some more hard issues...

so, in light of some rather contentious debates in my last class, i just want to put this out there:

what do you think about the idea of moral relativism? do you think that it is wrong for we in the proverbial west to say: "hey, female genital mutilation is wrong!", or "stop killing women for the honor of your family" or "get that woman to a god-damned hospital before she gets fistula, yo!"

i mean, y'all probably know where i stand, but i'd like to know what everyone thinks. to me the idea that as a woman, as a person i can't say that doing something potentially devastating, brutal, violent against the will of another is wrong is infuriating.

a guy in my class today actually compared female genital circumcision to that of male circumcision - i can see his point in the fact that this is done without consent, but to compare a procedure that is done in adulthood and takes away any and all sexual pleasure for the rest of one's life to a procedure that, as far as i can see, is essentially aesthetic seems a bit stretched. but then, i've never been circumcised. anybody out there that has been: any thoughts? i think the part that riled me up was that his intention was not to point out agency but to say that we shouldn't judge or try to change another culture, because this is their choice.

to me this seems irrelevant - to my sensibilities it is NOT a cultural issue, it is an issue of agency, of power, of human rights. if there is a single woman out there who does not want this procedure, who does not want to give birth alone, who does not want to be killed for the honor of her family then it is an issue of equality and of choice.

the way i see it, if i were a young woman living at any period in the past when the only options open to me were marriage and motherhood i would want support in fighting this. i would want this support whether or not i chose to take advantage of new avenues open to me, whether i decided ultimately to commit my life to motherhood and marriage or to a career as a friggin' brain surgeon or astronaut. because equality is the main issue here.

i am feeling today a lot of what i often felt in india: this gap between fury and confusion; this gap between my tie to indian women through gender, and my inability to understand their circumstances because of differences in background, culture, class. but even just as a human there is a tie in the desire for choice; for the power to choose how one lives their life, who controls that life, who decides what does and doesn't happen, and the power to live a life free of subordination and violence.

does this make sense?

i know i've gotten in a lot of heated debates about this before: whether as so-called westerners we should stand up for issues that go against someone else's "culture". my stance has often been that perhaps our role is not so much to go out there and say "you're wrong, i'm right", but instead to be there for support of whoever may desire equal choice, equal treatment. do we have a role at all to play?

to me saying that we can't stand up for an issue because we are not involved is the same as saying that men shouldn't fight for women's rights because it is a woman's issue, that humans shouldn't defend animal rights because we can't possibly know what they want. but isn't it an equality issue instead, and an issue of violence? shouldn't we have the obligation to stop suffering? can we ever know whether someone is suffering if they don't tell us?

and what of inequalities here in canada? how much representation do we truly have in politics? how much do we make in comparison to men? and if there are indeed still institutional inequalities then who are we to go off to sub-saharan africa to change someone else's culture?

well, i'll leave you with that. there are a lot of different ideas battling it out in my brain, so let me know how you feel.