Interesting article from Michelle Goldberg on Fuambai Ahmadu, a Sierra Leonean who defends female circumcision:
Fuambai Ahmadu, the American-born daughter of a Sierra Leonean
family, wore knee-high leather boots under a stylish rust-colored
skirt. A postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago with a Ph.D.
from the London School of Economics, she looked younger than her 40
years. Beside her was Grace Mose, regal in a red African tunic,
matching skirt, and head wrap. Her perfect English was deeply accented
by her native Kenya, where she had grown up in an Abagusii village in
the country's southwest region. It was easy to imagine her as a
champion of the line of midwives who have made their living cutting
girls since the beginning of recorded history, women who are now being
jailed in some countries for practicing a trade that once brought them
money and pride.
But it wasn't that simple. Ahmadu, not Mose, is the high-profile
defender of female circumcision and the role it can play in inducting
African girls into their societies. "My sitting here is a perfect
example that female initiation can have a place in a global society,"
she insisted. "I don't see that initiation is somehow an impediment to
girls' development." Circumcision and all that it represents in her
culture, she said, "is an important source of my social identity. It's
what links me with my mother, my grandmothers, my aunts, my female
ancestors. It celebrates our history, our connection."
As she spoke, Mose, a fervent campaigner against the practice,
glared at her. Unruffled, Ahmadu continued, arguing that in Sierra
Leone, "female circumcision is empowering." Toward the end of the
debate, a Senegalese woman, incensed by Ahmadu, stood up and said, "I
really feel very frustrated seeing an African sister defending female
genital mutilation." A few people applauded. She herself, she said, had
not been cut and saw the practice as indefensible. "There is one thing
we have to clarify. We have used here the term 'female circumcision,'
which is a term that I do not like at all. Because it puts together two
things that are totally different. We [should] talk about female mutilation. Why? When we circumcise a boy, that is skin
that is cut off. Now when a female is, I'll say, excised, that is the
whole part that is taken out. That is completely different!"
Such cases are interesting, but irrelevant because exceptions don't make the rule. It is always possible to find people who oppose or agree with traditions, rituals, policies, which the majority of people affected consider unjust and barbaric. It would have been possible during slavery to find slaves oppose to abolition as it is now possible to find gays who oppose marriage, we only have to take the example of Zora Neale Hurston who oppose didn't segregation to be terrible for African to understand that it isn't a minority within a large of group of people asserts its individuality that it changes reality and the experience of a greater number of people. Besides the argument against female circumcision isn't really about whether it is good or bad, but about the fact that it should be a choice given to women when they become adult not one impose on little girls to force them to submit to received ideas and barbaric and misogynistic traditions.