I've just learned that Seattle's Stranger keeps a calendar of resistance and solidarity events. Glancing at their list of events for the week ahead, I see a wide variety of things one can attend, ranging from marches (there's one this afternoon, and another later in the week for Black Lives Matter) to rallies ("Stand with Immigrants! An Emergency Protest", which is scheduled for Sunday afternoon) to shows ("Resist! A Show of Burlesque, Bellydance, and Punk Rock") to art exhibits ("Protect the Sacred: Native Artists for Standing Rock") to workshops ("Black Arists Lead: Creative Education for Liberation and Survival"), and much, much more (concerts, fundraisers, etc). If you live in the Seattle area, the link is: http://www.thestranger.com/events/resistance.
Are such calendars being kept in other cities? If you know of additional examples, please furnish a link to them in a comment. I'd love to be able to post other sources that this blog's readers can consult. Such events not only allow you to express your concerns and outrage at all the injustice and damage and pain that the current administration in Washington is inflicting on the US and the world at large, they also feed your spirits, strengthen your hearts, and enlarge your imagination. (And sometimes even bring amazing insights to your understanding of the world you live in.) Resistance and solidarity are our hope for making a future we can stand to live in.
ETA:
For people in Portland, check out the Portland Mercury's page: https://www.portlandmercury.com/events/resistances-and-rallies
Showing posts with label political action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political action. Show all posts
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Monday, July 1, 2013
Bank of America's latest bit of theater of the absurd
Bank of America pushed for the prosecution of Olson on vandalism charges for writing his First Amendment opinions on public sidewalks (and in one case on Bank of America pavement). In fact the elected conservative SD City Attorney, Jan Goldsmith, didn't even initiate charges against Olson until months after he wrote in chalk on sidewalks in front of three Bank of America branches in SD. It was only after the local security officer for Bank of America relentlessly prodded the City Attorney's office that Olson was charged with the 13 counts of vandalism.The trial judge, Howard Shore, not only forbade Olson and his defense to mention the First Amendment or little things like freedom of speech in his defense, he also put a gag order on Olson for the course of the trial. And he had special condemnation for the mayor of San Diego, too:
Judge Howard Shore also chastised the Mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner. Filner apparently in the judge's eyes had the temerity to call the trial of Olson a waste of time and taxpayer money. According to the San Diego Reader, Filner sent out a memorandum on June 20 that read in part:It's farcical, sure. But just think for a minute how serious such farcical abuses of the law really is. Many of us are always talking about how it's gotten to be difficult to tell the difference between reports of political reality and displays of political satire. As Mark Karlin writes, "No Bank of America top officials were prosecuted for any number of questionable legal activities leading to this nation's taxpayers bailing out the banks too big to fail." As far as Bank of America officials (and certain judges and prosecutors) are concerned, the law is not an instrument of justice, but of protecting the interests of a tiny, wealthy elite. We see this every day not only in the way that political activists are treated by our various judicial systems, but also--and especially-- in the large-scale jailing of black men. We're also seeing it used, now, by the Obama Administration to punish whistle blowers revealing government policies to citizens, declaring them "traitors" as though they were the revealing secrets to foreign powers rather than government policies and actions to the citizens they supposedly work for.
This young man is being persecuted for thirteen counts of vandalism stemming from an expression of political protest that involved washable children's chalk on a City sidewalk. It is alleged that he has no previous criminal record. If these assertions are correct, I believe this is a misuse and waste of taxpayer money. It could also be characterized as an abuse of power that infringes on First Amendment particularly when it is arbitrarily applied to some, but not all, similar speech.Judge Shore, in essence, warned the mayor of San Diego, who happens to be a Democrat in a traditionally conservative city, to keep his comments to himself, and would likely have issued a gag order on the mayor if Judge Shore were able.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Go: For a Winning Anarchist Strategy
by
Roy Jovana
Written in Fall 2010 for a local anarchist Go meetup in Seattle. Thanks to everyone for your feedback.
A year later, after the Arab Spring, after the American Autumn, who would have guessed the hint of potential in the air would have exploded so abruptly and raised so many questions about our strategy going forward?
Throughout history, people have joined together to fight exploitation and injustice. A thread of resistance can be traced from ancient Egyptian slave revolts to the WTO protests in Seattle, continuing in our present day struggles. Though we’ve had setbacks and losses over the millennia, we’ve also made many gains. As the powerful have adapted their strategies and tactics to hold onto their power and influence, we’ve been successful when we have also adapted, building on and learning from past successes and failures.
The game of Go is another struggle for power and influence, a strategic game where opponents try to expand and hold onto their areas of power and use them to limit the other’s. We can learn from and apply strategies from the game of Go to adapt and make our struggles more effective.
21st Century Anarchism
With the failure of authoritarian communism and the recent petering out of the anti-globalization movement, the 21st century is a time for a new beginning. Just as in 1910 few people could have predicted the upheavals that lay in store for them, this century will no doubt bring times where the unthinkable, impossible future suddenly becomes an undeniable present. This changing battle requires us to develop new strategies and abandon failed ideologies—without mindlessly reenacting past battles, but also without each generation starting anew and rejecting history. Instead, we need to develop a strategy of challenging power, honestly applying lessons from past resistance to the realities of our present day struggles.
