WMST 2500 On Women: Introduction to Women’s Studies

Follow up on October 5 & 6, 1999 lectures

An informal exercise based on comparison:

On the practice of female circumcision and the practice of non-medical cosmetic plastic surgery (breast enlargements, liposuction, labia restructuring, etc.):

N.B.: The point of this exercise is not principally to discuss the wrongfulness or rightfulness of female circumcision or that of cosmetic plastic surgery separately, (though that will be an important topic for other discussions in the course of the year). The point of this exercise is to compare our reactions to these two practices. It is inspired by the writings of Sherene Razack on these issues.

Please reflect upon the following questions:

· Why does one practice, namely female circumcision, get a lot of attention in the media and in public debates in Canada in general, and not the other?

· Why is one practice discussed in moralistic terms, and not the other?

· To what extent is our response to each practice influenced by the discursive structures of the society we live in (i.e. the categories, stereotypes, and the values associated with these discursive structures and the system of oppression/domination that define them)?

· Let’s grant that we all live within a system that defines the discursive structures available to us to apprehend, talk about and reflect upon our world and our place in it. To the extent that these are THE discursive structures we have, they are necessary for us to survive (i.e. we cannot but appeal to them). In this context, and the context of our discussion of female circumcision and cosmetic plastic surgery, reflect about the following. What does it mean to have a ‘choice’ as a ‘Western’ woman? Is it that different from having a ‘choice’ as a so-called ‘Third world’ woman or woman from another culture? What is the nature of our choice? What are the limitations set on our capacity for choosing by the discursive structures to which we are subjected? To what extent and how can we circumvent them?

· Back to the practices of female circumcision and cosmetic plastic surgery: To what extent can it be said that our differential treatment of each of these practices is influenced by a system (of domination and oppression) that operates both to marginalize and ‘pathologize’ the practices of women of other cultures, and to keep women within our (Western) culture subservient to the accepted patriarchal norms of appropriate female representation and femininity? To what extent could it be said that the media-encouraged focus on female circumcision, and the highly moralistic and condemning tone of the public debate that ensues serve to obliterate and render invisible the plight of all (regardless of racial/cultural origins) women in Canada, and hence is a functional part of a system that is set to keep us all quiet (or blind) about the plight of Canadian women?

· Can you see some usefulness, in terms of the possibility of enhancing our capacity to ‘transgress’ the diverse systemic discursive barriers we are subjected to, at paying attention to the specificity of, and exchanging about, the different ways in which women from different parts of the world and diverse cultures express ourselves and organize ourselves to combat the systems which generate our oppression?

This exercise serves 3 important aims:

1. To help us investigate whether and the extent to which, in our assessment of non-Western cultural practices that affect women’s emancipation, we are drawn to appeal blindly to double-standards dictated to us through the discursive systems within which we live, in a way that leads us to reproduce prejudicial and mistaken assumptions of the superiority of Western culture and Western cultural practices; that this is even more likely to happen when the cultural practices in question are identifiable to groups traditionally defined (in the West) in reductionist racial terms.

2. To explicate and illustrate how that contributes to painting women from other countries and cultures as deviant, marginal, worse off than us; and hence perpetuates negative stereotypical conceptions of women from other cultures; to show how this, amongst other things is at the root of ‘other feminists’ criticism of feminist theories developed from the sole point of view of white women, and how it keeps us separate and disempowers us all.

3. To show that a comparative reflection on both female circumcision and cosmetic plastic surgery (or mutilation?), and other comparative reflections of that kind could be useful tools to:

-enable us to ‘bridge the gap’ between strict ‘white, middle class, heterosexual women standpoint-inspired feminisms’ and feminisms inspired by the experience of women from other cultures/other ways of life/other parts of the world/etc. (black feminisms, lesbian feminist thought, ect.);

-To enhance our understanding of the roots of women’s oppression and the modes of operation of the social systems (media controlled public debate, in this case) that effect it, in a way that can be fruitful and constructive rather than divisive.