Female Genital Cutting in Africa: A Second Layer of Cultural Meanings

Monday, October 23, 2000

Second papers to be handed back this week Will be ready to be picked up this

Thursday October 26th, after 10 am Please pick up your paper from the box

marked “ANT 185” in front of your TA’s office

Two questions Question about Islam, from article by

Janice Boddy (about infibulation) Question on sexual response -- to be

addressed on Wednesday!

Summary of FGC’s cultural meanings touched on so far Rite of passage to full

personhood and adulthood Rite of passage to

becoming marriageable (because believed to contribute to ability to bear children)

Way of claiming honor for self and family

Way of ensuring respectful treatment by husband’s family

Cultural meanings I will touch on today

FGC and women’s mystical and social power

FGC and the power of fertility (going further than we did last week)

FGC, beauty and purity FGC and feelings group

superiority

FGC and women’s mystical and social power; or, what gets Leunita mad

Leunita in her 30s a Kono of Sierra

Leone initiate into secret

Bundu society when she was 13

gave long interview to anthropologist Fuambai Ahmadu

What gets Leunita mad “What gets me mad, is when people say we

are ‘victims’. And I say, victims of what? The women of the Bundu [cut women] are not victims! For us, the one you would have to pity is the woman who is not of the Bundu!”

How being an initiate of the Bundu society gives Kono women power and authority, 1 The role of soko

Leader of the all-female secret society

Intermediary between women and spiritual realm

guardian of medicines

respected as advocate of village women’s interests

How being an initiate of the Bundu society gives Kono women power and authority, 2

The value of obedience -- but which obedience is emphasized?

Qualities of good woman taught by Bundu society

The right to public speech

Leunita weighs in on a special kind of female power “The secret power we exercise -- and why

men fear us -- is our ability to have children. Without being cut, the ancestresses will not want to release to you the powers of your own body.”

FGC and a special kind of female power: fertility Soko is custodian of secret

rituals to ensure and maximize women’s fertility

Initiation into Bundu takes place in dry season

Initiates bathed in river Symbolism of path into

the forest clearing (at initiation)

The powers of soko over male potency

Luanita on beauty and FGC “I think one of the most beautiful things is

after a woman is cut. There can be no question that she is more beautiful that way. Very beautiful.”

FGC and aesthetic values Survey of 55 Sierra

Leonean women: 90% said that cutting rendered the woman more beautiful

Survey of 290 Yoruba women: 76% said the operation made the woman more beautiful

Beauty and bodily modifications Worldwide, dramatic

modifications of body as means of beautifying

Neck-lengthening in SE Asia

Lip-stretching in Amazon Cosmetic surgery in

“West”

Bragging about the beauty of infibulations in Somalia

Women’s oral poetry: “My scar is a

flower/It is smooth and perfect as a petal/Can you see it? Am I not beautiful?/Look at my flower, look at my flower.”

The other side of the aesthetic: repulsiveness of the uncut Woman anthropologist in Guinea-Bissau:

“Women politely tried to conceal their disgust when they learned that I, a married woman, was not excised.”

Sandy Lane in Egypt: “They were thoroughly disgusted. Didn’t I just completely gross my husband out? Didn’t my mother love me?”

Luanita again “In the area where the Kono live, it is just

us who perform the ceremony, who have Bundu. Our neighbors are the Krio, and they do not cut women. Imagine that! They are very dirty [disgusting] people.”

FGC and feelings of group superiority

Superior to non-cutting groups Kono The Mandinga and

the idea of Muslim purity

FGC and feelings of superiority to “the West” Interview with Sondra

Hale (anthropologist) in Sudan:

“I am proud to be a cut woman. People from Europe lecture us about this, saying it is not good. What do they know? The young people in the West hop on top of each other like rabbits. That is not good.”

On Wednesday: FGC and the eroticism of barriers Comparing FGC and cosmetic surgery