FW: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

[Assensoh, Akwasi B.]

 

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/22/efua-dorkenoo

May she rest in peace.

 

[Mario Fenyo]

PLease forgive me for being so ignorant.   FGM ---  is it some new (or old) disease?

 

Respectfully,  Mario

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Assensoh, Akwasi B. [aass...@indiana.edu]
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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - FW: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

 

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/22/efua-dorkenoo

May she rest in peace.

 

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[John Mbaku]

FGM=Female Genital Mutilation; centuries old, not new.

--

JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
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(801) 626-7423 Fax

[Oyinlola Longe]

Female Genital Mutilation.

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Gynecologists in the nineteenth century Europe and America used to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation. It was called CLITODECTOMY. When the same thing is done in Africa, it is derogatively Called, FEMALE GENITATAL MUTILATION. Males and females are circumcised in some African countries but if it were to be in Euro-America it would have been propagated as GENDER EQUALITY! Males' circumcisions in Africa are never referred to as Male Genital Mutilation probably because the Jews and Arabs also circumcise their males. However, both males and females in Euro-America nowadays are engaged in what is called PIERCING OF THE GENITALS (VAGINA AND PENIS).

---

Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:32:53 -0600
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London
From: jmb...@weber.edu
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[John Mbaku]

Salimonu Kadiri wrote:

"Gynecologists in the nineteenth century Europe and America used to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation. It was called CLITODECTOMY. When the same thing is done in Africa, it is derogatively Called, FEMALE GENITATAL MUTILATION. Males and females are circumcised in some African countries but if it were to be in Euro-America it would have been propagated as GENDER EQUALITY! Males' circumcisions in Africa are never referred to as Male Genital Mutilation probably because the Jews and Arabs also circumcise their males. However, both males and females in Euro-America nowadays are engaged in what is called PIERCING OF THE GENITALS (VAGINA AND PENIS)."

Please, Salimonu Kadiri, what  do you mean when you say "derogatively Called, FEMALE GENITATAL(sic) MUTILATION"? Are you by anyway implying that FGM, as a practice in Africa, is justified? I hope you are not trying to justify FGM on any grounds, including those you appear to state above.

Please, explain yourself.

[ZALANGA SAMUEL]

Thank you very much Professor Mbaku. This is a very sensitive discussion for some people and I appreciate your intervention out of concern. I hope in the name of defending mother Africa, sometimes we Africans do not condone something that is not actually healthy. Male circumcision  has  helped in controlling the speed of infection of HIV/ AIDS. One factor that partly contributed to the spread of the virus in some parts of Africa is the huge number of people not circumcised. But that aside, from an anthropological point of view, what some people seem to be saying is that simply because a practice is in existence, it must necessarily have a value and the value must be healthy for everyone in the society. Ruling classes or powerful people can initiate an act and institutionalize it even though the act serves some people more than others. My vision of a society is one of shared risk and shared prosperity. 

I think we should work hard, as difficult as it may be, to come up with principles or criteria for healthy and dignified human existence that takes into cognizance solid scientific knowledge. And there are persons with impressive scientific credentials: male and female.  Once we have that, we can use that to evaluate a situation and arrive at whether it is healthy for our people or not. In my view, even if we go around the world and find out that poor people are oppressed in the U.S., Middle East, China, India, Europe or Latin America, that is not a reason why we should condone the oppression of poor people in Africa, if our sense of judgement rooted in solid scientific evidence says doing so is bad for our people. In the same, even if women are treated like second class citizens in other societies, we should use our solid sense of judgement rooted in science and human dignity of the person and ask whether simply because it is happening in all societies, it is a reason for us to go and and hold a party to celebrate what is happening to women  in Africa. The African should be able to judge if something is not healthy for his or her people and not wait for the outsider to help us make the call.

I truly believe that as Africans we are able to, with a sense of humility, commitment to justice and fairness make the right decision about what truly dignifies our people and on that basis stop what dehumanizes them. Constantly blaming someone else for our problem is not in the long run going to help us. To ignore what oppresses fellow Africans or any group of human beings in the world for that matter, because someone in the U.S. or somewhere is doing it also or did it in the past, suggests to me more a lack of courage to face one owns reality, as in defending Africa, the person is still relying on foreign models.

In any case, there are educated women who are trained and informed and can give fellow Africans honest assessment about this problem of genital mutilation. As a sociologist, to me, it is a weak argument to say it is part of our culture. There are hundreds of things that used to be part of African culture but now such things are not practiced. There are reasons for that. 

Some years ago, I was part of an educational tour to South Africa for two weeks. As part of it, the organizers took us to a Black theatre where Black women and men are performing traditional South African dance, often the Zulu type. My seat was in front and amazingly, the women came out almost naked with their chest open. It is true there were men on stage but the real attention was on the body of the women. It was a "free pay per view." At the end, there was a debate in our group and some used African culture to justify it. My response is why is it that the Zulu have stopped practicing many aspects of their culture that used to be existing three hundred years ago but the one that allows women to expose their bodies in a global culture that commodifies sex and women's body is justified to continue? Of course because someone sees it as an industry of making money. Without the women exposing themselves, the attendance would not be as high as it was. The point is not that Zulu people should not practice their culture, but culture is dynamic, and people with power in a culture can influence the change more than others. So, simply hiding behind a cultural argument as such does not help if we cannot as Africans think deeper. 

We should remember that many women are not granted same rights as men in Africa. At least in the conference I attended in Sokoto Nigeria, where Professor Falola was the keynote speaker, this issue came up and it is glaring. In one session, in spite of being careful about what I say, I had to intervene to say that scholars attacked a woman's presentation on the representation of women in Nigerian literature was a veiled attack on any concern about gender; even though the frame of argument used by Europeans to put down we Africans down or to put racial minorities down is the same used to justify keeping women down: i.e., biology, intelligence, culture, emotional expression etc. 

 Promoting the rights of women does not mean as some think that one is promoting an anarchic society because I know in the part of Nigeria I come from, some think this way. To say that it is also western suggests that we Africans do not have the capacity to think of our fellow Africans as full human beings. Any society that denies a  portion of its people to develop their full human potential is losing something very important. The idea that education or freedom can lead someone astray is not a uniquely female problem, but a human problem. Young men can get educated or have freedom and be irresponsible with it and ignore the wisdom from the elders. Frankly this is not a uniquely female problem. If it is a female problem, it is because most people judge the woman differently in the first place. And this boils down to: what does it mean to be HUMAN?

For those who  have the time and patience, below is a weblink to a documentary film from the series: "WHY POVERTY?" It shows how cultural assumptions can suppress people from discovering their full potential, in this case, a Jordanian woman. Of course, as she realized something new about her, it changed her sense of what she is or capable of doing, contrary to where her husband and people categorized. This is true of all humans.  If looked from the point of view of pursuing human dignity and potential, this is a very inspiring film. I am not sure that I can do what the woman did in terms of accomplishment.  Here is the link: "SOLAR MAMAS"

http://video.pbs.org/video/2296683172/

I suggested to the president of Northern Nigerian association in the U.S. (Zumunta Association) to screen it during the last annual convention and he did. It generated very much discussion. What the woman accomplished in the film is phenomenal if you look at it in context. And there are Masai women too in the training to produce solar energy.

Samuel

---

Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 12:11:30 -0600

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Talking about HUMAN RIGHTS,

WHO has the right  - but whatever name,  " to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation"?

That is the question dear Salimonu....

We Sweden

[Ibukunolu A Babajide]

John,

Salmonu is very clear.  Whrn the rich and educated watch nude pictures it is called erotica and elevated to an art form but when the poor and working class do the same it is called pornography and criminalised.

Similarly, egen Europeans cut the clitoris ut is called Clidectony and hidden from view but when Africans do the same it becomes FGM and demonised to create an image of primitive Africans and gather money to further denigrate Africans.

Nobody is supporting FGM. All we are saying is that you must widen your perspective and approach its eradication without denying Africans of their dignity and self worth. Do not be a victim of incipient programme of being labelled as primitive or lacking in self worth or being subhuman.

I see so many Europeans with abhorrent tattoos and body piercings.  Nobody reduces them to levels of primitivity that attends FGM and Africans.

By the way Jews and many cultures are allowed to remove the foreskin on the penises of male children why is this not called male genital mutilation?

Just a parting questiin.

Cheers.

IBK

[Pablo]

Dear Samuel,
 I enjoy your posts; they are often balanced deliberative and insightful. However, can you provide evidence of the  statement about male circumcision reducing the spread of HIV?  As from what I know, the evidence, such as it is, is  not at all proven.  Also, while I also appreciate the spirit of your post, I am not sure that it "from an anthropological point of view". What does anthropology have to do with it?  Surely it is from a ethical point of view that is not morally relativistic.

Best,
Pablo

[Ibukunolu A Babajide]

Cornel is,

I know you claim some Jewish Ness.  Who has the right to remove child's foreskin?

Cheers.

IBK

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Sir,

 

I guess your question is being framed by your legal mind and that what you are really interested in is the ultimate legal authority which for me is the one and only Almighty.

Your next line of argument will probably be that everybody has his or her own authorised or unauthorised version or definition of “Almighty” and Almighty tradition.

 

 I can tell you for a fact that in Kalabariland in Nigeria FGM / clitoridoctomy is not practised. This is probably because of Akaso – a female goddess, but what do I know?

 

Since you refer to me personally, all I can tell you unequivocally is that prior to any claim or awareness of Jewish - ness I and my younger brother Harold (also known as Ola) without our permission, were circumcised when eight days old.

 

As to circumcision in Judaism it is a sign of the covenant.

 

In post-enlightenment Sweden some of the medical authorities for their own personal reasons are anxious to outlaw, others to modify the tradition by introducing anaesthetics etc. – employing the same arguments that are used against shechita slaughter  which they say is nothing less than cruelty to animals....

 

My question was originally posed to Hon. Salimonu Kadairi who boldly asserts that “Gynecologists in the nineteenth century Europe and America used to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation”

This inclines me to ask – albeit rhetorically, whether or not he or indeed you  think  it proper or improper in twenty-first century Europe and America  to remove that most esteemed male organ merely in order “ to curb” excessive male masturbation?

Best Regards,

CEH

[kenneth harrow]

european clitodectomy? looked up your source, and got this.  " Apparently the first clitoridectomy performed in the West occurred in 1858, in England. Isaac Baker Brown published a book describing his success at treating female masturbators with genital operations, after which he was roundly criticised and expelled from the London Obstetrical Society. Most evidence indicates that clitoridectomy, but not female circumcision, was thereafter abandoned in England."  not a good example.
http://www.noharmm.org/paige.htm
ken

-- 
kenneth w. harrow 
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

[John Mbaku]

IBK:

Sorry, but I do not care about what the Europeans are doing to their bodies--that is their problem. What concerns me is what is happening to girls in Africa--this is my main and only concern. I really do not care what anybody calls it--FGM or some more acceptable name, it is a practice that imposes unnecessary risks on our girls and provides them with absolutely no benefits. Comparing male circumcision to FGM is unfair and totally inappropriate. For one thing, I doubt that the people who circumcise their male children are doing so because they are afraid that without undertaking the exercise their children will grow up to be promiscuous. Yet, it is the fear that the female who is not subjected to the barbaric practice of FGM will grow up to be promiscuous that drives the practice.

Sorry, but I do not agree with you and S. Kadiri. FGM must be stamped out. It is a barbaric and horrific practice that does not belong in today's Africa. No girl should be subjected to such inhumanity. By the way, FGM or female cutting are appropriate names--they describe accurately the nature of the practice and what actually takes place during this barbarism.

[kenneth harrow]

does everyone on this thread know that female circumcision doesn't take all one form; that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia; that radical cuttung and infibulation is not the only form? hard for me to type now, so i'll be brief. outsiders should support african women in dealing w the issue--unlike alice walker in her semi-imperialist WarriorMarks. i hate u.s. people telling africans all about how awful they are for practising fem gen cutting
and i resent outsiders doing the same to jews and muslims over circumcision
ken

-- 
kenneth w. harrow 
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

[John Mbaku]

Ken:

I do not support any form of female circumcision. Why should anybody circumcise a girl? What is the objective? You write "that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia." Why should anybody do even that? Small, slight, tiny, insignficant--it is still cutting and mutilation and no girl in Africa deserves to be subjected to such barbarism.

[Sam Andoh]

Really? Only small cutting? 

[kenneth harrow]

hi john
why is it barbarism? as someone else said, how about all those tattoos and rings thru every conceivable, and unconceivable partof the body young people do these days.
ok, i hate the radical cutting and infibulation too; but i don't agree that it is the same as all the other things people do. and it is the gender aspect that is what is most troubling about excision and infibulation. i don't think genitalia are sacred; i don'y find traditional scarification is bad...it can ofen be beautiful.  i don't anything wrong w male circumcision....  i take your points; easy to understand. but when i hear americans talk about it, with no attempt to understand it, i hate that more. 
when i saw senegalese women take charge of the issue, i admired them.
we can advocate for change w/o accusing those involved of barbarism
k

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Dear Mbaku! 

                    Not everything done in Euro-America is good and not everything done in Africa is bad. Answering your question, female genital mutilation in Africa should also be female genital mutilation in Euro-America but my protest is where the same practice is given different names so as to portray one as civilised and the other primitive. Why do you have Female Genital Mutilation and not Male Genital Mutilation? By the way I have a copy of advertisement from Matlock-clinic in Los Angeles offering women operation of the labia and clitoris for the purpose of increasing orgaism and sexual enjoyment. The surgeon responsible for that operation is Dr David L. Matlock and its cost is 1, 850 dolars. Mind you, MGM is much more common in Africa than FGM and the practice would certainly disappear with time just as the CHASTITY KNOT (A PADLOCK) in the labia of European women disappeared shortly after the World War II.

---

Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 12:11:30 -0600

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

While I agree wholeheartedly with Professor Mbaku's position on this issue, I must say that
Prof/ Mr/ Dr. Kadiri was focusing on the use of double standards in the description of social phenomena. I take it
that he is also against the practice. His point, if I got it right, was that similar practices in Western
countries would be evaluated differently and be given some rather euphemistic names and labels.
For example, if I may add to his list,' breast implants' would hardly be called 'breast mutilation' etc.

But I do fully concur that no girl should be subjected to this practice in any form.
It may be about wrongheaded notions of an alleged female promiscuity.

It could also be about male impotence, real or imagined.


Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History & African Studies
africahistory.net
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Documentaries on Africa and the African Diaspora
________________________________
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Mbaku [jmb...@weber.edu]
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 4:57 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Ken:

I do not support any form of female circumcision. Why should anybody circumcise a girl? What is the objective? You write "that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia." Why should anybody do even that? Small, slight, tiny, insignficant--it is still cutting and mutilation and no girl in Africa deserves to be subjected to such barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 1:43 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>> wrote:
does everyone on this thread know that female circumcision doesn't take all one form; that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia; that radical cuttung and infibulation is not the only form? hard for me to type now, so i'll be brief. outsiders should support african women in dealing w the issue--unlike alice walker in her semi-imperialist WarriorMarks. i hate u.s. people telling africans all about how awful they are for practising fem gen cutting
and i resent outsiders doing the same to jews and muslims over circumcision
ken


On 10/26/14, 2:38 PM, John Mbaku wrote:
IBK:

Sorry, but I do not care about what the Europeans are doing to their bodies--that is their problem. What concerns me is what is happening to girls in Africa--this is my main and only concern. I really do not care what anybody calls it--FGM or some more acceptable name, it is a practice that imposes unnecessary risks on our girls and provides them with absolutely no benefits. Comparing male circumcision to FGM is unfair and totally inappropriate. For one thing, I doubt that the people who circumcise their male children are doing so because they are afraid that without undertaking the exercise their children will grow up to be promiscuous. Yet, it is the fear that the female who is not subjected to the barbaric practice of FGM will grow up to be promiscuous that drives the practice.

Sorry, but I do not agree with you and S. Kadiri. FGM must be stamped out. It is a barbaric and horrific practice that does not belong in today's Africa. No girl should be subjected to such inhumanity. By the way, FGM or female cutting are appropriate names--they describe accurately the nature of the practice and what actually takes place during this barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 4:10 AM, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk...@gmail.com<mailto:ibk...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Cornel is,

I know you claim some Jewish Ness. Who has the right to remove child's foreskin?

Cheers.

IBK

On 26 Oct 2014 13:07, "Cornelius Hamelberg" <cornelius...@gmail.com<mailto:cornelius...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Talking about HUMAN RIGHTS,

WHO has the right - but whatever name, " to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation"?

That is the question dear Salimonu....

We Sweden<http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/corneliushamelberg/>

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--
JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
1337 Edvalson Street, Dept. 3807
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442 Phone
(801) 626-7423 Fax
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kenneth w. harrow
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
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ph. 517 803 8839<tel:517%20803%208839>
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JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
1337 Edvalson Street, Dept. 3807
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442 Phone
(801) 626-7423 Fax

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Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History & African Studies
History Department
Central Connecticut State University
New Britain
CT 06050
africahistory.net
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Documentaries on Africa and the African Diaspora

________________________________
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Mbaku [jmb...@weber.edu]
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 4:57 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Ken:

I do not support any form of female circumcision. Why should anybody circumcise a girl? What is the objective? You write "that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia." Why should anybody do even that? Small, slight, tiny, insignficant--it is still cutting and mutilation and no girl in Africa deserves to be subjected to such barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 1:43 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>> wrote:
does everyone on this thread know that female circumcision doesn't take all one form; that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia; that radical cuttung and infibulation is not the only form? hard for me to type now, so i'll be brief. outsiders should support african women in dealing w the issue--unlike alice walker in her semi-imperialist WarriorMarks. i hate u.s. people telling africans all about how awful they are for practising fem gen cutting
and i resent outsiders doing the same to jews and muslims over circumcision
ken


On 10/26/14, 2:38 PM, John Mbaku wrote:
IBK:

Sorry, but I do not care about what the Europeans are doing to their bodies--that is their problem. What concerns me is what is happening to girls in Africa--this is my main and only concern. I really do not care what anybody calls it--FGM or some more acceptable name, it is a practice that imposes unnecessary risks on our girls and provides them with absolutely no benefits. Comparing male circumcision to FGM is unfair and totally inappropriate. For one thing, I doubt that the people who circumcise their male children are doing so because they are afraid that without undertaking the exercise their children will grow up to be promiscuous. Yet, it is the fear that the female who is not subjected to the barbaric practice of FGM will grow up to be promiscuous that drives the practice.

Sorry, but I do not agree with you and S. Kadiri. FGM must be stamped out. It is a barbaric and horrific practice that does not belong in today's Africa. No girl should be subjected to such inhumanity. By the way, FGM or female cutting are appropriate names--they describe accurately the nature of the practice and what actually takes place during this barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 4:10 AM, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk...@gmail.com<mailto:ibk...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Cornel is,

I know you claim some Jewish Ness. Who has the right to remove child's foreskin?

Cheers.

IBK

On 26 Oct 2014 13:07, "Cornelius Hamelberg" <cornelius...@gmail.com<mailto:cornelius...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Talking about HUMAN RIGHTS,

WHO has the right - but whatever name, " to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation"?

That is the question dear Salimonu....

We Sweden<http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/corneliushamelberg/>

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[Pablo Idahosa]

That's fine. Call it like you see it, here in the "West", but this mutilation done here is by adults.
P



Sent from my grandfather's typewriter

[kenneth harrow]

i thought chastity belts for women were medieval.
but i agree 100% on the consistent discursive biases that have inflicted epistemic violence on africans by europeans , beginning w the word black. and not only europeans too...
ken

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har...@msu.edu

[Ayo Obe]

But it always used to be called "female circumcision". It was women who labelled it "female genital mutilation" - a term you hardly find 30 years ago - with the specific goal of stigmatising it as a way to raising consciousness that it ought to be stopped.

Ayo
I invite you to follow me on Twitter @naijama

[Assensoh, Akwasi B.]

Ken:

 

Is it old age or bad eyes making it hard for you to type? It is good that you did not type more because there is no justification for FGM (or FC). As a student at University of Stockholm several years ago, I had the opportunity of witnessing some conferences about and by African women (or female scholars), including one in Denmark (UN Decade) and another one in Nairobi, Kenya. Alice Walker, Angela Davies and other radical feminists were very active at those events.

 

It was when "war" broke out at these forums between Muslim women speakers and non-Muslim speakers that I started to learn about the horrors of the practice called FGM. There were tearful female victims, who were ready to expose how they had no "romantic feelings" left for them after what you call the "small cutting" of that precious part of their female organs; it was no longer an African issue but a real human rights issue!

 

Recently at a Berkeley, California, conference, my spouse and I took a taxi cab driven by a Somali national, who told us that he was "reading" his two young daughters to be taken home (to Somalia) for Female Circumcision (FC), what Western feminists call FGM. I was so appalled that I later approached a policeman to see what could be done to stop the man: the policeman's backward reaction was that no offence or crime had been committed yet! "Really?" I asked him. "Yes, really; and that is not my problem," he added.

 

Maybe, the UN should pass drastic anti-FGM laws with punitive punishment or consequences for those, who flout them, regardless of one's religious background!

 

A.B. Assensoh, Oregon.

      

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Sam Andoh [ando...@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 6:58 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Cc: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[John Mbaku]

Ken:

FGM is barbarism! I will never do it or allow it to be done to my own daughter or anyone else's. Tattoos and rings! As far as I know, these young people voluntarily obtain this so-called body art. African girls are never given a choice--for one thing, these girls are mutilated before they reach the age of consent. You cannot compare what is done to them with what people in the United States and other Western countries voluntarily do to themselves. You do not think genitalia are sacred? A girl's body is sacred and nobody, regardless of their intentions, should be allowed to mutilate it. Usually on many issues, I am willing to engage in robust discussion and entertain alternative arguments. However, for this one, I do not plan, now or in the future, to change the way I feel about FGM--it is simply wrong and should never be supported!

[kenneth harrow]

some women labelled it fgm, not all. i want to repeat, for those who
don't remember anyway, alice walker's Warrior Marks (`1993) was
completely, embarrassingly imperialistic in attitude toward the "poor
african" victims who she was determined to save. she treated the elder
women circumcisors with as much scorn as ANY superior colonialist type.
she used the term fgm, without nuance or really understanding of what
was at stake. i hate the notion that it is all about controlling women's
sexuality. try reading up on dogon rites if you want another
understanding. i agree much of it is to be opposed, should be opposed,
but not all. furthermore, opposing it from the outside is even worse
than accepting it.
in senegal, the ngos and international donors got the legislature there
to outlaw it. nothing changed, of course. then the senegalese women's
org starting working on it. at first, the elders in the villages
wouldn't let them in. then they tried a year later. no luck. then they
tried again, quietly, quietly, and when the first village let them in,
they tried talking to the women, including the older women. eventually
they began to win some success. does anyone on this list really want an
american or french or italian ngo or state dept to dictate this policy
to african villages? how is that not colonialism?

look, lots of customs need to change, and i am not arguing about keeping
fgm when it comes to excision or infibulation. but when it comes to
cutting that is more symbolic than anything else, the only reason to
oppose it, if not medical, is simply a mindless buy-in to western
modernist thought, which = colonialist thought.
i made this argument on an amnesty international list, and received
enormous scorn. but this is an african based list, and i expect more
thoughtful responses to the issue of western imperialist practices, and
especially western epistemic violence.
ken

har...@msu.edu

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

“FGM is barbarism” So is war. So is racism. So one might argue is police brutality that masquerades as the upkeep of public order. Does one need to go on?

Would FGM be less barbaric if it was carried out by trained medically qualified surgeons in state-of-the-art medical facilities? It is not the method or process of mutilation that makes FGM unacceptable today. It is its rationale and the practice itself that are unacceptable. It hard to see that it creates or adds value to any one’s life. Every attempt to justify it is usually a struggle that unduly stretches the imagination. Could it be that in some cultures, FGM is the equivalent for females, of circumcision for males? Even so is there a need for that equivalence? Is male circumcision barbaric? Is it less so now that it is sometimes carried out by qualified medics in hospitals? Are there any benefits of both practices that justify the pain and other costs to their victims and their societies?

Barbarism is not always a sufficient reason to choose and act as one wishes to, or continue to do so. Sometimes, its benefits as is claimed about just wars for example (whatever just war means) are considered ample and worthy justification for it. One person’s barbarism may be another’s sanctimony.

The world has moved on. The human race arguably is more knowledgeable and understanding of life and how it may be lived more fullfillingly today, than she has ever been. Superstition is increasingly giving way to science. The folly of the former is increasingly realized and better appreciated. More people are realizing that God is not as interested or involved in the affairs of men, women, and children as He is claimed and made out to be. It is increasingly appreciated that the destiny of the human race does not lie outside the human race. Human beliefs and practices are being increasingly evaluated. Many past justifications for some of them no longer stand up. Those of them that do not pass the fair and valid test of reason and true value should be discontinued. FGM seems to me to be one of them.  

Describing FGM as barbaric may therefore not cut it. Calling FGM’s practitioners names is no better. What may be more helpful is to educate more people and groups on the evident needlessness of some of their cultural practices including FGM that neither improve nor enrich the lives of victims and their society. You do not tell any culture that its ways are barbaric if you want an engaging conversation and a positive response. You tell them that the imperatives of the  cultural practice at issue do not apply anymore for the reason(s) you so think. Then you may have a positive response. Change may then follow.

