"Global feminism: Whose agenda?"
By Patience Akpan
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

An Excerpt

The language: The practice has always been referred to as "barbaric." And my
usual question has been, "barbaric on whose say-so?" Is it barbaric because
"western feminists" and their elitist counterparts in the Third World say
so? Is this the only way we can linguistically frame this debate, or
describe this practice? This is the word that was used to describe us
Africans and our way of life when the colonialists (under the guise of
Christian mission) first arrived our shores. In fact, not only our way of
life was barbaric, WE were barbaric. And now we have unreflectively taken on
this ethnocentric language in our discourse about female circumcision,
rituals of widowhood and other such practices that seem "alien" to the West.
We have allowed western activists around this issue area to set the agenda
for us and we have taken on the discourse without reflecting on its
linguistic and cultural implications. Let's consider for a moment, a
practice that I consider absolutely odd here in North America.

On a Saturday morning, parents herd their children off to McDonalds to stuff
them with junk food. In my society, this is considered an appalling
lifestyle. What kind of parent would do such an "immoral" thing? For many
women who work outside the home, and who may not always have time for
elaborate breakfasts, Saturday morning is the time to make up. In my
household, on Saturday morning, we made akara and ogi which was a real treat
for the kids. Of course, we couldn't ever buy street akara. What horrors!!!
In the evening, we baked bread to last for the following week, and Sunday
lunch was a real celebration. The only concession to the strange lifestyle
of eating out, was bringing home suya bought from the nearest Suya Mallam
(one of the best in Lagos, by the way). Once in a while, we would go to the
great isi ewu joint on Tonade Street, Ikeja, but it was definitely NOT a
family outing.. So I come here and see all these strange behavior by parents
who generally don't cook. If they are not feeding their children at a
fast-food restaurant, they are giving them one-minute microwave dinners. I
consider this practice absolutely "barbaric." That is, if that's the word
for anything that seems "strange" to one's usual way of life.

Ideology: The argument, and as has been distilled here even in this
mini-debate on the subject, is usually about individual's rights to choose.
We are told that individual rights should come before societal or communal
rights -- individuals before society. Part of the women emancipatory project
is about the right to choose. It therefore fits into feminist theory and
practice to fight against any practice that denies women that right to
choose. And female circumcision is clearly one in which the woman can not
choose, because majority of female circumcision is done when the woman is
still an infant. Tunde Giwa paints the picture of the innocent, trusting,
helpless infant who gets "mutilated" by her barbaric society even before she
has a say in the matter (or in any matter, for that matter!). This is a
gripping picture, and one that tugs at the heart of every "civilized" human
being.

However, this focus on individual rights is another attempt to impose an
ideology that is "alien" to us. Individualism is to  western as
communitarianism is to African. Each has its shortcomings, but we should not
ignore the negative aspects of individualism and the positive aspect of
communitarianism. In our societies, we speak about societal/communal rights,
and not individual rights. And communitarianism, with all its negatives, has
worked for us. In a society such as Nigeria, where there are no social
safety nets, or any integrated sociopolitical system that works FOR the
people,  our people have survived so far because of this sense of community.
I read a study somewhere
that showed that the average income earner in Nigeria is financially
responsible for the welfare of nine people. I didn't get to see the full
report -- a Federal Office of Statistics study - - but I doubt that the nine
people are all members of the income earner's nuclear family. In some cases,
the nine people may not even be a direct family member, especially where the
person is single. It is this communitarian spirit that would make someone
pack a bag and go to Lagos, to stay with a "brother" or "sister" who is
often just someone from the same village, confident that he/she will not be
turned away. We lived in a three-bedroom house (or bungalow, as we say it
back home) in Lagos. At every given moment, there was always at least one
"sister" or "brother" staying with us. At a time, we used to jokingly say
our house was a "bus stop -- people get off the bus and stop here." Contrast
this with this colleague of mine here who gave up her apartment and moved
into her grandparents' basement to cut costs. She pays rent -- a reduced
rent, but a rent -- to live with her mother's parents. And she is cool about
it -- it's only natural. She even defended it when I failed in the effort to
pretend I wasn't shocked.

