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FORWARDED FROM: Rachel Coles
FROM: Rachel Coles
DATE: 11/21/94 09:18
TO: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
SUBJECT: female mutilation
PRIORITY:
ATTACHMENTS:
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Deborah--
I am glad to see that you brought up the issue of female mutilation. I just
got into a rather heated discussion last week about this with someone whom I
consider to be a card-carrying feminist, only to have her defend the practice
and implicitly accuse me of being eurocentric. (She might just have been
playing devil's advocate, who knows.)
This subject is SO upsetting to me. I watched a documentary on public
television a few weeks ago about the the Masai tribe of sub-Sarahan Africa.
Listening to the women talk, not only about how inferior they were to the
men, (they kept mentioning how they were only "foolish" women), but also
pridefully recounting how expert they were at cutting their daughters, I
literally did get tears in my eyes and had to turn off the television. I AM
aware of the danger of eurocentrism, but I just couldn't get out of my mind
the question that there has to be a point where it stops becoming an issue of
culture versus culture-- that at some point, one can justifiablly condemn
certain pratices within a culture and not be accused of eurocentrism, because
EMPIRICALLY and OBJECTIVELY, these acts are reprehensible and unacceptable.
Substitute circumcision for murder, for instance. When the questionable
behavior is taken to extemes, doesn't it at some point beocme less a question
of culture differences and more a question of humanity? Consider the
widspread occurence in rural China of infanticide if the babies are females.
Are there really some scholars who would analyze this as a cultural
phenomenon, and leave it at that?
Perhaps some scholars defend mutilation as the right of a culture to live
as it pleases because of what has happened in American history-- Americans
have indeed been guilty of judging what is "different" and "other" to be
aberrant and barbaric, and trying to "mend" the ways of those poor people who
didn't know any better. But sorry, keeping this well in mind, I still cannot
justify within my head and heart what happens to millions of African women.
Rachel Coles
University of California, Santa Barbara
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Nov 21 13:36:58 MST 1994
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 13:38:32 MST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Other Cultures
>Thank you Jayne and Frederique for your messages of support. Thanks
>also Frederique for your reminder about the insidiousness of cultural
>imperialism. I plead guilty to the ethnocentricity charge. It is an
>issue I find difficult to come to terms with. I wonder how others on
>the list, particularly those "in the field" deal with the apparent
>contradiction of viewing certain cultural practices (such as
>clitoridectomy) as cruel and barbaric from a Western feminist
>perspective, yet respecting the rights of individuals within that
>culture to continue that or any other practice, as they choose.
>Should we intervene at all (even so minor an intervention as
>education) or do we just chalk the whole thing up to "cultural
>differences" and forget about it. This is a difficult question for
>me. Any answers ?
No answers from me, just the same questions (I sure hope this topic becomes a
dicussion thread).
This, to me, seems like a *huge* international issue. My most stunning contact
came during the Tiennamon Square incident. There is a Chinese population of 40
or 50 students on the campus I was a student at, and during the crisis, I was
working with some people to organize campus activities in support of democracy
(as it was students in China mostly doing the organizing and some students on
my campus knew some of them). The Chinese students on my campus did not
participate in our activities and, in fact, asked us *to stop what we were
doing*. Upon asking a Chinese friend why, he took me aside and showed me a book
his grandmother had sent him from China...it was a textbook on theatre/stage
design from the era of the cultural revolution. I had no idea what this meant
(he was a business major). He explained that all mail coming to him was
probably opened by the Chinese government, and the book was a silent, double
message from his grandmother...first, reminding him that revolts often fail,
and turn around to kill those who believed they were changing things (the Mao
era) and second, that he should remember that he was always on stage (a book on
stage design said this)...that the Chinese students on campus just assumed that
the Chinese government had a t least one or two students there secretly keeping
track of the Chinese student population, whose families in China would be in
distinct danger if they demonstrated for democracy or in any way publically
embarrassed the Chinese government.
Now this, to me, seemed appalling...doubly so when the next week the
grandmother's wisdom was borne out in a massacre of non-violent protesters in
Tiennamon Square.
I am not one who uncritically simply accepts democratic capitalism,
but, the beauty in democratic principles was never brought so close to home as
when I watched my friend silently weep for friends of his who had died in the
massacre...and could neither say a word about it nor participate in the
memorial service people on my campus arranged. To see someone standing next to
me, and realize that 5000 miles from China streched a hand so oppressive that
he was utterly silenced...and that the means of coercion was threats to his
*family* (he is a strong man...and probably would be willing to risk his own
life for something he believed in...but not his familiy's).
I would never want to impose my cultural standards on anyone else, but!
in my gut the scene I witnessed seemed terribly WRONG; I just cannot
emotionally buy the premise that it is all just a difference of cultures, and
we have no right to raise the issue of human rights with China (a claim China
is increasingly making as it enters the global economic arena).
Not an answer...just a contribution to the discussion -JRC
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Nov 21 14:12:46 MST 1994
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 14:45:28 -0600 (CST)
From: Jonathan M Poppele <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: female mutilation
To: Ecofem <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Consider the
> widspread occurence in rural China of infanticide if the babies are females.
> Are there really some scholars who would analyze this as a cultural
> phenomenon, and leave it at that?