 

oa

[John Mbaku]

Ken:

First, all the African societies that I have visited--and I have visited a lot them during the last 25 years--and discussed FGM in its various names, I have been able to filter only one reason for the practice: to minimize promiscuity in the girls when they become women. Of course, some elders have argued that the practice was inherited from their ancestors and that the gods demanded it as a way to promote social cohesion, bountiful harvest and peaceful coexistence. Nevertheless, they also mentioned that minimizing wayward and promiscuous behavior was an additional benefit. 

Second, I am not fighting this problem from afar. I do not just visit the various societies in Africa that practice this insidious activity but have had many opportunities to interact with "practitioners" as I condemn it. 

Third, FGM is all about controlling women's sexuality--you and I can argue about this to eternity but the fact of the matter is that, of all the African societies that I have interacted with and which engage in this practice, none of them has ever been able to provide a satisfactory justification for it. 

Fourth, what do you mean by "symbolic cutting"? Do you know how many girls die or become permanently deformed or unable to function effectively as adult women from this symbolic cutting? I have seen first hand the devastation visited on these innocent girls by their tradition-minded parents--many of these girls never recover from their injuries. 

Finally, I would rather be called or considered a "mindless follower of Western imperialism" than support what is perhaps one of the most cruel and horrific act committed on African girls daily in the name of tradition.

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Mbaku [jmb...@weber.edu]

Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 4:57 PM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Ken:

I do not support any form of female circumcision. Why should anybody circumcise a girl? What is the objective? You write "that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia." Why should anybody do even that? Small, slight, tiny, insignficant--it is still cutting and mutilation and no girl in Africa deserves to be subjected to such barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 1:43 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:harrow@msu.edu>> wrote:
does everyone on this thread know that female circumcision doesn't take all one form; that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia; that radical cuttung and infibulation is not the only form? hard for me to type now, so i'll be brief. outsiders should support african women in dealing w the issue--unlike alice walker in her semi-imperialist WarriorMarks. i hate u.s. people telling africans all about how awful they are for practising fem gen cutting
and i resent outsiders doing the same to jews and muslims over circumcision
ken


On 10/26/14, 2:38 PM, John Mbaku wrote:
IBK:

Sorry, but I do not care about what the Europeans are doing to their bodies--that is their problem. What concerns me is what is happening to girls in Africa--this is my main and only concern. I really do not care what anybody calls it--FGM or some more acceptable name, it is a practice that imposes unnecessary risks on our girls and provides them with absolutely no benefits. Comparing male circumcision to FGM is unfair and totally inappropriate. For one thing, I doubt that the people who circumcise their male children are doing so because they are afraid that without undertaking the exercise their children will grow up to be promiscuous. Yet, it is the fear that the female who is not subjected to the barbaric practice of FGM will grow up to be promiscuous that drives the practice.

Sorry, but I do not agree with you and S. Kadiri. FGM must be stamped out. It is a barbaric and horrific practice that does not belong in today's Africa. No girl should be subjected to such inhumanity. By the way, FGM or female cutting are appropriate names--they describe accurately the nature of the practice and what actually takes place during this barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 4:10 AM, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk...@gmail.com<mailto:ibk20...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Cornel is,

I know you claim some Jewish Ness. Who has the right to remove child's foreskin?

Cheers.

IBK

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Mbaku [jmb...@weber.edu]

Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 4:57 PM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Ken:

I do not support any form of female circumcision. Why should anybody circumcise a girl? What is the objective? You write "that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia." Why should anybody do even that? Small, slight, tiny, insignficant--it is still cutting and mutilation and no girl in Africa deserves to be subjected to such barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 1:43 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:harrow@msu.edu>> wrote:
does everyone on this thread know that female circumcision doesn't take all one form; that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia; that radical cuttung and infibulation is not the only form? hard for me to type now, so i'll be brief. outsiders should support african women in dealing w the issue--unlike alice walker in her semi-imperialist WarriorMarks. i hate u.s. people telling africans all about how awful they are for practising fem gen cutting
and i resent outsiders doing the same to jews and muslims over circumcision
ken


On 10/26/14, 2:38 PM, John Mbaku wrote:
IBK:

Sorry, but I do not care about what the Europeans are doing to their bodies--that is their problem. What concerns me is what is happening to girls in Africa--this is my main and only concern. I really do not care what anybody calls it--FGM or some more acceptable name, it is a practice that imposes unnecessary risks on our girls and provides them with absolutely no benefits. Comparing male circumcision to FGM is unfair and totally inappropriate. For one thing, I doubt that the people who circumcise their male children are doing so because they are afraid that without undertaking the exercise their children will grow up to be promiscuous. Yet, it is the fear that the female who is not subjected to the barbaric practice of FGM will grow up to be promiscuous that drives the practice.

Sorry, but I do not agree with you and S. Kadiri. FGM must be stamped out. It is a barbaric and horrific practice that does not belong in today's Africa. No girl should be subjected to such inhumanity. By the way, FGM or female cutting are appropriate names--they describe accurately the nature of the practice and what actually takes place during this barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 4:10 AM, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk...@gmail.com<mailto:ibk20...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Cornel is,

I know you claim some Jewish Ness.  Who has the right to remove child's foreskin?

Cheers.

IBK

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[kenneth harrow]

hi john
i am not going to defend the practice, but at least we should be aware of what it entails. this is what UNICEF defines it as involving:
UNICEF divides FGM into four categories: (1) cut, no flesh removed (pricking or symbolic circumcision); (2) cut, some flesh removed; (3) sewn closed; and (4) type not determined/unsure/doesn't know.^[43] The WHO categorizes the main procedures as Types I–III, and Type IV for symbolic circumcision and miscellaneous procedures.<sup>[44]

ken</sup>

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

but when it comes to cutting that is more symbolic than anything else, the only reason to oppose it, if not medical, is simply a mindless buy-in to western modernist thought, which = colonialist thought.

---Ken

A classic example of what Bill Maher calls the soft bigotry of low expectations--making unconvincing cultural allowances for practices that we would not allow in our own Western societies.  I disagree strongly with the excerpt above from Ken. Clitoridectomy was/is, wherever it was/is practiced (including in the West sometime ago), a practice designed by insecure males and the institutions they emplaced to curb female sexuality, which was/is believed to be out of control, beyond the capacity of a supposedly emotional, sensual, and undisciplined females to suppress or check. I believe in nineteenth century America healthy expressions of female sexuality, including female sexual pleasure, were diagnosed clinically as "hysteria" and other contrived disorders, treated with clitoridectomy and opiates. This (mis) understanding of female sexuality and its deployment as justification for the mutilation of the female clitoris (blamed for making the woman hypersexual and promiscuous) is almost universal in areas where clitoridectomy is practiced. This is where our analysis should start. The red herrings will not do.

We can all agree about Orientalist and Eurocentric labeling being a bad thing, but does that mean that we should equivocate when commenting on the moral, humanistic, scientific, and medical wrongness of the object of the labeling? Whether it is called FGM or clitoridectomy, was/is it not about the misguided idea of infantalizing females and giving men authority over the body and sexual expressions and enjoyment of females? For those who may come to this from a religious perspective, why did God create the clitoris if He didn't want women to enjoy sex or if He thought it would make women slaves to their sexual desires?

Clitoridectomy is not a symbolic act; it is a serious, violent, invasive, and sexist act done to non-consenting children and with no proven medical benefit. 

And nothing could be further from the truth that one could only oppose it on medical grounds. On this point, let me tell a story relayed to me by an African colleague some years ago. He was in the audience of a talk on clitoridectomy, where the speaker, an academic and activist against the practice, cited the medical risks involved, particularly the risk of infection resulting from unsanitary conditions, as the anchor of her argument. The careful white liberal academic that she was, and given her politically correct white liberal commitment to cultural relativism, she elected to hitch her argument on the seemingly safe wagon of medical risks. When an audience member asked if she would change her position and support the procedure if it was made safe with sanitized surgical rooms and sterilized surgical equipment, she demurred, and became flustered because some smart bloke had removed the proverbial carpet from underneath her. Her premise taken away, her position ceased to make sense, and she ended up looking like a fool.

Had she been honest and bold enough to declare that the practice was wrong because it was a sexist, patriarchal, violent, misguided, and traumatic invasion of a woman's body, and that it had no medical benefit that might justify such violence, she would have been able to sustain her opposition/position if the medical argument was rendered moot, even if hypothetically. Instead she hid behind a medical risk alibi to make what is or should be an argument about a practice that offends every enlightened sensibility, traumatizes young girls, and takes away or undermines their God-given sexual right for ever, not to mention exposing them to the risk of complications.

One is not buying into colonial or Orientalizing thought when one condemns a practice that is clearly out of step with our times. One can reject the Othering label of FGM but also reject the practice that it designates. Not to distinguish between labels/signifiers and signified/substance--brutally consequential substance--is to become a slave to abstract criticisms of colonialism and Orientalism and to lose sight of the moral consequences of actual practices on the ground. That attitude eclipses, in my opinion, the infraction of not recognizing or criticizing the Orientalizing gaze expressed through labels such as FGM.

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Mbaku [jmb...@weber.edu]

Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 4:57 PM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Ken:

I do not support any form of female circumcision. Why should anybody circumcise a girl? What is the objective? You write "that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia." Why should anybody do even that? Small, slight, tiny, insignficant--it is still cutting and mutilation and no girl in Africa deserves to be subjected to such barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 1:43 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:harrow@msu.edu>> wrote:
does everyone on this thread know that female circumcision doesn't take all one form; that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia; that radical cuttung and infibulation is not the only form? hard for me to type now, so i'll be brief. outsiders should support african women in dealing w the issue--unlike alice walker in her semi-imperialist WarriorMarks. i hate u.s. people telling africans all about how awful they are for practising fem gen cutting
and i resent outsiders doing the same to jews and muslims over circumcision
ken


On 10/26/14, 2:38 PM, John Mbaku wrote:
IBK:

Sorry, but I do not care about what the Europeans are doing to their bodies--that is their problem. What concerns me is what is happening to girls in Africa--this is my main and only concern. I really do not care what anybody calls it--FGM or some more acceptable name, it is a practice that imposes unnecessary risks on our girls and provides them with absolutely no benefits. Comparing male circumcision to FGM is unfair and totally inappropriate. For one thing, I doubt that the people who circumcise their male children are doing so because they are afraid that without undertaking the exercise their children will grow up to be promiscuous. Yet, it is the fear that the female who is not subjected to the barbaric practice of FGM will grow up to be promiscuous that drives the practice.

Sorry, but I do not agree with you and S. Kadiri. FGM must be stamped out. It is a barbaric and horrific practice that does not belong in today's Africa. No girl should be subjected to such inhumanity. By the way, FGM or female cutting are appropriate names--they describe accurately the nature of the practice and what actually takes place during this barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 4:10 AM, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk...@gmail.com<mailto:ibk20...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Cornel is,

I know you claim some Jewish Ness. Who has the right to remove child's foreskin?

Cheers.

IBK

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Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
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Documentaries on Africa and the African Diaspora

________________________________

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Mbaku [jmb...@weber.edu]

Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 4:57 PM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Ken:

I do not support any form of female circumcision. Why should anybody circumcise a girl? What is the objective? You write "that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia." Why should anybody do even that? Small, slight, tiny, insignficant--it is still cutting and mutilation and no girl in Africa deserves to be subjected to such barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 1:43 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:harrow@msu.edu>> wrote:
does everyone on this thread know that female circumcision doesn't take all one form; that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia; that radical cuttung and infibulation is not the only form? hard for me to type now, so i'll be brief. outsiders should support african women in dealing w the issue--unlike alice walker in her semi-imperialist WarriorMarks. i hate u.s. people telling africans all about how awful they are for practising fem gen cutting
and i resent outsiders doing the same to jews and muslims over circumcision
ken


On 10/26/14, 2:38 PM, John Mbaku wrote:
IBK:

Sorry, but I do not care about what the Europeans are doing to their bodies--that is their problem. What concerns me is what is happening to girls in Africa--this is my main and only concern. I really do not care what anybody calls it--FGM or some more acceptable name, it is a practice that imposes unnecessary risks on our girls and provides them with absolutely no benefits. Comparing male circumcision to FGM is unfair and totally inappropriate. For one thing, I doubt that the people who circumcise their male children are doing so because they are afraid that without undertaking the exercise their children will grow up to be promiscuous. Yet, it is the fear that the female who is not subjected to the barbaric practice of FGM will grow up to be promiscuous that drives the practice.

Sorry, but I do not agree with you and S. Kadiri. FGM must be stamped out. It is a barbaric and horrific practice that does not belong in today's Africa. No girl should be subjected to such inhumanity. By the way, FGM or female cutting are appropriate names--they describe accurately the nature of the practice and what actually takes place during this barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 4:10 AM, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk...@gmail.com<mailto:ibk20...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Cornel is,

I know you claim some Jewish Ness.  Who has the right to remove child's foreskin?

Cheers.

IBK

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JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
1337 Edvalson Street, Dept. 3807
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442 Phone
(801) 626-7423 Fax
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michigan state university
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JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
1337 Edvalson Street, Dept. 3807
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442 Phone
(801) 626-7423 Fax

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michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

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There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.


---Mohandas Gandhi

[John Mbaku]

hi john
i am not going to defend the practice, but at least we should be aware of what it entails. this is what UNICEF defines it as involving:
UNICEF divides FGM into four categories: (1) cut, no flesh removed (pricking or symbolic circumcision); (2) cut, some flesh removed; (3) sewn closed; and (4) type not determined/unsure/doesn't know.^[43] The WHO categorizes the main procedures as Types I–III, and Type IV for symbolic circumcision and miscellaneous procedures.<sup>[44]

ken</sup>

^{Ken: I am sorry but I really do not see how important UNICEF's or any other multilateral/international organization's descriptions are to the fate of the African girl who is faced with this ignominious  practice called FGM. So, UNICEF places FGM into four categories--may be that is good to know. Nevertheless, why should anybody engage in any form of cutting of any healthy part of the African girl, whether that act is symbolic or not? I do not need to read UNICEF documents or those of other organizations to know what the practice is--my field experiences have educated me on the nature of the practice and I can tell you that it is horrific, and this includes what you refer to as symbolic cutting. None of this brutality against the African girl belongs in the Africa that we are working so hard to cultivate.} 

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

No matter WHO (couldn't resist the pun) categorizes the practice, can the societies which practice them wait for the girls to reach the age of consent and then allow them to decide whether they want to go through it or not? Is that too much to ask?

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

“a practice designed by insecure males”

 

Mo

 

Hmm. Why not ignorant males? Why not jealous males? What is the certainty that the males were “insecure”? Is political correctness at play here? I am just asking.

More seriously, ideas and practices have their time. FGM must have made “sense” for cultures that practiced it in the past or it would not been so well   accepted that it endured. It quite simply makes no sense in this day and age. Why am I sure? I am because there is no plausible case to be made for it today. All who have tried failed. Tradition is worse than a lame excuse for continuing the practice given how much of and how often, traditions everywhere are increasingly challenged and some discontinued. The eradication of ignorance through education and enlightenment are a great help. FGM seems to me to be  having its last day and they will sooner than later be gone.

 

oa

 

oa    

 

oa

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 2:15 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

 

but when it comes to cutting that is more symbolic than anything else, the only reason to oppose it, if not medical, is simply a mindless buy-in to western modernist thought, which = colonialist thought.

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Mbaku [jmb...@weber.edu]

Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 4:57 PM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Ken:

I do not support any form of female circumcision. Why should anybody circumcise a girl? What is the objective? You write "that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia." Why should anybody do even that? Small, slight, tiny, insignficant--it is still cutting and mutilation and no girl in Africa deserves to be subjected to such barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 1:43 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>> wrote:
does everyone on this thread know that female circumcision doesn't take all one form; that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia; that radical cuttung and infibulation is not the only form? hard for me to type now, so i'll be brief. outsiders should support african women in dealing w the issue--unlike alice walker in her semi-imperialist WarriorMarks. i hate u.s. people telling africans all about how awful they are for practising fem gen cutting
and i resent outsiders doing the same to jews and muslims over circumcision
ken


On 10/26/14, 2:38 PM, John Mbaku wrote:
IBK:

Sorry, but I do not care about what the Europeans are doing to their bodies--that is their problem. What concerns me is what is happening to girls in Africa--this is my main and only concern. I really do not care what anybody calls it--FGM or some more acceptable name, it is a practice that imposes unnecessary risks on our girls and provides them with absolutely no benefits. Comparing male circumcision to FGM is unfair and totally inappropriate. For one thing, I doubt that the people who circumcise their male children are doing so because they are afraid that without undertaking the exercise their children will grow up to be promiscuous. Yet, it is the fear that the female who is not subjected to the barbaric practice of FGM will grow up to be promiscuous that drives the practice.

Sorry, but I do not agree with you and S. Kadiri. FGM must be stamped out. It is a barbaric and horrific practice that does not belong in today's Africa. No girl should be subjected to such inhumanity. By the way, FGM or female cutting are appropriate names--they describe accurately the nature of the practice and what actually takes place during this barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 4:10 AM, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk...@gmail.com<mailto:ibk...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Cornel is,

I know you claim some Jewish Ness. Who has the right to remove child's foreskin?

Cheers.

IBK

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JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
1337 Edvalson Street, Dept. 3807
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442 Phone
(801) 626-7423 Fax
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--
kenneth w. harrow
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839<tel:517%20803%208839>

har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>

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JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
1337 Edvalson Street, Dept. 3807
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442 Phone
(801) 626-7423 Fax

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Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History & African Studies
History Department
Central Connecticut State University
New Britain
CT 06050
africahistory.net
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Documentaries on Africa and the African Diaspora

________________________________

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Mbaku [jmb...@weber.edu]

Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 4:57 PM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Ken:

I do not support any form of female circumcision. Why should anybody circumcise a girl? What is the objective? You write "that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia." Why should anybody do even that? Small, slight, tiny, insignficant--it is still cutting and mutilation and no girl in Africa deserves to be subjected to such barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 1:43 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>> wrote:
does everyone on this thread know that female circumcision doesn't take all one form; that in some cases there is only small cutting made to the labia; that radical cuttung and infibulation is not the only form? hard for me to type now, so i'll be brief. outsiders should support african women in dealing w the issue--unlike alice walker in her semi-imperialist WarriorMarks. i hate u.s. people telling africans all about how awful they are for practising fem gen cutting
and i resent outsiders doing the same to jews and muslims over circumcision
ken


On 10/26/14, 2:38 PM, John Mbaku wrote:
IBK:

Sorry, but I do not care about what the Europeans are doing to their bodies--that is their problem. What concerns me is what is happening to girls in Africa--this is my main and only concern. I really do not care what anybody calls it--FGM or some more acceptable name, it is a practice that imposes unnecessary risks on our girls and provides them with absolutely no benefits. Comparing male circumcision to FGM is unfair and totally inappropriate. For one thing, I doubt that the people who circumcise their male children are doing so because they are afraid that without undertaking the exercise their children will grow up to be promiscuous. Yet, it is the fear that the female who is not subjected to the barbaric practice of FGM will grow up to be promiscuous that drives the practice.

Sorry, but I do not agree with you and S. Kadiri. FGM must be stamped out. It is a barbaric and horrific practice that does not belong in today's Africa. No girl should be subjected to such inhumanity. By the way, FGM or female cutting are appropriate names--they describe accurately the nature of the practice and what actually takes place during this barbarism.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 4:10 AM, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk...@gmail.com<mailto:ibk...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Cornel is,

I know you claim some Jewish Ness.  Who has the right to remove child's foreskin?

Cheers.

IBK

To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com<mailto:USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
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--
JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
1337 Edvalson Street, Dept. 3807
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442 Phone
(801) 626-7423 Fax
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There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.


---Mohandas Gandhi

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[John Mbaku]

Moses wrote:

"No matter WHO (couldn't resist the pun) categorizes the practice, can the societies which practice them wait for the girls to reach the age of consent and then allow them to decide whether they want to go through it or not? Is that too much to ask?"

Moses, that is a very good question. Actually, during a series of interviews that several colleagues of mine and I conducted with a groups of village/tribal elders in West Africa, this question was actually presented to a village matriarch who was in charge of not just carrying out the practice but was also the custodian of female virtue--she was supposedly chosen by the ancestors and the village gods to ensure that young girls maintained their virtue both before and after marriage. She told us that granting the girls the right to decide whether they wanted to undertake the procedure was actually an abomination, one that had the potential to destroy the balance that the village had enjoyed for many generations; besides, granting such a choice was forbidden by the gods. She continued that since there was a significant likelihood that left on her own, the girl would not voluntarily subject herself to the procedure and by doing so, bring the wrath of the ancestors and the gods on the people and the village, it was necessary and critical that the procedure be performed as soon as it was possible after the birth of a girl child. 

[kenneth harrow]

john i wonder why the practice is described by you as so horrendous when it ranges over slight marking to extreme removal of body parts. for you these are all equivalent.
and moses, i wonder why it has to be bigotry of any kind when i raise these questions, especially when i state i am not defending it, but defending the rights of africans to determine their own practices rather than outside ngos or states who not only define the meaning of the practice but whether it should continue or not. the u.s. congress wants, and probably succeeded, in having it banned as a condition of aid. do you think that is not "hard bigotry"? i do.

we are skirting around male circumcision in this discussion. should it be abolished along with female circumcision? as a jew i would resent christians telling me what should happen to my son when he is 8 days old, unless there were real medical reasons to question it. should the u.s. stop giving aid in africa till male circumcision is abolished?

i've given you WHO descriptions because i had heard of these practices before, and knew the somali model wasn't the only kind.
i repeat, i don't like it, am not defending it; but there is a hysteria that attends any questioning of how its practitioners see the world and who should be controlling that vision.

i am in the middle of reading geschiere's Witchcrft, Intimacy, and Trust. do you think the western states should withhold donor aid till witchcraft practices are ended, as they threatened w fgm?
as for the reasons for it, i suggested other reasons besides controlling female sexuality might be at stake. within the islamic world perhaps that became the reason. was it always the case? again, does anyone here know why it was, and maybe still is, a dogon practice? the reasons given there are quite the opposite.

your responses are basically to things i am not arguing. i am hardly favoring the practice; hardly favoring prohibitions placed on female sexuality. so why are those raised when i am not defending those positions?
for me there is something more at stake when the argument passes beyond the purely medical, when, as i said, in its mildest forms it is closer to symbolic cutting. i suggested the women's organizations in senegal should be supported in their campaigns; not the state legislature in servile acquiescence to "enlightened" donors. how would you conduct the campaign, what would you do in a village where the women continued the practice? what punishment would you accord the old women circumcisers? the mothers of the girls?

ken

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Professor Gloria Emeagwali
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Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
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ph. 517 803 8839
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[Salimonu Kadiri]

Thank you Professor Gloria Emeagwali! I am neither a Professor, nor a Doctor or a Mr. I am simply Ògbéni Kadiri.

> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

> From: ayo.m...@gmail.com
> Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 06:10:14 +0100
> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[John Mbaku]

Ken:

Why should anyone--whether a mother or father--mutilate (whether slight or otherwise) any part of the healthy sexual organs of the girl child? I have already explained this--symbolic or not, no form of FGM belongs in a modern Africa.

The rights of Africans to their own practices must not include the mutilation of their daughters. There are certain practices that must be condemned as not appropriate by all human beings, be they Africans or non-Africans. Hence, I do not believe that Africans should be allowed to mutilate their daughters in the name of political and traditional autonomy. 

Regarding autonomy for Africans, consider the following: During the civil rights struggle in the southern American States, many of the supporters of Jim Crow laws (i.e., laws designed to perpetuate white supremacy and maintain permanent black inferiority) argued that it was not appropriate for Yankees (outsiders) to come to the South and tell southerners how to deal with "their black citizens." Southern whites who supported Jim Crow and other States rights advocates, argued that they had and deserved the right to define their own political, social and economic practices and resented being dictated to by "outsiders." Afrikaners, the framers of the horrendous apartheid system in South Africa, made similar arguments against so-called outsiders--Africans from the rest of the continent who supported the African National Congress in its fight against white supremacy: leave us and our blacks alone. How is what you are prescribing here any different from what happened in the southern American States in the 1950s and 1960s or in South Africa under apartheid?

Of course, they are many opportunistic NGOs currently operating in Africa. However, Africans are capable of differentiating between those organizations that are genuinely interested in positive change in the continent and those that are only out to enrich themselves or impose their values on African societies. I have worked with many US-based NGOs, as well as several NGOs from the European countries that have actually made positive change in Africa. Some of that change has been in helping African groups abolish FGM. I was among those Africans who welcomed the help of these NGOs.

Male circumcision is an issue for a different discussion. Our concern here is FGM. If you want to talk about male circumcision, we could do that at another time. 

Donor aid always comes with conditionalities--these may include forcing the aid receiving government to eliminate subsidies to citizens (these was a prime requirement of the SAPs), improve the way they treat their citizens, reduce bureaucratic corruption, or abolish certain traditional practices, etc. Most of this aid is tax-payer money and is almost always granted in an effort to maximize the objectives of the donor country. This is the nature of foreign or so-called development aid. Hence, any country that wants to receive development aid must be willing to accept the conditionalities attached to the aid or simply decline the aid. Many poor countries (e.g., Eritrea) have refused aid because its leaders were not willing to abide by the conditionalities attached to the aid. An aid donor should have the right to make rules regarding the use of its resources.

Convincing people to abolish even barbaric practices has been done. The movement to wipe out FGM is not without success--success is slow, but it is quite possible.

[Salimonu Kadiri]

My question was originally posed to Hon. Salimonu Kadiri who boldly asserts"Gynecologists in the nineteenth Century Europe and America used to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation." 

This incline me to ask .... whether or not he or indeed you think it proper or improper in the twenty-first century Europe and America to remove that most esteemed male organ merely in order "to curb" excessive male masturbation? - Cornelius Hamelberg.