In all the work we do, we need strategies for campaigns such as tenant/landlord and workplace struggles or fights targeting other institutions. We also need to connect these campaigns to large-scale, longer-term strategies and ultimately to a strategic framework for the entire revolutionary project of overthrowing the ruling class and establishing a free, just, and equal society.
In developing these strategies, we must remember that theory not grounded in practical struggle is sterile and useless, while action without strategy and reflection is an ineffective dead-end. This requires that we refuse to let our political ideology color our practical judgment. We must not believe that a tactic will be effective simply because we would like it to be or because our ideology tells us that it must be.
Instead, we must look at the playfield honestly, judging the strengths and weaknesses of ourselves as well as our adversaries. As the struggle unfolds, we must analyze the effectiveness of tactics based on direct experience. And to be effective, we must train ourselves and others to have the skills necessary to achieve our objectives including strategic thinking skills.
The Game of Go
Centuries before written history, a game was invented to help the Chinese aristocracy practice strategic thinking. This game is now commonly referred to as “Go”, from the Japanese name, or “Wei Qi,” the modern Chinese name, meaning literally, “the surrounding game.” Based on simple rules that have changed little over thousands of years, Go is a complex game. The style of play has constantly changed, with expert players building on the lessons from past players and constantly analyzing current and past games for insights into new strategies.
So what is the game of Go? Go is played on a board with a 19×19 grid (13×13 or 9×9 for beginners). Two players take turns placing black and white Go “stones” on the intersection points on the grid. Once placed, the stones cannot be moved. Each point has between two and four “liberties,” represented by the lines leaving the point. A stone with one or more liberty or connected to stones of the same color with liberties is considered “alive.” If a player fills in the liberties of their opponent’s stone, that stone is “captured” and is removed from the board. But capturing is not the most important aspect of the game. At the end of a game, each player will have surrounded different parts of the board in a way that their stones cannot be captured. These surrounded portions of the board are their “territory”; the larger determines the winner.
Go As a Revolutionary Tool
But Go is more than just a game. It can be a valuable tool for developing revolutionary anarchist strategy. Go has lasted for thousands of years because it is the boiled-down essence of real strategy, simple enough to move beyond transitory historical details, instead reflecting many general strategic concepts. At the same time, it is not so simple as to be irrelevant to real-world strategic problem solving. This allows us to map complex real-world problems to Go concepts and to use Go techniques to see fundamental strategic flaws or strengths. Go provides a language and a framework for discussing core strategic and tactical issues.
Compared with other games, we can see why Go can map better to real world struggles. In chess, the goal is to corner and kill the opponent’s king. In modern struggles, whether war between nations, political power battles, labor struggles, or the revolutionary struggle in general, opponents never have a single head or point of power. Instead, their power is determined by their political, economic, military, or social influence, and this power can change dramatically over time. These different spheres of influence can be mapped to points on a Go board, with success being determined by expanding territory. Capture can be important, but more as a tactic to gain territory than as an end in itself.
In the book, The Protracted Game: A Wei-Ch’i Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy, Scott A. Boorman presents one such mapping. The edges of the board correspond to the lowest caste of peasants in feudal China. Towards the center, points correspond to higher positions in the social caste system, with the very center being the urban political class. While other factions fought directly for the single center point, Mao used the standard Go strategy of building territory first in the isolated corners, then along the edges. While others focused on one point, Mao and the communists focused on building territory, ultimately dominating the board.
For our purposes, a less precise mapping is likely to be more useful, just enough to provide a bridge between Go strategic concepts and the practical issue we’re addressing.
Go Proverbs
One of the ways that Go strategy has been passed down from generation to generation is in the form of simple proverbs. Each proverb summarizes a technique or idea. They are meant to suggest likely good moves but are not to be followed blindly. Once you start using Go to think about strategy, you will find that many Go proverbs can give insight into our struggles.
Lose Your First Fifty Games as Quickly as Possible
One such proverb for beginners is “lose your first 50 games as quickly as possible.” Many beginners play slowly, over-analyzing their moves, but with no experience to draw on. Rather than playing quickly and learning from their mistakes, they are stuck in a paralysis that prevents them from gaining the experience they need. The fact is that if you don’t know what you are doing, you will lose. The important thing is to learn from it, and not take risks larger than you are willing to lose.
Don’t Throw an Egg at a Wall
Another that is especially relevant for anarchists, almost literally, is “don’t throw an egg at a wall.” This Korean proverb is more commonly known as “play away from thickness” and cautions against playing stones too close to your opponents’ strength, as well as playing a useful distance away from your own strength. In Go, if your opponent has a strong wall that you have no hope to cut or capture, playing close to the wall guarantees the capture of your stone and actually strengthens your opponent. The same can be said for misguided anarchists tossing an egg against a wall of riot cops only to be knocked to the ground and arrested. The converse is also true: playing too close to your own strong group is a wasted “safe” move that does little to gain territory.
Strengthening Your Own Weak Group Makes Your Opponent’s Weaker
Stating the strategic advantage of solidarity is the proverb “strengthening your own weak group makes your opponent’s weaker.” When targeting your opponent’s weakness for attack, your own weaknesses expose you to counter attack. If you can strengthen them first, your attack will be more successful. In the labor movement, this lesson appears when you have divisions in your ranks, with vulnerable workers exposed to attack. If you can strengthen the vulnerable workers before the fight, the boss will have less ability to fight back, ultimately making your offensive more successful.
