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Home Front: Culture Wars
Muslim Genital Mutiliation is a Good Thing
2007-09-03
by Robert Fulford

It was a surprise to Janice Boddy when she realized that the altering of female genitals through surgery, professional or amateur, looms large whenever the Sudan is mentioned. In 1976, when she went there for the first time, she was interested in studying religious beliefs of rural Muslim women. But her fellow graduate students in Canada made it clear that when they thought of the Sudan they thought first of female circumcision.
This is yet another variant of Edward Said's anti-orientalism BS about ideological "creation of the other" for colonialist ends. According to the dogma, only 3rd worlders like Kim Jong Il and bin-Laden can "represent" their authentic world view. Westerners have no moral right to pass judgement; we have a moral obligation to bend to the anti-colonial will. Bite me!
Moreover, the women in the village she chose for her anthropological research insisted that she should learn about this practice and see it performed if she hoped to understand them. She followed this advice and eventually concluded that circumcision validates the village women's lives, safeguards their fertility and establishes "the meaningful parameters of their selfhood."
"Aaaaiiieee! The pain!"
"Just relax, Dearie! It's validating your life!"
"It hurts!"
"It'll safeguard your fertility!"
"You rotten bastards! You CUT MY PUBIC LIPS OFF!"
"Just think of it as setting the meaningful paramaters of your selfhood!"
"You're USING THEM TO MAKE SOUP!"
Now chair of the anthropology department at the University of Toronto, she boldly addresses this question with her new book, Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan (Princeton University Press). The fact that she then falls on her face, academically speaking, does not necessarily diminish her bravery.

Her readers discover, almost at the beginning, that she has a limited idea of academic detachment and fairness. A chronology of events at the front of her book twice uses the politics-laden term "propaganda" to describe Britain's efforts in the 1940s to publicize the harm done by genital cutting. But then she quickly buckles down to her own propaganda project, a storm of disapproval directed at those who argue against the ritual cutting of female genitals.

In her first four pages she says this worldwide campaign has been sustained by imperialistic logic and spurious empathy. Much of its literature, she claims, is "moralizing and polemical" as well as self-righteous. Its supporters, including the 1995 World Conference of Women in Beijing, have "leaped to condemn what they've only presumed to understand." The word for Boddy's approach is "tendentious"-- obviously, it's calculated to promote a particular view...
Posted by:McZoid

#12  Ya know, if Allan wanted women to have no feeling, then he would have made the necessary changes. So, jerkoffs of Islam are correcting their Allan ? Say what ?
Posted by: wxjames   2007-09-03 18:45  

#11  "Muslim Genital Mutiliation is a Good Thing"

It certainly could be - if practiced against the MEN.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2007-09-03 16:23  

#10  Ms. Boddy's moral and cultural relativism is the same mental disease that 'celebrates' diversity... to the extreme of excusing Mayan human sacrifices as 'valid', and non-judgementalism as a virtue. Disgusting fools.
Posted by: Phinater Thraviger   2007-09-03 14:52  

#9  They do operate on moral absolutes: colonialism and Western supremacism is bad; anti-colonialism and Islamic supremacism is good.

My only nitpick would be that intentional support of Islamic supremacism can only be immoral. However, it is not a worthy reply to an argument which deserves much more scathing analysis. Few better dissections of modern liberalism are available than Evan Sayet's 'How Modern Liberals "Think"'

If anyone has not watched this video, WATCH IT NOW.

Sayet absolutely nails liberal rejection of tolerant Western culture.



Posted by: Zenster   2007-09-03 13:59  

#8  Zenster:

They do operate on moral absolutes: colonialism and Western supremacism is bad; anti-colonialism and Islamic supremacism is good. Consideration of 1400 years of Muslim aggression and their wholesale destruction of native cultures is abridged, because it won't lead to a politically correct conclusion. Muslim conquerers did NOT set up self-administered Native Indian reserve lands, as we did; they indoctrinated captives on threat of murder and raped women after murdering adult males. Take away tenure and this type of garbage won't get to print.
Posted by: McZoid   2007-09-03 13:17  

#7  She followed this advice and eventually concluded that circumcision validates the village women's lives, safeguards their fertility and establishes "the meaningful parameters of their selfhood."

This sort of moral relativism is the most preposterous drivel imaginable. Boddy should be forced to undergo a one year court-ordered series of novocaine injections to her clitoris (without a topical anesthesia prep) in order that her own sexual arousal can be like that of the mutilated women she claims are so "validated".

This is the ultimate betrayal, when free women in open societies pervert their liberty to speak out against tyranny and, instead, help perpetuate savagery. Witness the logical extension of liberal "open-mindedness" brought full circle to the point of "anything goes". Witness the typical liberal rejection of anything that white Christian progressive society has originated in favor of whatever barbaric "traditions" invented by some backwater tribe of nomadic illiterates.

I would pay good money to see a debate between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Janice Boddy. Ali would eat Boddy's lunch before her chair got warm. There needs to be a concerted global effort to expose and disgrace this sort of vicious tommyrot the moment it raises its evil little pinhead.
Posted by: Zenster   2007-09-03 13:05  

#6  Deal with tenured incompetents, MZ, and see how the amount of (ego-building) nonsence decreases dramatically.
Posted by: gromgoru   2007-09-03 12:24  

#5  Women do the operations, and they are done with kitchen utensils and without sterilization or use of antibiotics. Although non-Muslim groups adopted the cult practise, its sick rationale is Koranic: if the capacity for sexual arousal is removed from women, then they won't cheat on Muslim men. The talk about "preserving fertility" is BS. The time has come to deal with tenured radicals.
Posted by: McZoid   2007-09-03 11:47  

#4  She should be handed over to the rapists she so admires.
Posted by: Excalibur   2007-09-03 10:15  

#3  Good point - if its so good and establishes "the meaningful parameters of their selfhood." why didn't the good Professor undergo the process?

Or did she purchase "Genital Mutilation credits Indulgences"?
Posted by: CrazyFool   2007-09-03 09:17  

#2  A tenured professor, chair of a department writing egregious nonsense.
Posted by: mhw   2007-09-03 09:10  

#1  Perhaps Janice would like to undergo the procedure?
Posted by: gorb   2007-09-03 02:19  

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