In any case, there are some women who are comfortable with the terminology female genital mutilation.

However, I also have friends who teach cultural anthropology who’ve had modified women in their classes who say that they find the term, and the way that undergraduates talk about it, to alienate them from the discussion. They feel that it portrays their culture as savage, flattens the situation, and contributes to taking away their agency and their opinions about their own bodies.

In my opinion, it is more damaging to alienate large numbers of affected women from the process of discussion than it is to allow for a minor linguistic shift that can bring more people to the table in a positive fashion. Cultural imperialism is a spectre, here.

(By the by, did I see you when I posted this over on the Aqueduct blog? If so, science fictional greetings! Good to see you ’round these parts.)

1. Khady Koita, author of Mutilée and now works for GAMS
2 . Dr Bogaletch Gebre who has set up a women’s self help group in Ethiopia.
3. Waris Dirie, from Somalia, a supermodel who has set up a foundation to work against FGM.
4. Papillon, from Senegal now living in Paris, who has been tracing her route from a mutilated child to a woman who has had reconstructive surgery. Her blog in French is translated into English here.

No way do any of these women advocate what has happened to them and none of them has any compunction in denouncing it. Papillon and Waris Dirie are consumed with anger that it should happen.

Papillon is the reason I object to female genital surgeries as a term. She has had surgery to correct the wrong that was done to her. Calling the original female genital surgeries smacks of euphemism and an insult to those that have to have surgery to attempt to overcome the original mutilation. And believe me, they use these words. Papillon frequently calls it an abomination and mutilation, an act of barbarism:

“When I was 4 my mother had me circumcised. It ruined my life.”
“the horror of my circumcision”
“my body was the first victim of my circumcision. It was wounded, mutilated, traumatised”
“My cousin also told me about her circumcision, of the anger which had never left her ”
“educate the torturers”
“she had done nothing to prevent my grandmother from mutilating us”
“we were there to repair an abomination which had been inflicted by the hand or wish of our own people”

I could go on and on.

Alas, I don’t have articles, but it was something my teacher communicated in lecture.

Also, imperialsm sucks.