multicentered feminism

Multicentered Feminism

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Multicentered Feminism Revisiting the “Female Genital

Mutilation” Discourse

MariaCaterina La Barbera

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Proprietà letteraria riservata Finito di stampare nel luglio 2009 Compostampa di M. Savasta - Palermo ISBN 978-88-903912-6-2

Disegno di copertina di Marta Amigo, http://web.mac.com/martaamigo


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Table of Contents

Introduction .............................................................. 11 Part 1 Multicentered Feminism 1.1 Feminism vs. Multiculturalism? ............................. 23 1.2 Gender: What’s in a Name? .................................. 33 1.3 Gender as a Category of Analysis of Political Theory .................................................... 43 1.4 Where Does Difference Come From?.................. 54 1.5 The Different Voices of Multicentered Feminism. 63 1.5.1 Black Feminism .................................................. 66 1.5.2 Chicana Feminism............................................... 70 1.5.3 Postcolonial Feminism ........................................ 73 1.5.4 Islamic Feminism ................................................ 77 1.6 Intersectional Gender as a Key Concept ............... 81 1.7 Locationality: the In/Out-sider Perspective............ 91 1.8 Preliminary Conclusions ...................................... 100 Part 2 Revisiting the “Female Genital Mutilation” Discourse

Section 2.1 Terminology, Classification, and Legislation 2.1.1 The Problem of Naming: Ritual Female Genital Cuttings .................................... 109 2.1.2 The WHO Classification ................................. 119


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2.1.3 Anti-FGM Laws in France, UK, USA, and Italy: A Comparative Analysis .................................... 123

2.1.3.1 France ............................................................. 126 2.1.3.2 United Kingdom............................................. 133 2.1.3.3 United States of America ............................... 138 2.1.3.4 The European Parliament Resolution ........... 141 2.1.3.5 Italy ................................................................. 143 Section 2.2 Understanding Ritual Female Genital Cuttings in Western Countries 2.2.1 Why Are Ritual Female Genital Cuttings Practiced? ........................................ 147 2.2.1.1 Religion........................................................... 148 2.2.1.2 Hygiene and Aesthetic ................................... 149 2.2.1.3 Socio-symbolic Function ................................ 150 2.2.2 Learning from Colonial History..................... 155 2.2.3 Further Meanings in the Western Context .... 158 2.2.4 Breast Implantation: Distinguishing between Lawful and Unlawful Non-Therapeutic Intervention ...................... 161 2.2.5 A Comparison with Male Non-Therapeutic Circumcision ..................... 166 2.2.6 Ritual Female Genital Cuttings vs. Genitalplasty .............................................. 171 2.2.6.1 Clitoridectomy in the Victorian Age .............. 172 2.2.6.2 Designer Vagina ............................................. 177 2.2.6.3 Intersex Surgery.............................................. 179 2.2.7 Alleged Perils of the Symbolic Cut ................ 183


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Section 2.3 Multicentered Feminism and the Accommodation of Gender and Cultural Differences 2.3.1 Challenging the North-West vs. South-East Binarism.................................... 189 2.3.2 On the Concept of Health ................................ 201 2.3.3 A Matter of Choice............................................ 204 2.3.4 Towards a New Legislation ............................... 212 Annex 1 1. Statistical Annex: Comparative Data .................... 219 Annex 2 1. Legislative Annex: Anti-FGM Western Legislation (Chronological Order) ........................ 225 a) France ..................................................................... 225 b) United Kingdom .................................................... 227 c) United States of America ....................................... 231 d) California................................................................ 232 e) European Union..................................................... 236 f) Italy ......................................................................... 252 2. The Proposal of Female Symbolic Circumcision in Italy .............................................. 254 a) The Decision of the Regional Council of Tuscany..... 254 b) The Opinion of the Regional Bioethics Commission ... 260 Bibliography............................................................ 281


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Aknowldgement This book is the result of my PhD research in the Human Rights program at the University of Palermo (Italy), which I have then furthered during a postdoctoral research at the Antrhopology Department of the University of California, Berkeley. I express gratefulness to all those professors and colleagues that, in different ways, have contributed to the development of this research project: Isabel Trujillo, Alessandra Facchi, Francesco Viola, Bruno Celano, Gianfrancesco Zanetti, Guido Smorto, Francesco Biondo, Jesus Ballestreros, Ricardo Guibourg, Renate Holub, Saba Mahmood, Ramon Grosfguel, Angela Harris, Laura Nader, and Margarita Del Olmo Pintado. I would also like to thank all whose love and friendship supported me during the years of research.


