Questions: "Female Cutting"

1. In the Statement by African Women Are Free to Choose (AWA-FC), they argue the following: "In the Victorian era, when white European women were defined as sexually repressed, they projected their fears (in complicity with their husbands) onto African women who were viewed as sexually licentious and immoral. Today, to the extent that the descendants of these women view themselves as sexually liberated (calling attention to their external clitoris as the phallic symbol of theirs and so all women's liberation and autonomy) they project their fears of past repression onto circumcised African women, who given their deliberate excision of the external clitoris, are conveniently marked as sexually repressed and passive." What are your thoughts on this argument? Do you find it compelling? Do you think it is true?

2. Gruenbaum discusses the tensions between two different tribes in a Sudanese village:the Zabarma who perform Sunna circumcisions on their women and the Kenana who perform pharaonic circumcisions on their women. Gruembaum notes that Kenana girls would say "Ya, ghalfa" ("Hey, unclean") to the Zabarma girls. In retaliation, Zabarma girls would call back "Ya, mutmura" (mutumura meaning storage pits that open and close like the scar tissue of the Kenana girls) and ask Kenana girls demeaning questions like "when you run out of meat, will you buy some in the market?". How do tensions between such groups (even within the same village) who practice different forms of female circumcisions affect how each group views the different forms of it? How do such tensions affect how each group views the potential elimination of female circumcision in all its forms?

3. The Outrage to Courage reading notes that some people argue that FGM should be medicalized and thus made more sterile, hygienic, and safe while also simultaneously giving women the opportunity for anesthesia. What are your thoughts on this proposed solution which theoretically would allow women to retain their cultural practice but in a healthier fashion? Take into account the suggested infeasibility of this solution in poor and rural areas, which is also mentioned in the reading.