Connecting Groups
A core strategy in Go is to start in the corners and edges, and then jump out to the center to connect separate groups of stones. It is easiest to create solid territory in the isolated corners. Next, territory can be made on the edges—but it is more difficult. Finally, especially if a group of your stones is weak, jumping out to the center can allow them to connect with others, increasing the chances for survival. As in the previous proverb, connecting your weak groups strengthens them, putting them in a better position to attack their common foe.
In the real world, small isolated groups, like weak groups of stones on the board, must establish a base or coordinate with other groups to survive and be effective. A base is an organizational and social network capable of sustaining itself in spite of attacks and setbacks. In addition to being self-sustaining, the network would allow expanding the fight to new territory. But even with a solid base, there is a risk of “living small”, or staying isolated with just enough structure and support to keep going but with no ability to go on the offensive. Keeping groups connected and working together can prevent this.
In the real-world this could apply to many situations, connecting groups across race and gender lines, connecting a variety of groups in the same city where struggles intersect such as class struggle and environmentalist groups targeting the same corporation, or connecting demands such as feminist groups endorsing labor struggles for shorter work hours and childcare benefits.
A Poor Man Must Pick Quarrels
One proverb that is especially interesting in light of the asymmetrical nature of our fight is “a rich man should not pick quarrels.” The parallel is that if you are a poor man, then you should most certainly pick quarrels. As you play a game, if you notice that you are well ahead of your opponent in territory, you will want to avoid complicated fights and instead solidify your gains. Meanwhile, if you are behind and playing safe moves that solidify the status quo, you are bound to lose. The only way you can win is to make bolder moves, attacking your opponents’ weaknesses in an effort to deny them the opportunity of solidifying their gains.
In Go, a handicap is used to balance games between players of differing ability. The better player plays white and gives their opponent enough extra stones to compensate for the difference in ability. Black starts out with stones already placed at the key points on the board. They start out a rich man, and their job is to safely and simply hold onto everything they began the game with. White, matching the asymmetry of our struggle, begins the game as a poor man who has no choice but to pick quarrels.
Unfortunately for us, while our struggle is asymmetrical, it is not because we are coming to the game with greater experience and natural ability than our adversary. Still, in many ways, the powerful are slow to respond to new tactics. Their strength is the stability of the system they control. As marginal activists organizing from scratch, we are approaching an opponent who is firmly entrenched, seemingly in control of the whole board. Our task is to disrupt that stability and expose weaknesses that give us further openings.
Conclusion
The game of Go is based on simple rules and is easy to learn, but as you play and improve your skill, it becomes a complex game with great depth of strategy. As 21st century Go players, we have easy access to a wealth of information, built up from countless generations of players, each generation building on the accomplishments of previous generations and devising new patterns and styles of play.
Likewise, as anarchists we have much to learn from present and past struggles, though we often lack in objectively evaluating past strategies and devising new ones. Go gives us an opportunity to look at strategy boiled down to its bare essence and to apply the lessons we learn to our revolutionary praxis.
The Go proverbs and strategies mentioned above are just a beginning. In print and online, there exists a wide variety of resources on Go strategy, much of it useful for general strategic thinking. We can combine these concepts with our practical experience and knowledge of historical struggles to gain insights for practical strategy. As we improve as Go players, we will continue to develop a strategic intuition and a language and framework for analyzing real-world strategy.
Resources
Go: An Introduction – by Andreas Fecke
A comic providing a simple introduction to the game of Go: here
The Way to Go: How to play the Asian game of Go – by Karl Baker
A more thorough introduction to the game: here
A free 9×9 Go game – play against a computer: here
KGS Online Go Server – play against other people: here
Online Go problems: here
Go proverbs: here, here, here, here, and here
This guest post originally appeared at http://ideasandaction.info/2012/03/go-for-a-winning-anarchist-strategy/.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Problematizing Legal Approaches Toward Stopping FGS
On Pandagon, Amanda relates what she calls some good news: Egypt has outlawed FGM.
From the article:
On the Pandagon thread, a commenter called Dan writes: "Obviously, banning FGM is always a step in the right direction..."
I am not convinced that this is obvious. Nor am I necessarily convinced that this outcome is good news.
Some Background
One thing that one learns in the study of anthropology is that culture is a holistic entity. That means that you can't split it up into tiny bits and interact with those bits piece by piece. You can't hold up -- say -- dowry burnings and say "this is what dowry burning is, this is what it means" outside the context of the rest of the culture, anymore than you could hold up "I Love Lucy" to people who didn't understand Western gender roles or Western materialism or a Western sense of humor and expect them to understand it.
Female genital surgeries (FGS) are the same way; they exist within a cultural context that gives them meaning. The cultural contexts are different, so the meanings are different.
Let me take a brief digression to deal with the issue of terminology. I'm going to call the procedures FGS, which is the term that an anthropologist friend of mine favors when he teaches Intro to Anth. FGS is not a perfect term. However, it is an attempt to ameliorate some of the problems with other terms. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a term that many African women, and others, object to as stifling conversation because the term itself is alienating and inflammatory. Female circumcision is inaccurate, and leads to a false equivalency between male and female circumcision since it creates an ersatz linguistic link between the two procedures.* FGS is an attempt at a middle ground.