Well, we the Negroid race of Africa have been brainwashed to believe that we were nothing before the invasion of the Caucasians and we would be nothing without them. On the contrary, we were something before their invasion and conquest. If the Caucasians say female circumcision is tantamount to Female Genital Mutilation, what then is Clitoridoctomy? Juxtaposing FGM to CLITORIDOCTOMY can reasonably not imply that I approve both practices anywhere in the globe.

Sometimes ago the former President of the United States Bill Clinton had affairs with Monica Wilinsky in which he admitted inserting his penis inside the mouth of the girl (not his wife, Hillary) that gave subsequent flush of sperm splashes on Wilinsky's gown. Clinton defended himself that his action was not a sexual act since he did not penetrate her vagina. In Africa, and right from the time immemorial, the mouth is anatomically deployed for eating, talking, drinking and in special circumstances to take in oxygen. In Europe and America, oral sex is a fashion but in Africa it is an abomination. In Yórùbá language sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is euphemistically referred to as ADÙN MÁ DÉ ÈKÉ, which implies something that is sweet without touching, or feeling it in, the mouth. Take again the twentieth century civilisation of anal sexual intercourse between men and tribadism which the Caucasian Europe and America want to force down the throat of Negroid Africa contrary to physiological, anatomical and biological laws. Here is what Dr Peter Duesberg wrote about anal sex, "AIDS began and prevailed among those who are still at high risk, namely the passive male and sometimes female, recipients of anal intercourse. This is because the rectal mucosa and its supporting tissues are relatively fragile, designed for excretory, not intrusive activity. When the thin submucosa is eroded and blood vessels damaged, the tissues and blood streams are opened to invasion by all the organisms of the faecal microflora, by the pathogens of all the sexually transmitted diseases and many others. The risk of trauma and infection increases greatly with the frequency, variety (oro-anal, lingual vaginal) and violence of the sexual activity and preference, as with 'fisting' and other accessory, traumatic and contaminating procedures, and with multiplicity of partners. The frequent presence of semen in the rectum and blood adds allogeneic, 'non-self' reactions which dys-regulate immune responses. The faecal microflora interacts with semen to form N-nitroso compound, some of which are immunosuppressive and carcinogenic ( See AIDS: VIRUS - OR DRUG INDUCED? Edited by PETER DUESBERG ; p. 176)." I hope you would not ask me if I do not think that ANAL SEX is a fundamental human right that Africans should prioritise. 
S. Kadiri

---

Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 09:54:49 -0700
From: cornelius...@gmail.com
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
CC: ogunl...@hotmail.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Sir,

 

I guess your question is being framed by your legal mind and that what you are really interested in is the ultimate legal authority which for me is the one and only Almighty.

Your next line of argument will probably be that everybody has his or her own authorised or unauthorised version or definition of “Almighty” and Almighty tradition.

 

 I can tell you for a fact that in Kalabariland in Nigeria FGM / clitoridoctomy is not practised. This is probably because of Akaso – a female goddess, but what do I know?

 

Since you refer to me personally, all I can tell you unequivocally is that prior to any claim or awareness of Jewish - ness I and my younger brother Harold (also known as Ola) without our permission, were circumcised when eight days old.

 

As to circumcision in Judaism it is a sign of the covenant.

 

In post-enlightenment Sweden some of the medical authorities for their own personal reasons are anxious to outlaw, others to modify the tradition by introducing anaesthetics etc. – employing the same arguments that are used against shechita slaughter  which they say is nothing less than cruelty to animals....

 

My question was originally posed to Hon. Salimonu Kadairi who boldly asserts that “Gynecologists in the nineteenth century Europe and America used to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation”

This inclines me to ask – albeit rhetorically, whether or not he or indeed you  think  it proper or improper in twenty-first century Europe and America  to remove that most esteemed male organ merely in order “ to curb” excessive male masturbation?

Best Regards,

CEH

On Sunday, 26 October 2014 11:49:49 UTC+1, ibk wrote:

Cornel is,

I know you claim some Jewish Ness.  Who has the right to remove child's foreskin?

Cheers.

IBK

On 26 Oct 2014 13:07, "Cornelius Hamelberg" <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:

Talking about HUMAN RIGHTS,

WHO has the right  - but whatever name,  " to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation"?

That is the question dear Salimonu....

We Sweden

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Dear Wofa Akwassi,

It's good that you mention some of your experiences in Sweden where the Swedish woman generally still has a right to decide over her own body. The African Diaspora in Sweden has increased considerably since you were last here, to the extent that when in the last government, Sister Nyamko Sabuni was appointed Minister of Integration and Gender Equality one of her first acts was to address the pressing issue of FGM being practised in Sweden, as we have a large numbers of immigrants from some of the countries where this practice is still prevalent and even after their re-location to Sweden some of them have continued this practice here - to the extent that some people who live in such tightly knit, enclosed national communities and still adhere to such traditions may experience difficulty in finding suitable marriage partners either in Sweden or their home countries  if such potential partners have not undergone an FGM operation. So Nyamko Sabuni courageously called for an obligatory gynaecological examination of all schoolgirls to ascertain that they had not suffered FGM and also to prevent such operations taking place in Sweden where it is now illegal.

Up till now, some families - ( just like the guy you mentioned) send their daughters to their home country or to some non-medical quack to undergo the operation which is some sort of rite of passage. Girls have been known to die as a result of the primitive conditions and instruments with which the operations is performed – rusty knives, no anaesthetics etc...

Here's part of some of our discussions of the matter in a Gambian list serve...

Needless to say, some of the traditionalists are very faithful to this aspect of what they call ancient African culture. I was once almost unfriended by an African friend - and this was in Swedish female company when  I took the anti-FGM position in a discussion which one of the ladies started. I was so surprised because he was exceedingly angry with me shouting that FGM had been practised for “ thousands of years in Africa, before the white man came!” etc. Well even in Africa there are diverse cultures with regard to this , the Wolof woman for example hails from an FGM free zone of Senegal.

In Alexandria in Egypt my engineer friend – an advanced Sufi  -  was singing the praises of a young lady that he wanted me to meet it sounded interesting ( those that your right hand possess etc) but  I got completely turned off when he arrived at the punch line of his long pitch and the punchline was that I would find that she was “completely sealed!” - that is she had been sown up. like leather...

There's Waris Dirie (a Somalian model ) and her anti FGM activism....

Please remember us in your prayers..

Best Regards,

Cornelius

We Sweden

[ofure aito]

May I add my voice by sharing my experience on FGM conversation. First, I understand the position of Mr/Dr/Prof Kadiri and Samuel as well as Prof Mbaku's strong opposing position. I was genitally mutilated in what is called 'circumcision' at age 5 along with my elder sister at age 8. I recall a middle aged woman coming to our house one late afternoon and asking my mum to buy her new razors. Thereafter, my sister was taken to the bathroom. When she returned she walked astride. I worried and was transfixed by the way she walked after a simple visit to the bathroom. I didn't understand what was happening but within me I said I will not go to the bathroom. So I went to our room and hid under the bed, in fear and rejection of walking like my sister. My father came to lure me out to the bathroom where I was given my 'skin cut' and walked like my sister. When I returned to the living room I overheard our neighbor's son in our house explaining to my brother the reason why were walking like that was because we had just been circumcised. The point in this recall is that, I was born in the city and grew in the city, yet my parents felt it was necessary, even when I was already conscious of my environment. My parents never explained. My understanding came from what the neighbour said.
I do not subscribe to fgm or circumcision, but I wonder how much damage that has cost women in African societies since the 60s to date in terms of diseases and sexual deprivation? Our arguments usually take cue from western prompting. The symbolic sexual control it is expected to pose has not limited women's potentials in so many areas of self achievements and actualization (even in the precolonial that the practice was strongest and a thing of pride, women were leaders, partake in policy making, decision makers at home, during war and peace). Even promiscuity has never been affected or controlled, because in my growing up days we hear about women: married or single, who were described as 'wayward', putting it mildly. It has not stagnated women and their identity, sexuality and sensuality.
From my experience, the change in the 21st century like Prof Mbaku clamour for is subjective and dependent on individual choices. My parents did not choose to do what they did until we were almost in our teens.
I stand on the argument that it is a societal tradition, not culture that may have outlived its implication, especially, in the age of technological consciousness. The interpretation and practice are subjective but the age-old view is to control women's sexual power and identity vis-a-viz male dominance. Has this actually been the case. Another point is that change is a natural, evolutionary process (Darwinian law) that must come. Whether, we clamour for it or not some of these anachronistic and 'perverse' practices will become obsolete and without people necessarily demanding the change. Even the culture of piercing and tattooing in the west as fad is fading.
And I do agree with Samuel that until the west has given a name and approval, Africa does not come up with her on opinionated view. For instance, the issue breastfeeding in the 70s was disdained by the west in order to sell baby formular and now, exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months is ideal. Africa is the dump site of various ideological tests and we Africans do not see anything good done in, by or come out of Africa.
Ofure

[Assensoh, Akwasi B.]

My questions: So, please, did that circumcision take anything away from you, like pleasure of sex, etc.? Please, tell us, as I am appalled to my last breath! Years ago, I knew a young woman, who had been circumcised or mutilated; she was very frigid, to say the least! What about you, Sister Ofure?

A.B. Assensoh, Oregon.


________________________________________
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of ofure aito [ofur...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 2:57 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

[John Mbaku]

Dear Ofure Aito:

My arguments against FGM are original and have nothing to do with "western prompting." You state that FGM has not limited "women's potentials in so many areas of self achievements and actualization." I remember a similar argument given by a fellow African about modern-day slavery and indentured servitude--he confidently argued that the practice had not negatively affected the self-actualization and functionality of many of the young girls that lived and worked (slaved?) in many of the households that he was familiar with. Have you considered the thousands of African girls who die each year because of this needless practice or those who, as a result of FGM, have to live with highly compromised reproductive organs?

I believe you are missing the point here: no one should have the right to mutilate a girl! 

[Ibukunolu A Babajide]

Dear friends,

 

This is thye most illuminating narrative I have read on this topic.  Coming from a supposed "victim" it is even more compelling.  I have three daughters and I will NEVER allow any of them to be circumcised.  The issues that we need to address are these:

 

1.  The characterization of the practice by the West;

2.  The dehumanization of Africa and recruitment of Africans to do the dirty for them on fellow Africans; and

3.  Finding African solutions to African issues without being led by the nose by ignorant non Africans who make money and create their own narratives.

 

I raised the issue of male circumcision and so far nobody has taken up the gauntlet, afterall it fits samlessly into Jewish tradition and the west will not toy with that tradition.

 

Cheers.

 

IBK

_________________________

Ibukunolu Alao Babajide (IBK)

(+2348061276622)
ibk...@gmail.com

[Ibukunolu A Babajide]

A.B Assensoh of Oregon,

 

Very wrong questions.

 

There are so many women who were not circumcised but who are frigid.  How do we explain those.  Our sister here never enjoyed sex with her organs intact so how can she compare?

 

I do not blame you.  You are a man and like most men you want to take over issues that are the exclusive preserve of women.  Let us all men be more sensitive.

 

Cheers.

 

IBK

_________________________

Ibukunolu Alao Babajide (IBK)

(+2348061276622)
ibk...@gmail.com

[kenneth harrow]

dear ibk
i agree partly with you, but disagree strongly on other points.
i am an american, so a westerner. i don't see the world in one optic shared by everyone else. there is no single west, no single africa, no single villain out there. there are perspectives that vary, and some of those that predominate in the west are terrible about africa. maybe that means americans are imperfect, and if you can concede that you might agree that there are also views in africa that are not so great. what bothers me is lumping everyone into the same mold.

i raised the issue of male circumcision on this thread as well, and john said, another day for that. fine. but it isn't just jews who practice it; not only muslims who practice it; lots of christians throughout the world do so as well. and as for the "west" not  "toying with it" because jews practice it, it is hardly the case that because it is a jewish tradition that it hasn't been challenged. you are imagining a jewish presence and power that doesn't exist. in fact, that is classic antisemitism.
 you can google the issue if you want to find enormous attempts to prohibit male circumcision, not only in the u.s. but in europe as well. and in fact in amnesty international as well.
i agree with you, however, that the representation of female circumcision by the west has been part of the long tradition of western denigration of africans as barbarous, and it doesn't help to adopt the dominant western tropes of civilization and barbarism that served colonialist discourse for hundreds of years.
finally, i want to make it plain to john and others participating in this discussion that i agree that the practices of excision and infibulation ought to be ended, but not by outside donors imposing their cultural norms on africans, but rather by african populations themselves taking control of the issue. i support african groups opposed to the practice; i strongly disagree that the u.s. congress should tie its money to africans changing their practices as a result.
even if i don't like the practice, i find that is a form of imperialism.
ken

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Seriously, can we stop invoking this hackneyed assumption that any time an African criticizes an African practice that African is yielding themselves as a mouthpiece for Western ideologies or simply parroting Western cultural norms and standards? The least you can do in any discussion is to not assume or input motives to your interlocutors but to ask them the rationale behind their position when in doubt. I don't see any of the opponents of female circumcision here invoking or deploying any Western registers of devaluation. As a matter of fact, many of them have issued repeated disclaimers to the effect that their condemnation of the practice is not informed by Western framings of it or rooted in some Western moral order.

So when some African chiefs, aristocrats, and regular people in the heyday of the Atlantic slave trade campaigned to stop the trade their activism was informed by the lexicon and propaganda of Western abolitionists? For goodness sake, when are we going to concede to Africans agency and the right to think and act for themselves without being remote-controlled by Western discourses and activism?

It seems to me that those accusing others of buying into Western frames of understanding and valuation are the ones who subconsciously have internalized the belief that any critique of African culture is an expression of a Eurocentric agenda, a mindset which paradoxically reifies and grants paradigmatic sway to Western thought and ideas that do not have such power in real life. When you suggest that any African critic of African cultural practices is mentally colonized or under the spell of Western thought and paradigms, are you not the one suffering from that pathology of seeing the West as all-controlling and Western ideas as ubiquitous and impossible to escape?

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Another point is that change is a natural, evolutionary process (Darwinian law) that must come. Whether we clamour for it or not some of these anachronistic and 'perverse' practices will become obsolete and without people necessarily demanding the change - Ofure Aito.

Thank you my sister. When the countries of Africa start developing economically and industrially, ossified beliefs, old dictums, traditions, assumptions, and conventions will give way to new ideas and practices. We don't need the Evil Samaritans to come to us with their NGO money to tell us which of our problems should be prioritised. On December 14,1981, the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 36/133 declared that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development, etc. are human rights but the Satanic Samaritans opposed it. If that resolution was accepted and implemented, FGM, among other things, would have disappeared long time ago.However, the practice of FGM is diminishing in Africa without the pointing of fingers from those who name their own FGM, CLITORIDECTOMY. 

> Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 23:57:34 -0700
> From: ofur...@gmail.com

> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London
>

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Humans Rights Watch : FGM

It looks like we're treading water...

I do not say like Lakunle,

“A savage custom, barbaric, out-dated,
Rejected, denounced, accursed,
Excommunicated, archaic, degrading,
Humiliating, unspeakable, redundant.
Retrogressive, remarkable, unpalatable...”

“An ignoble custom, infamous, ignominious,

Shaming our heritage before the world....”

Even those words are not enough to convey the tragedy of the what's done that cannot be undone and for some people to understand that yes, that even if that was a phase of someone's great culture since a few thousand years ago when Jesus rode upon a donkey, much progress has been made in many other spheres as well, since the advent of Lucy...

Nor do we need to be futuristic or prophetic to observe today, that in this twenty-first century, every enlightened being who espouses freedom and gender difference or equality and even some of the primitives know that FGM is a danger to all women – to womankind as a whole and not just to African women. For at least two decades now FGM has been a recurring topic of discussion in many Africa & Diaspora fora and by now we are all familiar recycling of the various arguments for and against stamping out this wicked practise. Old customs die hard. In the areas of the world where the various types of FGM still persists has it been a rite of passage imposed by patriarchal authorities – authorities who are still the law makers in the societies where FGM is still being practised ? If so, there is hope that with the rising tide of feminism the world over, the chances of FGM being imposed in Western societies the way that tattooing is now spreading,will remain remote - but there is an ever present danger since the African Diaspora West is growing and it is still the wont of some of the first generation immigrants from FGM cultures and countries to continue their FGM practice in their new homeland. So in Sweden efforts are being made to educate people out of this practice. Although, most unfortunately even among some of our intelligentsia there is still some support for FGM by the culture Chauvinists among both the men and women as you cans see here and elsewhere...

Much is made of the virgins in paradise( faithfully waiting for the faithful after they leave this bodily existence in the grave) but there is no mention of FGM in the Qur'an or Bible or any of the scriptures or religious fables in Judaism or Islam. Since FGM is not sanctioned in Judaism or Islam (and I don't suppose that it is sanctioned by Jesus or St. Paul either) - any kind of totalitarian opposition will not come from adherents of the Abrahamic, but if any of the religions of the FGM practitioners sanction FGM then the adherents of those religions would invoke article 18 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights for their right to practise their religion in full for spiritual and not just for the rewards of sexual pleasure ( in this God-given life) or for upholding cherished notions and ideals of morality by amputating penis or clitoris...

We could pay some attention to Fuambai Ahmadu weighing in on these matter and apart from discussing we could contribute to the eradication of FGM in even more practical ways such as supporting anti-FGM groups who are raising awareness about its dangers....

[John Mbaku]

What guarantee do you have that these practices will go away once these countries have "developed"? And, what is that magic level of development at which these practices will miraculously disappear? And when would we know if that level of development has been achieved? By the way, if it is true that "[w]hen the countries of Africa start developing economically and industrially, ossified beliefs, old dictums, traditions, assumptions, and conventions will give way to new ideas and practices," then why is it that many generations of Africans living in Europe and North America (highly developed societies by any measure) still practice, albeit illegally, these barbaric customs, which include, of course, FGM?

Finally, in the meantime, and that is, until these countries become developed economically and industrially, what happens to the lives of the thousands of girls who must be subjected to this humiliating and unnecessary practices? Should we allow them to continue to suffer in the name of gradualism? If something is wrong, it should be stopped. We should not grant deference to the practitioners in order to allow for them or their offspring to achieve a level of development that, hopefully, will allow them to voluntarily give up their destructive practices. 

By the way, the fact that some people refer to the practice as clitoridectomy (instead of FGM) should have absolutely no impact on the desire of Africans to fight and eliminate the practice.

[Ofure Aito]

The experience has not in any way inhibited my sexuality, identity or intelligence. However, we are not made of the same strength and our process of reacting to situations within and around us differs.
To Prof Mbaku, I do not sanction FGM. My position is that we do not need the west to direct or dictate what is right or wrong. Even when what is wrong seem to persist, there is a natural process called change that will overcome the nihilistic dogmas of our time. I would like to believe that my father would not have mutilated us, based on his high level of education and exposure, but for the pressure of tradition. The interesting fact is that the pressure came from women in our society and the notion is that they were protecting us.
I empathize with the less fortunate, who have been psychologically scared or died in the process. I argue that our people will continue to resist this argument if it is perceived to come from the west. What is required right now is how to reach the core and remote communities and communicate this objection to them in their linguistic and cultural terms. How do we deal with it without the feeling of exclusion which is tearing Nigeria, as an instance, apart: north against south and east against west and north and Islam against Christianity?
Note: I never had to do it to my child. I respect the individuality of my child.

Ofure O. M. Aito (PhD) (University of Lagos)
Department of English and Communications
College of Humanities
Redeemer's University, Mowe
Ogun State, Nigeria

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Ken,

I think folks, including myself, were reacting to your seeming trivialization of female circumcision through the use of expressions like "small cutting," "symbolic cutting," etc. One discursive tactic for trivializing a matter is to unnecessarily complicate it, which is what folks read you to be doing when you sought to classify, following the WHO, female circumcision into gradations and varieties, as if to suggest that only some forms of the practice are hurtful, traumatizing, morally wrong, and thus deserving of condemnation. I for one understood your point about foreign activists and actors, but I read it as others did in conjunction with what seemed like your refusal to unequivocally condemn a practice that you now say you oppose.

By the way, if I may ask, if a practice is wrong, what is wrong with foreigners and foreign NGOs using their resources and visibility to spotlight it or mobilize people against it? At any rate, is there a foreign NGO that does not work with local groups and partners that share its advocacy? If you know of any, please let me know because you seem to be erecting a straw man of foreign NGOs who go to Africa to imperially tell Africans what to do and not to do without collaborating with or working through local partners. You're a member of Amnesty International, a group founded and funded in the West, which campaigns against human rights violations in Africa and in many cases prescribe certain notions of human rights protection and violation to African governments and peoples--notions that may in fact be informed by Western notions of rights and personhood. Why don't you see that as a form of imperialism? Why are you involved with them? If your answer is that they work with or through local partners, well, so do the anti-FGM foreign NGOs that you so vehemently condemn. I really see a double standard here with your commitment to AI and its work in African countries condemning and promoting certain practices it deems either morally reprehensible or noble. 

My overarching point in all this is to suggest that the idea that foreign NGOs who campaign against FGM in Africa are imperialist and should cede the stage completely to Africans is neither practical nor consistent with your own activist commitments.

[kenneth harrow]

hi moses
this is complicated. i had thought the exchanges on this topic were pretty much finished, but i always welcome responding to you.
i have been pretty much partly misread throughout this thread. the topic elicits such heat.
i am, as usual, not the world expert on the topic, but i know a few things, and have had long experience in dealing with or seeing the politics of it played out. so, i'll ask your indulgence as i explain my position.
where to begin? the radical excision of the parts of the genitalia that goes by the name fgm, and the infibulation that some also practice, seems quite terrible to me, and frankly most people i know. but, but, there are a few caveats that matter a lot to me. what is the labia is cut simply to make a mark, without any removal of the flesh? what if that is not done to stop women from enjoying sex but to initiate a girl into womanhood? how is that worse than male circumcision? if there is no real "mutilation," why is it shocking?

i screened Warrior Marks at MSU maybe 15-20 years ago, and the msu students (primarily female, as it so happened) were outraged, and had trouble holding back their scorn, dislike, almost hatred of africans for practicing "fgm," and the response i was given to the question i posed above was filled with abhorrence and venom.
why is that? anyone who has been around western reactions to african practices understands that the two cultures frame things differently, and that shapes the reactions. in this case, the western student sees science and medicine as trumping african religious beliefs, which they would regard as backward superstition. the western student is not humble: he or she feels they know the truth, and at best, as a "nice kind missionary" might "sacrifice" their modern comfortable status at home and go out and "save the natives."
i hope you and i agree on how reprehensible this is, and at least has to be a consideration in the issues at stake.

are there any points at which i would hold my nose and say, yes, we have to stop such and such a practice, at all cost; have to intervene as outsiders? of course; i advocate for intervention, for instance, over genocide. when human rights are violated, i advocate for intervention, but there it has to be more nuanced. i would not advocate reintroducing foreign rule, violation of sovereignty, because a govt violates human rights. but i would advocate for pressures to be brought to bear, including withholding funding. an example would be withholding american military aid to rwanda because it has stifled the opposition, jailed the political candidate who opposed kagame, because journalists have been killed, and so on.

as an aside, then, the case of amnesty. it isn't all or nothing: i am not arguing, i did not argue, that we not express our advocacy over "fgm" in africa, but that it should take the form of supporting women's organizations in africa that are working on the issue. that was my experience in senegal, and i found their work exemplary, in contrast to the u.s. congress desire to without funding to senegal until the senegalese govt passed laws against it. i feel the same way still. (to repeat; the senegal govt caved and passed anti-fgm legislation; the women's groups went out, patiently, year after year, and finally made headway. the former approach reinforced senegalese deference to the donor nation; the latter grew organically out of the local population. i favor the latter, applaud it)

amnesty is not a western organization. you are right about it being founded in the west and getting most of its funding in the west. its centers for research are now located around the world, with two centers in africa. if its principles date back to the enlightenment, that doesn't mean africans haven't adopted those principles. all african states have signed onto the u.n. declaration of universal rights. but more importantly, ai works by supporting human rights orgs in african countries, lobbies the govts, publicizes concerns, and asks its advocates to write authorities in african states asking them to act on behalf of prisoners of conscience.
not all interventions are the same. what to do about slavery in mauretania is not the same as what to do about journalists being harassed or jailed in burundi or ethiopia. in some cases we write u.s. authorities asking them to bring pressure on a govt, but even there, not all forms of pressure are acceptable. mostly we want to publicize the event and lobby foreign govts to act. that seems to have an impact.

i want to end by returning to cutting. i am not trivializing what it means to cut a child. however, i want to also not trivialize what it might mean to intervene in a practice where the child is taught in his or her community that not undergoing traditional initiation means not becoming a full man or woman (as i tried to indicate in referencing dogon practices). there are competing issues at stake: not violating the child's body versus not violating the community's beliefs and worldviews. the former, the body, is not an absolutely pure object that shouldn't be touched. i gave as an example facial scarification. we could cite many others. the latter is not an absolute: slavery, in its various forms, can't be tolerated, despite a community's claims that it forms the framework for the society. but when the objection is made, by john mbaku or my american students, that any cutting, even if merely symbolic, is absolutely to be prohibited, i believe we are not discussing simply the child's agency or the dated nature of the practice, but something more, something inherent in the refusal absolutely to hear what the other has to say or believe. that is where i see modernism, call it western if you want, shut its ears to others.

because i am jewish, i am perhaps more sensitive to what this means re male circumcision as well. for a while the germans outlawed it, until there was such a reaction that merkel had to have the legislation reversed. in a play by arthur miller, dealing with the holocaust, at one point a jewish chararacter says to another who claims he will pass as non-jewish, "what will you do when they look down your pants." if jews decide some day to end circumcision on medical grounds, and that that symbol of the covenant is less important than the child's health or agency, so be it. but if non-jews tell them, you can't inflict this on a child, then i would have to say, having seen the act performed (the baby is 8 days old; the cutting doesn't appear to inflict great pain; the child cries briefly, and it is over), knowing all the members of my religious community around the world undergo this ritual, who are you to tell us what to do?
if you explain to me why it is wrong, i will listen, and if you are right, i will have to change my mind. but i would hope that i would have something to say about the matter.

all traditions can be changed; but they are not all the same, and the means for changing them have to be weighed given the circumstances. that was what i was trying to say, and especially i want to say, the decision should be made not "from above" except in extreme cases, like genocide or slavery. mostly it should be made in collaboration.
best
ken

[Ayo Obe]

Initiate a girl into womanhood?  A friend from the Warri area of Nigeria where these rites were/are carried out - not at birth (as they are in some parts of Yorubaland) - but at puberty, described how, when her seniors were to undergo these rites which included the FGM, her own father took her to watch the girls dancing off to begin the rites.  He told her to look at them very well because the rites that they were going to take part in were what men used to oppress women, and that he was not going to allow her to take part because he wanted her to be able to stand up for her own rights.  She is over 60 now and reached the pinnacle of her chosen profession.