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Introduction The main focuses of this volume are feminisms and multiculturalism. Particularly, my first and founding question is whether or not gender equality is truly incompatible with traditional culture. As feminism and traditional cultural are often understood as conflicting, searching for gender equality within traditional cultures is often perceived as a paradox. However, my main commitment here is explaining why this is not paradoxical at all, neither theoretically nor practically and I approach the revisitation of female circumcision/ genital mutilation/surgery/cutting discourse as test-case. In order to do so, I believe crucial understanding the concepts at the stake in this debate: my starting point is analyzing such a founding concept for feminism as gender is. In fact, understanding what gender means is a crucial step for exploring, on one hand, the meaning of equality and its inextricable links with difference. On the other hand, I believe that the concept of gender offers a key for re-interpreting the conceptual tools adopted in approaching difference, such as neutrality, impartiality, and laicity of the State. Ultimately, dealing with the concept of gender involves examining the relations between identity and culture, cultural or religious belonging and liberty, and consequently the cohabitation among different cultures. In a sense, given the multiplicity of feminism, the multicultural values are inherent to feminism itself.

My analysis takes into account how gender has been used as category of analysis for criticizing the neutrality and gender-blindness of classical political theory and how the concept of difference has been addressed in feminist thought. In doing so, I address the necessity that theories of justice incorporate a gender


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perspective, abandoning the categories of universality, generality, and abstraction based on the conception of individual as single, free, autonomous, and self-possessed. Instead of being conceived as expression of autonomy, the rights should be viewed as revealing the individual vulnerability, weakness, and interdependency as well as the need for protection. Thus, from the feminist perspective relationality, interdependency, contextuality, subjectivity, and diversity should be placed as fundamental categories for legal methodology.

While welcoming these concepts and methodologies from the legal feminism, I also deem necessary to refer to the disagreement within feminism on the source of gender difference: whether gender or rather subordination is the source of difference is a question that has framed one of the most fundamental quarrels within feminism. I deal with the claim of many feminists urging to think about gender in connection with race/ethnicity, culture, nationality, class, and sexual orientation. They also warn that the white, middle-class, heterosexual, Christian-formed, and able-bodied experience is often assumed as a norm, without specifying anything else. Indeed, this set of assumptions recreates the same impasse that feminists criticized of classical political theory, i.e. the neutrality hiding a privileged position assumed as model, neglecting the different perspectives, and ignoring that inequalities are socially constructed rather than merely resulting from inherent differences.

Becoming aware of the perils of essentialization, I approach a de-essentialized notion of gender analyzing the interactive causal relation between biology and societal construction. Such a concept explains that the undeniable biological differences between sexes are


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understandable only as cultural, social, historical, and located facts because the body is always viewed through the lens of social interpretation and humans cannot exist but culturally. As product of social interpretation not merely tied to biological facts, gender is constitutively open to change and contestation. Gender is a process in continuous becoming and thus should be understood as variable and fluid, always re-establishing new borders. Thanks to such a concept it is possible understanding that people in the world are different not only in social expectation about thinking, feeling, and acting, but in perceiving the body too.

I believe this a pivotal finding for understanding ritual female genital cuttings and revisiting the patriarchal oppression - assumed as unquestionable - supposedly underlying these practices.

Rather than thinking about ‘Woman’, a de-essentialized notion of gender leads to represents women as a map of intersecting similarities and differences, in which the body do not disappear but assume historical significance, recognizing it as variable which changes in the different context. A multiple difference should be asserted, rejecting one single method inclusive of all kinds of differences. Rather an effective strategy seems to be working on the construction of coalitions, networks, and alliances fit to go together for shared goals tailored - without demanding ideological unity - for the specific task from time to time.

