own judgments when looking at the practices of others. It does not say that all cultural practices are equally valid or just," said Daniels. Conversely, cultural relativity involves recognizing the autonomy and responsibility of others.

"Female Genital Mutilation is a prejudicial term," he said. "To speak of these practices only as operations or mutilations is like speaking of making the sign of the cross on someone's forehead on Ash Wednesday as 'soiling the face' or speaking of a fraternity branding as 'mutilating the upper arm,'" said Daniels.

Circumcision is a deeply embedded right of passage in Africa. It is a central ritual that defines social roles in families, communities, marriage-systems, a person's self-identity and self-worth, said Daniels.

We should object and intervene when some people are destroying others, as in Darfur. There are more than enough cases of that within our own social and political system, and those in which we can have some effective influence.

"The cutting in each case removes our inherent androgynies, taking away the most feminine aspects of boys' genitalia and the most masculine aspects of girls' genitalia, so that we are truly made men and women," Daniels said.

Daniels referred to a feminist critique by Wairimu Njambi, a circumcised woman, to support his argument.

"Anti-FGM discourse perpetuates a colonialist assumption by universalizing a particular western image of a 'normal' body and sexuality," Njambi wrote.

"This discourse includes not only a missionizing Christian bias, but also a Western sexist bias by considering women's issues as separable from men's," Daniels said.

Daniels critiqued the common feminist notion that the rituals are an extreme form of male oppression.

"If one says they are examples of male oppression, does that mean that most or all the women in these societies are not only victims but agents in their own victimization?"

Cultural relativity does not say that all human behavior is just or justified, but it does say that we have to entertain the possibility that other ways of life may be equally valid ways to be human, that the "natives" are not simply ignorant and need our enlightenment, but that perhaps they know what they are doing as much as we do.

Check out Njambi's critique in Colonizing Bodies: A Feminist Science Studies Critique of Anti-FGM Discourse.

Ayazheni Bourassa
As a American Indian women, I can honestly say 100+ years ago many of my male ancestors did not treat my female ancestors very well. They were considered property, to do with as the males choose. Many of my female ancestors had very hard lives ruled with an iron fist by their men. I am so very glad to be born in this age; I have the basic human right to be who I want to be. My father or husband has no power over me.

I can still have my cultural traditions here in America without the force.

Women in Islamic countries have no such choice. If a Muslim women wants to be second class to her husband because of her religion, it should be a choice and not a law forced on all Muslim women.

A real feminist is all about free will and choice.

In my opionion, Wairimu Njambi can't be called a feminist if she cares more about cultural traditions than a women's right to free will.