There is a lot of value to individualism, and we can import it to our
society. But are we ready to go the whole hog? Can we pay the cost of
individualism? I seriously doubt that. So when we harp on the
individual-rights aspect of this discourse on female circumcision, we should
be conscious of the ramifications of individualism for a society that is
still uncertain about how to achieve an organic-type state, in which we will
be fully aware of ourselves as citizen-individuals in a relationship to a
state that works for everyone. Until then, we will continue to depend on our
sense of community to see us through, and any advocacy for individualism
that ignores the benefits of communitarianism will hurt us more than help.

Prioritization of issues: The question here is, is this the only issue? Why
do "western feminists" privilege this issue out of the myriad of ills that
afflict the African woman? It is amazing the amount of activism and verbiage
that has gone into the question of female circumcision. If you do a keyword
search anywhere (a library or WWW), you will come up with tons of
materials -- and even more, if one is searching for female genital
mutilation (the phrase "western" feminists love so much). A keyword search
on "women, poverty and Nigeria" will throw up far less materials. Why is
that so? Should I believe that the "problem" of female circumcision is more
important than the problem of poverty among our women? If the activists
around female circumcision care so much about our women, how come they are
not directing their efforts at the more urgent issues of infant and maternal
mortalities (the rates are higher in Africa than in any other region of the
world)?

Our women still routinely die during childbirth. A higher percentage of our
children do not survive their fifth birthday. Our women still live in
economic bondage -- many are stuck in emotionally and physically abusive
marriages because they can't afford to leave. And recall that in many
African societies, and in Nigeria specifically, our women are the ones who
"leave" when a marriage fails. They are the ones who return, penniless, to
their father's family leaving behind their youth and years of helping the
man attain his goals. In many cases, she is asked to leave with the
children, and she spends the remaining years of her life struggling to raise
them. (Of course, when they become adults, they are returning to their
fathers, who celebrate the "reunion" without any pang of conscience for
abandoning them and their mothers). Many African girls still do not have
access to education because, if the resources are scarce, and it comes down
to a choice between her and a brother, she will be asked to stay at home. In
many cases, she is married off and her bride price is used to fund her
brother's education. Bride price, that's another issue that should agitate
the minds of activists who truly care about our women.

There's nothing wrong with the exchange of gifts at marriage, etc., but
there's everything wrong with the "possession mentality" that bride price
creates. Where I was growing up, it was common to hear a man scream at his
wife: "I paid (x amount) to marry you, so don't give me nonsense." There's
even a closer-home example. A cousin of mine got into one of those nightmare
marriages, but she couldn't get out  of it. Why? She lost her father during
the war, and she and her brother and sisters were raised by our grandfather
(her maternal, and my paternal). When she got married, the bride price was
used to pay her brother's school fees. And so when that marriage hit the
rocks, she got out of it the only way our tradition allows. She got married
to another man and his money was used to pay off the first man. But if the
first husband was bad, the second was a suitor straight from the pits of
hell. Once, while I was on a visit to the village, this man came visiting. I
saw him, listened to what he had to say, the way he talked about my cousin
and that day, I knew what it means to feel like strangling someone. I
resisted the urge only because I didn't think the idiot-ikot-iwa was worth
going to prison for!!!

Finally, the incidence of female circumcision has reduced in many parts of
the continent, and it certainly has nothing to do with western feminists
labeling it "barbaric." As I argue elsewhere, the practice no longer has
social capital. In my society -- one of those often cited as the
headquarters of female circumcision -- the practice was associated with
femininity and everything that is good about a woman. It was a rite of
passage to womanhood -- and something many women looked forward to. It was
accompanied by the fattening room ritual which prepared the girl for life as
a woman and wife. (In my society, not all women were circumcised in
infancy -- others went through it at the nexus between adolescence and
womanhood, usually, between the ages of 13 and 15.) An uncircumcised woman
was considered "unclean" and if unclean, therefore unmarriageable. In the
past, as it is now, the only way a woman could get some sense of
independence and attain a certain level of economic comfort was to get
married. The idea was that the man would provide for her -- though as I look
back, I realize that that was a myth of the patriarchy.