In this respect, it seems to me fundamental paying attention to the multiple voices of feminism that I describe using the umbrella expression of ‘multicentered feminism’. I describe multicentered feminism as an


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evolving body of theories and pattern of action that - far from offering a singular or unified theory - proposes a conceptual framework through which understanding women’s locationality within multiple and interlocking systems of subordination. Multicentered feminism stresses that gender is constructed by a range of interlocking inequalities, and that is inherently intersectional insofar as it is differently experienced depending on social location, namely race, culture, religion, nationality, class, and sexuality. In doing so, multicentered feminism offers a way to approach not just differences, but also the way in which difference and subordination intersect and are historically and socially constructed. Furthermore, assuming the marginalized locations as epistemological standpoint creates alternative ways of understanding the social world and the experiences of different women. Multicentered feminism includes emergent approaches developed mainly by lived experiences of women from different national, cultural, and ethnic groups whose marginalized social location provide them with a particular perspective on self and society: Black, Chicanas, Post-colonial, and Muslim women.

Thanks to Black feminists I became aware of the danger of an essentialized gender perspective: the attempt to extract the essential feminine ‘self’, as they powerfully show, can lead to ignore the experience of non-white women or deals with them as variations of the white norm. They argue that the idea of ‘otherness’ inevitably reflects the perspective of who made it, i.e. the dominant Western perspective of white, heterosexual, and middle-class people. Adopting the notion of ‘multiple consciousness’, Black feminists describe the causes of oppression as not only linked to gender, rather


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connected to an inextricable web, made up of race, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexual orientation, social class and economic situation.

Following Chicana theory I understood how the borderland/las fronteras can become epistemological places from which theorizing the subordination. Like Black feminists, Chicana feminists focus on the multiplicity and oppositionality of consciousness as a crucial concept in order to understand social inequalities. The oppositional consciousness holds multiple identity axes and social perspectives, aiming to transform the existing subordinated material conditions into sources of liberating processes. Becoming a ground for founding new representation of identity, the ambiguous and polyvalent space of multiple cultural belongings is transformed from an initial condition of oppression into a site of emancipation and self-affirmation.

Listening to the voices of Postcolonial feminists - criticizing the use of the category of Woman as homogenous group a priori defined - I gained a new perspective on the so-called ‘Third-world’ women. Using the category of ‘colonization’ they describe how the production of a particular cultural discourse about the so-called ‘Third world’ produces the exploitation of their experiences. Postcolonial feminists focuses on women’s life in post-colonial state as well as in the diasporic migration, representing women’s difficulties in emerging both in national narratives and in minority group’s assertion in Western countries. Postcolonial feminists, thus, claim for dismantling the relation of ‘structural domination’, subverting the strategies of ‘discursive suppression’ of the heterogeneity of the subject of analysis.


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Considering Islamic feminism I learned how tradition can be transformed from the within. While in Western laypeople’s eyes gender equality and religion - Islam particularly - seems harshly compatible, many educated middle-class women in Muslim countries have not broken away from their Islamic faith and their religious identity. Rather, they claim that the Islamic Holy Texts do not involve women subordination, whose theorization and actualization has been the mere result of the male-centered interpretation. Given the peculiar linkage between spirituality and politics in Islam, a gender-oriented theological reformation involves relevant political changes in the same direction. Islamic feminism offers a particularly interesting example that shows the multiplicity of the paths for gender equality, which for being effective must be rooted in the community.

Taking into account all these different voices of feminism, I use the concept of ‘intersectional gender’ as a key to understand the differences among women. Using ‘intersectional’ as an attribute of ‘gender’ allows me to express the idea that gender is inherently made up by class, race, ethnicity, and culture, all of which work together simultaneously shaping gender in a non-predefined way. The intersectional gender - meant not as additive rather as constitutive process - underlines that gender oppression is originated and interconnected along with the others in inextricable ways.

Listening to all the different voices of feminism, we should think about migrant women practicing ritual female genital cuttings in Western countries as subjects that from their multiple and oppositional consciousness perceive their situation as not only linked to gender, that is rather nested in an inextricable web, made up of race,


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ethnicity, nationality culture, religion, social class, economic and political situation.

Such an approach allows recognizing women not as victims of social structures, but as agents dynamically interacting. Paying attention to the different location of women within the complexity of social structure in terms of class, race, and ethnicity is possible to acknowledge that women are at the same time both oppressed and oppressors of other women and men. Moreover, taking into account the different location of women allows challenging the binarism in which the feminism versus multiculturalism debate has been framed, jointly analyzing the different kinds of oppression for women in multicultural society. Through the concept of intersectional gender it is possible analyzing the inequalities suffered by women within minorities, taking into account, on one hand, the structures of subordination within subordinate groups and on the other hand the inequalities of power among women according to class, race, and ethnicity.

