A Liberal Quandary

Tens of thousands of girls every year have their genitals mutilated for religious or cultural reasons, but the men doing this are all Muslim Arabs or Africans... What’s a good progressive to think?! I, as a Liberal, have to actively support any culture that’s non-Caucasian or Christian, but these people are chopping up the sex organs of women for "moral" reasons...

Zosia Bielski, National Post
Published: Saturday, August 25, 2007

Academia's fixation on cultural sensitivity is changing the debate around female genital mutilation, with a growing number of professors and women's rights activists becoming hesitant to condemn the practice.

Where feminists rallied against the operation from the pages of Ms. magazine in the 1970s, today's critics are infinitely more cautious, with most suggesting that the Western world butt out until Muslim African communities are ready to reconsider what they are doing to their daughters.

The shift in attitudes about the practice-- which in the worst of cases involves the carving out of a woman's clitoris and inner labia and can cause lifelong urinary tract infections, sterility and even death -- comes at a time when high-profile victims of the operation such as writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali and model Waris Dirie, both Somalis, have launched very public campaigns against the practice.

"Yeah, but CHRISTIANS did this, that, and the other thing, blah blah" in 5... 4... 3...