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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