Ayo

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @naijama

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

"amnesty is not a western organization. you are right about it being founded in the west and getting most of its funding in the west. its centers for research are now located around the world, with two centers in africa. if its principles date back to the enlightenment, that doesn't mean africans haven't adopted those principles. all african states have signed onto the u.n. declaration of universal rights. but more importantly, ai works by supporting human rights orgs in african countries, lobbies the govts, publicizes concerns, and asks its advocates to write authorities in african states asking them to act on behalf of prisoners of conscience.
not all interventions are the same. what to do about slavery in mauretania is not the same as what to do about journalists being harassed or jailed in burundi or ethiopia. in some cases we write u.s. authorities asking them to bring pressure on a govt, but even there, not all forms of pressure are acceptable. mostly we want to publicize the event and lobby foreign govts to act. that seems to have an impact."

---Kenn

Ken,

What you wrote above would apply to every Western-founded-and-funded NGO working in Africa. I challenged you to name one foreign NGO in Africa that does not operate along those lines and you could not. The difference you're trying to draw between AI and other foreign advocacy organizations in Africa simply does not exist. Really, "amnesty is not a Western organization" simply because it has centers and offices in African countries that employ local staff? Come on, Ken, the anti-FGM NGOs that you rail against also have similar local structures.

Surely when John Mbaku and me express the kind of outrage that your students voiced about what you call "symbolic" cutting or female-circumcision-as rights-of-passage we are not inspired by Western arrogance rooted in Western notions of modernity and civilized culture, are we? We are human and resent certain practices for being morally outrageous and for violating basic human norms of decency, fairness, and protection of the juvenile. You seem to see the hand and eyes of imperialism and post-Enlightenment European modernity in every Western and non-Western reaction to and advocacy on African practices--except of course when it comes to the work of your beloved AI. This, I submit to you, is another kind of hangover.

Perhaps it is cultural relativism run amok; perhaps it is an exaggerated fear of and anxiety about the reach of Western neocolonial power; perhaps it is benign but misguided commitment to multiculturalism. I don't know.

On your labored and unpersuasive effort to distinguish between "small, symbolic" cutting and more invasive procedures, as well as your analogy of male circumcision, I'd say a few things:

1. Should one by the same relativist logic not condemn human sacrifice or other kinds of infractions because they have symbolic import for the communities that practice them?

2. We part ways on your distinctions, which I, like your students, do not agree should mitigate the moral offense that the practice causes and the damage it does to the girls subjected to it. I have not read any piece of anthropology that asserts this rites-of-passage-only explanation for "FGM." Please point me in that direction. And while doing so, give me some proof that even in the case of these symbolic, small cuttings, there is no trauma, risk of infection and long term damage to reproductive systems and capacity. As a digression, this rights-of-passage explanation reminds me of the good old days of colonial functionalist anthropology, in which there was a strong emphasis on preserving every practice encountered in Africa because it was supposedly a component of an undifferentiated African cultural corpus and served a (symbolic) function or purpose, or was a rites of passage ritual. Many terrible African practices were romanticized, sensationalized, and exoticized by the Evans-Prichards of this world in the name documenting (and celebrating) African rights of passage. By the way, in some African precolonial societies, one rite-of-passage requirement was a demonstration of a young man's ability to kill, the criterion often fulfilled with the presentation of a human skull of a victim. Should this practice have endured because it was part of some dark ritual of passage from boyhood to manhood?

3. You seem to suggest that opposing a culture or things done for cultural reasons amounts to imperial, know-it-all arrogance, and that only a medical critique is tenable or sustainable. Here I couldn't disagree more. As I wrote earlier, the medical concern is quite easy to remove and address. Once you've done that, would you then accept the practice of "FGM" and change your mind to support it? Were the missionaries wrong to advocate against the killing of twins in certain parts of Southern Nigeria? If that is imperialism, Africa needs more of it. Or perhaps they should have left it to local groups, who didn't know any better than the practitioners, to do the advocacy. Certain practices and cultures are simply out of step with our world and with the values and sensibilities of our current human conditions. Equivocating on them and nuancing them to me is unacceptable. I guess this is where we differ.

4. On male circumcision, the preponderance of medical opinion comes down on the side of the practice being medically beneficial, providing  protection against disease and infection. Not only that, its aesthetic outcome is widely acknowledged. Finally, apart from the risk of infection when the wounds are not nursed probably, I've yet to read of any long lasting risk to male reproductive capacity or sexuality. Moreover, male circumcision is not done anywhere that I know of as a mechanism for suppressing male sexual expression or for controlling male bodies and sexuality. Because of all these reasons, male circumcision, whether religiously commanded or medically recommended, is seen as a practice whose benefits outweigh whatever trauma the child may be subjected to in the process, and the violation of the law of consent. We perform many procedures on children because they are beneficial. Not waiting till the child comes of age in this case is worth it. But in the case of "FGM" what medical benefit can we point to? And then we have to consider the risk of long-lasting bodily and reproductive damage. There is also the risk of psychological damage in a world in which "FGM" is not the norm but an aberration.

Put simply, you and I are on different planets on this issue, and our disagreements run the gamut of all the registers that have been invoked in this discussion. I am not as obsessed with or paranoid about imperialism and Western modernity as you are, especially when I am dealing with African interlocutors. I generally grant Africans the right to express their outrage and values without connecting them to a supposedly omnipotent/hegemonic European frame of discursive reference. I do nuance and complexity when an issue lends itself to such complication. But searching for and highlighting complexity in cases which call for moral and ethical clarity for me amounts to a form of complicity.

[John Mbaku]

Ken: 

First, not all traditional practices, whether they are practiced in Africa or some other part of the world are benign or beneficial. Who should condemn and campaign for their abolition? Anyone who is in a position to do so, whether foreigner or native.

Second, while the intervention of the Royal Niger Company could be considered opportunistic and destructive to the Niger Delta's various groups and their traditions,  many Nigerians, especially those from Calabar and its surrounding areas, would say that intervention by Scottish missionary, Mary Slessor, was both timely and beneficial. Perhaps, someone from Cross River and Abia States can correct me and argue to the contrary. 

Third, over the years, many African intellectuals have argued that European Christian missionary societies actually paved the way for and greatly enhanced the "success" of the colonial enterprise in the continent. As part of the argument, Christianity is said to have softened the African and helped him easily accept and internalize the indignities of colonial exploitation. Yet, as was quite clear in the German colony of Kamerun (which after 1916 would become League of Nations mandates under British and French administration and then UN Trust Territories under British and French administration after WWII and the founding of the United Nations), education at schools owned and operated by foreign missionary societies helped Cameroonians recognize the contradictions of colonial rule. It was these Cameroonians who provided the intellectual foundation for the successful struggle against colonialism. By any measure, Ruben Um Nyobé, who was summarily assassinated by the French colonial government, remains Cameroon's most important founding father. He and a handful of other graduates of missionary schools, led the fight against French imperialism in the UN Trust Territory of Cameroons under French administration--in fact, as these leaders would write later, the church helped them more effectively articulate their ideas about brotherhood and the dignity of all of God's creatures. 

Fourth, I am not totally opposed to the participation of foreign NGOs in Africa--we, like people in other parts of the world have free agency and in exercising it, we can refuse to take the assistance offered by these groups if we believe that it comes with conditionalities that are likely to result in our exploitation. Or, are we saying that Africans, at this point in their political evolution, are still incapable of determining how to develop their own societies and hence, must depend on external actors for direction? If you are fighting the forces of exploitation, I do not see why accepting foreign assistance undermines your movement, unless you provide the foreign actors with the wherewithal to do so. Even China (PRC), the world's fastest-growing economy, has accepted and fully utilized foreign assistance but has done so on its own terms. Many of the East Asian economies (e.g., South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong) readily sought and accepted foreign assistance in their efforts to develop. Today, they are fully developed economies and yet, they have managed to retain their cultures and traditions. Why not Africa?

Fifth, male circumcision and FGM are two different issues that should be seen as such. My studies of the African societies that practice both, show that they are undertaken for completely different reasons. The present discussion originated from the death of a famous campaigner against FGM and I think we should focus on FGM. If anyone wants us to take up the issue of male circumcision next, we can do that.

Sixth, Ken, I do not know why you still insist on trivializing FGM by reference to expressions such as "symbolic cutting," "labia is cut simply to make a mark, without any removal of the flesh?," etc. Why, for heaven's sake, should anybody cut a girl's labia? Why make a mark on the labia? What is the point? What if in the course of making this mark, the labia are infected and the girl is maimed for life or worse, dies? Death or permanent disfigurement is the fate of many young girls in the African societies in which this practice continues. All this in the name of "passage to womanhood"! There are other less intrusive ways to initiate people into adulthood. FGM should not be an acceptable way, regardless of how "small"  the cutting is. 

Finally, in a globalizing world, I find it difficult to see how African societies can effectively prevent their cultures and traditions from being affected by outside forces. Cultures are dynamic animals--interaction with others allows them to grow, deal with changing societal needs and challenges and remain relevant to the people. Hiding from the rest of the world only contributes to stagnation, underdevelopment, poverty, and material deprivation. 

[Segun Ogungbemi]

History of popular Europe is replete with such practices but today they are not there and if you find some residuals of them they have lost their original values. 

Segun Ogungbemi Ph.D

Professor of Philosophy

Adekunle Ajasin University

Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State

Nigeria

Cellphone: 08033041371

                   08024670952

[kenneth harrow]

john
i can't defend a position i didn't take.
perhaps i expressed myself poorly, but i didn't say ngos should not act in africa; i said, in the case of this issue, they should support african entities, not force the issue.
of course all your cases of foreign interventions are strong. i support them. we are arguing over something else, but to further your argument, i have taught in africa, on and off, for fairly extensive periods. sometimes on fulbright exchanges, sometimes university exchanges, etc. if i didn't believe foreigners should work, or act, in africa, i couldn't have done it.
however, even if i taught as best i could, in ways i knew best, i did not go to africa to tell people there they were wrong and i knew all the answers.
i must have said a million times, there are good and bad interventions. in this case, all i am saying is, let african organizations, and primarily women's organizations, take the lead on this matter, instead of, say, the u.s. congress.

as for trivializing fgm, i am not really. your points are all valid, but in fact, if it is merely cutting the labia rather than one's cheeks or foreskins, the logic to me collapses. you state there is risk of infection; sure, but in all cases that's true. i don't really defend it when i say it is a rite; i explain it, and explain why some people want to retain it. i can understand a u.s. senator not caring about that, but i imagine africans understand better how some changes are harder to bring about, and might be more sensitive in effecting change.
we might actually listen when a girl says, i want to be able to marry when i grow up. we can work to change that way of thinking; but we shouldn't ignore it.
john, we don't want the u.s. marines to come in and execute the old women circumcisers, do we? so let's actually talk about what is at issue: how do we imagine effecting change over practices we oppose?
you begin by stating not all traditional practices are benign. granted. but how can we effect change? not all practices should be changed the same way.
 ken

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Thanks, Ayo, for that wonderful example. Given the age of the woman in question, her father was a man ahead of his time, who, unlike many other men in his time and in that cultural space, saw the horrors, oppressive logics, and patriarchal foundations of the practice.

Prof. Mbaku, you make excellent points. Africans are not children to be protected from evil foreign anti-FGM NGOs and organizations. For goodness sake, this infantilization of Africa and Africans should stop, and the ability of Africans to formulate their own ethics and morality utilizing all the knowledges and resources available to them, including foreign ones, should be recognized. Anything less than this is a little condescending, an expression of what Bill Maher calls the soft bigotry of low expectations, which is often applied to non-Western peoples by Western liberals and progressives.

[kenneth harrow]

hi moses
the case of amnesty is more complicated than what you wrote. but i didn't express myself about it to state it was different from others. i think there is, again,  gamut of ngos that work with little or no african input into their thinking and are very american or euro-centered in their workings. amnesty had been organized with london as the base from which all researchers and campaigners for the international part of the organization worked. they would go to africa on research missions for a determined period of time, and return to london, write up their reports, and initiate the campaigns. the lawyer and administration were in london. they probably still are, but the campaigners and researchers now have been relocated to various sites located on the continents for which they work. that shift was monumental, and many people left the organization over it.
i have my own criticisms of amnesty, one of which had been this centering of the international org in london; i am glad for the change, but it is, again, not a simple issue. in general i favor african over foreign agencies whenever possible; it doesn't help senegalese children to see Italo- on the ambulances that run through the city, reinforcing the notion that senegal can't produce its own emergency medical services. i don't oppose aid, but i can see the negative ramifications.

you want me to acknowledge the agency of africans like yourself and john in opposing fgm. i never questioned that; african people are divided on the issue, and i've been saying that my position is that i'd prefer outsiders to support african institutions and people in determining the issue.  when you express your outrage over it, it might be for many different reasons. i believe when my students do so, it is inseparable from the way they see africa, and it's clear in the discourse they use, basically in seeing african, africa, african ways in general, as barbarous and inferior. that discourse has a history. maybe we all are somewhat enmeshed in it; but i would want my students to be aware of the historical, colonial, imperial history that gave that discourse its epistemology. i didn't say you were driven by that discourse, although maybe it is true that many africans still live by a notion of modernity that is fundamentally grounded in dominant western epistemes with the usual history. we are all caught up in discourses, and inhabit them at times uneasily. i put "fgm" in scare-quotes because i believe it is tendentious and still largely centered in european-grounded sensibilities. that said, i must share in those sensibilities because i am also largely repelled by excision and infibulation.
when it comes to symbolic cutting, i am not repelled by it. sorry, i don't see any reasons to get excited about it. clean knives? sure. when the people of casamance were circumcising boys with the the same razor, sharing the blood of one boy to another, the state came down against it because of aids. there was resistance on the ground because what bound the boys was being taken away. given the threat of aids, however, i think the traditional resistance couldn't be sustained. i note that senegal has a lower rate of aids than the u.s.

i tried, in my response, to suggest we regard these practices relatively. i did state that i favored external intervention in extreme cases, like genocide or slavery. i never stated that the symbolic reasoning for practices trumped other considerations. so why should i defend a position i didn't take? the logic you are using to counter my position is forced. i am not suggesting functionalist anthropological reasons trump others; but i am saying the beliefs of people have to be taken into consideration. when i state that, you seem to hear me saying that they override other considerations. i didn't say that.

you want me to document my claim that these practices concern rites of passage, and not other considerations. well, ayo's response concerning the warri state that point, and i think it is very widespread. anyway, that would take me more time than i'm willing to give to this debate. i read it enough, here and there, to remember it. if, however, you want to claim it is now being used to repress women's sexuality, i'd agree that it has become increasingly so that people use that reasoning. i doubt very much that was true in the past; in fact, i'd bet it was never really the case until the modern period. now that logic is used universally in islamic circles, and has become a dominant rationale for the procedure. but times change.

my last point, moses, is that you seem to want me to impute western, imperialist thinking to africans who oppose the practice. i didn't say or think that. i fully support african people and organizations that work to end it, and i don't think of them as servants to imperial thinking. however, and here is where we might disagree, i feel that american legislative practices and attitudes towards africa are generally condescending, neo-colonialist, and degrading--with some few exceptions. insisting that africans behave as the u.s. congress dictates is a real and present danger; it is manifest in the africom policies and various forms of epistemic violence that continue on levels where popular opinion is being solicited. when it comes to the real everyday relations, things change, and collaboration becomes possible. but you seem to think there is no risk involved of u.s. thinking or practices as being dominant or hegemonic, and i do.

ken

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Ken, 

I started hearing about "FGM" being a practice designed to control female sexuality since I was a kid, way before I had any access to Euro-American modernist scripts. This is common knowledge in many parts of Nigeria, which I'm familiar with. It was never about rites of passage only. And Ayo's example proves the point that this was more than about rites of passage. The father of the woman in the story saw through the rites of passage facade and expressed this understanding to his daughter.

but i am saying the beliefs of people have to be taken into consideration. when i state that, you seem to hear me saying that they override other considerations. i didn't say that.

Yes, and this is one of the places we disagree. For me, a consideration of beliefs is important but not important enough to allow this heinous practice to be inflicted on children, scarring many of them for life or even exposing them to fatal risks. You seem to venerate a consideration of culture, of beliefs, and traditions, rendering this consideration a factor at par with or superior to the imperative of protecting these young girls from this dehumanizing practice. I vehemently disagree with your position, but at least we understand each other here.

you want me to document my claim that these practices concern rites of passage, and not other considerations. well, ayo's response concerning the warri state that point, and i think it is very widespread. anyway, that would take me more time than i'm willing to give to this debate. i read it enough, here and there, to remember it. if, however, you want to claim it is now being used to repress women's sexuality, i'd agree that it has become increasingly so that people use that reasoning. i doubt very much that was true in the past; in fact, i'd bet it was never really the case until the modern period. now that logic is used universally in islamic circles, and has become a dominant rationale for the procedure. but times change.

I don't know what you mean by "in the past." I grew up exposed to this rationale for "FGM." Since I'm not that old, perhaps your "in the past" does not include when I was growing up. Care to cite any sources that locate a different justificatory etymology in some distant African past?

 but you seem to think there is no risk involved of u.s. thinking or practices as being dominant or hegemonic, and i do.

I knowledge the risk--there is risk in everything we do or don't even do. However, my position is that Africans are not children. They are smart enough to recognize that Western actors in Africa have their own agenda that could be harmful and can sift through the advocacy and interventions appropriately. More crucially, my point is that 1) it should be up to Africans to discern useful Western interventions and assistance from agenda-laden and potential counterproductive or harmful ones; and 2) that it is not the job of Western liberals and progressives to protect Africans from the risks and dangers of neo-imperialist and hegemonic practices and interventions. This attitude infantilizes Africans. I admit that in many cases African leaders have not done a great of job of insulating their people from the harmful effects and aspects of Western interventions and "assistance," but that is squarely an African problem, a blame borne by Africans, and thus it does not warrant the paranoid anti-colonial but condescending attitude of lecturing Africans on the dangers that Western anti-FGM NGOs and other Western activisms pose to them. 

As a final comment here, let me say that your last post clearly delineates for me our irreconcilable differences on this issue. You said you have no issue with "symbolic cutting" of the labia or what you call "making a mark on the labia" for ritual/symbolic purpose. I do have a huge issue with ANY form of cutting or marking of the labia, clitoris, or any other part of the female anatomy for symbolic or whatever purpose. Here, too, we can agree to disagree. 

Your posit is becoming a lot clearer and with that clarity comes a better understanding of the differences in how we see the issue. Hey, we even agree on one thing: that Euro-American modernist epistemology and ways of seeing and doing color how Westerners view and name African practices, hence their naming of African female circumcision FGM.

[kenneth harrow]

hi moses
i feel you are somewhat twisting my position. when i said i don't take "traditional" beliefs as overriding other considerations, but rather that they have to be taken into consideration, you read that as meaning something else. i don't know how i could make that clearer since you cite my statement.
if you vehemently disagree with that point, then i guess we are in strong disagreement.
i hate disagreeing, but what can i do? ok, i still think you can't go to a community with a bulldozer and ride them and their beliefs into the ground. you need to talk.
the senegalese women's group i heard about returned for 3-4-5 years to villages where the elders initially refused them entry. they persisted. with time, they were allowed to speak to the women in the village; eventually changes started to come.
the circumcisers were not thrown into prison, but the community began to embrace change. had an american ngo gone in, nothing would have changed; had the police gone it, it would have continued in secret. with the women talking to the women in the community, it was possible to effect change.

my examples: i read about the dogon in the usual texts, back in the day, and male and female circumcision were described in depth. griaule, dieterlein, the usual suspects. i have read here and there, heard here and there, about the need for initiation to entail entry into the adults. that doesn't make it a good rite: kourouma describes it in some detail in Suns of Independence, but it still is described as a path to becoming ready for marriage.

i believe the notion that it entails controlling sexuality is more recent, and has been driven by muslim readings of the rite. i'm not going to research it, sorry. maybe i'm wrong; but i think that since your youth it has been described that way, and that older descriptions focus less on controlling sexual drives than preparing to be an adult.
if i'm wrong, maybe some anthropologist who has worked on this issue can come in here.

lastly, i am not infantilizing anybody in taking these positions. if it were the case, then it seems to me that anything i say concerning africa, any views i hold and express to an african audience becames infantilizing. why is that? am i not allowed to hold positions and voice them without being accused of talking down to africans?
it is really hard for you to accept this, i know, but i don't imagine myself as the white savior when i express my views in african circles. to be accused of that is to be placed in a position where i am being silenced. most whites don't like that, and refuse to take a chance of speaking up. i won't do it. i'll risk being maligned before i'll not speak on an issue, especially dealing with africa because, in fact, i am more at home in addressing these issues than anything else.
ken

[John Mbaku]

Professor Segun Ogungbemi wrote:

"History of popular Europe is replete with such practices but today they are not there and if you find some residuals of them they have lost their original values." 

Europe is not Africa. We, in Africa, cannot wait and hope that the transformative processes that occurred in Europe would eventually come to us and transform our societies in a similar manner. For one thing, the confluence of events and people that brought about positive change in Europe may never occur in Africa. If it becomes necessary for us to reach out and benefit from the global knowledge commons, I see no reason why we should wait to reinvent the wheel.

Europe went through a lot of experimentation to arrive at the level of human development that now exists in the continent. In the process, there was a lot of destruction--many people were killed and a lot of property destroyed before the Europeans established what are now peaceful and rules-based political economies. We can learn from them and effectively escape the many years of experimentation and suffering. How do you think China (PRC) has been able to achieve such phenomenal economic growth in such a short period of time? By taking advantage of the knowledge that has already been created by other countries--primarily Europe and the United States. 

While it is important for Africans to devise solutions to their own problems, it is not practical and cost-effective for us to try to "reinvent the wheel." It is true that locally-developed knowledge is more appropriate to Africa's problems than imported technologies. However, with appropriate planning and the right type of consultation, it is possible to source from the global "knowledge commons" technologies that complement indigenous systems and enhance the ability of Africans to solve their problems and advance economically, socially and politically. 

That said, it is important that we in Africa, like people in other parts of the world, continuously examine our traditional practices and rid ourselves of those which are harmful to our well-being, retain those that enhance our welfare, and reach out to the global knowledge commons to avail ourselves of others that might serve our needs and enhance our ability to progress. 

It would be foolish (and perhaps, cruel) to tell the people of Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone not to reach out to the international community for help in dealing with Ebola, but to rely on traditional practices, for fear that reaching out might contaminate the cultures of the people. 

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

This is to us all:

As mentioned earlier FGM operations are illegal in Sweden and will probably, gradually be eradicated in the countries of birth, where it is still prevalent as a cultural or religious practice. Up to now I don't know what happens in the Bondo Society . In February 1970 I had to read an essay on rites of passage which I was supposed to have researched, and there was Kenneth Little sitting in the seminar room at the Institute of African studies Accra, Ghana, leaning forward with some expectation maybe to hear some personal testimony and first hand experience from the horse's mouth. I'm afraid to say that for lack of any reliable information about e.g. the Bondo Secret Society or the mysteries of the Poro Society, I am still as ignorant today, as I was back then about these specific matters – for which reason I resisted joining the Arochukwu when invited to do so - mainly because since I espouse the philosophy of “ Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain” I lack the spirit of inquisitiveness necessary for delving any deeper into such matters that do not greatly interest me – and so , we should ask those who know( people who are members or have gone through such processes as they can be touchy about outsiders pontificating or even showing any signs of “Western” cultural arrogance or imperialism from the outside...)

Within Judaism where the brit milah is a sign of the Covenant I have come across the idea that this shows that we have to help the Almighty – otherwise if the Almighty had so desired , we would have all been born already circumcised.

In the absence of an Almighty type of religious authority for FGM, with the globalisation and spread of Western notions of culture and ideology ( including homosexuality) it's a question of time before the WHO , the church and the mosque legislate that FGM be classified as Child Abuse and Cruelty to children. In about a hundred years time they will be throwing parents in jail for fulfilling any such divine nor not so divine commands... even as tattooing ( forbidden in Judaism) is legally on the increase on the basis of people can do what they like with their own body. Reminds me of Cyprian Lamar Rowe in Ghana (he was a great fan of Achebe , putting him on a pedestal far above what Ayi Kwei Armah's two first novels could ever earn in his estimation) well Cyprian who was very much a man of traditional African fashion when it came to clothing would say in his usually very unctuous tones, about rainbow dashikis, and his palm oil colours in contrast with the British navy blues and greys, “ The body is an aesthetic instrument!”

