misspepita:

For my senior thesis, I chose to write on the topic of female genital surgeries, often called female genital mutilation, with a small emphasis on how the practice is carried out in Sudan. This is the first time I am making it available to view online, so I’m a bit nervous. This was a topic that I eventually became extremely passionate about! I would like to translate this passion into something useful (a “career”), but have no idea without it becoming too much of a Typical Western Feminist Thing. Anyway, back to my senior thesis. I attempted to present as much information on the practice of female genital surgeries, without showing bias- not always an easy task- but anthropology is not an easy field. If you proceed to read more, I ask you do so with an extremely open mind.

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Worth a read for some basic information people may not know (such as different types of FGM, parts of the told it happens/happened in (including the west))

However I feel this paper ignores many things; the most important for me being that the author points out just how culturally ingrained the practice is even among the educated, while then saying it’s something they must fix themselves- completely ignoring that because of just how ingrained it is as they themselves pointed out that it is basically impossible for women to overcome FGM and ‘fix it’ themselves. It’s very circular, unhelpful and immoral in my opinion. 

The opinion that it isn’t anyone’s place to interfere in a culture that is not their own did not stand in cases of child rape, genocide and other barbaric religious and cultural standards, so why should this? I think the only reason it is up for debate is simple- because the victims are female.