Female genital cutting, regardless of the particulars of a surgery or the context in which it occurs, is viewed as abhorrent, and is described with an array of derogatory and insulting adjectives applied to the women who carry out genital cutting and the societies that allow it.10 Many of those who condemn genital cutting see their attitudes as unequivocally right and good, even enlightened. Few opponents of genital cutting appreciate the importance of thinking about the issues of genital cutting in terms other than physical mutilation and the presumed consequent denial of sexual pleasure.
Clinical evidence has revealed a number of complications associated with specific female genital surgeries, including problems often evidenced immediately or soon after the operations, such as shock, hemorrhage, injury to adjacent organs, difficulties with retention of urine and menses, and infections. In addition are long-term problems, such as scarring and keloid formation, recurrent urinary infections, vulvar cysts and abscesses, pelvic inflammatory disease, formations of fistulas, and potential hazards in childbearing. All of these are grounds for serious concern, but the frequency with which they occur is far from certain. Data collected in clinical settings do not convey information about the proportion of females who experience gynecological problems from genital cutting. Focused epidemiological research could provide a detailed understanding of the overall effects of female genital cutting for female morbidity and mortality, but it has not been carried out. In the absence of wide-ranging data collection, clinical accounts too often focus on anecdotal sources or the severe cases that do involve hospitalization. The anti-FGM responses to such cases are often filled with anger and frustration over the “needless” damage to health, yet generally fail to appreciate the rationale for the practice, and sometimes even convey racism and paternalism (Parker 1995, 514–16).
Sentiments run high in all directions. For example, at the 2006 annual meeting of the African Studies Association, a woman identified herself simply as African and proceeded to passionately denounce the hypocrisy of Western critics of genital cutting in vilifying African practices while ignoring parallel activities that take place routinely in the United States.11 She implored the audience to recognize that women the world over alter their bodies to become more attractive as sexual partners, citing surgeries performed in the United States and Europe to augment or to reduce women’s breasts. Such surgeries, she argued, also have lasting repercussions for women’s health, including possibly affecting their abilities to nurse their infant offspring. To her, these seemed as senseless as genital cutting in Africa appears to many Western observers.
Beginning in the 1970s, key anthropological publications studying the social and cultural aspects of female genital cutting were often written by women academics informed and influenced by social movements in their home countries, and this, of course, affected the questions they asked, as well as their findings. These findings include that genital cutting denies women the right to a full and satisfying sexual life (Hosken 1981); that genital cutting is a reflection of the asymmetrical power relations between men and women (Hayes 1975); and that genital cutting is primarily a socially important procedure concerned mainly with establishing clan membership and adult status (Lyons 1981). The work of Janice Boddy in northern Sudan describes genital cutting as an assertive and symbolic act, controlled by women, which emphasizes “the essence of femininity: morally appropriate fertility, the potential to reproduce the lineage or to found a lineage section” (Boddy 1982, 696). Though many elements of Boddy’s formulation hold true for Kuria practices as well, the type of operations the two societies practice are physically and surgically different.
Christine Walley’s critique of the FGM literature centers on the two seemingly polar viewpoints commonly expressed in western countries toward female genital operations—moral opprobrium and relativistic tolerance (1997, 406). Questioning whether these perspectives are sufficient to construct an adequate feminist and humanist political response to the issue of female genital operations, she argues that, to some extent, Westerners hold responsibility for the terms of the debates over female genital operations that have been adopted widely in Kenya and other African countries. She cautions that Western interests stem not only from feminist or humanist concerns, but also from the desire to sensationalize, titillate, and call attention to differences between “us” and “them” in ways that reaffirm notions of Western cultural superiority (409). Accounts of female genital cutting disseminated through Western media feed into powerful and value-laden understandings of the differences between Africans and Euro-Americans, presuming a radical difference between the first and third worlds, between “modern” Euro-Americans and “traditional” others. Further, the very concepts of “culture” and “tradition” are constructed in problematic ways. As Walley argues, “Rather than focusing on ‘culture’ as historically changeable and broadly encompassing beliefs and practices characteristic of a social group, the discourse on genital operations understands culture as ahistorical ‘customs’ and ‘traditions.’ Such ‘traditions’ are simultaneously depicted as the meaningless hangovers of the premodern era and as the defining characteristic of the Third World” (421). The allegedly coercive and oppressive nature of African cultures and societies is emphasized, and, from dominant Western perspectives, collective culture is judged to be less relevant than rights premised on the individual.
Examples supporting Walley’s position abound in Kenyan media. Increasingly, accounts of genital cutting emphasize the distinction between traditional (rural) and modern (urban), using the same language and concepts as Western media. For example, a feature article in Kenya’s popular newspaper the Daily Nation from the late 1980s discusses the time for boys to graduate into “manhood” in the following terms: “In the olden days, boys became men by undergoing traditions circumsicion [sic]. They were expected to demonstrate courage through withstanding the severe pain inflicted on them by the traditional surgeon. Times have changed however and the ritual is now rather outmoded due to the physical risks involved. Besides the risk of Aids [sic], the candidate stands the possibility of losing his manhood” (Sipakati 1988, 14).
More recently, in the Daily Nation, Beth Mugo, a member of parliament and an assistant minister of education, wrote an editorial titled “FGM is Barbaric and Retrogressive.” She condemned forced circumcision of schoolgirls in the northern parts of the country, reminding politicians representing those areas that they had voted for the Children Act of 2001 and thus had a duty to protect children (Mugo 2005). As the language of condemnation shows, the outsider/insider dichotomy of perspectives is without a doubt too facile in a world where information and opinions flow easily even between geographically distant locations. To understand initiation practices, an outsider needs the insiders’ understanding and perspective. Most particularly, outside of practicing societies, discourse on female genital operations tends to ignore the other aspects of the ritual complex of which it is an element, including the fact that in societies where females undergo genital cutting, males do as well. In many of those cultures, the two are constructed as equivalent rituals, both seen as achieving a similar cultural end: adult membership in the society and its structures.
Male and Female Genital Operations
In Kuria society, genital cutting is seen as a requisite step toward adulthood that prepares both genders (there are only two among Kuria) for marriage. Kuria people are well aware of the international condemnation over the genital cutting of girls. Male genital cutting is not seen as problematic by most Western societies and is usually left out of the discussions on genital cutting practices in Africa, indicating that it is not genital cutting per se that infringes human rights (we don’t hear of “male genital mutilation”). This is the case whether it is the American practice of using medical practitioners to cut away the foreskin of infant boys’ penises in routine postnatal surgery, or the religious practice in Jewish or Muslim communities where specialists cut the foreskins of infant males as a rite of inclusion.
Male and female genital cutting are rarely related in Western analysis, largely because male circumcision is regarded as more superficial than the operations performed on females and consequently less dangerous, while also conferring health benefits. Some opponents of circumcision argue that genital cutting should be understood largely in terms of male control of female sexuality, and therefore, male and female genital cutting are not comparable (Caldwell, Oroubuloye, and Caldwell 1997, 1188). Further, genital cutting in sub-Saharan Africa is embedded in a ritual context where scarification