Gender, race, and class are always interconnected in a way that it is not only senseless not to concurrently take into account all the forms of discriminations, but also counterproductive. As a matter of fact, the attempt of fighting race-, gender- and class-based discrimination separately often leads to the paradoxical and perverse effect of creating new discriminations.

Yet, I want to point out that conceptualizing gender as intersectional does not mean putting gender in the basket along with the other categories, neglecting that gender cross all of them. Rather, it does mean on one hand that gender as social and contextual category is


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meaningless without taking into account all the others factors constituting identity, and on the other hand that the significance of gender changes when interacting with all the other categories. A integrated approach is thus required to understand the intertwined factors of discrimination that - as a network of forces and barriers systematically interconnected - oppress, discriminate, and silence women.

In this respect, locationality becomes a crucial concept that positioning in time and space women’s body allows to understand individual experiences as shaped by the location in hierarchically relations of production and reproduction of power structuring social interactions, and by the material conditions of their lives. This seems an especially effective tool for defining the concept of identity in the post-colonial diaspora, and particularly the psycho-political location of migrant women.

Given the actual asymmetry, a systematic interrogation of the terms utilized would be required and being wary of speaking for women whose culture is the object of scrutiny. In looking at ritual female genital cuttings, this means recognizing that these practices are intertwined with the history of colonialism, racism, and neo-imperialism, and not a simple result of gender oppression.

Only recognizing the privilege of Western voice it will be possible make room for the voices of African women. To avoid the risk of the ethnocentrism we should take differences and pluralities seriously, rejecting the notion of singular category of gender and to recognize its inherent and intersectional heterogeneity and multiplicity. This means focusing on located, particular, and historically embodied conditions of


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women, stressing the centrality of the single and concrete context in which they live. In this way we could reach a goal that I consider crucial for multicultural politics: to abandon white, middle class and Western perspective, and to articulate, negotiate, and recognize negated identities. Taking into account the intersectionality of gender, class, and race/ethnicity shows how one may be an insider and an outsider simultaneously in relation to different dimension of power and hierarchical difference. The concept of intersectional gender - to the extent that makes clear the complexity of each identity - can aid in understanding women’s positionality in this debate, perplexing the ‘either insider or outsider’ perspective.

Approaching from this perspective the female circumcision/genital mutilation/surgery/cutting discourse, I started calling into question the very name, thinking that the name mutilation is incorrect at least to the extent that is unable of representing the practicing communities’ point of view. So, the first step for me has been that of naming the practices in a purportedly neutral way - or at least less evaluative - than calling them ‘mutilation’. I have been looking for an adequate name for most part of these years of doctoral research, considering naming the first act of knowledge, and I at last opted for ‘ritual female genital cuttings’: this term aims to be neutral in the evaluation of the intervention, stressing the rituality as fundamental component of these practices, and pointing out - through the plural form - the multiplicity of different intervention involved under this entry that vary in invasiveness, health complications, and meaning.

Yet, analyzing the Western legislation it is evident that no distinction has been made either among the several types of cutting, or between adult women and


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young girls. Vice versa, a relevant distinction has been made between male and female genital cuttings as well as between ritual genital cuttings and cosmetic genital surgeries performed on Western women in the hospitals. I inquire the reasons of such a double standard, raising the questions that orient my research: how to name these practices? Why are they practiced? Is criminal law an effective tool? How should Western liberal societies regulate these practices? What can we learn from the anti-FGM banning by colonial powers in African countries? Do ritual female genital cuttings get further significance in the Western context? Are female genital surgeries an African anomaly? Is breast implantation different from ritual female genital cuttings? To what extent are ritual female genital cuttings different from male circumcision? What kind of reasons does justify the disparity of treatment between newborn male and female? Which is the symbolic function of law? How does law model the perception of social phenomena? Why did the proposal of symbolic circumcision fail in Western countries? Are there alternative solutions to the criminal ban?

Though ritual female genital cuttings have been lively debated in public press and academics fora splitting up the public opinion, I claim that within this debate everyone seems entitled to speak less than the subjects whose rights are the stake. I believe that if the aim is to guarantee human rights, who is supposed to suffer a violation should be invite to talk and listened to. In approaching one of most controversial topic related to cultural differences from a multicentered feminist perspective, my main commitment is addressing a theoretical and practical interdisciplinary perspective that allows making differences visible as diversity, and not as violation of Western standards.

multicentered feminism

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