Female genital surgeries exist in many different forms, in many different cultural contexts. Here are some of the physical manifestations of the surgery:
FGS are also done for a variety of reasons. Each culture that practices FGS will be practicing its own variation -- in terms of what the surgery consists of, and why it is done. For this reason, it's very difficult to talk about FGS as a monolith. And there's a good reason for that. FGS are not a monolith.
For instance, it's not uncommon to encounter feminists arguing that FGM is done to eliminate female sexual pleasure, or to prevent women from cheating. FGS are not done solely for either of these reasons, although they are some of the reasons stated by some cultures.
For the Kikuyu in Kenya, who practice clitorodectomy, FGS is practiced as a rite of passage in order to create a more visible separation between men and women. The clitoris, or masculine part, is removed to make the woman more womanly (conversely, the foreskin which is seen as being like the labia, is removed to make men more manly). Therefore, any attempts to eliminate FGS among the Kikuyu will have to react to these cultural motivations.
It would be inappropriate for the same solutions to be attempted among the Kikuyu as would be used in infibulation-practicing East African countries like Ethiopia and Somalia, countries that are very patriarchal and have clear interests in establishing inheritance laws. Unlike the FGS practiced by the Kikuyu, Ethiopian and Somalian infibulation appears to arise from an interest in protecting paternity rights (Carolyn Martin Shaw). They want to make sure that inheritance goes to genetic sons. Women - often upper-class women - bear the brunt of this (as they did in Europe with chastity belts, in the middle east with seclusion, in China with footbinding) because the patriarchy (supported by both men and women) views them as vessels for heirs. Reducing their ability to become pregnant by men who are not their husbands makes it more likely that inheritance will go to genetic heirs. Cultural practices grow around this desire. Later, these practices are fetishized.
Clitorodectomy and infibulation are both practiced by some cultures that believe the touch of a woman's uncircumcized genitals will sap a man of his ability to hold an erection, cause hydrocephally, and/or kill any infant the woman bears. This myth is enduring. You may think that decades of interaction with white women who are uncircumcized and yet able to bear children would have shaken the myth, but this is often not the case. White women often choose not to bear children or to bear very few children, which means that white women are often seen as infertile. Thus it is possible for African women from FGS-practicing cultures to interact with uncircumcized white women and still believe that circumcision is necessary for fertility.
The point of all this is: FGS is not something that exists in isolation. It exists for particular reasons. You don't get rid of those reasons by changing the law. All you do is create a situation in which the reasons still exist (need for a rite of passage, to ensure paternity, to ensure fertility), but the traditional method of meeting those needs has been outlawed.
Laws Against FGS Analogized to Laws Against Rape
On a Feministe thread about the ban, Jill writes in defense of the law. "I don’t think anyone is saying FGM is going to disappear," she writes, acknowledging that the ban will not be a cure. She goes on to say, "But it is important that they’ve outlawed it, since that reflects a profound social shift, and it allows people to be prosecuted for it... Rape laws don’t get rid of rape, but I’d rather have them than not."
I think Jill is erring in comparing FGS to rape. FGS is a culturally sanctioned, overt part of how the society functions. Rape is at best a covert part of our cultural function. While it holds up patriarchy by limiting women's movements, it also subverts patriarchy because it is a threat to paternal property. FGS is not like that.
In my opinion, a better analogy would be to compare FGS to - say -- capture marriage as its practiced in Nepal, in which a young man kidnaps a young woman and marries her by force. To western eyes, these marriages look superficially abhorrent (and they're certainly not 100% good). But we're missing the subtleties of the capture marriages. These marriages are often arranged before hand and approved by both families as a way of allowing a young couple to marry when they do not have the financial resources to put on a huge wedding. In many (I think most) capture marriages, the woman is not actually in danger, or experiencing surprise; she feigns both ritualistically. However, the bride is not always told of the capture marriage beforehand. Capture marriages are a culturally sanctioned process which serves particular culturally sanctioned purposes (allowing a way for the children of families who have fallen on hard times to marry), and which puts the interest of families above the interests of the woman.
It would be possible to make laws against capture marriage, in ostensible defense of the woman's independence. However, the kinds of laws that tend to get enacted in situations like these are made with a western gaze. We see the surface effect of a capture marriage and apply it to known situations -- the biblical Sabine women, for instance. We aren't looking at the reasons why capture marriages exist, or how they are rooted in the culture. Addressing the symptom by making capture marriages illegal may actually make the situation worse for women.
And this is what we have seen, time and time again, with regard to legal remedy for FGS.
A Brief Overview of Some Historical Consequences of Outlawing FGS
Missionaries who got down to Africa really didn't like FGS. Well, I don't either. Many of them did what seems like the logical thing to do when you are in ostensible control of a group of people who are doing something that you think is a major violation of human rights, moral decency, and God's law. They decided to ban it.
Early bans had a number of consequences (not all of which occurred in all places).
Perhaps the most important effect of banning FGS is that it created a dichotomy, the effects of which activists are still dealing with today. It underlined the idea that female genital surgeries are African, and not practicing female genital surgeries is American. Not to practice female genital surgery is to capitulate to colonialists. To practice FGS is to be genuinely African.
When Western feminists insist on framing the discourse about FGS on our terms, we make this problem worse. When we emphasize statements like, "African women are being denied sexual pleasure," as if it were the worst part of the situation, we grind home this dichotomy.
