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


© Valerie Borey
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Jun 7, 2002


In understanding the debate about female circumcision, it’s vital to distinguish between two separate lines of thought. The movement against female genital mutilation has become increasingly identified with the movement against female oppression, perhaps erroneously so. Conflicting reports about medical complications, coercion, and male dominance have made the two arguments difficult to separate. A careful consideration of the evidence and the influence of economic pressures involved in the debate is warranted, keeping in mind that even voices within the same culture may vary according to time and perspective.

Female circumcision is an exceedingly charged topic that in the last 10-15 years has been repositioned from the realm of the personal to the political and economic domain of international relations. Nations in which female circumcision has been traditionally practiced are experiencing extreme pressure to ban the practice and penalize its practitioners. Immigrants are particularly susceptible to the social and economic pressures being applied to them from those in both the new country and their native land. Like Safia, they are torn between the values of their past and the expectations of the present in Norway.

Resources

Obermeyer, C. (1999). Female genital surgeries: The known, the unknown, and the unknowable. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 13.

Shweder, R. (2000).What about “Female Genital Mutilation”? And why understanding culture matters in the first place. DÆDALUS 129 (4), 209-232.

Fact Sheet on Black, Immigrant and Refugee Women in Norway
http://www.mirasenteret.no/Artikkler.m.m...

When One Culture’s Custom is Another’s Taboo
http://www.panix.com/~squigle/dep/cultre...

Ministry of Children and Family Affairs
http://odin.dep.no/bfd/engelsk/publ/hand...

Stolt av å være omskåret – helt til hun kom til Norge
http://tux1.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks...

       

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