Kvinnelig Omskjaering: Female Circumcision in Norway (Part II of II)

A quick survey of newspapers and web sources on the topic of female circumcision will show a fairly staunch and consistent opposition to the practice, but there are others who claim the international action so recently taken up against female circumcision is merely a new form of cultural imperialism and intolerance. Martha Minow, a professor at Harvard Law School, suggests that such strong reactions stem from a lack of understanding of immigrant behaviors, guided by perceptions that immigrants are “nonmodern, nonscientific, and nonrational.” Morality judgments can also be included amongst these intolerant beliefs – in fact, a poll conducted by the Norwegian Statistics Bureau in 2000 revealed that 50% of Norwegians agree with the statement, “Immigrants are more criminal than Norwegians.”

This is a point that should hit home for those who remember the case of the Norwegian couple visiting the US who were picked up by the police for parking their baby-carriage outside a New York business (baby included) while they went inside. Though considered a safe practice in Norway, it is regarded as barbaric and an abusive form of neglect in the US.

Other critics, like Richard Shweder at the University of Chicago, protest that laws against female circumcision do not make sense in terms of being framed as human rights violations. He argues that there is little reliable information that the health risks associated with female circumcision are problematic in the vast majority of cases, citing a comprehensive review by Carla Obermeyer (1999) that demonstrates that “medical complications are the exception, not the rule” (Shweder, 2000). Shweder draws a parallel with abortion related complications, saying we needn’t necessarily eliminate the practice, though we should make it safer.

Shweder further argues that female circumcision practices do not represent beliefs about the inferiority of women and that circumcision is not a male-dominated form of culture-control. Rather, it represents the woman’s aesthetic judgment of her own body, strength, and womanhood. Female circumcision is a female dominated practice that men rarely know much about. The modification or non-modification of female genitalia simply evokes what he calls “mutual yuck response” in cross-cultural situations. Whereas societies that do not practice female modification possess implicit beliefs about beauty being what is “natural,” those societies that endorse the practice consider it to be a process of beautification and feminization.

Finally, Shweder says that the practice of female circumcision in younger girls is instigated by parents out of loving obligation, rather than an attempt (intentional or otherwise) to torture, control, or otherwise put their daughters at risk. It is considered a part of becoming a woman, much as confirmation practices in Norway or ear piercing in other parts of the Western world signal the onset of adulthood.

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