It has been repeatedly proven to be much more effective to talk about FGS in terms of women's and children's health. FGS kills women and children. According to a study linked by Feministe last year, women who've undergone infibulation are 50% more likely to die or to lose their infants than women who have not. Women who've undergone clitorodectomy are 15% more likely to die or to lose their infants in childbirth than women who have not.
This is the kind of information that tends to persuade women, because it is culturally situated. It addresses what they are worried about. Sexual pleasure tends to be coded as decadent and western. It is therefore not only not of concern, but can be specifically opposed. It's therefore not always useful to talk to African women about it. Our insistence on framing the narrative in our terms can damage African women's actual lives.
Because while sexual pleasure is a big deal, in my personal opinion, poor childbirth outcomes are probably a bigger deal. Spreading HIV through the use of dirty razor blades is a bigger deal. Injury and lameness are bigger deals. Uterine prolapse is a bigger deal. Death is a bigger deal.
There are real world harms to the ways in which westerners have typically framed debates about FGS. The dichotomy I mentioned earlier, where FGS is coded as genuine, African, and anti-colonial, gained teeth during the pan-African movement. Since that time, in some places, FGS has become a marker of cultural superiority. Cultures that did not practice FGM have taken it up, in order to emulate other cultures that are considered more prestigious. And other cultures that did not practice FGM have taken it up, specifically in order to show that they are African and anti-colonial. Our attempts to legally ban FGS have not lessened cultural attachment. They've increased it.
The Egyptian Ban, in Particular
FGS has been effectively banned in Egyptian hostpitals for some time. The original ban was put into place in 1997, although it left a loophole for "exceptional cases" in which surgeons were allowed to operate.
As of 2000, 97% of Egyptian women were circumcized.
What do we know about those procedures? Almost all of them were performed without the benefit of hospital medical care.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to calculate the number of girls' deaths that are caused by female genital surgeries. However, the procedure is risky. Clitorodectomy involves surgery near nerves and arteries. There are manifold risks to health, including bleeding out, cutting major tissue, and passing AIDS through non-sterilized equipment.
There are two ways to control those health risks. One is to provide adequate medical care. The other is to eliminate female genital surgeries.
Certainly, the second is preferable. But in the past 10 years of the ban on female genital surgeries, the number of circumcisions does not appear to have moved. A survey in 1995 shows the same rate of 97% that the 2000 study shows. In fact, the rate showed to be constant in 1997, 2000, and 2003. The ban has not had ANY effect on the practice of female genital surgeries. It has only made it unlikely that gilrs will receive adequate medical care -- and soon it will be impossible for girls to receive it.
If these figures are accurate, supporting this ban seems insane. Our stated goal is to improve the lives of women. This ban does not improve the lives of women. It makes female genital surgeries, which are going to be carried out with or without the ban, more medically risky.
I am reminded of pro-life advocate's devotion to the idea of outlawing abortion, ostensibly to prevent abortion, even when they are unwilling to take other measures that would actually prevent abortions, such as funding government-provided birth control. Are we actually dedicated to the idea of improving women's health, safety, and quality of life? Or are we more attached to the symbollic ban of something we don't like, placing the idea of women's sexual pleasure above the possibility that fewer girls -- who are going to be cut anyway -- will die, be maimed, or infected with HIV?
Solutions that Actually Work
There are solutions that actually work to reduce the incidence of FGS. Some activists are working on finding ritual substitutes for genital cutting that can stand in for the procedure, allowing the ritual function to continue without the surgery.
By far the most successful direct method has been educating women. Educated women are less likely to have their daughters circumcized, even in Egypt (this has some breakdowns by class). Educating women specifically about health is likely to dispell some of the myths that have grown up around circumcision, by showing that uncircumcized women are clean, and fertile, and can have children who do not suffer from hydrocephaly or death. It can also show the dangers of FGS, including the horrific child birth statistics listed above.
However, none of these methods are likely to be permanently effective until women in Africa have economic self-determination. They need to have enough money to be able to make their own decisions about FGS.
One chilling thing that has happened in the past is that activists have been able to convince families that FGS is a damaging practice. The families agree not to circumcize their girls -- and then the girls discover that there is no room for them in their society. Such girls have often agreed to be circumcized so that they will have a place in their cultures.
Women who are economically dependent can not make independent decisions about FGS. Money and education will allow them the power to choose.
From the article:
Officially the practice, which affects both Muslim and Christian women in Egypt and goes back to the time of the pharoahs, was banned in 1997 but doctors were allowed to operate "in exceptional cases".
On Thursday, Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali decided to ban every doctor and member of the medical profession, in public or private establishments, from carrying out a clitoridectomy, a ministry press official told AFP.
On the Pandagon thread, a commenter called Dan writes: "Obviously, banning FGM is always a step in the right direction..."
I am not convinced that this is obvious. Nor am I necessarily convinced that this outcome is good news.
Some Background
One thing that one learns in the study of anthropology is that culture is a holistic entity. That means that you can't split it up into tiny bits and interact with those bits piece by piece. You can't hold up -- say -- dowry burnings and say "this is what dowry burning is, this is what it means" outside the context of the rest of the culture, anymore than you could hold up "I Love Lucy" to people who didn't understand Western gender roles or Western materialism or a Western sense of humor and expect them to understand it.
Female genital surgeries (FGS) are the same way; they exist within a cultural context that gives them meaning. The cultural contexts are different, so the meanings are different.
