I am so glad to read this forward.  I am so sick and tired of hearing us 
in the west telling those in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere what is 
good for them -- across the spectrum, from political to sexual.  And it is 
especially preposterous for Americans to be counseling the backwards 
people of Africa about sexuality.  Watch a little TV if you doubt what a 
spectacularly bad job American culture does with sexuality and relations 
between the sexes.

Jane Warner-Tholley

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Jane Zainab Warner-Tholley
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington

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On Sat, 2 Dec 2006, Ylva Hernlund wrote:

> Due to a lack of time, I have not been participating in the latest female circumcision debate (although I am of course always willing to reply to direct inquiries regarding my book). Fuambai Ahmadu, who has written the definitive work on Gambian FGC, asked me to forward this to the list (perhaps the list managers can look into why she can't post, although she is surscribed).
> Best always, Ylva
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2006 00:37:27 +0000
> From: fuambai ahmadu <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Posting for the Gambia list
>
>
> Ylva,
>
> I wrote this last week after following some of the "Sabuni/FGM"
> discussion on the Gambia list.  I tried to post it but it came back to me
> twice.  I was wondering you could to it for me and sign my name. All the best,
> FA
>
>
>
> Subject: Sabuni and FGM
>
> Just to interject for a moment here (in response to "Ginny Quick" and
> other comments on Sabuni and "FGM"). As a scholar of African female and male
> inititaion/ritual genital
> modifications as well as a woman who has been personally "subjected" to
> the practice, I have to say that not all circumcised women accept for one
> second much of the exaggerated and sensationalized media claims and
> activist literature about the "harmfulness" of "FGM".  Moreover, there
> are significant studies that challenge the view that female circumcision
> automatically hinders or diminishes female sexuality (the forthcoming
> edited volume by Hernlund and Shell-Duncan, for example).  The current
> biomedical evidence on various sources and experiences of female
> orgasms (as well as on the extensive structure of the clitoris itself,
> which is mostly hidden below the vaginal surface and remains untouched
> after excision or clitoridectomy) support the bulk of anecdotal evidence
> of circumcised women who report experiencing sexual pleasure and
> orgasms. "Education" must flow both ways.  Nonpractitioners
> - particularly anti-"FGM" activists, both liberal and conservative
> politicians and policy-makers in Western countries as well as various
> strands of Westerns feminists - have much to learn about the cultural,
> symbolic and aesthetic values of women who come from practising
> societies, especially the latter's views about womanhood and women's
> power and status in their own cultures.  Millions of African women who
> uphold female circumcision may not be literate or "educated" in a western
> sense, but they do have their own ideas about the merits of excsion to
> women's cleanliness and hygiene (much of the same arguments are made
> about male circumcision) and do not necessarily require books or Western
> women to tell them "how their bodies work".  Despite Western media
> representations, in many of these cultures, the experience of sexual
> pleasure is considered a woman's right in marriage, as much as a man's;
> and, for hundreds, if not thousands of years, African grandmothers have
> used indigenous women's initiation networks to teach matters of sex,
> sexuality, sexual hygiene, among other things, across generations of
> women. What is sorely needed (albeit, perhaps too idealistic) is honest
> cross-cultural/transnational exchange and dialogue among women as equals,
> circumcised and uncircumcised, to see what we can learn from one another,
> rather than the current situation of imposing the dominant cultural
> values and aesthetics of women in Western countries over those of
> circumcised African women who come from poor, geopolitically
> marginalized countries.  Ethnic orgin and socioeconomic status aside, how
> morally different is African women's "FGM" from Western women's more
> euphemistically termed "designer vaginas"?  Perhaps we - that is,
> Western(ized) women - need to put away cultural arrogance and hypocrisy
> and engage African women in international efforts to improve women's
> autonomy and empowerment in all parts of the world, including the west.
>
> Fuambai Sia Ahmadu
>
>
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