Infanticide in China is a practice with an ancient tradition. China has
always had a dense rural population and a high person to land ratio. The
addition of another mouth to feed at the wrong time could mean the
strvation of a whole family. Under these conditions, infanticide makes
sense. To what degree and for what ends it is used now I am not as
familiar. My understanding is that baby girls are sometimes drowned
because families who are only allowed to have one child want to have an
heir (perhaps it is only the father who wants this, I don't know). In any
case, why is infanticide of girls inherently bad in a country whos
largest single problem is population? (don't get too angry yet,
just read on then let me know, it's an honest question.) China's biggest
single problem is its population, it does need to take drastic measures
to lower it. Now if this were done by killing adults, I think we
should have a problem with it. But how is infanticide different from
abortion? The large change which takes place between fetus and child does
not happen magically at the moment of birth. I think the issue of
ethnocentrism comes in when we say (rather arbitrarily) that the fetus is
somehow fundamentally different from the new born child, and while the
one may be killed at the discression of the parents the later cannot.
This may be our view, but it is a rather arbitrary decision and we should
not impose it.
Sorry this is rambling a bit. I'll cut it out for now. :)
By the by, I'm coming up on finals and the like here and may well be
signing off the list for a week and a half or two weeks. Hope I don't
miss too much.
Peace,
Jon.
PS A warm and happy Thanksgiving to all.
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Nov 21 14:13:27 MST 1994
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 16:16:31 -0500 (EST)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Anarchy
James Roper wrote:
>
>It just isn't true that authority is
>|> intrinsically bad. It is a necessary condition for civilization.
>|>
>|> H.C. Ellis>>>
>First, we cannot know if the above is true. It may only be a necessary
>condition for a large, overpowering civilization. And it depends upon
>how you define authority. In many naitve civilizations, there are elders
>as authority figures, but they do not coerce cooperation among others,
>instead they offer advice and the others are free to follow it, or some
>other idea.
Authority, as I understand it, has several practical meanings. It can
certainly mean the kind of role taken by tribal elders in which they
offer wisdom and example and individuals do what they want. This is fine
when we are only talking about actions that affect only the actor.
But as soon as people do things that affect others (such as polluting the air
and water that we all use) something more than advice is needed, namely,
power to bring the actor into compliance with societal needs. When no
entity in a society has that power, then there will be war. Whether it
is war of ranchers against farmers, workers against capitalists, neighbor
against neighbor, criminal against victim, etc., without someone or some
institution with the power (authority) to make individuals behave in
society's interest, many of them won't. I have not yet seen on this list
or elsewhere from the anarchists some explanation of how people will be
made to behave without someone having this kind of power.
H.C. Ellis
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Nov 21 18:43:17 MST 1994
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 20:46:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Jayne S Docherty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Anarchy
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Mon, 21 Nov 1994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Authority, as I understand it, has several practical meanings. It can
> certainly mean the kind of role taken by tribal elders in which they
> offer wisdom and example and individuals do what they want. This is fine
> when we are only talking about actions that affect only the actor.
>
> But as soon as people do things that affect others (such as polluting the air
> and water that we all use) something more than advice is needed, namely,
> power to bring the actor into compliance with societal needs. When no
> entity in a society has that power, then there will be war. Whether it
> is war of ranchers against farmers, workers against capitalists, neighbor
> against neighbor, criminal against victim, etc., without someone or some
> institution with the power (authority) to make individuals behave in
> society's interest, many of them won't. I have not yet seen on this list
> or elsewhere from the anarchists some explanation of how people will be
> made to behave without someone having this kind of power.
So far, I have stayed pretty well out of the anarchy debate and I really
do not want to get into it right now. But, I would like to point out
that the assumption that people need to be *made* to behave is rooted in
an assumption that individuals are basically self interested, value
maximizers. The notion that without an authoritative state to chain the
passions/instincts/drives/selfish desires of the individual has a long
history in Western political and social thought. Where I listed
pasions/instincts/etc., you can just pick one of
these depending on whether you are reading Rousseau or Freud or some other
white male, western theorist who has basically reworked the mythology of a
primeval war of all against all as the beginning of human kind.
There is
*so much* evidence that this mythology is inaccurate in many respects,
that I cannot even begin to cover them all. First, I would direct you to
an earlier post of mine in which I talked about the fact that human
evolution depended on a *prior* development of human social bonding and
social structures. Second, I would direct you to studies of our nearest
relatives in the primate world. Third, I would direct you to the
numerous feminist critiques of the assumption that the *individual*
exists over and against the community and is "tamed" by the community. I
am sure that others can add many more sources of evidence to refute this
basic assumption about human nature.
Finally, I would point out that there are many, many ways that people
cooperate -- voluntarily and not just for reasons of self interest as
economists would have us believe. In fact, there is much evidence that
we cannot become "selves" without positive interaction with others.
Therefore, authority *does not* have to be arrogated to a hierarchical,
dominating state or authority structure. Authority *can* emerge out of
shared norms and community values, which can be far more powerful in
influencing human behavior than threats and punishments.
I think that the anarchists are placing greater faith in the efficacy of
these kinds of processes than many of us think is justified at this time
in history. But, just because we might think they are *too* optimistic
does not mean we have to go to the other extreme and blindly accept the
mistaken notions of human nature which have dominated academia, politics,
social theory, etc. etc.
Jayne