Let me take a brief digression to deal with the issue of terminology. I'm going to call the procedures FGS, which is the term that an anthropologist friend of mine favors when he teaches Intro to Anth. FGS is not a perfect term. However, it is an attempt to ameliorate some of the problems with other terms. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a term that many African women, and others, object to as stifling conversation because the term itself is alienating and inflammatory. Female circumcision is inaccurate, and leads to a false equivalency between male and female circumcision since it creates an ersatz linguistic link between the two procedures.* FGS is an attempt at a middle ground.
Female genital surgeries exist in many different forms, in many different cultural contexts. Here are some of the physical manifestations of the surgery:
- Nicking of the clitoris or removing the tip of the clitoris - relatively unusual
- Clitorodectomy - the most common form of FGS, involving removal of the clitoris. Often practiced along with the removal of the labia minora. May or may not be accompanied by a procedure intended to kill the clitoral nerve, such as pressing hot needles into the affected area.
- Infibulation - the removal of the clitoris, labia minora, and labia majora. The inner walls of the vagina are scraped and then sewn together, leaving a hole as small as a woman's pinky finger. This procedure can make menstruation and urination very difficult and lead to an increased probability of health complications like uterine prolapse. Tough, inelastic scar tissue is unyielding, making birth a dangerous process. Infibulated women must be cut open for sex and birth, and are often resewn afterward.
FGS are also done for a variety of reasons. Each culture that practices FGS will be practicing its own variation -- in terms of what the surgery consists of, and why it is done. For this reason, it's very difficult to talk about FGS as a monolith. And there's a good reason for that. FGS are not a monolith.
For instance, it's not uncommon to encounter feminists arguing that FGM is done to eliminate female sexual pleasure, or to prevent women from cheating. FGS are not done solely for either of these reasons, although they are some of the reasons stated by some cultures.
For the Kikuyu in Kenya, who practice clitorodectomy, FGS is practiced as a rite of passage in order to create a more visible separation between men and women. The clitoris, or masculine part, is removed to make the woman more womanly (conversely, the foreskin which is seen as being like the labia, is removed to make men more manly). Therefore, any attempts to eliminate FGS among the Kikuyu will have to react to these cultural motivations.
It would be inappropriate for the same solutions to be attempted among the Kikuyu as would be used in infibulation-practicing East African countries like Ethiopia and Somalia, countries that are very patriarchal and have clear interests in establishing inheritance laws. Unlike the FGS practiced by the Kikuyu, Ethiopian and Somalian infibulation appears to arise from an interest in protecting paternity rights (Carolyn Martin Shaw). They want to make sure that inheritance goes to genetic sons. Women - often upper-class women - bear the brunt of this (as they did in Europe with chastity belts, in the middle east with seclusion, in China with footbinding) because the patriarchy (supported by both men and women) views them as vessels for heirs. Reducing their ability to become pregnant by men who are not their husbands makes it more likely that inheritance will go to genetic heirs. Cultural practices grow around this desire. Later, these practices are fetishized.
Clitorodectomy and infibulation are both practiced by some cultures that believe the touch of a woman's uncircumcized genitals will sap a man of his ability to hold an erection, cause hydrocephally, and/or kill any infant the woman bears. This myth is enduring. You may think that decades of interaction with white women who are uncircumcized and yet able to bear children would have shaken the myth, but this is often not the case. White women often choose not to bear children or to bear very few children, which means that white women are often seen as infertile. Thus it is possible for African women from FGS-practicing cultures to interact with uncircumcized white women and still believe that circumcision is necessary for fertility.
The point of all this is: FGS is not something that exists in isolation. It exists for particular reasons. You don't get rid of those reasons by changing the law. All you do is create a situation in which the reasons still exist (need for a rite of passage, to ensure paternity, to ensure fertility), but the traditional method of meeting those needs has been outlawed.
Laws Against FGS Analogized to Laws Against Rape
On a Feministe thread about the ban, Jill writes in defense of the law. "I don’t think anyone is saying FGM is going to disappear," she writes, acknowledging that the ban will not be a cure. She goes on to say, "But it is important that they’ve outlawed it, since that reflects a profound social shift, and it allows people to be prosecuted for it... Rape laws don’t get rid of rape, but I’d rather have them than not."
I think Jill is erring in comparing FGS to rape. FGS is a culturally sanctioned, overt part of how the society functions. Rape is at best a covert part of our cultural function. While it holds up patriarchy by limiting women's movements, it also subverts patriarchy because it is a threat to paternal property. FGS is not like that.
In my opinion, a better analogy would be to compare FGS to - say -- capture marriage as its practiced in Nepal, in which a young man kidnaps a young woman and marries her by force. To western eyes, these marriages look superficially abhorrent (and they're certainly not 100% good). But we're missing the subtleties of the capture marriages. These marriages are often arranged before hand and approved by both families as a way of allowing a young couple to marry when they do not have the financial resources to put on a huge wedding. In many (I think most) capture marriages, the woman is not actually in danger, or experiencing surprise; she feigns both ritualistically. However, the bride is not always told of the capture marriage beforehand. Capture marriages are a culturally sanctioned process which serves particular culturally sanctioned purposes (allowing a way for the children of families who have fallen on hard times to marry), and which puts the interest of families above the interests of the woman.