The body! 

That was some mind over body.

Already in Sweden and some other countries in Europe they are making moves to ban ritual Jewish and Muslim circumcision of boys, insisting that an anaesthetic must be used and even going further than that, trying to outlaw the tradition altogether on the grounds that it is a cruel and barbaric custom...

So moral relativity or not, it's the religious and culture tradition practitioners of the various circumcision, the small cut, the big cut or even “ the most unkindest cut of all” versus those who oppose on modern atheistic and required anaesthetic and humanitarian grounds.

Over here, we will continue to watch and pray. I haven't read this over. I usually don't.

We Sweden

Current archives at <a onmousedown="this.href

...

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

There is one point being missed in this debate. Prof. Harrow did not originate the idea of 'genital cutting.'


Groups of women suggested that 'genital cutting' was a preferred transitional move
away from the old established practice. They believed that even if the practice were to be outlawed and criminalized, and even if lawyers and
policemen were brought in to terminate the practice, they would all fail. The practice would simply go underground.

So 'genital cutting' was seen by them as a transitional mechanism.


The conclusion was arrived at after extensive consultation with a wide range of
community leaders and activists in a democratic setting.

This is the context of Prof. Harrow's argument.

Now, were the community leaders wrong in their conclusion? Can FGM be stopped without this so-called
transitional process? Should Amnesty International consider FGM
a violation of human rights? And if so declared, can it be stopped?

Can humanitarian aid intervention against ebola be placed on the same footing as
an international anti-FGM campaign? Should FGM be criminalized?

I suspect that Professors Mbaku and Ochonu will say yes to most of the above -
but it is important to note the original context.



Professor Gloria Emeagwali
africahistory.net
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Documentaries on Africa and the African Diaspora
________________________________________
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu [meoc...@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2014 5:47 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Ken,

I started hearing about "FGM" being a practice designed to control female sexuality since I was a kid, way before I had any access to Euro-American modernist scripts. This is common knowledge in many parts of Nigeria, which I'm familiar with. It was never about rites of passage only. And Ayo's example proves the point that this was more than about rites of passage. The father of the woman in the story saw through the rites of passage facade and expressed this understanding to his daughter.



but i am saying the beliefs of people have to be taken into consideration. when i state that, you seem to hear me saying that they override other considerations. i didn't say that.


Yes, and this is one of the places we disagree. For me, a consideration of beliefs is important but not important enough to allow this heinous practice to be inflicted on children, scarring many of them for life or even exposing them to fatal risks. You seem to venerate a consideration of culture, of beliefs, and traditions, rendering this consideration a factor at par with or superior to the imperative of protecting these young girls from this dehumanizing practice. I vehemently disagree with your position, but at least we understand each other here.




you want me to document my claim that these practices concern rites of passage, and not other considerations. well, ayo's response concerning the warri state that point, and i think it is very widespread. anyway, that would take me more time than i'm willing to give to this debate. i read it enough, here and there, to remember it. if, however, you want to claim it is now being used to repress women's sexuality, i'd agree that it has become increasingly so that people use that reasoning. i doubt very much that was true in the past; in fact, i'd bet it was never really the case until the modern period. now that logic is used universally in islamic circles, and has become a dominant rationale for the procedure. but times change.


I don't know what you mean by "in the past." I grew up exposed to this rationale for "FGM." Since I'm not that old, perhaps your "in the past" does not include when I was growing up. Care to cite any sources that locate a different justificatory etymology in some distant African past?


but you seem to think there is no risk involved of u.s. thinking or practices as being dominant or hegemonic, and i do.


I knowledge the risk--there is risk in everything we do or don't even do. However, my position is that Africans are not children. They are smart enough to recognize that Western actors in Africa have their own agenda that could be harmful and can sift through the advocacy and interventions appropriately. More crucially, my point is that 1) it should be up to Africans to discern useful Western interventions and assistance from agenda-laden and potential counterproductive or harmful ones; and 2) that it is not the job of Western liberals and progressives to protect Africans from the risks and dangers of neo-imperialist and hegemonic practices and interventions. This attitude infantilizes Africans. I admit that in many cases African leaders have not done a great of job of insulating their people from the harmful effects and aspects of Western interventions and "assistance," but that is squarely an African problem, a blame borne by Africans, and thus it does not warrant the paranoid anti-colonial but condescending attitude of lecturing Africans on the dangers that Western anti-FGM NGOs and other Western activisms pose to them.

As a final comment here, let me say that your last post clearly delineates for me our irreconcilable differences on this issue. You said you have no issue with "symbolic cutting" of the labia or what you call "making a mark on the labia" for ritual/symbolic purpose. I do have a huge issue with ANY form of cutting or marking of the labia, clitoris, or any other part of the female anatomy for symbolic or whatever purpose. Here, too, we can agree to disagree.

Your posit is becoming a lot clearer and with that clarity comes a better understanding of the differences in how we see the issue. Hey, we even agree on one thing: that Euro-American modernist epistemology and ways of seeing and doing color how Westerners view and name African practices, hence their naming of African female circumcision FGM.

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 2:22 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>> wrote:
hi moses
the case of amnesty is more complicated than what you wrote. but i didn't express myself about it to state it was different from others. i think there is, again, gamut of ngos that work with little or no african input into their thinking and are very american or euro-centered in their workings. amnesty had been organized with london as the base from which all researchers and campaigners for the international part of the organization worked. they would go to africa on research missions for a determined period of time, and return to london, write up their reports, and initiate the campaigns. the lawyer and administration were in london. they probably still are, but the campaigners and researchers now have been relocated to various sites located on the continents for which they work. that shift was monumental, and many people left the organization over it.
i have my own criticisms of amnesty, one of which had been this centering of the international org in london; i am glad for the change, but it is, again, not a simple issue. in general i favor african over foreign agencies whenever possible; it doesn't help senegalese children to see Italo- on the ambulances that run through the city, reinforcing the notion that senegal can't produce its own emergency medical services. i don't oppose aid, but i can see the negative ramifications.

you want me to acknowledge the agency of africans like yourself and john in opposing fgm. i never questioned that; african people are divided on the issue, and i've been saying that my position is that i'd prefer outsiders to support african institutions and people in determining the issue. when you express your outrage over it, it might be for many different reasons. i believe when my students do so, it is inseparable from the way they see africa, and it's clear in the discourse they use, basically in seeing african, africa, african ways in general, as barbarous and inferior. that discourse has a history. maybe we all are somewhat enmeshed in it; but i would want my students to be aware of the historical, colonial, imperial history that gave that discourse its epistemology. i didn't say you were driven by that discourse, although maybe it is true that many africans still live by a notion of modernity that is fundamentally grounded in dominant western epistemes with the usual history. we are all caught up in discourses, and inhabit them at times uneasily. i put "fgm" in scare-quotes because i believe it is tendentious and still largely centered in european-grounded sensibilities. that said, i must share in those sensibilities because i am also largely repelled by excision and infibulation.
when it comes to symbolic cutting, i am not repelled by it. sorry, i don't see any reasons to get excited about it. clean knives? sure. when the people of casamance were circumcising boys with the the same razor, sharing the blood of one boy to another, the state came down against it because of aids. there was resistance on the ground because what bound the boys was being taken away. given the threat of aids, however, i think the traditional resistance couldn't be sustained. i note that senegal has a lower rate of aids than the u.s.

i tried, in my response, to suggest we regard these practices relatively. i did state that i favored external intervention in extreme cases, like genocide or slavery. i never stated that the symbolic reasoning for practices trumped other considerations. so why should i defend a position i didn't take? the logic you are using to counter my position is forced. i am not suggesting functionalist anthropological reasons trump others; but i am saying the beliefs of people have to be taken into consideration. when i state that, you seem to hear me saying that they override other considerations. i didn't say that.

you want me to document my claim that these practices concern rites of passage, and not other considerations. well, ayo's response concerning the warri state that point, and i think it is very widespread. anyway, that would take me more time than i'm willing to give to this debate. i read it enough, here and there, to remember it. if, however, you want to claim it is now being used to repress women's sexuality, i'd agree that it has become increasingly so that people use that reasoning. i doubt very much that was true in the past; in fact, i'd bet it was never really the case until the modern period. now that logic is used universally in islamic circles, and has become a dominant rationale for the procedure. but times change.

my last point, moses, is that you seem to want me to impute western, imperialist thinking to africans who oppose the practice. i didn't say or think that. i fully support african people and organizations that work to end it, and i don't think of them as servants to imperial thinking. however, and here is where we might disagree, i feel that american legislative practices and attitudes towards africa are generally condescending, neo-colonialist, and degrading--with some few exceptions. insisting that africans behave as the u.s. congress dictates is a real and present danger; it is manifest in the africom policies and various forms of epistemic violence that continue on levels where popular opinion is being solicited. when it comes to the real everyday relations, things change, and collaboration becomes possible. but you seem to think there is no risk involved of u.s. thinking or practices as being dominant or hegemonic, and i do.

ken


On 10/31/14, 2:07 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
"amnesty is not a western organization. you are right about it being founded in the west and getting most of its funding in the west. its centers for research are now located around the world, with two centers in africa. if its principles date back to the enlightenment, that doesn't mean africans haven't adopted those principles. all african states have signed onto the u.n. declaration of universal rights. but more importantly, ai works by supporting human rights orgs in african countries, lobbies the govts, publicizes concerns, and asks its advocates to write authorities in african states asking them to act on behalf of prisoners of conscience.
not all interventions are the same. what to do about slavery in mauretania is not the same as what to do about journalists being harassed or jailed in burundi or ethiopia. in some cases we write u.s. authorities asking them to bring pressure on a govt, but even there, not all forms of pressure are acceptable. mostly we want to publicize the event and lobby foreign govts to act. that seems to have an impact."

---Kenn


Ken,

What you wrote above would apply to every Western-founded-and-funded NGO working in Africa. I challenged you to name one foreign NGO in Africa that does not operate along those lines and you could not. The difference you're trying to draw between AI and other foreign advocacy organizations in Africa simply does not exist. Really, "amnesty is not a Western organization" simply because it has centers and offices in African countries that employ local staff? Come on, Ken, the anti-FGM NGOs that you rail against also have similar local structures.

Surely when John Mbaku and me express the kind of outrage that your students voiced about what you call "symbolic" cutting or female-circumcision-as rights-of-passage we are not inspired by Western arrogance rooted in Western notions of modernity and civilized culture, are we? We are human and resent certain practices for being morally outrageous and for violating basic human norms of decency, fairness, and protection of the juvenile. You seem to see the hand and eyes of imperialism and post-Enlightenment European modernity in every Western and non-Western reaction to and advocacy on African practices--except of course when it comes to the work of your beloved AI. This, I submit to you, is another kind of hangover.

Perhaps it is cultural relativism run amok; perhaps it is an exaggerated fear of and anxiety about the reach of Western neocolonial power; perhaps it is benign but misguided commitment to multiculturalism. I don't know.

On your labored and unpersuasive effort to distinguish between "small, symbolic" cutting and more invasive procedures, as well as your analogy of male circumcision, I'd say a few things:

1. Should one by the same relativist logic not condemn human sacrifice or other kinds of infractions because they have symbolic import for the communities that practice them?

2. We part ways on your distinctions, which I, like your students, do not agree should mitigate the moral offense that the practice causes and the damage it does to the girls subjected to it. I have not read any piece of anthropology that asserts this rites-of-passage-only explanation for "FGM." Please point me in that direction. And while doing so, give me some proof that even in the case of these symbolic, small cuttings, there is no trauma, risk of infection and long term damage to reproductive systems and capacity. As a digression, this rights-of-passage explanation reminds me of the good old days of colonial functionalist anthropology, in which there was a strong emphasis on preserving every practice encountered in Africa because it was supposedly a component of an undifferentiated African cultural corpus and served a (symbolic) function or purpose, or was a rites of passage ritual. Many terrible African practices were romanticized, sensationalized, and exoticized by the Evans-Prichards of this world in the name documenting (and celebrating) African rights of passage. By the way, in some African precolonial societies, one rite-of-passage requirement was a demonstration of a young man's ability to kill, the criterion often fulfilled with the presentation of a human skull of a victim. Should this practice have endured because it was part of some dark ritual of passage from boyhood to manhood?

3. You seem to suggest that opposing a culture or things done for cultural reasons amounts to imperial, know-it-all arrogance, and that only a medical critique is tenable or sustainable. Here I couldn't disagree more. As I wrote earlier, the medical concern is quite easy to remove and address. Once you've done that, would you then accept the practice of "FGM" and change your mind to support it? Were the missionaries wrong to advocate against the killing of twins in certain parts of Southern Nigeria? If that is imperialism, Africa needs more of it. Or perhaps they should have left it to local groups, who didn't know any better than the practitioners, to do the advocacy. Certain practices and cultures are simply out of step with our world and with the values and sensibilities of our current human conditions. Equivocating on them and nuancing them to me is unacceptable. I guess this is where we differ.

4. On male circumcision, the preponderance of medical opinion comes down on the side of the practice being medically beneficial, providing protection against disease and infection. Not only that, its aesthetic outcome is widely acknowledged. Finally, apart from the risk of infection when the wounds are not nursed probably, I've yet to read of any long lasting risk to male reproductive capacity or sexuality. Moreover, male circumcision is not done anywhere that I know of as a mechanism for suppressing male sexual expression or for controlling male bodies and sexuality. Because of all these reasons, male circumcision, whether religiously commanded or medically recommended, is seen as a practice whose benefits outweigh whatever trauma the child may be subjected to in the process, and the violation of the law of consent. We perform many procedures on children because they are beneficial. Not waiting till the child comes of age in this case is worth it. But in the case of "FGM" what medical benefit can we point to? And then we have to consider the risk of long-lasting bodily and reproductive damage. There is also the risk of psychological damage in a world in which "FGM" is not the norm but an aberration.

Put simply, you and I are on different planets on this issue, and our disagreements run the gamut of all the registers that have been invoked in this discussion. I am not as obsessed with or paranoid about imperialism and Western modernity as you are, especially when I am dealing with African interlocutors. I generally grant Africans the right to express their outrage and values without connecting them to a supposedly omnipotent/hegemonic European frame of discursive reference. I do nuance and complexity when an issue lends itself to such complication. But searching for and highlighting complexity in cases which call for moral and ethical clarity for me amounts to a form of complicity.

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 11:20 AM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>> wrote:
hi moses
this is complicated. i had thought the exchanges on this topic were pretty much finished, but i always welcome responding to you.
i have been pretty much partly misread throughout this thread. the topic elicits such heat.
i am, as usual, not the world expert on the topic, but i know a few things, and have had long experience in dealing with or seeing the politics of it played out. so, i'll ask your indulgence as i explain my position.
where to begin? the radical excision of the parts of the genitalia that goes by the name fgm, and the infibulation that some also practice, seems quite terrible to me, and frankly most people i know. but, but, there are a few caveats that matter a lot to me. what is the labia is cut simply to make a mark, without any removal of the flesh? what if that is not done to stop women from enjoying sex but to initiate a girl into womanhood? how is that worse than male circumcision? if there is no real "mutilation," why is it shocking?

i screened Warrior Marks at MSU maybe 15-20 years ago, and the msu students (primarily female, as it so happened) were outraged, and had trouble holding back their scorn, dislike, almost hatred of africans for practicing "fgm," and the response i was given to the question i posed above was filled with abhorrence and venom.
why is that? anyone who has been around western reactions to african practices understands that the two cultures frame things differently, and that shapes the reactions. in this case, the western student sees science and medicine as trumping african religious beliefs, which they would regard as backward superstition. the western student is not humble: he or she feels they know the truth, and at best, as a "nice kind missionary" might "sacrifice" their modern comfortable status at home and go out and "save the natives."
i hope you and i agree on how reprehensible this is, and at least has to be a consideration in the issues at stake.

are there any points at which i would hold my nose and say, yes, we have to stop such and such a practice, at all cost; have to intervene as outsiders? of course; i advocate for intervention, for instance, over genocide. when human rights are violated, i advocate for intervention, but there it has to be more nuanced. i would not advocate reintroducing foreign rule, violation of sovereignty, because a govt violates human rights. but i would advocate for pressures to be brought to bear, including withholding funding. an example would be withholding american military aid to rwanda because it has stifled the opposition, jailed the political candidate who opposed kagame, because journalists have been killed, and so on.

as an aside, then, the case of amnesty. it isn't all or nothing: i am not arguing, i did not argue, that we not express our advocacy over "fgm" in africa, but that it should take the form of supporting women's organizations in africa that are working on the issue. that was my experience in senegal, and i found their work exemplary, in contrast to the u.s. congress desire to without funding to senegal until the senegalese govt passed laws against it. i feel the same way still. (to repeat; the senegal govt caved and passed anti-fgm legislation; the women's groups went out, patiently, year after year, and finally made headway. the former approach reinforced senegalese deference to the donor nation; the latter grew organically out of the local population. i favor the latter, applaud it)

amnesty is not a western organization. you are right about it being founded in the west and getting most of its funding in the west. its centers for research are now located around the world, with two centers in africa. if its principles date back to the enlightenment, that doesn't mean africans haven't adopted those principles. all african states have signed onto the u.n. declaration of universal rights. but more importantly, ai works by supporting human rights orgs in african countries, lobbies the govts, publicizes concerns, and asks its advocates to write authorities in african states asking them to act on behalf of prisoners of conscience.
not all interventions are the same. what to do about slavery in mauretania is not the same as what to do about journalists being harassed or jailed in burundi or ethiopia. in some cases we write u.s. authorities asking them to bring pressure on a govt, but even there, not all forms of pressure are acceptable. mostly we want to publicize the event and lobby foreign govts to act. that seems to have an impact.

i want to end by returning to cutting. i am not trivializing what it means to cut a child. however, i want to also not trivialize what it might mean to intervene in a practice where the child is taught in his or her community that not undergoing traditional initiation means not becoming a full man or woman (as i tried to indicate in referencing dogon practices). there are competing issues at stake: not violating the child's body versus not violating the community's beliefs and worldviews. the former, the body, is not an absolutely pure object that shouldn't be touched. i gave as an example facial scarification. we could cite many others. the latter is not an absolute: slavery, in its various forms, can't be tolerated, despite a community's claims that it forms the framework for the society. but when the objection is made, by john mbaku or my american students, that any cutting, even if merely symbolic, is absolutely to be prohibited, i believe we are not discussing simply the child's agency or the dated nature of the practice, but something more, something inherent in the refusal absolutely to hear what the other has to say or believe. that is where i see modernism, call it western if you want, shut its ears to others.

because i am jewish, i am perhaps more sensitive to what this means re male circumcision as well. for a while the germans outlawed it, until there was such a reaction that merkel had to have the legislation reversed. in a play by arthur miller, dealing with the holocaust, at one point a jewish chararacter says to another who claims he will pass as non-jewish, "what will you do when they look down your pants." if jews decide some day to end circumcision on medical grounds, and that that symbol of the covenant is less important than the child's health or agency, so be it. but if non-jews tell them, you can't inflict this on a child, then i would have to say, having seen the act performed (the baby is 8 days old; the cutting doesn't appear to inflict great pain; the child cries briefly, and it is over), knowing all the members of my religious community around the world undergo this ritual, who are you to tell us what to do?
if you explain to me why it is wrong, i will listen, and if you are right, i will have to change my mind. but i would hope that i would have something to say about the matter.

all traditions can be changed; but they are not all the same, and the means for changing them have to be weighed given the circumstances. that was what i was trying to say, and especially i want to say, the decision should be made not "from above" except in extreme cases, like genocide or slavery. mostly it should be made in collaboration.
best
ken



On 10/30/14, 9:07 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
Ken,

I think folks, including myself, were reacting to your seeming trivialization of female circumcision through the use of expressions like "small cutting," "symbolic cutting," etc. One discursive tactic for trivializing a matter is to unnecessarily complicate it, which is what folks read you to be doing when you sought to classify, following the WHO, female circumcision into gradations and varieties, as if to suggest that only some forms of the practice are hurtful, traumatizing, morally wrong, and thus deserving of condemnation. I for one understood your point about foreign activists and actors, but I read it as others did in conjunction with what seemed like your refusal to unequivocally condemn a practice that you now say you oppose.

By the way, if I may ask, if a practice is wrong, what is wrong with foreigners and foreign NGOs using their resources and visibility to spotlight it or mobilize people against it? At any rate, is there a foreign NGO that does not work with local groups and partners that share its advocacy? If you know of any, please let me know because you seem to be erecting a straw man of foreign NGOs who go to Africa to imperially tell Africans what to do and not to do without collaborating with or working through local partners. You're a member of Amnesty International, a group founded and funded in the West, which campaigns against human rights violations in Africa and in many cases prescribe certain notions of human rights protection and violation to African governments and peoples--notions that may in fact be informed by Western notions of rights and personhood. Why don't you see that as a form of imperialism? Why are you involved with them? If your answer is that they work with or through local partners, well, so do the anti-FGM foreign NGOs that you so vehemently condemn. I really see a double standard here with your commitment to AI and its work in African countries condemning and promoting certain practices it deems either morally reprehensible or noble.

My overarching point in all this is to suggest that the idea that foreign NGOs who campaign against FGM in Africa are imperialist and should cede the stage completely to Africans is neither practical nor consistent with your own activist commitments.

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 10:21 AM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>> wrote:
dear ibk
i agree partly with you, but disagree strongly on other points.
i am an american, so a westerner. i don't see the world in one optic shared by everyone else. there is no single west, no single africa, no single villain out there. there are perspectives that vary, and some of those that predominate in the west are terrible about africa. maybe that means americans are imperfect, and if you can concede that you might agree that there are also views in africa that are not so great. what bothers me is lumping everyone into the same mold.

i raised the issue of male circumcision on this thread as well, and john said, another day for that. fine. but it isn't just jews who practice it; not only muslims who practice it; lots of christians throughout the world do so as well. and as for the "west" not "toying with it" because jews practice it, it is hardly the case that because it is a jewish tradition that it hasn't been challenged. you are imagining a jewish presence and power that doesn't exist. in fact, that is classic antisemitism.
you can google the issue if you want to find enormous attempts to prohibit male circumcision, not only in the u.s. but in europe as well. and in fact in amnesty international as well.
i agree with you, however, that the representation of female circumcision by the west has been part of the long tradition of western denigration of africans as barbarous, and it doesn't help to adopt the dominant western tropes of civilization and barbarism that served colonialist discourse for hundreds of years.
finally, i want to make it plain to john and others participating in this discussion that i agree that the practices of excision and infibulation ought to be ended, but not by outside donors imposing their cultural norms on africans, but rather by african populations themselves taking control of the issue. i support african groups opposed to the practice; i strongly disagree that the u.s. congress should tie its money to africans changing their practices as a result.
even if i don't like the practice, i find that is a form of imperialism.
ken




On 10/29/14, 7:54 AM, Ibukunolu A Babajide wrote:
Dear friends,

This is thye most illuminating narrative I have read on this topic. Coming from a supposed "victim" it is even more compelling. I have three daughters and I will NEVER allow any of them to be circumcised. The issues that we need to address are these:

1. The characterization of the practice by the West;
2. The dehumanization of Africa and recruitment of Africans to do the dirty for them on fellow Africans; and
3. Finding African solutions to African issues without being led by the nose by ignorant non Africans who make money and create their own narratives.

I raised the issue of male circumcision and so far nobody has taken up the gauntlet, afterall it fits samlessly into Jewish tradition and the west will not toy with that tradition.

Cheers.

IBK



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On 29 October 2014 09:57, ofure aito <ofur...@gmail.com<mailto:ofur...@gmail.com>> wrote:
May I add my voice by sharing my experience on FGM conversation. First, I understand the position of Mr/Dr/Prof Kadiri and Samuel as well as Prof Mbaku's strong opposing position. I was genitally mutilated in what is called 'circumcision' at age 5 along with my elder sister at age 8. I recall a middle aged woman coming to our house one late afternoon and asking my mum to buy her new razors. Thereafter, my sister was taken to the bathroom. When she returned she walked astride. I worried and was transfixed by the way she walked after a simple visit to the bathroom. I didn't understand what was happening but within me I said I will not go to the bathroom. So I went to our room and hid under the bed, in fear and rejection of walking like my sister. My father came to lure me out to the bathroom where I was given my 'skin cut' and walked like my sister. When I returned to the living room I overheard our neighbor's son in our house explaining to my brother the reason why were walking like that was because we had just been circumcised. The point in this recall is that, I was born in the city and grew in the city, yet my parents felt it was necessary, even when I was already conscious of my environment. My parents never explained. My understanding came from what the neighbour said.
I do not subscribe to fgm or circumcision, but I wonder how much damage that has cost women in African societies since the 60s to date in terms of diseases and sexual deprivation? Our arguments usually take cue from western prompting. The symbolic sexual control it is expected to pose has not limited women's potentials in so many areas of self achievements and actualization (even in the precolonial that the practice was strongest and a thing of pride, women were leaders, partake in policy making, decision makers at home, during war and peace). Even promiscuity has never been affected or controlled, because in my growing up days we hear about women: married or single, who were described as 'wayward', putting it mildly. It has not stagnated women and their identity, sexuality and sensuality.
>From my experience, the change in the 21st century like Prof Mbaku clamour for is subjective and dependent on individual choices. My parents did not choose to do what they did until we were almost in our teens.
I stand on the argument that it is a societal tradition, not culture that may have outlived its implication, especially, in the age of technological consciousness. The interpretation and practice are subjective but the age-old view is to control women's sexual power and identity vis-a-viz male dominance. Has this actually been the case. Another point is that change is a natural, evolutionary process (Darwinian law) that must come. Whether, we clamour for it or not some of these anachronistic and 'perverse' practices will become obsolete and without people necessarily demanding the change. Even the culture of piercing and tattooing in the west as fad is fading.
And I do agree with Samuel that until the west has given a name and approval, Africa does not come up with her on opinionated view. For instance, the issue breastfeeding in the 70s was disdained by the west in order to sell baby formular and now, exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months is ideal. Africa is the dump site of various ideological tests and we Africans do not see anything good done in, by or come out of Africa.
Ofure

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Professor Gloria in excelsis Emeagwali,

In anticipation of distinguished Professors Aito, Andoh, Anunoby, Assensoh, Fenyo, Harrow, Idahosa, Mbaku, Ochonu, Ogungbemi, Ògbéni Kadiri, Szalanga et al and Human Rights lawyers Ayo Obe and Ibukunolu Alao Babajide to weigh in at least one more time with perhaps the coup de grâce, this is what I think should be done:

Unlike Ebola which President Obama says should be stopped at its source, I think that in the Diaspora West (and you can call it Western imperialism or neo-colonialism if you like), on medical considerations alone, anti-FGM laws should be passed to criminalise the practice and impose heavy fines and long term imprisonment for violators...

