http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/ending-fgm-the-white-womans-burden/14673#.UwjHU6wo7mR
Ending FGM: the White Woman's Burden?
An Eritrean woman explains why Western campaigns to End FGM do more harm
than good.
*Tsedal Tesfamariam *writer
As a woman from Eritrea, now living in the UK, I find myself deeply
troubled by the current obsession with the supposed problem of female
genital mutilation (FGM) among African communities in Britain.
The campaign against FGM, led by feminists and various media outlets, is
taking a very simplistic approach to what is a very complex cultural
problem, and it risks generating yet more prejudice against, and
stereotyping of, certain immigrant communities.
For women of my background, FGM is a deeply personal and private issue in
which a greater understanding of the wider cultural background to this
practice is essential if we are going to have a serious discussion about
bringing it to an end. The problem with 'End FGM' campaigning is that it
lacks the capacity fully to engage communities and to challenge in any
meaningful way the problem of FGM; instead, it indulges in finger-pointing
and scaremongering about the practices of these communities. It fails to
acknowledge the various efforts being made to halt FGM within many
communities, and it calls into question people's capacity to change without
the guidance - and laws - of outsiders.
So the current efforts to encourage the UK education secretary Michael Gove
to make sure British schools teach about the risks of
FGM<
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/14/fgm-petition-michael-gove-signatures>is
at best a waste of schools' time and at worst is a condescending and
patronising initiative that echoes the 'let's save these savages from
themselves' attitude that informed the Victorians who colonised our nations
in Africa a hundred-plus years ago.
Most schools already have safeguarding policies in place that would allow
them to take action if they heard or discovered that a pupil was at risk of
FGM. Asking them to go further and actively to spy on their pupils, to go
out of their way to discover hints or clues about the occurrence of FGM,
will effectively turn schools into watchtowers of immigrant communities and
their behaviour. Schools already have a hard time engaging with parents
from such communities, because of language barriers and other social
issues; putting all such parents under suspicion will only make them feel
more alienated and isolated and probably make them less likely to engage
with social institutions.
Received on Sat Feb 22 2014 - 10:52:34 EST