It would be possible to make laws against capture marriage, in ostensible defense of the woman's independence. However, the kinds of laws that tend to get enacted in situations like these are made with a western gaze. We see the surface effect of a capture marriage and apply it to known situations -- the biblical Sabine women, for instance. We aren't looking at the reasons why capture marriages exist, or how they are rooted in the culture. Addressing the symptom by making capture marriages illegal may actually make the situation worse for women.
And this is what we have seen, time and time again, with regard to legal remedy for FGS.
A Brief Overview of Some Historical Consequences of Outlawing FGS
Missionaries who got down to Africa really didn't like FGS. Well, I don't either. Many of them did what seems like the logical thing to do when you are in ostensible control of a group of people who are doing something that you think is a major violation of human rights, moral decency, and God's law. They decided to ban it.
Early bans had a number of consequences (not all of which occurred in all places).
- Circumcision began to be performed on younger and younger girls. Because it was less likely that missionaries or western colonial agents would be messing in the lives of infant or very young girls, and because infants and very young girls would be less likely to understand what was going on well enough to discuss it with missionaries or western colonial agents, it made sense to do it on younger girls. (Here, again, we reach the problem with discussing FGS as a monolith. Some cultures started out performing FGS on younger girls. But many didn't, and many of those started performing the surgeries on younger and younger girls.)
Why is this a problem for women? Among other things, it decreases the likelihood of sexual function. Among the Kikuyu of Kenya, circumcision rituals were proceded with kinds of genital stimulation and body play that appear to have been intended to teach women how to orgasm once they had been cut. Adolescent girls and boys would wrap their bodies in tight strips of leather and rub up on one another. This kind of all-body stimulation is likely to have been instructive in helping women adjust to the altered physical sensations of a circumcized body. When circumcisions are done at a younger age, these kinds of rituals are likely to decline or disappear altogether.
Women are also much more likely to acheive sexual pleasure after circumcision if they have orgasmed before circumcision. This is, obviously, more likely to be the case in girls who are adolescents than girls who are toddlers or infants.
Circumcisions and younger ages also contribute to: - The destruction of social practices that surround circumcision, such as coming of age rituals, that provide context and meaning to the procedure. These contexts may not have anything to do with sexual pleasure (which is why I'm making this its own category), but are likely to have to do with community building and the function of a healthy culture. Destroying these rituals, but KEEPING the circumcision, is the opposite of good. The better option, of course, is to figure out how to keep the rituals while changing their object (as some activists have worked on doing).
- Circumcision was often driven underground, to be done in private, furtive spaces, which makes it difficult for the procedures to be done in clean, healthy ways that minimize risk to the girls.
Perhaps the most important effect of banning FGS is that it created a dichotomy, the effects of which activists are still dealing with today. It underlined the idea that female genital surgeries are African, and not practicing female genital surgeries is American. Not to practice female genital surgery is to capitulate to colonialists. To practice FGS is to be genuinely African.
When Western feminists insist on framing the discourse about FGS on our terms, we make this problem worse. When we emphasize statements like, "African women are being denied sexual pleasure," as if it were the worst part of the situation, we grind home this dichotomy.
It has been repeatedly proven to be much more effective to talk about FGS in terms of women's and children's health. FGS kills women and children. According to a study linked by Feministe last year, women who've undergone infibulation are 50% more likely to die or to lose their infants than women who have not. Women who've undergone clitorodectomy are 15% more likely to die or to lose their infants in childbirth than women who have not.
This is the kind of information that tends to persuade women, because it is culturally situated. It addresses what they are worried about. Sexual pleasure tends to be coded as decadent and western. It is therefore not only not of concern, but can be specifically opposed. It's therefore not always useful to talk to African women about it. Our insistence on framing the narrative in our terms can damage African women's actual lives.
Because while sexual pleasure is a big deal, in my personal opinion, poor childbirth outcomes are probably a bigger deal. Spreading HIV through the use of dirty razor blades is a bigger deal. Injury and lameness are bigger deals. Uterine prolapse is a bigger deal. Death is a bigger deal.
There are real world harms to the ways in which westerners have typically framed debates about FGS. The dichotomy I mentioned earlier, where FGS is coded as genuine, African, and anti-colonial, gained teeth during the pan-African movement. Since that time, in some places, FGS has become a marker of cultural superiority. Cultures that did not practice FGM have taken it up, in order to emulate other cultures that are considered more prestigious. And other cultures that did not practice FGM have taken it up, specifically in order to show that they are African and anti-colonial. Our attempts to legally ban FGS have not lessened cultural attachment. They've increased it.
The Egyptian Ban, in Particular
FGS has been effectively banned in Egyptian hostpitals for some time. The original ban was put into place in 1997, although it left a loophole for "exceptional cases" in which surgeons were allowed to operate.
As of 2000, 97% of Egyptian women were circumcized.
What do we know about those procedures? Almost all of them were performed without the benefit of hospital medical care.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to calculate the number of girls' deaths that are caused by female genital surgeries. However, the procedure is risky. Clitorodectomy involves surgery near nerves and arteries. There are manifold risks to health, including bleeding out, cutting major tissue, and passing AIDS through non-sterilized equipment.
There are two ways to control those health risks. One is to provide adequate medical care. The other is to eliminate female genital surgeries.