As many of you have been cooing “ Let Africa & Africans decide what must be done to Africans in Africa” - no doubt Africa's own light will shine into its own darkness even if the darkness comprehendeth it not....

“ They will cut you! They will cut you! “ You want to be cut?”

That is how Hindus scare away their fellow Hindus who show the slightest indication of wanting to convert to the religion of al-Islam. Just like the Luo, so too Hindu men take great pride in not being circumcised - for the Luo circumcision is a disgrace. In the various Hindu religions, as you can see from some of what Westerners refer to as “erotic sculptures” in Hindu temples and art galleries, the Hindu people are not as” holy “ or squeamish or prissy or Victorian when it comes to sexual matters and so we have some classic manuals such as the Kama Sutra and the Ananda Ranga , not to mention the various advanced Tantric practices. At the same time we ought not forget there's also the Hindu spiritual ideal of self-restraint known as brahmacharya (celibacy) - so it's not that psychological hedonism wins all the time – although, as Dr. Bajpai (an Indian lecture in Mathematics at the University of Port Harcourt ) once explained to me with a smile, there are also heavenly enjoyments....

Even foreign missionaries are not going to dictate to Hindus as to what they should do or not do with their private organs of procreation, or their holy cows, or the philosophy which influenced Schopenhauer

Well, for those who are against polygamy, there's Lord Krishna and the Gopis, there's King Solomon and his hundreds of wives...

Over here it's Halloween and All Saints Day rolled into one

as in these words with which Andrew Marvell tries to convince his coy mistress:

“Let us roll all our strength, and all

Our sweetness, up into one ball”

A short definition of racism is that some people don't want some other people to have a good time ( Let the Bro just tell that to a white girl and see how she reacts)

The winter weather is slowly setting in.

I wonder how the kidnapped Chibok girls are faring....

We Sweden

ibk...@gmail.com<mailto:ibk200...@gmail.com>

On 29 October 2014 09:57, ofure aito <ofur...@gmail.com<mailto:ofure...@gmail.com>> wrote:
May I add my voice by sharing my experience on FGM conversation. First, I understand the position of Mr/Dr/Prof Kadiri and Samuel as well as Prof Mbaku's strong opposing position. I was genitally mutilated in what is called 'circumcision' at age 5 along with my elder sister at age 8. I recall a middle aged woman coming to our house one late afternoon and asking my mum to buy her new razors. Thereafter, my sister was taken to the bathroom. When she returned she walked astride. I worried and was transfixed by the way she walked after a simple visit to the bathroom. I didn't understand what was happening but within me I said I will not go to the bathroom. So I went to our room and hid under the bed, in fear and rejection of walking like my sister. My father came to lure me out to the bathroom where I was given my 'skin cut' and walked like my sister. When I returned to the living room I overheard our neighbor's son in our house explaining to my brother the reason why were walking like that was because we had just been circumcised. The point in this recall is that, I was born in the city and grew in the city, yet my parents felt it was necessary, even when I was already conscious of my environment. My parents never explained. My understanding came from what the neighbour said.
I do not subscribe to fgm or circumcision, but I wonder how much damage that has cost women in African societies since the 60s to date in terms of diseases and sexual deprivation? Our arguments usually take cue from western prompting. The symbolic sexual control it is expected to pose has not limited women's potentials in so many areas of self achievements and actualization (even in the precolonial that the practice was strongest and a thing of pride, women were leaders, partake in policy making, decision makers at home, during war and peace). Even promiscuity has never been  affected or controlled, because in my growing up days we hear about women: married or single, who were described as 'wayward', putting it mildly. It has not stagnated women and their identity, sexuality and sensuality.
>From my experience, the change in the 21st century like Prof Mbaku clamour for is subjective and dependent on individual choices. My parents did not choose to do what they did until we were almost in our teens.
I stand on the argument that it is a societal tradition, not culture that may have outlived its implication, especially, in the age of technological consciousness. The interpretation and practice are subjective but the age-old view is to control women's sexual power and identity vis-a-viz male dominance. Has this actually been the case. Another point is that change is a natural, evolutionary process (Darwinian law) that must come. Whether, we clamour for it or not some of these anachronistic and 'perverse' practices will become obsolete and without people necessarily demanding the change. Even the culture of piercing and tattooing in the west as fad is fading.
And I do agree with Samuel that until the west has given a name and approval, Africa does not come up with her on opinionated view. For instance, the issue breastfeeding in the 70s was disdained by the west in order to sell baby formular and now, exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months is ideal. Africa is the dump site of various ideological tests and we Africans do not see anything good done in, by or come out of Africa.
Ofure

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Gloria,

Your suspicion is spot on, for me at least. Indeed I'd say an enthusiastic "yes" to your questions above. I'd support a legislation and its determined, top-down enforcement as a way of stamping out this practice. I don't believe that one more African girl-child should be victimized by this practice in the name of building a bottom-up coalition, which is a euphemism for a gradualist approach that would enable the practice to go on for the foreseeable future. As for driving the practice underground, this is true, but it is also true that every vice or practice that has been outlawed in history went underground for a while before eventually petering out. This includes slavery, in societies where legislation and enforcement were used to end it. But the certainty of legislation (and its enforcement) driving vices and abhorrent practices underground has not stopped and should not stop responsible governments and peoples from passing legislations to outlaw practices that are a blemish on their society and dehumanize some of their citizens.

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Ken,

My intention is not to silence you. Far from it. In fact I want you to speak more about African issues, only more candidly. That is what I expect from my white progressive interlocutors. By the way, I could just as well accuse you of trying to blackmail me into a different kind of silence, into not calling you out for what I and other Africans perceive to be your habit of making excuses and supplying caveats, qualifiers, nuances, and irrelevant contexts for African problems and vices--vices and problems that you'd be up in arms--figuratively--fighting in your own society. I find this attitude annoying and condescending. It is, as I said, a form of avuncular racism. It is not always pleasant even though it is unintended, benign, and well-intentioned.

The pattern is predictable. If one mentions and condemns the crimes of an African ruler in strong uncomplicated terms, I can count on you to try to put those crimes in context or to try and blame colonialism or neocolonialism for them. For me and many Africans there are situations in which such an instinctive critique of colonialism falls flat and is inadequate for explaining the state of things in Africa. By the way, I go to Africa almost every year and sometimes multiple times a year, talking to a broad range of people. You'd be surprised by the extent to which invoking this anti-colonial critique as an alibi for contemporary African problems has lost relevance on the ground, at how little purchase this rhetoric has among Africans nowadays. Even I myself have been shocked by the reception that this excuse of colonialism and neocolonialism gets among my African interlocutors. 

When Africans mess up or continue to practice a procedure that clearly offends every tenet of decency, I expect an ally of Africa like yourself to call a spade a spade and say give blame where it is due. After all, we Africans resident in the States or in Africa routinely criticize the foibles of both America and its leaders. If one points to vices being perpetrated by certain Africans, I can predict with a high degree of accuracy, and in fact I have never been wrong, that Ken will come and disrupt the outrage being expressed by pointing to similar vices in America. This tendency to construct equivalences, to complicate African vices and bad practices is often very disappointing, especially coming from a staunch friend of Africa like yourself. True friends, I was taught, tell each other truths and do not flatter or mitigate/minimize each other's deficits. Yet that is what you seem to do consistently. 

When "FGM" was broached, you predictably took that same tack, throwing around alibis, justifications, and linguistic tropes of trivialization like "small cutting," "symbolic cutting," "rites of passage," and other literary devices of attenuation. This is how folks read your interventions on this topic. You say you're being misread, but what's the possibility that all your interlocutors are misreading you? And the more you've sought to clarify your position, the more alibis and excuses you've come up with for the practice, even while saying that you oppose it. This kind of equivocation when it comes to African matters is not uncommon among Western progressives, who cannot bring themselves to speak candidly about Africa lest they be misunderstood as condemning the continent or drawing from some hegemonic Western scripts. But with you, I don't think such a risk exists; you're almost an African and your record of advocating for Africa on the scholar and activist front forecloses such misunderstanding. Which is why your tentativeness and equivocation sometimes baffle me.

So, yes, maybe me and some other folks are reading your current interventions in a larger context of your history on this list, in their intertextual universe. But who can blame us, when you're fond of driving us crazy with this tendency to protect the image of Africa and Africans and to worry more about Western/neocolonial denigration or victimization of Africans than Africans themselves do. That is the classic avuncular humanitarian racism that I speak of, an aspect of which also infantilizes Africans by assuming that Africans cannot discern and select strategically from what Western neo-imperial actors have on offer.

I am not saying that this attitude is on par with the white conservative and neoliberal attitude of telling Africa what to do and how to live, and of seeking to remake Africa in the West's image. No, I am not saying that at all. But, quite frankly, for me--and I can only speak for myself--the avuncular protectionist attitude of white progressives is equally offensive. We are all interconnected, in a globalizing world, and our fates are entwined, so we're all invested in these matters, which is why Africans do not shy away from criticizing and calling out Euro-American vices and crimes. Why not return the gesture and trust Africans to take it in the chin and appreciate it like one does an honest critical commentary from a friend?

I think there is a balance somewhere--between the haughty, racist dictation of Westerners on the Right and in the neoliberal camp and the avuncular, annoying tentativeness of Western progressives. I have white American friends and interlocutors, progressives, who have been able to strike this balance. We discuss candidly about Africa's problems and I love it. We freely criticize problems in both America and Africa. And they don't condescend to me or my compatriots by trying to make excuses for African/Nigerian failures and problems. I know it is not your intention, but you often come across as making light of African calamities.

This is not a white versus black problem. This past summer, while I was in Oxford for research I was invited to a talk by an Americanist colleague who was spending the year there. There, I met this young, brilliant African American Rhodes Scholar and our discussion quickly turned to Boko Haram and the Chibok girls. At the time, there seemed to be a lot of discussion about foreign (read: Western) assistance to help free the girls. He asked me what I thought about that. I looked him straight in the face and told him that I was in support of any kind of help from America, Britain, or any other Western country to help free the girls. Shocked by my answer, he immediately jumped on my comments, spouting the familiar critiques of Western interventions, colonialism, Western agenda, etc. I told him that I didn't care if the US moved Fort Bragg and Africom headquarters to Nigeria if that would lead to freeing of the girls. It was a small price to pay for the girl's freedom, I told him. I would not let my concern about US imperialism blind me to the superior concern about the girls. Dumbfounded, he quietly moved on.

I believe in truth telling and honest critique. I have an Iranian Muslim friend who is one of my favorite people in the world. He is free to criticize African problems and vices to me, and I am free to point out what I see as the problems, foibles, and bad practices in Iran, in the larger Middle East, and in the larger Muslim world. Neither of us is defensive. We critique what needs to be critiqued as an internal issue and we point out the external, imperial dimensions of problems that have those elements. I am not one, for instance, to shy away from, equivocate on, or relativize the widespread practice of honor killings in some Muslim societies or the proliferation of so-called apostasy laws in the Muslim world, which in effect codifies religious intolerance and takes away freedom of religion. No one can tell me that that is is "their" culture and thus should be left alone, or that I as an honorary Westerner cannot tell Muslims that that is a despicable law incompatible with the ecumenical imperatives of our world.

Anyway, I am just rambling now, but I've gone to this length to let you know that there is a method to my madness, a context to some of my more strident critique of your position on the "FGM" issue. I am not asking you to change your ideology. It is too late now :). Besides, one of the things I admire in you is your ideological consistency, which ironically is the thing that makes you take the predictable positions on African matters that irritate the heck out of me. You're a great interlocutor any day, able to debate and to educate. But boy, sometimes you can make one so mad with what you say or imply in your sophisticated analysis on African issues, especially in situations when one is looking for moral clarity.

[Assensoh, Akwasi B.]

These are healthy discussions, from which some of us -- with sheltered missionary school outlooks -- are all learning a lot! Years ago, some of us would have been called all sorts of names for daring to introduce the topic of FGM and other genital-cutting acronyms! By the way, are we also saying that, like homosexuality, "Consenting Adult Females" (maybe, to be styed as "CAFs") should be allowed to undergo the practice, or should it be criminalized and done away with completely for everyone, at least so that no part of a female sexual organ is "cut" by anybody?

 

A. B. Assensoh.  

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu [meoc...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2014 8:56 PM

[kenneth harrow]

moses, i will write back tomorrow, but i feel somewhat uncomfortable putting out a defense of myself, or self-justification, for the whole list. i am not an issue; my views are. i appreciate your reaching out, and your patience, actually, with someone whose views frustrate or annoy you. but we can communicate maybe just between ourselves rather than putting who i am out there for public discussion.
ken

[Ikhide]

Moses, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Please consider re-working this into a robust essay - for publication somewhere, you know with hot links and all, (LOL! Just kidding about the hot links, well, maybe half-kidding, SMH!). An even better idea, you and Kenn see this as an opportunity to collaborate on a joint essay, a call and response on this issue that you know has vexed me for a long time. Great riff. Be well.

- Ikhide

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Let me assure you, I am capable of tittle-tattle but I don’t want to get into any tittle-tattle with anyone, with reference to Professor Harrow the human being who you rubber stamp as “almost an African” and who you thusly accuse:

“You say you're being misread, but what's the possibility that all your interlocutors are misreading you?”

All?  You can count me out.

What do you want? That he should be “brutally frank” like Dr. Chika A. Onyeani?

Many years ago, I was happy to learn from Rabbi Sacks, about the dignity of difference.

In this diversity (or is it uniformity) of voices, comprehension, you can count me out. I am not misreading anything. I read nuance and a caution that is aware beyond the “cutting” of the foreskin, where the confluence of history and tradition meet.  I understand, learn, respect, appreciate, empathise, sympathise with the complexity of his cautious  and nuanced self-expression, even if on this issue you would like us to a be uniform and en masse , that we all be shrill in our condemnation of all forms of FGM in Africa  in Asia, in everywhere.  And what if some African God had decreed FGM?

 I intuit that I am not a lone voice saying this on behalf of myself only. Only three  other people that I would have liked to see in some crisp discussion  are absent in this thread: the late W.H. Auden,  Kwame Anthony Appiah and Torbjörn Tännsjö. The latter enfant terrible and atimes radical iconoclast blowing against the popular wind, I requested to go public with a DN article on FGM - public instead of being buried as a footnote or a “hot link” under a mountain of some academic tomes...

Fresh out of tears

Please feel free to ignore this

We Sweden

<div dir="

...

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Male circumcision has helped in controlling the speed of infection of HIV/AIDS. One factor that partly contributed to the spread of the virus in some parts of Africa is the huge number of people not circumcised - S. Zalanga.

The ground on which Samuel Zalanga premised the justification of male circumcision in Africa is wrong. Africa has never had HIV/AIDS problems except that Neo-Third Reich Politicians, Virologists and Medical Scientists have succeeded in brainwashing African rulers and their intellectual administrators that the Virus, Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus (LAV) or Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus (HTLV - III) originated in Africa and Africans were dying in millions of AIDS said to have been caused by the Franco-American named Virus. The Satanic Samaritans then stepped in to claim that Negroid Africa was on the verge of extinction as a result of the Franco-American LAV/HTLV -III infections in Africa. Let us go back to the history of the farce.

In the Autumn of 1980, the attention of Dr Michael Gottlieb at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Centre, was drawn to an unusual respiratory case. Subsequent medical examinations and tests showed that the young man's lungs were filled with Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia (PCP). Late in 1979, Dr Joel Weisman, a Los Angeles private practitioner with a sizable sodomite clientele, had noticed PCP cases among his clients of which one was eventually admitted to the UCLA Medical Centre, bringing the number of Patients under Dr Gottlieb's treatment to five. Similarities of the patients were striking: all the five patients were male Caucasians; they were aged between 29 and 36 years at the time of PCP diagnosis; they suffered PCP along with Candida and cytomegalovirus infections; they had abnormal immune responses; they all reported multiple sex partners; and they reportedly used amyl-nitrite 'poppers' as sexual stimulants to dilate the anal orifice so as to facilitate easy passage of the penis into the anus. One admitted using injectable narcotics (See p. 284-285, The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett). The strange illness affecting Sodomites was made known to the world by the US CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), published on Friday, June 5, 1981 and was based on Drs Michael Gottlieb and Joel Weisman's observations on the Los Angeles cases of Pneumocystis Carinii. In order to avoid offending the sensitivities of the homosexuals, Randy Shilts remarked, "The report, therefore, appeared not on page one of the CDC MMWR but in a more inconspicuous slot on page two. Any reference to homosexuality was dropped from the title and the headline simply read: Pneumocystis Pneumonia - Los Angeles. Don't offend the gays and don't inflame the homophobes. These were the twin horns on which the handling of this epidemic would be torn from the first day of this epidemic (p 68 - 69, AND THE BAND PLAYS ON by Randy Shilts)."

Nevertheless, since all the PCP affected were sodomites the medical establishments in USA, as from June 1981, named the disease GAY RELATED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY (GRID). Neither the homosexuals nor the Medical Scientists liked the name, GRID. While the homosexuals would not like to admit that the cause of their strange illness was due to sodomy, the Medical Scientists, especially the virologists, were certain that if the cause of GRID was attributed only to Sodomy, it would neither attract research funds from the government nor sympathy  from the general public in USA. Thus, as GRID induced opportunistic infections in homosexuals, it also induced opportunistic Research funds in Medical Scientists/Virologists. With the appearance of GRID, Virologists discovered that they could gain access to research funds provided GRID could be projected not only as a disease that threatened all Americans but the entire world. Hence they decided to invent a propagandist and catchy name to replace GRID. Laurie Garrett explained how it happened thus, "In August (1982) the CDC had quietly dropped the name GRID, by changing the name of the disease to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to reflect the recognition that it wasn't just a disease of gay men (p. 309, The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett)." Dr Peter Duesberg put it more succinctly, "Having decided that the syndrome was a single contagious disease, the CDC now worked to swing most biomedical and political institutions behind its new war. Support will be hard to gather unless the disease had an easily remembered name; and by July 1982, the CDC decided to call it Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). This name also swept under the rug any connection between the Syndrome and the risk groups (the Sodomites); a move favoured both by the CDC and the homosexual rights movements - who did not like emphasis on AIDS being a gay disease. In addition, more federal money had to be appropriated to give this disease more respectability and to attract more experts to this new field (p. 150-151, INVENTING THE AIDS VIRUS; by Dr Peter Duesberg)." On the new name for GRID, Randy Shilts recorded, "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome gave the epidemic a snappy acronym, AIDS, and was sexually neutral. The word *acquired*, separated the immune deficiency syndrome from congenital defects or chemically induced immune problems, indicating the syndrome was acquired from somewhere even though nobody knew from where (p. 171, AND THE BAND PLAYS ON)."  On the integrity of the people who were to find where AIDS came from and what caused it, Dr Alan Cantwell Jr., M.D. remarked thus, "The ill-fated and forgotten war on Cancer which began in the early 1970s has been quietly and unceremoniously transformed into the new war on AIDS. Ironically, many of the same scientists who failed to find the cause and cure for human cancer have now become new leaders in the assault against the AIDS VIRUS (p. 31-32; AIDS AND THE DOCTORS OF DEATH by Alan Cantwell)."

After transforming GRID, from non life-style sodomite disease, to AIDS that could afflict anybody, two American Virologists, Myron Max Essex and Robert Gallo, took the centre stage in finding the origin and cause of AIDS. James Curran of the CDC had approached Dr Robert Gallo in early 1982 to get involved in the research for the cause of AIDS and Gallo revealed his initial reaction thus, "Intellectually, I began to play out one scenario. What if AIDS were due to mutation of an HTLV, probably occurring in Africa, which has spread to Haiti, then to the United States (p. 136, Virus Hunting by Robert Gallo)." Earlier on page 131 of his book, Virus Hunting, Gallo had said about the origin of AIDS thus, "Probably starting in 1960s, perhaps even earlier, ... a previous unreported epidemic disease that was difficult to transmit and that had a long period of apparent latency was silently but relentlessly establishing itself. Its (HIV/AIDS) exact place of origin may not be fully certain but the time of its appearance seems more settled." But the US CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of Friday, 5 June 1981, never mentioned any African or Haitian in its report and it was never said that they had visited Africa or Haiti. Moreover no such illness were reported from Haiti or Africa as at June 1981. Why then must Gallo's scenario have to take place in Africa and Haiti? It was just like some Americans were caught being bedwetters and the cause of bedwetting was attributed to African rain-forest!! Gallo and his fellow virus hunters had decided to place the origin of AIDS in Africa and they spared no effort to concoct evidence to support their claims. Therefore, in an asterisk note on page 227 of his Virus Hunting, Gallo remarked, "Amazingly, in the early part of my research on AIDS (early 1983), I was visited by Ann Guidici Fettner, a freelance writer, who told me emphatically that the origin and epicentre of the disease were in a river basin near Lake Victoria. She also stated that she believed the virus came from African Green Monkeys, apparently, due to her experiences and observations in Central Africa." Gallo's book was published in 1991 that is to say eight years after he had his purported under-the-bedsheet gossip with Ann Guidici Fettner. If Ann Guidici Fettner really believed and actually told Gallo in 1983 that AIDS originated in Africa, she should have affirmed and highlighted it in a book, on AIDS, she co-authored in 1984 with Dr William A. Check and titled, *THE TRUTH ABOUT AIDS: Evolution of an Epidemic.* However, on page two, Guidici and Check wrote, "Another crystallization has occurred, its (AIDS) cause unknown, its origins obscure." Further on page 123, they asked, "Has an AIDS-like disease been seen in equatorial Africa before?" The authors answered, "Dr. Charles Olweny of Uganda, who for many years was associated with the then-prestigious Makerere University Medical School and hospital in Kampala, states unequivocally that he never saw illnesses in Africans that fulfilled the CDC criteria for AIDS. And other physicians with African experience agree." Earlier on page 4 the duo wrote, "Even in equatorial Africa, where some suspicion of the genesis of AIDS is focused, no previous reports of such an illness are known to physicians long treating these populations." Finally on page 244, Ann Guidici Fettner and Dr. William A. Check confirmed what everyone in the world knew, "AIDS STARTED AS AN AMERICAN DISEASE. But it is spreading in Europe and perhaps in black Africa." To the Authors the existence of the disease, AIDS, in black Africa was doubtful which was the cause of their expression *perhaps in black Africa.* I will get back to the alleged virus jumping from*African Green Monkeys* to humans in Africa later.

Just before Christmas 1982, a thirty-three year-old Parisian homosexual and fashion designer, Frédéric Brugière was feeling unwell and called in at La Pitié Salpêtrière hospital. He complained of general debility, fatigue, enlarged rubbery nodes on the neck. He had a history of several episodes of gonorrhoea and had been treated for syphilis in September 1982. He enjoyed more than fifty sexual partners per annum and travelled a great deal, including travel to North America, though his last trip to New York had been in 1979. Lab tests showed that Brugière had cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus and herpes simplex virus. On January 3, 1983, Dr Willy Rozenbaum, removed an enlarged lymph node from the neck of Brugière. A tissue sample from the lymph nodes was sent to Luc Montagnier's lab at Pasteur Institute Paris where, virologists, Francoise Barré-Sinoussi and Jean-Claude Chermann set about growing lymphocytes in culture. The operations which were applied in the 'Départment de Virologie' of the Institut Pasteur in January 1983 were calculated to detect a retrovirus should one be present. They were not looking for the cause of AIDS, they were looking for a retrovirus.On 25th January 1983, evidence of reverse transcriptase activity in Brugière's cells was discovered(see p.51-52, AIDS: THE HIV MYTH; by JAD ADAMS). Montagnier and his group submitted their results to the journal *SCIENCE* in April 1983 and was published on May 20, 1983. The paper was titled, "Isolation of a T-Lymphotropic Retrovirus from a Patient at Risk for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome." In order to differentiate their discovery from Gallo's Human T-Cell Leukaemia Virus (HTLV) family, Montagnier's group named their discovery, Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus (LAV). It is worth noting their (Montagnier's group) caution, Jad Adams remarked on page 153, "The role of this virus in the etiology of AIDS remains to be determined." By 17 July 1983, the Pasteur Institute sent an isolate of LAV to Gallo which his lab was unable to grow. Another sample was sent on 23 September 1983, along with a contract specifying that the American Lab could not use the virus to develop commercial items. The Pasteur Institute filed for a British patent in September 1983 and a US patent in December of the same year. However, shortly after receiving the virus, Randy Shilts recorded, "Dr. Gallo had started forging major breakthroughs in his AIDS research (p. 386, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON)." Then on Monday, 23 April 1984, US Health and Human Services Secretary, flanked by dark goggled Robert Gallo, announced thus,".....the probable cause of AIDS has been found.....a new process has been developed to mass-produce this virus ....we now have a blood test for AIDS which we hope can be widely available within about six months. We have applied for the patent on this process today.... we can now identify AIDS victims with essentially 100 percent certainty...the new process will enable us to develop vaccine to prevent AIDS. We hope to have such vaccine ready for testing in about two years... (p.193, VIRUS HUNTING by Robert Gallo)." Robert Gallo's discovery of the *PROBABLE CAUSE OF AIDS* was named Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus - Three (HTLV -III).

