/Rant mode ON
Please allow me to be simplistic for a moment.
When I looked at this issue, it wasn't patriachal control of women's sexuality that upset me. I didn't start pondering the nature of gender oppression, postmodern cultural relativism, the meaning of communal vs individualistic societies, colonial repression of traditional cultures, or spirituality in sexuality. My response was a bit more basic than that. It was to gag. Why? No, not because it's a practise of an alien culture that doesn't like Americans and is made up of faraway people with lots of melanin. ( < - sarcasm!)
Allow me now to go out on a limb and propose that a normal human being will agree with the following statements:
To deliberately cause agonising pain in another person is a bad thing. You should not do it.
To deliberately cause traumatic, chronically painful, debilitating and potentially life threatening injury in another person is a bad thing. You should not do it.
Now what exactly is the complication in this issue?
I would be intruiged to hear the rationale held by anyone who disagrees with the above, incidentally. I suspect it would be along the lines of "Oh, it's part of their culture, and everyone knows black girls from weird cultures are so supported by their community/spiritually enlightened (read: totally unlike us in every respect, they're not in any way the same species and don't deserve the same consideration) they don't feel agonising, traumatic pain when you slash the most sensitive part of their body with a knife"
/Rant mode possibly off...
Ok. Sorry about the anger and the sarcasm. I have been told to try reasoning. I am afraid that some people will still find the idea that every person is entitled to safety from deliberate physical injury to be noxious cultural imperialism. There's nothing I can do about that. But ok, here's an attempt at reason in a very unreasonable issue.
I am labouring under the understanding that we are dealing, here, with an activity that risks the health and lives of, and causes serious trauma, in both the medical and psychological sense, to intelligent, self-aware members of species homo sapiens.
It would also seem fair to state that this activity in fact is a contradictory exception to the basic idea that underpins human moral codes, including the ones on which these societies are based. This basic idea is that to cause suffering and injury is wrong. Otherwise, what is the problem with murder, rape, assault and other such charming activities? If the individual is not worthy of protection from harm, such things would perfectly allowable. No society I am aware of feels this way.
So why is genital mutilation an exception still carried out? Nobody can contest that it does not cause medically provable harm, not only to the victim but sometimes her children. You will note that no comparable injury is inflicted on men. Many people have a problem with male circumcision, but were the equivalent of an infibulation carried out on a man he would be left with no penis or scrotum whatsoever.
However the practise started, it continues because its subjects are those who do not have the ability within their society to speak out and challenge its ideas. It is now being continued purely because it has been done for a long time. Why does this excuse violence? People of my ethnicity and culture were persecuting and discriminating against Jews for hundreds of years. Does this make it a valued cultural tradition that should be continued? For that matter, are traditional tribal racism and genocide valuable traditions? Would a culture of human sacrifice be ok? Does the fact their society not value the individual make that individual worthless? Does objecting to violence and brutality in any culture, including your own, make you a bad, imperialist person?
Back to the people who practise the violence under consideration, I am not concerned with the bulk of their culture. I am not concerned with traditional community structure. I don't believe they are evil and wrong, and that I am better. I believe they are normal human beings with respect for others, with one strange and distressing exception being perpetuated merely because it has always been done. I don't want these women to eat Big Macs, have five boyfriends and reject their religion. I don't what them to believe what i believe and live like I live, although I wouldn't mind them having the choice. I do object to them being hurt.
Violence is violence, no matter what the excuse. Suffering should not be perpetuated just because it was caused in the past, to people who had no real option of protesting. People who are individual human beings worthy of the same respect and compassion as any Westerner. They are not just subjects of some interesting cultural practise, the are people as worthy of safety from violence and harm as anyone else. To suggest otherwise is no better than racism.