Certainly, the second is preferable. But in the past 10 years of the ban on female genital surgeries, the number of circumcisions does not appear to have moved. A survey in 1995 shows the same rate of 97% that the 2000 study shows. In fact, the rate showed to be constant in 1997, 2000, and 2003. The ban has not had ANY effect on the practice of female genital surgeries. It has only made it unlikely that gilrs will receive adequate medical care -- and soon it will be impossible for girls to receive it.
If these figures are accurate, supporting this ban seems insane. Our stated goal is to improve the lives of women. This ban does not improve the lives of women. It makes female genital surgeries, which are going to be carried out with or without the ban, more medically risky.
I am reminded of pro-life advocate's devotion to the idea of outlawing abortion, ostensibly to prevent abortion, even when they are unwilling to take other measures that would actually prevent abortions, such as funding government-provided birth control. Are we actually dedicated to the idea of improving women's health, safety, and quality of life? Or are we more attached to the symbollic ban of something we don't like, placing the idea of women's sexual pleasure above the possibility that fewer girls -- who are going to be cut anyway -- will die, be maimed, or infected with HIV?
Solutions that Actually Work
There are solutions that actually work to reduce the incidence of FGS. Some activists are working on finding ritual substitutes for genital cutting that can stand in for the procedure, allowing the ritual function to continue without the surgery.
By far the most successful direct method has been educating women. Educated women are less likely to have their daughters circumcized, even in Egypt (this has some breakdowns by class). Educating women specifically about health is likely to dispell some of the myths that have grown up around circumcision, by showing that uncircumcized women are clean, and fertile, and can have children who do not suffer from hydrocephaly or death. It can also show the dangers of FGS, including the horrific child birth statistics listed above.
However, none of these methods are likely to be permanently effective until women in Africa have economic self-determination. They need to have enough money to be able to make their own decisions about FGS.
One chilling thing that has happened in the past is that activists have been able to convince families that FGS is a damaging practice. The families agree not to circumcize their girls -- and then the girls discover that there is no room for them in their society. Such girls have often agreed to be circumcized so that they will have a place in their cultures.
Women who are economically dependent can not make independent decisions about FGS. Money and education will allow them the power to choose.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Some Thoughts on Khaled Hosseini, reading from A Thousand Splendid Suns
I went to a reading by Khaled Hosseini last night, at the bay area Book Group Expo. Khaled read from a section of his new book A Thousand Splendid Suns, which someone described as being the history of Afghanistan viewed through the eyes of two women.
The reading was fascinating/frightening: it detailed the search of a pregnant woman and her surrogate mother for a hospital that would take them in while she gave birth. Women had been banned from all the hospitals in Afghanistan, bar one, and that one lacked water, electricity, and basic medical supplies. When the woman's baby turned out to be in the breech position, the doctor apologized for the lack of anasthetic, and then continued to do a cesarian section anyway.
Khaled Hosseini is a physician who has worked internationally; consequently, the medical details had a frightening heft. He described the way in which the pregnant woman's mouth stretched back and frothed with pain.
As he passed into this description, the audience, which was full, began to shift. The demographic was mostly women, but with more men than last year (I'd make a guess at 25-30%). Everyone was uncomfortable. As Hosseini described the doctor's whispered apologies, I heard people exclaiming to each other "There isn't going to be any anasthetic...!" Everyone appeared to find the idea shocking, unthinkable. Hosseini himself said that when he had gone into Afganistan as a physician, hoping to lend aid, he'd been shocked to hear from doctors that the sheer number of injuries that had been incurred by the war when the warlords entered Afghanistan meant that physicians were constantly running out of basic supplies. A doctor told him that it had, during the war, become expected to perform cesarian sections, and even amputations, without anasthetic. "As a doctor from the west," said Hosseni, "the idea was wild..."
The reading was fascinating/frightening: it detailed the search of a pregnant woman and her surrogate mother for a hospital that would take them in while she gave birth. Women had been banned from all the hospitals in Afghanistan, bar one, and that one lacked water, electricity, and basic medical supplies. When the woman's baby turned out to be in the breech position, the doctor apologized for the lack of anasthetic, and then continued to do a cesarian section anyway.
Khaled Hosseini is a physician who has worked internationally; consequently, the medical details had a frightening heft. He described the way in which the pregnant woman's mouth stretched back and frothed with pain.
As he passed into this description, the audience, which was full, began to shift. The demographic was mostly women, but with more men than last year (I'd make a guess at 25-30%). Everyone was uncomfortable. As Hosseini described the doctor's whispered apologies, I heard people exclaiming to each other "There isn't going to be any anasthetic...!" Everyone appeared to find the idea shocking, unthinkable. Hosseini himself said that when he had gone into Afganistan as a physician, hoping to lend aid, he'd been shocked to hear from doctors that the sheer number of injuries that had been incurred by the war when the warlords entered Afghanistan meant that physicians were constantly running out of basic supplies. A doctor told him that it had, during the war, become expected to perform cesarian sections, and even amputations, without anasthetic. "As a doctor from the west," said Hosseni, "the idea was wild..."
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
A Frequently Asked Question
Last weekend at a dinner party attended by several sf writers (including me), the question arose, “Why aren’t people out in the streets?” This question is so frequently asked that no one even bothers anymore to finish stating the question with the objective being “out in the streets” would presumably serve. And in fact it’s so familiar a question that I’ve never really taken a good look at it. No doubt it will be raised at WisCon this year, just as it was last year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)