With the backing of the government of USA, the Bio/Pharmaceutical companies and the Gay lobby, Gallo moved fast to put the origin of his HTLV-III in Africa. In the TIME Magazine of April 30, 1984, Gallo claimed that the new HTLV-III strain of the AIDS virus evolved in Africa. TIME Magazine quoted him, "The virus may have been around in the bush for some time, but with mass migration into cities, crowding and prostitution, what was contained at a low level became a problem." Further, the NEWSWEEK Magazine of May 7, 1984, pictured a world map showing arrows pointing to probable routes of the AIDS virus "on the move" out of central Africa. The accompanying description read: 1. AIDS probably appeared first in Africa, as the result of a minor genetic change in a less lethal virus, or when rural people who harboured the virus moved to urban areas. 2. French and Belgians who lived in central Africa presumably carried the disease back to Western Europe. AIDS also travelled to the Caribbean, possibly brought there by Haitians. 3. From Haiti, vacationing homosexuals from the United States may have brought AIDS home. By April 1985, Professor Myron Max Essex of Harvard University and colleagues gave prominence to the hypothesis of AIDS originating from Africa when they announced the discovery of SIMIAN T-LYMPHOTROPIC VIRUS IN WILD CAUGHT AFRICAN GREEN MONKEYS (STLV-III, AGM) in April 1985. Based on their discovery Essex concluded that "it was reasonable to assume that AIDS started as an African monkey disease, and only recently, through an unknown means, entered the human population (in Africa). It was not until 1987 that other scientists began to look into Professor Essex and colleagues' claim of AIDS originating from African Green Monkeys in Africa. The title on page 27 of the New Scientist of October 15, 1987, read, "Evidence of Origin is Weak." Skin and Allergy News of January 1988, on page 28 had the headline, HIV Origin "A Continuing Mystery": GREEN MONKEY THEORY DISPUTED. A Professor of Pharmacology, Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, USA, Karel Mulder, proved that what Essex and colleagues presented as AIDS virus from wild caught African Green Monkey was a laboratory contaminant from Asian Macaque Monkeys that did not even exist in the animal in the forest of Asia. Professor Mulder and Colleagues got their findings published in NATURE, Volume 331 of February 18, 1988, on p.562-563, captioned, A Case of Mistaken Non-Identity. In the same volume of NATURE, Essex and Kanki admitted that their STLV-III (agm) was a laboratory mixed up on p.621-622. Under the headline, LABORATORY MIX-UP SOLVES AIDS MYSTERY, the New Scientist of February 25, 1988, discussed on p. 32 Essex false African Green Monkey AIDS Virus. Finally, in Nature's Volume 333, of June 2, 1988, p. 396, Professor Mulder stated emphatically that Human Virus was not from monkeys. 

At the Bangui Conference on AIDS, 22-24 October 1985, presided over by World Health Organisation (WHO), something unusual happened. A director of WHO for communicable disease programme did the bidding of US by threatening to cut off WHO shipments of cholera vaccines to African countries that refused to give figures of AIDS infected in their countries. The following day, Rwanda reported 319 AIDS cases, Kenya 10 cases, Zaire (now D. M. R. Congo) gave 6% of Kinshasa population, Zambia reported 17 adult and 15 children (p. 359, The Coming Plague, by Laurie Garrett). At the Bangui Conference in Central African Republic, a clinical definition of AIDS was proposed and adopted.WHO claimed that the clinical definition was necessary because HIV screening kits were too expensive for use in Africa. Thus the agreed clinical definition of AIDS included symptoms such as persistent fever, weight loss and chronic diarrhoea which could be indicative of any diseases other than AIDS. Armed with the WHO's clinical definition of AIDS, the neo-Third Reich medical Scientists and Doctors thereafter, proceeded to quantify HIV infected Africans through presumptive diagnoses whereby every illness and death in Africa, South of Sahara, was attributed to HIV/AIDS. By 1997, the Chief for United Nations AIDS program, Dr. Peter Piot could say, "We are now realizing that the rates of HIV transmission have been grossly underestimated, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the bulk of the infections have been concentrated.UNAIDS now estimates that 7.4 percent of Africans between 15 to 49 years old are infected. Because voluntary testing is so rare, at least 90 percent don't even know that the virus is lurking in their body fluids (Newsweek, December 8, 1997, p 41-42)." Up till date, the HIV statistics for Africa are nothing but presumptive diagnoses otherwise known as estimates.

Starting from May 1983, there was Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus (LAV) and from May 1984, there was Human T-Cell Leukaemia Virus-Three (HTLV-III), but no HIV. Late in 1985, Pasteur Institute in Paris filed a lawsuit against the National Cancer Institute at a federal court in USA. The lawsuit was an indirect indictment of Gallo for viral theft concerning his HTLV-III. Randy Shilts quoted Dr. Don Francis on the potentials of the lawsuit thus, "If this litigation gets into open court, all of the less-than-admirable aspects will become public and, I think, hurt science and the Public Health Service. The French clearly found the cause of AIDS first and Dr. Gallo clearly tried to upstage them one year later (p.592-593)." In March 1987, President Ronald Reagan and his French colleague, Jacques Chirac met together with Gallo and Montagnier to broker an agreement and settlement out of court. Earlier in 1986, a nomenclature Committee at National Institute of Health, under the Chairmanship of Harold Varmus was set up to find a single new name for LAV and HTLV-III. The committee, subsequently, arrived at a compromise name: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Thus, LAV = HTLV-III = HIV, which is probable cause of AIDS. Yet in his 1991 book, Virus Hunting, Robert Gallo argued that Montagnier has never proved/concluded that LAV was the cause of AIDS (see p. 167, 169, 187, 190, 193, 204 and 209). Fortunately or unfortunately, Robert Gallo admitted on page 211 of the Virus Hunting that the photographs of HTLV-III which was published in the Science at the end of May 1984 was that of LAV which was grown in his Lab. Hence, if LAV was not probable cause of AIDS, HTLV -III, that was cultured from LAV could not be probable cause of AIDS. And we have the words of Dr. Kary Mullis, Nobel prize winner, Chemistry, in 1993, for inventing Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) used by AIDS officials to claim finding HIV in almost every antibody-positive AIDS, when he said, "Human beings are full of retroviruses, and neither HIV nor any other retrovirus by itself poses any kind of threat. Which is not to say that there is no such thing as AIDS - only that Hiv doesn't cause it (p. 154, POSITIVELY FALSE:Exposing the Myths around HIV and AIDS, By JOAN Shenton)." Further in Neville Hodgkinson's book, AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science, Dr Kary Mullis said, "If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be Scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such documents ... If you ask a virologist for that information, you don't get an answer, you get a fury (p. 182)." And on page 346 Mullis asked for a reason why HIV moved from being probable cause of AIDS, according to Gallo's press conference of 23rd April 1984, to the definite cause of AIDS without any experiments that actually verify that relationship. At the Sixth International Conference on AIDS held in San Francisco, June 1990, Professor Luc Montagnier declared that 'HIV could not itself be enough to cause AIDS. The virus needed a co-factor..'

Thanks to the Beckley University Virologist, Professor Peter Duesberg, AIDS was confirmed to be a life-style disease. Hear him, "During 1960s, males homosexuals discovered the aphrodisiac effects of nitrites. Receptive anal intercourse became less painful because the anal sphincter (muscle) would relax; therefore, receptive men (women prostitutes) used far more of the drug than did their inserting partners. Nitrites also helped maintain erection and intensified orgaism... The alkylated nitrites (poppers) .. react more violently with almost anything. Upon mixing with water, as in human body, these nitrites form the unstable nitrous acid, which in turn destroys any biological molecules within reach. The nitrites  and their breakdown products have long been known to Scientists for their ability to mutate DNA,... In addition, nitrites are some of the most powerful cancer causing chemical in existence.

In contact with living cells, nitrite inhalants are cytotoxic (cell killing), which means they either poison or kill cells including, of course, the blood-forming cells and the epithelial lining of the lungs. Since these are among the fastest growing cells in the body; they will also be among the first cells to be in short supply if the sources are intoxicated. This is the reason that nitrites cause anemia, immunodeficiency, and pneumonia in experimental animals and humans (p. 270-271 in INVENTING THE AIDS VIRUS By Peter Duesberg)."

"The toxicity of nitrites to the cells of the lung and the immune system also explains the proclivity of male homosexual nitrite users for pneumonia, which is the most common AIDS disease in the United States and Europe (p. 274-275)." Earlier on page 209, Professor Duesberg wrote, "AIDS is a syndrome of about thirty diseases, not a disease. It displays no unique combination of diseases in the patient. clinically, it is identified by the diagnosis of specific diseases known to medical science for decades or centuries. ... The (CDC) list of AIDS now includes brain dementia, chronic diarrhoea, cancers such as Kaposi's sarcoma and several lymphomas, and such opportunistic infections as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, cytomegalovirus infection, herpes, candidiasis (yeast infections), and tuberculosis. Even low T-cell counts in the blood can now be called *AIDS* with or without real clinical symptoms. Cervical cancer has recently been added to the list, the first AIDS disease that can affect only one gender (in this case, women). The purpose behind adding this disease was entirely political, admittedly to increase the number of female AIDS patients, creating an illusion that the syndrome is*spreading* into hetrosexual population."

The neo-Third Reich Politicians, Medical Scientists and Virologists began their Goebel propaganda that the entire Black Africa was on the verge of extinction as a result of HIV/ AIDS which they claimed is hetersexually transmitted contrary to United States and Europe that was limited only to homosexuals, female prostitutes, and drug addicts. By year 2000 the World Bank and its owners had succeeded to force all Black African governments to embrace and prioritise the fight against HIV/AIDS as the only means to economic and industrial progress. As usual we are being killed with false charity and kindness. While the UNAID an organ of the United Nations was campaigning about the decimation of black Africa because of HIV/AIDS another organ of the UN, UNFPA, was clamouring that the population of Black Africa was increasing at explosive rate. We are told that in 1994, the population of Africa was 570 million compared to Europe's 700 million but in 2009 Europe with the population of 732 million had been overtaken by Africa which had 967 million inhabitants. In October 2011, the UNFPA released its estimated figures for world's population whereby Africa as well as India had 1. 25 billion each and China had 1.35 billion. Consequently, on November 16, 2011, an international reproductive health adviser and former Senior Population Adviser to the World Bank, Dr. Frederick Sai, urged African leaders to do more in ensuring family planning access. Therefore, when the UNFPA International Conference on Family Planning was held in Dakar, Senegal November 29 to December 2, 2011, the Western Media reported that the Conference was taking place in West Africa where women have some of the highest fertility rates, lowest contraceptive usage and the highest unmet needs for contraception in the world. Access to reproductive health in Africa has now become another expression for family planning and the propaganda about saving Africa from HIV/AIDS, is nothing but a pretext to invade the Continent with Condoms and other contraceptives, oral or injectable. So, my dear Zalanga, there was no HIV infections in Africa and much less reducing it through male circumcisions.

Finally, it is only a grave that one starts digging from the top but if one wants to solve the problems of Africa, one should start from the bottom. I don't think that the greatest ambition of any parent in Africa today is to get her daughter circumcised. We have to address the immediate needs of our people and for me the most barbaric thing is to herd our people into shelters, as we have seen from the pictures from Marburg Virus infected West African countries, that are considered criminal for cattles in Europe and USA. 

S. Kadiri

---

From: szalan...@msn.com
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 17:41:50 -0500

Thank you very much Professor Mbaku. This is a very sensitive discussion for some people and I appreciate your intervention out of concern. I hope in the name of defending mother Africa, sometimes we Africans do not condone something that is not actually healthy. Male circumcision  has  helped in controlling the speed of infection of HIV/ AIDS. One factor that partly contributed to the spread of the virus in some parts of Africa is the huge number of people not circumcised. But that aside, from an anthropological point of view, what some people seem to be saying is that simply because a practice is in existence, it must necessarily have a value and the value must be healthy for everyone in the society. Ruling classes or powerful people can initiate an act and institutionalize it even though the act serves some people more than others. My vision of a society is one of shared risk and shared prosperity. 

I think we should work hard, as difficult as it may be, to come up with principles or criteria for healthy and dignified human existence that takes into cognizance solid scientific knowledge. And there are persons with impressive scientific credentials: male and female.  Once we have that, we can use that to evaluate a situation and arrive at whether it is healthy for our people or not. In my view, even if we go around the world and find out that poor people are oppressed in the U.S., Middle East, China, India, Europe or Latin America, that is not a reason why we should condone the oppression of poor people in Africa, if our sense of judgement rooted in solid scientific evidence says doing so is bad for our people. In the same, even if women are treated like second class citizens in other societies, we should use our solid sense of judgement rooted in science and human dignity of the person and ask whether simply because it is happening in all societies, it is a reason for us to go and and hold a party to celebrate what is happening to women  in Africa. The African should be able to judge if something is not healthy for his or her people and not wait for the outsider to help us make the call.

I truly believe that as Africans we are able to, with a sense of humility, commitment to justice and fairness make the right decision about what truly dignifies our people and on that basis stop what dehumanizes them. Constantly blaming someone else for our problem is not in the long run going to help us. To ignore what oppresses fellow Africans or any group of human beings in the world for that matter, because someone in the U.S. or somewhere is doing it also or did it in the past, suggests to me more a lack of courage to face one owns reality, as in defending Africa, the person is still relying on foreign models.

In any case, there are educated women who are trained and informed and can give fellow Africans honest assessment about this problem of genital mutilation. As a sociologist, to me, it is a weak argument to say it is part of our culture. There are hundreds of things that used to be part of African culture but now such things are not practiced. There are reasons for that. 

Some years ago, I was part of an educational tour to South Africa for two weeks. As part of it, the organizers took us to a Black theatre where Black women and men are performing traditional South African dance, often the Zulu type. My seat was in front and amazingly, the women came out almost naked with their chest open. It is true there were men on stage but the real attention was on the body of the women. It was a "free pay per view." At the end, there was a debate in our group and some used African culture to justify it. My response is why is it that the Zulu have stopped practicing many aspects of their culture that used to be existing three hundred years ago but the one that allows women to expose their bodies in a global culture that commodifies sex and women's body is justified to continue? Of course because someone sees it as an industry of making money. Without the women exposing themselves, the attendance would not be as high as it was. The point is not that Zulu people should not practice their culture, but culture is dynamic, and people with power in a culture can influence the change more than others. So, simply hiding behind a cultural argument as such does not help if we cannot as Africans think deeper. 

We should remember that many women are not granted same rights as men in Africa. At least in the conference I attended in Sokoto Nigeria, where Professor Falola was the keynote speaker, this issue came up and it is glaring. In one session, in spite of being careful about what I say, I had to intervene to say that scholars attacked a woman's presentation on the representation of women in Nigerian literature was a veiled attack on any concern about gender; even though the frame of argument used by Europeans to put down we Africans down or to put racial minorities down is the same used to justify keeping women down: i.e., biology, intelligence, culture, emotional expression etc. 

 Promoting the rights of women does not mean as some think that one is promoting an anarchic society because I know in the part of Nigeria I come from, some think this way. To say that it is also western suggests that we Africans do not have the capacity to think of our fellow Africans as full human beings. Any society that denies a  portion of its people to develop their full human potential is losing something very important. The idea that education or freedom can lead someone astray is not a uniquely female problem, but a human problem. Young men can get educated or have freedom and be irresponsible with it and ignore the wisdom from the elders. Frankly this is not a uniquely female problem. If it is a female problem, it is because most people judge the woman differently in the first place. And this boils down to: what does it mean to be HUMAN?

For those who  have the time and patience, below is a weblink to a documentary film from the series: "WHY POVERTY?" It shows how cultural assumptions can suppress people from discovering their full potential, in this case, a Jordanian woman. Of course, as she realized something new about her, it changed her sense of what she is or capable of doing, contrary to where her husband and people categorized. This is true of all humans.  If looked from the point of view of pursuing human dignity and potential, this is a very inspiring film. I am not sure that I can do what the woman did in terms of accomplishment.  Here is the link: "SOLAR MAMAS"

http://video.pbs.org/video/2296683172/

I suggested to the president of Northern Nigerian association in the U.S. (Zumunta Association) to screen it during the last annual convention and he did. It generated very much discussion. What the woman accomplished in the film is phenomenal if you look at it in context. And there are Masai women too in the training to produce solar energy.

Samuel

---

Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 12:11:30 -0600

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

From: jmb...@weber.edu
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Salimonu Kadiri wrote:

"Gynecologists in the nineteenth century Europe and America used to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation. It was called CLITODECTOMY. When the same thing is done in Africa, it is derogatively Called, FEMALE GENITATAL MUTILATION. Males and females are circumcised in some African countries but if it were to be in Euro-America it would have been propagated as GENDER EQUALITY! Males' circumcisions in Africa are never referred to as Male Genital Mutilation probably because the Jews and Arabs also circumcise their males. However, both males and females in Euro-America nowadays are engaged in what is called PIERCING OF THE GENITALS (VAGINA AND PENIS)."

Please, Salimonu Kadiri, what  do you mean when you say "derogatively Called, FEMALE GENITATAL(sic) MUTILATION"? Are you by anyway implying that FGM, as a practice in Africa, is justified? I hope you are not trying to justify FGM on any grounds, including those you appear to state above.

Please, explain yourself.

On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 12:39 PM, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Gynecologists in the nineteenth century Europe and America used to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation. It was called CLITODECTOMY. When the same thing is done in Africa, it is derogatively Called, FEMALE GENITATAL MUTILATION. Males and females are circumcised in some African countries but if it were to be in Euro-America it would have been propagated as GENDER EQUALITY! Males' circumcisions in Africa are never referred to as Male Genital Mutilation probably because the Jews and Arabs also circumcise their males. However, both males and females in Euro-America nowadays are engaged in what is called PIERCING OF THE GENITALS (VAGINA AND PENIS).

---

Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:32:53 -0600

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

From: jmb...@weber.edu
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

FGM=Female Genital Mutilation; centuries old, not new.

On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 6:36 AM, Mario Fenyo <MFe...@bowiestate.edu> wrote:

PLease forgive me for being so ignorant.   FGM ---  is it some new (or old) disease?
 
Respectfully,  Mario

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Assensoh, Akwasi B. [aass...@indiana.edu]
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 2:11 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Cc: anthony...@yahoo.co.uk; mina...@yahoo.com; Charles.Q...@kpu.ca; dmwh...@iupui.edu; Afoaku, Osita; Nnaemeka, Obioma G; Obeng, Samuel Gyasi; McCluskey, Audrey T.
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - FW: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

 

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/22/efua-dorkenoo

May she rest in peace.

 

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JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
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Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
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(801) 626-7442 Phone
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Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
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(801) 626-7442 Phone
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[Salimonu Kadiri]

I'd support a legislation and its determined, top-down enforcement as a way of stamping out this practice - Ochonu

In 1979, when Jerry Rawlings came to power in Ghana, he instituted courts to try those who stole from the national patrimony at the expense of the masses. Since the state burglaries were from different ethnic groups, Rawlings constituted the courts and jurors to suit the ethnic language of each accused state rogue so that the trial could be conducted in local languages and not in English, the official language in Ghana. The rogue leaders on trial could not explain their source of wealths in local languages which had no equivalent for millions. The money stolen by each rogue leader was measured in bags and baskets which were equated to how many people died because of bad roads, lack of adequate hospitals, lack of electricity, lack of potable water to drink and bad sanitary environment because money appropriated for those projects had been stolen by the rogue leaders. Consequently, they were sentenced to death. The usual foreign supporters of rogue leaders in Africa began to cry foul and wanted the trial to be conducted in English with the assistance of Whig wearing professional word twisters as Judges and advocates. But Rawlings did not burge. Departing from Rawling's example in Ghana, any legislation against FGM in Africa should be promulgated in the people's language and not colonial languages, not spoken or understood by the absolute majority of the people. Governing the people with the language they speak and understand would encourage participatory democracy. Alternatively, it should be criminal for any government in Africa to impose and rule people in foreign language other than the one spoken and understood by the people. Or do we need foreign financed NGO to do that?

---

Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2014 19:56:54 -0500

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

From: meoc...@gmail.com
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Between 1996 and 2000, Africa Update hosted about ten articles on female circumcision
as indicated below. I decided to have a look at the views put forward then, to decide whether the arguments
were still relevant or not- in the light of this current discussion.

In the process of doing so I came across a forgotten piece by the late Professor Ali Mazrui in 2000.
Here is an excerpt from his article.


Prof. Gloria Emeagwali
History Department
CCSU
emea...@ccsu.edu<mailto:emea...@ccsu.edu>

.................................................................................................................................


Black Orientalism? Further Reflections on "Wonders of the African World" by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

by Ali A. Mazrui, Director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies and Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, Binghamton University.



*
Africa Update - Central Connecticut State University<http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/updtWin2k.htm>
www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/updtWin2k.htm<http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/updtWin2k.htm>





What has Black Orientalism got to do with circumcision ceremonies and rites of passage?



One or two sisters who wrote to me were worried by my remark that Gates was playing to "the Western feminist gallery"

when in a casual sentence he went too far in condemning female genital surgery. Some Western feminists are aware that

some of the greatest defenders of female circumcision in Africa are women themselves. We must all convince each

other that this particular tradition must end. I personally have publicly spoken against it in Africa itself where it matters.



See, for example, my highly publicized lecture on "The Black Woman" given for The Guardian newspaper in

Nigeria on July 4, 1991, and published among other places in Research in African Literatures (The Ohio State University, Columbus, Vol.24, No.1, Spring 1993).



But cultural reform requires persuasion, education and example.

Cheap rhetoric and denunciations are not very helpful....................................

...................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................


*
Africa Update Archives - Central Connecticut State University<http://www.ccsu.edu/Afstudy/upd3-2.html>
www.ccsu.edu/Afstudy/upd3-2.html<http://www.bing.com/search?cp=1252&FORM=FREESS&q=female+circumcision&q1=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccsu.edu%2Fafstudy#>

Female circumcision in Africa By Aisha Samad Matias Director Women's Studies, CUNY I. Background and Scope. Over 80-100 million women in the world have experienced ...

*
Africa Update Archives - Central Connecticut State University<http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd8-3.htm>
www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd8-3.htm<http://www.bing.com/search?cp=1252&FORM=FREESS&q=female+circumcision&q1=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccsu.edu%2Fafstudy#>

As female circumcision is perceived to be a religious rite in "traditional Islam" by necessity this source needs to be found in the writings ...

*
Africa Update Archives - Central Connecticut State University<http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd8-4.htm>
www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd8-4.htm<http://www.bing.com/search?cp=1252&FORM=FREESS&q=female+circumcision&q1=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccsu.edu%2Fafstudy#>

In fact proponents of the "Qur'an-only" philosophy maintain that because "female circumcision" is not mentioned in the Qur'an, it has no place in ...

*
Africa Update Current Issue - Central Connecticut State ...<http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd10-2.html>
www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd10-2.html<http://www.bing.com/search?cp=1252&FORM=FREESS&q=female+circumcision&q1=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccsu.edu%2Fafstudy#>

Polygamy and female circumcision were not the most important issues on Dr. Okome's list but she advised that activists must avoid alienating potential allies and ...

*
Africa Update - Central Connecticut State University<http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/africaupdate_archives.html>
www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/africaupdate_archives.html<http://www.bing.com/search?cp=1252&FORM=FREESS&q=female+circumcision&q1=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccsu.edu%2Fafstudy#>

Vol. III, no. 2 (Spring, 1996): Female Circumcision in Africa; Vol. III, no. 3 (Summer, 1996): Democracy in Botswana; Vol. III, no. 4 (Fall, 1996): ...










________________________________

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu [meoc...@gmail.com]

Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2014 8:56 PM

To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Gloria,

Your suspicion is spot on, for me at least. Indeed I'd say an enthusiastic "yes" to your questions above. I'd support a legislation and its determined, top-down enforcement as a way of stamping out this practice. I don't believe that one more African girl-child should be victimized by this practice in the name of building a bottom-up coalition, which is a euphemism for a gradualist approach that would enable the practice to go on for the foreseeable future. As for driving the practice underground, this is true, but it is also true that every vice or practice that has been outlawed in history went underground for a while before eventually petering out. This includes slavery, in societies where legislation and enforcement were used to end it. But the certainty of legislation (and its enforcement) driving vices and abhorrent practices underground has not stopped and should not stop responsible governments and peoples from passing legislations to outlaw practices that are a blemish on their society and dehumanize some of their citizens.

On Sat, Nov 1, 2014 at 12:21 AM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@mail.ccsu.edu<mailto:emea...@mail.ccsu.edu>> wrote:


There is one point being missed in this debate. Prof. Harrow did not originate the idea of 'genital cutting.'


Groups of women suggested that 'genital cutting' was a preferred transitional move
away from the old established practice. They believed that even if the practice were to be outlawed and criminalized, and even if lawyers and
policemen were brought in to terminate the practice, they would all fail. The practice would simply go underground.

So 'genital cutting' was seen by them as a transitional mechanism.


The conclusion was arrived at after extensive consultation with a wide range of
community leaders and activists in a democratic setting.

This is the context of Prof. Harrow's argument.

Now, were the community leaders wrong in their conclusion? Can FGM be stopped without this so-called
transitional process? Should Amnesty International consider FGM
a violation of human rights? And if so declared, can it be stopped?

Can humanitarian aid intervention against ebola be placed on the same footing as
an international anti-FGM campaign? Should FGM be criminalized?

I suspect that Professors Mbaku and Ochonu will say yes to most of the above -
but it is important to note the original context.



Professor Gloria Emeagwali

africahistory.net<http://africahistory.net>
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos<http://vimeo.com/user5946750/videos>

Documentaries on Africa and the African Diaspora
________________________________________

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com> [usaafric...@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu [meoc...@gmail.com<mailto:meoc...@gmail.com>]

Sent: Friday, October 31, 2014 5:47 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London

Ken,

I started hearing about "FGM" being a practice designed to control female sexuality since I was a kid, way before I had any access to Euro-American modernist scripts. This is common knowledge in many parts of Nigeria, which I'm familiar with. It was never about rites of passage only. And Ayo's example proves the point that this was more than about rites of passage. The father of the woman in the story saw through the rites of passage facade and expressed this understanding to his daughter.



but i am saying the beliefs of people have to be taken into consideration. when i state that, you seem to hear me saying that they override other considerations. i didn't say that.


Yes, and this is one of the places we disagree. For me, a consideration of beliefs is important but not important enough to allow this heinous practice to be inflicted on children, scarring many of them for life or even exposing them to fatal risks. You seem to venerate a consideration of culture, of beliefs, and traditions, rendering this consideration a factor at par with or superior to the imperative of protecting these young girls from this dehumanizing practice. I vehemently disagree with your position, but at least we understand each other here.




you want me to document my claim that these practices concern rites of passage, and not other considerations. well, ayo's response concerning the warri state that point, and i think it is very widespread. anyway, that would take me more time than i'm willing to give to this debate. i read it enough, here and there, to remember it. if, however, you want to claim it is now being used to repress women's sexuality, i'd agree that it has become increasingly so that people use that reasoning. i doubt very much that was true in the past; in fact, i'd bet it was never really the case until the modern period. now that logic is used universally in islamic circles, and has become a dominant rationale for the procedure. but times change.


I don't know what you mean by "in the past." I grew up exposed to this rationale for "FGM." Since I'm not that old, perhaps your "in the past" does not include when I was growing up. Care to cite any sources that locate a different justificatory etymology in some distant African past?


but you seem to think there is no risk involved of u.s. thinking or practices as being dominant or hegemonic, and i do.


I knowledge the risk--there is risk in everything we do or don't even do. However, my position is that Africans are not children. They are smart enough to recognize that Western actors in Africa have their own agenda that could be harmful and can sift through the advocacy and interventions appropriately. More crucially, my point is that 1) it should be up to Africans to discern useful Western interventions and assistance from agenda-laden and potential counterproductive or harmful ones; and 2) that it is not the job of Western liberals and progressives to protect Africans from the risks and dangers of neo-imperialist and hegemonic practices and interventions. This attitude infantilizes Africans. I admit that in many cases African leaders have not done a great of job of insulating their people from the harmful effects and aspects of Western interventions and "assistance," but that is squarely an African problem, a blame borne by Africans, and thus it does not warrant the paranoid anti-colonial but condescending attitude of lecturing Africans on the dangers that Western anti-FGM NGOs and other Western activisms pose to them.

As a final comment here, let me say that your last post clearly delineates for me our irreconcilable differences on this issue. You said you have no issue with "symbolic cutting" of the labia or what you call "making a mark on the labia" for ritual/symbolic purpose. I do have a huge issue with ANY form of cutting or marking of the labia, clitoris, or any other part of the female anatomy for symbolic or whatever purpose. Here, too, we can agree to disagree.

Your posit is becoming a lot clearer and with that clarity comes a better understanding of the differences in how we see the issue. Hey, we even agree on one thing: that Euro-American modernist epistemology and ways of seeing and doing color how Westerners view and name African practices, hence their naming of African female circumcision FGM.

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 2:22 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu><mailto:har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>>> wrote:
hi moses
the case of amnesty is more complicated than what you wrote. but i didn't express myself about it to state it was different from others. i think there is, again, gamut of ngos that work with little or no african input into their thinking and are very american or euro-centered in their workings. amnesty had been organized with london as the base from which all researchers and campaigners for the international part of the organization worked. they would go to africa on research missions for a determined period of time, and return to london, write up their reports, and initiate the campaigns. the lawyer and administration were in london. they probably still are, but the campaigners and researchers now have been relocated to various sites located on the continents for which they work. that shift was monumental, and many people left the organization over it.
i have my own criticisms of amnesty, one of which had been this centering of the international org in london; i am glad for the change, but it is, again, not a simple issue. in general i favor african over foreign agencies whenever possible; it doesn't help senegalese children to see Italo- on the ambulances that run through the city, reinforcing the notion that senegal can't produce its own emergency medical services. i don't oppose aid, but i can see the negative ramifications.

you want me to acknowledge the agency of africans like yourself and john in opposing fgm. i never questioned that; african people are divided on the issue, and i've been saying that my position is that i'd prefer outsiders to support african institutions and people in determining the issue. when you express your outrage over it, it might be for many different reasons. i believe when my students do so, it is inseparable from the way they see africa, and it's clear in the discourse they use, basically in seeing african, africa, african ways in general, as barbarous and inferior. that discourse has a history. maybe we all are somewhat enmeshed in it; but i would want my students to be aware of the historical, colonial, imperial history that gave that discourse its epistemology. i didn't say you were driven by that discourse, although maybe it is true that many africans still live by a notion of modernity that is fundamentally grounded in dominant western epistemes with the usual history. we are all caught up in discourses, and inhabit them at times uneasily. i put "fgm" in scare-quotes because i believe it is tendentious and still largely centered in european-grounded sensibilities. that said, i must share in those sensibilities because i am also largely repelled by excision and infibulation.
when it comes to symbolic cutting, i am not repelled by it. sorry, i don't see any reasons to get excited about it. clean knives? sure. when the people of casamance were circumcising boys with the the same razor, sharing the blood of one boy to another, the state came down against it because of aids. there was resistance on the ground because what bound the boys was being taken away. given the threat of aids, however, i think the traditional resistance couldn't be sustained. i note that senegal has a lower rate of aids than the u.s.

i tried, in my response, to suggest we regard these practices relatively. i did state that i favored external intervention in extreme cases, like genocide or slavery. i never stated that the symbolic reasoning for practices trumped other considerations. so why should i defend a position i didn't take? the logic you are using to counter my position is forced. i am not suggesting functionalist anthropological reasons trump others; but i am saying the beliefs of people have to be taken into consideration. when i state that, you seem to hear me saying that they override other considerations. i didn't say that.

you want me to document my claim that these practices concern rites of passage, and not other considerations. well, ayo's response concerning the warri state that point, and i think it is very widespread. anyway, that would take me more time than i'm willing to give to this debate. i read it enough, here and there, to remember it. if, however, you want to claim it is now being used to repress women's sexuality, i'd agree that it has become increasingly so that people use that reasoning. i doubt very much that was true in the past; in fact, i'd bet it was never really the case until the modern period. now that logic is used universally in islamic circles, and has become a dominant rationale for the procedure. but times change.

my last point, moses, is that you seem to want me to impute western, imperialist thinking to africans who oppose the practice. i didn't say or think that. i fully support african people and organizations that work to end it, and i don't think of them as servants to imperial thinking. however, and here is where we might disagree, i feel that american legislative practices and attitudes towards africa are generally condescending, neo-colonialist, and degrading--with some few exceptions. insisting that africans behave as the u.s. congress dictates is a real and present danger; it is manifest in the africom policies and various forms of epistemic violence that continue on levels where popular opinion is being solicited. when it comes to the real everyday relations, things change, and collaboration becomes possible. but you seem to think there is no risk involved of u.s. thinking or practices as being dominant or hegemonic, and i do.

ken


On 10/31/14, 2:07 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
"amnesty is not a western organization. you are right about it being founded in the west and getting most of its funding in the west. its centers for research are now located around the world, with two centers in africa. if its principles date back to the enlightenment, that doesn't mean africans haven't adopted those principles. all african states have signed onto the u.n. declaration of universal rights. but more importantly, ai works by supporting human rights orgs in african countries, lobbies the govts, publicizes concerns, and asks its advocates to write authorities in african states asking them to act on behalf of prisoners of conscience.
not all interventions are the same. what to do about slavery in mauretania is not the same as what to do about journalists being harassed or jailed in burundi or ethiopia. in some cases we write u.s. authorities asking them to bring pressure on a govt, but even there, not all forms of pressure are acceptable. mostly we want to publicize the event and lobby foreign govts to act. that seems to have an impact."

---Kenn


Ken,

What you wrote above would apply to every Western-founded-and-funded NGO working in Africa. I challenged you to name one foreign NGO in Africa that does not operate along those lines and you could not. The difference you're trying to draw between AI and other foreign advocacy organizations in Africa simply does not exist. Really, "amnesty is not a Western organization" simply because it has centers and offices in African countries that employ local staff? Come on, Ken, the anti-FGM NGOs that you rail against also have similar local structures.

Surely when John Mbaku and me express the kind of outrage that your students voiced about what you call "symbolic" cutting or female-circumcision-as rights-of-passage we are not inspired by Western arrogance rooted in Western notions of modernity and civilized culture, are we? We are human and resent certain practices for being morally outrageous and for violating basic human norms of decency, fairness, and protection of the juvenile. You seem to see the hand and eyes of imperialism and post-Enlightenment European modernity in every Western and non-Western reaction to and advocacy on African practices--except of course when it comes to the work of your beloved AI. This, I submit to you, is another kind of hangover.

Perhaps it is cultural relativism run amok; perhaps it is an exaggerated fear of and anxiety about the reach of Western neocolonial power; perhaps it is benign but misguided commitment to multiculturalism. I don't know.

On your labored and unpersuasive effort to distinguish between "small, symbolic" cutting and more invasive procedures, as well as your analogy of male circumcision, I'd say a few things:

1. Should one by the same relativist logic not condemn human sacrifice or other kinds of infractions because they have symbolic import for the communities that practice them?

2. We part ways on your distinctions, which I, like your students, do not agree should mitigate the moral offense that the practice causes and the damage it does to the girls subjected to it. I have not read any piece of anthropology that asserts this rites-of-passage-only explanation for "FGM." Please point me in that direction. And while doing so, give me some proof that even in the case of these symbolic, small cuttings, there is no trauma, risk of infection and long term damage to reproductive systems and capacity. As a digression, this rights-of-passage explanation reminds me of the good old days of colonial functionalist anthropology, in which there was a strong emphasis on preserving every practice encountered in Africa because it was supposedly a component of an undifferentiated African cultural corpus and served a (symbolic) function or purpose, or was a rites of passage ritual. Many terrible African practices were romanticized, sensationalized, and exoticized by the Evans-Prichards of this world in the name documenting (and celebrating) African rights of passage. By the way, in some African precolonial societies, one rite-of-passage requirement was a demonstration of a young man's ability to kill, the criterion often fulfilled with the presentation of a human skull of a victim. Should this practice have endured because it was part of some dark ritual of passage from boyhood to manhood?

3. You seem to suggest that opposing a culture or things done for cultural reasons amounts to imperial, know-it-all arrogance, and that only a medical critique is tenable or sustainable. Here I couldn't disagree more. As I wrote earlier, the medical concern is quite easy to remove and address. Once you've done that, would you then accept the practice of "FGM" and change your mind to support it? Were the missionaries wrong to advocate against the killing of twins in certain parts of Southern Nigeria? If that is imperialism, Africa needs more of it. Or perhaps they should have left it to local groups, who didn't know any better than the practitioners, to do the advocacy. Certain practices and cultures are simply out of step with our world and with the values and sensibilities of our current human conditions. Equivocating on them and nuancing them to me is unacceptable. I guess this is where we differ.

4. On male circumcision, the preponderance of medical opinion comes down on the side of the practice being medically beneficial, providing protection against disease and infection. Not only that, its aesthetic outcome is widely acknowledged. Finally, apart from the risk of infection when the wounds are not nursed probably, I've yet to read of any long lasting risk to male reproductive capacity or sexuality. Moreover, male circumcision is not done anywhere that I know of as a mechanism for suppressing male sexual expression or for controlling male bodies and sexuality. Because of all these reasons, male circumcision, whether religiously commanded or medically recommended, is seen as a practice whose benefits outweigh whatever trauma the child may be subjected to in the process, and the violation of the law of consent. We perform many procedures on children because they are beneficial. Not waiting till the child comes of age in this case is worth it. But in the case of "FGM" what medical benefit can we point to? And then we have to consider the risk of long-lasting bodily and reproductive damage. There is also the risk of psychological damage in a world in which "FGM" is not the norm but an aberration.

Put simply, you and I are on different planets on this issue, and our disagreements run the gamut of all the registers that have been invoked in this discussion. I am not as obsessed with or paranoid about imperialism and Western modernity as you are, especially when I am dealing with African interlocutors. I generally grant Africans the right to express their outrage and values without connecting them to a supposedly omnipotent/hegemonic European frame of discursive reference. I do nuance and complexity when an issue lends itself to such complication. But searching for and highlighting complexity in cases which call for moral and ethical clarity for me amounts to a form of complicity.

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 11:20 AM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu><mailto:har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>>> wrote:
hi moses
this is complicated. i had thought the exchanges on this topic were pretty much finished, but i always welcome responding to you.
i have been pretty much partly misread throughout this thread. the topic elicits such heat.
i am, as usual, not the world expert on the topic, but i know a few things, and have had long experience in dealing with or seeing the politics of it played out. so, i'll ask your indulgence as i explain my position.
where to begin? the radical excision of the parts of the genitalia that goes by the name fgm, and the infibulation that some also practice, seems quite terrible to me, and frankly most people i know. but, but, there are a few caveats that matter a lot to me. what is the labia is cut simply to make a mark, without any removal of the flesh? what if that is not done to stop women from enjoying sex but to initiate a girl into womanhood? how is that worse than male circumcision? if there is no real "mutilation," why is it shocking?

i screened Warrior Marks at MSU maybe 15-20 years ago, and the msu students (primarily female, as it so happened) were outraged, and had trouble holding back their scorn, dislike, almost hatred of africans for practicing "fgm," and the response i was given to the question i posed above was filled with abhorrence and venom.
why is that? anyone who has been around western reactions to african practices understands that the two cultures frame things differently, and that shapes the reactions. in this case, the western student sees science and medicine as trumping african religious beliefs, which they would regard as backward superstition. the western student is not humble: he or she feels they know the truth, and at best, as a "nice kind missionary" might "sacrifice" their modern comfortable status at home and go out and "save the natives."
i hope you and i agree on how reprehensible this is, and at least has to be a consideration in the issues at stake.

are there any points at which i would hold my nose and say, yes, we have to stop such and such a practice, at all cost; have to intervene as outsiders? of course; i advocate for intervention, for instance, over genocide. when human rights are violated, i advocate for intervention, but there it has to be more nuanced. i would not advocate reintroducing foreign rule, violation of sovereignty, because a govt violates human rights. but i would advocate for pressures to be brought to bear, including withholding funding. an example would be withholding american military aid to rwanda because it has stifled the opposition, jailed the political candidate who opposed kagame, because journalists have been killed, and so on.

as an aside, then, the case of amnesty. it isn't all or nothing: i am not arguing, i did not argue, that we not express our advocacy over "fgm" in africa, but that it should take the form of supporting women's organizations in africa that are working on the issue. that was my experience in senegal, and i found their work exemplary, in contrast to the u.s. congress desire to without funding to senegal until the senegalese govt passed laws against it. i feel the same way still. (to repeat; the senegal govt caved and passed anti-fgm legislation; the women's groups went out, patiently, year after year, and finally made headway. the former approach reinforced senegalese deference to the donor nation; the latter grew organically out of the local population. i favor the latter, applaud it)

amnesty is not a western organization. you are right about it being founded in the west and getting most of its funding in the west. its centers for research are now located around the world, with two centers in africa. if its principles date back to the enlightenment, that doesn't mean africans haven't adopted those principles. all african states have signed onto the u.n. declaration of universal rights. but more importantly, ai works by supporting human rights orgs in african countries, lobbies the govts, publicizes concerns, and asks its advocates to write authorities in african states asking them to act on behalf of prisoners of conscience.
not all interventions are the same. what to do about slavery in mauretania is not the same as what to do about journalists being harassed or jailed in burundi or ethiopia. in some cases we write u.s. authorities asking them to bring pressure on a govt, but even there, not all forms of pressure are acceptable. mostly we want to publicize the event and lobby foreign govts to act. that seems to have an impact.

i want to end by returning to cutting. i am not trivializing what it means to cut a child. however, i want to also not trivialize what it might mean to intervene in a practice where the child is taught in his or her community that not undergoing traditional initiation means not becoming a full man or woman (as i tried to indicate in referencing dogon practices). there are competing issues at stake: not violating the child's body versus not violating the community's beliefs and worldviews. the former, the body, is not an absolutely pure object that shouldn't be touched. i gave as an example facial scarification. we could cite many others. the latter is not an absolute: slavery, in its various forms, can't be tolerated, despite a community's claims that it forms the framework for the society. but when the objection is made, by john mbaku or my american students, that any cutting, even if merely symbolic, is absolutely to be prohibited, i believe we are not discussing simply the child's agency or the dated nature of the practice, but something more, something inherent in the refusal absolutely to hear what the other has to say or believe. that is where i see modernism, call it western if you want, shut its ears to others.

because i am jewish, i am perhaps more sensitive to what this means re male circumcision as well. for a while the germans outlawed it, until there was such a reaction that merkel had to have the legislation reversed. in a play by arthur miller, dealing with the holocaust, at one point a jewish chararacter says to another who claims he will pass as non-jewish, "what will you do when they look down your pants." if jews decide some day to end circumcision on medical grounds, and that that symbol of the covenant is less important than the child's health or agency, so be it. but if non-jews tell them, you can't inflict this on a child, then i would have to say, having seen the act performed (the baby is 8 days old; the cutting doesn't appear to inflict great pain; the child cries briefly, and it is over), knowing all the members of my religious community around the world undergo this ritual, who are you to tell us what to do?
if you explain to me why it is wrong, i will listen, and if you are right, i will have to change my mind. but i would hope that i would have something to say about the matter.

all traditions can be changed; but they are not all the same, and the means for changing them have to be weighed given the circumstances. that was what i was trying to say, and especially i want to say, the decision should be made not "from above" except in extreme cases, like genocide or slavery. mostly it should be made in collaboration.
best
ken



On 10/30/14, 9:07 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
Ken,

I think folks, including myself, were reacting to your seeming trivialization of female circumcision through the use of expressions like "small cutting," "symbolic cutting," etc. One discursive tactic for trivializing a matter is to unnecessarily complicate it, which is what folks read you to be doing when you sought to classify, following the WHO, female circumcision into gradations and varieties, as if to suggest that only some forms of the practice are hurtful, traumatizing, morally wrong, and thus deserving of condemnation. I for one understood your point about foreign activists and actors, but I read it as others did in conjunction with what seemed like your refusal to unequivocally condemn a practice that you now say you oppose.

By the way, if I may ask, if a practice is wrong, what is wrong with foreigners and foreign NGOs using their resources and visibility to spotlight it or mobilize people against it? At any rate, is there a foreign NGO that does not work with local groups and partners that share its advocacy? If you know of any, please let me know because you seem to be erecting a straw man of foreign NGOs who go to Africa to imperially tell Africans what to do and not to do without collaborating with or working through local partners. You're a member of Amnesty International, a group founded and funded in the West, which campaigns against human rights violations in Africa and in many cases prescribe certain notions of human rights protection and violation to African governments and peoples--notions that may in fact be informed by Western notions of rights and personhood. Why don't you see that as a form of imperialism? Why are you involved with them? If your answer is that they work with or through local partners, well, so do the anti-FGM foreign NGOs that you so vehemently condemn. I really see a double standard here with your commitment to AI and its work in African countries condemning and promoting certain practices it deems either morally reprehensible or noble.

My overarching point in all this is to suggest that the idea that foreign NGOs who campaign against FGM in Africa are imperialist and should cede the stage completely to Africans is neither practical nor consistent with your own activist commitments.

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 10:21 AM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu><mailto:har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>>> wrote:
dear ibk
i agree partly with you, but disagree strongly on other points.
i am an american, so a westerner. i don't see the world in one optic shared by everyone else. there is no single west, no single africa, no single villain out there. there are perspectives that vary, and some of those that predominate in the west are terrible about africa. maybe that means americans are imperfect, and if you can concede that you might agree that there are also views in africa that are not so great. what bothers me is lumping everyone into the same mold.

i raised the issue of male circumcision on this thread as well, and john said, another day for that. fine. but it isn't just jews who practice it; not only muslims who practice it; lots of christians throughout the world do so as well. and as for the "west" not "toying with it" because jews practice it, it is hardly the case that because it is a jewish tradition that it hasn't been challenged. you are imagining a jewish presence and power that doesn't exist. in fact, that is classic antisemitism.
you can google the issue if you want to find enormous attempts to prohibit male circumcision, not only in the u.s. but in europe as well. and in fact in amnesty international as well.
i agree with you, however, that the representation of female circumcision by the west has been part of the long tradition of western denigration of africans as barbarous, and it doesn't help to adopt the dominant western tropes of civilization and barbarism that served colonialist discourse for hundreds of years.
finally, i want to make it plain to john and others participating in this discussion that i agree that the practices of excision and infibulation ought to be ended, but not by outside donors imposing their cultural norms on africans, but rather by african populations themselves taking control of the issue. i support african groups opposed to the practice; i strongly disagree that the u.s. congress should tie its money to africans changing their practices as a result.
even if i don't like the practice, i find that is a form of imperialism.
ken




On 10/29/14, 7:54 AM, Ibukunolu A Babajide wrote:
Dear friends,

This is thye most illuminating narrative I have read on this topic. Coming from a supposed "victim" it is even more compelling. I have three daughters and I will NEVER allow any of them to be circumcised. The issues that we need to address are these:

1. The characterization of the practice by the West;
2. The dehumanization of Africa and recruitment of Africans to do the dirty for them on fellow Africans; and
3. Finding African solutions to African issues without being led by the nose by ignorant non Africans who make money and create their own narratives.

I raised the issue of male circumcision and so far nobody has taken up the gauntlet, afterall it fits samlessly into Jewish tradition and the west will not toy with that tradition.

Cheers.

IBK



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On 29 October 2014 09:57, ofure aito <ofur...@gmail.com<mailto:ofur...@gmail.com><mailto:ofur...@gmail.com<mailto:ofur...@gmail.com>>> wrote:
May I add my voice by sharing my experience on FGM conversation. First, I understand the position of Mr/Dr/Prof Kadiri and Samuel as well as Prof Mbaku's strong opposing position. I was genitally mutilated in what is called 'circumcision' at age 5 along with my elder sister at age 8. I recall a middle aged woman coming to our house one late afternoon and asking my mum to buy her new razors. Thereafter, my sister was taken to the bathroom. When she returned she walked astride. I worried and was transfixed by the way she walked after a simple visit to the bathroom. I didn't understand what was happening but within me I said I will not go to the bathroom. So I went to our room and hid under the bed, in fear and rejection of walking like my sister. My father came to lure me out to the bathroom where I was given my 'skin cut' and walked like my sister. When I returned to the living room I overheard our neighbor's son in our house explaining to my brother the reason why were walking like that was because we had just been circumcised. The point in this recall is that, I was born in the city and grew in the city, yet my parents felt it was necessary, even when I was already conscious of my environment. My parents never explained. My understanding came from what the neighbour said.
I do not subscribe to fgm or circumcision, but I wonder how much damage that has cost women in African societies since the 60s to date in terms of diseases and sexual deprivation? Our arguments usually take cue from western prompting. The symbolic sexual control it is expected to pose has not limited women's potentials in so many areas of self achievements and actualization (even in the precolonial that the practice was strongest and a thing of pride, women were leaders, partake in policy making, decision makers at home, during war and peace). Even promiscuity has never been affected or controlled, because in my growing up days we hear about women: married or single, who were described as 'wayward', putting it mildly. It has not stagnated women and their identity, sexuality and sensuality.
>From my experience, the change in the 21st century like Prof Mbaku clamour for is subjective and dependent on individual choices. My parents did not choose to do what they did until we were almost in our teens.
I stand on the argument that it is a societal tradition, not culture that may have outlived its implication, especially, in the age of technological consciousness. The interpretation and practice are subjective but the age-old view is to control women's sexual power and identity vis-a-viz male dominance. Has this actually been the case. Another point is that change is a natural, evolutionary process (Darwinian law) that must come. Whether, we clamour for it or not some of these anachronistic and 'perverse' practices will become obsolete and without people necessarily demanding the change. Even the culture of piercing and tattooing in the west as fad is fading.
And I do agree with Samuel that until the west has given a name and approval, Africa does not come up with her on opinionated view. For instance, the issue breastfeeding in the 70s was disdained by the west in order to sell baby formular and now, exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months is ideal. Africa is the dump site of various ideological tests and we Africans do not see anything good done in, by or come out of Africa.
Ofure

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