The woman was nothing but an economic slave for the man who needed free
labor. Often, the woman's condition was even worse than if she had done the
same thing she was doing in marriage for herself as a single woman. But it
was also a society where marriage was what every adult had to do. It was
like paying taxes in Canada. You just had to do it, even if it killed you.
Again, in retrospect, I don't recall anyone in my grandmother's generation
who was never-married single. The few women in my mother's generation I know
who are single are either divorced or widowed. None was never unmarried. An
unmarried woman in my society (as in many societies) was (and in many places
still is) considered a social misfit. Against this backdrop therefore no
parents wanted to render their daughter unmarriageable, by not circumcising
her.

But all these have changed. Many women of my generation were not
circumcised, and I don't know any of my age mates (including the
pre-literate ones) who have circumcised their daughters. The practice has
lost its socio-cultural relevance because with formal education, a woman can
provide for herself, generally speaking. Since many literate women are
likely to marry like-minded men, parents generally no longer feel that their
daughter would be considered unclean by her future husband if she wasn't
circumcised. While researching a paper on this subject last year, I spoke
with a retiring professor of anthropology and nursing at the University of
Alberta, Prof. Pamela Brink. She spent a post-doc year in my community in
the mid-70s researching the fattening-room practices among our people. I
didn't meet her then (but I heard of the "white woman" living in the next
village). She knows so much about my culture that it's always hilarious when
our conversations turn to "our people" as she refers to "my" people.

One of the things Professor Brink told me is that the Annang people have for
years now been doing "ritual female circumcision." Rather than "mutilate"
anything, the woman who does it, just draws a small thin line on the inner
thigh. A trickle of blood flows out and this is rubbed against the
circumcised female's body. And the woman/girl goes into the fattening room
(the duration of which has also been reduced to anywhere between one week
and one month -- down from the one year that it used to be). On the day of
"outing" (similar to the debuts of western girls not too long ago),  the
girl/woman is taken to church in a white dress and a communal
celebration follows. It seemed the dominant religion n my area (Catholicism)
found a way of "sanitizing" this "barbaric" practice. This seems to be a
perfect middle ground between keeping a custom that holds the people
together without inflicting any violence on women.

Agreed, female circumcision is still practiced in its extremities -- as
Bamidele has listed -- in other parts of the country, and Africa. I agree
that it is really a "mutilation" in some parts of Africa. And I am NOT
making an advocacy for the practice. Neither do I call it "barbaric." My
ambivalence on this subject is deliberate. However, the point of this
insertion into the discourse is basically this: there are more urgent
problems facing African women than female circumcision. While this subject
may be extremely titillating, and satisfying to western feminists who have
raised the rhetoric on "female sexuality" to a religion, African women
joining the discourse should be conscious of  the implications of the
language and ideology that frame this debate. At the level of practice,
African women, feminists or not, must refocus their energies on the fact
that the sisters on whose behalf they speak daily face more mundane, but
vitally urgent problems than "female sexuality." African women do not have
the socioeconomic luxury that western women have to spend their energies on
sexuality. For western women, if all else fails, the state will pick up the
tabs. They can then have the time to attend rallies, and carry placards that
extol the virtues of "right over my body." African women will get to this
point (and I pray the day comes soon), but for now, there are more important
things to attend to. For what will it profit a woman if she has the rights
over a body that has been wasted by preventable diseases and malnutrition?

I attended a talk on female circumcision last year. After the four "African"
speakers (including a man) had finished, someone (a white woman) in the
audience made a comment, the thrust of which was: "orgasm is every woman's
fundamental human right." Later, I told her, "go tell that to the woman who
is watching her child die from a preventable disease because she has no
money to take her to the hospital." Tell that to the woman who wakes up at 5
a.m. and treks 10 miles to fetch a pot of water; treks more miles in search
of firewood. Tell that to the woman who spends an entire day in the market
and ends up selling nothing, and returns home without buying any food for
the children because no one will sell to her on credit anymore. Tell that to
the woman whose husband has thrown her out of the home they struggled for 30
years to build. Tell that to the woman who, with four children trailing her,
walks the streets of any African city begging for "alms." I thought of, but
didn't tell her: "when you have buried yet a fifth child, put your
malnourished and Kwashiokored children to bed, on an empty stomach --
again -- you can then talk to an  African  woman about orgasm."

What am I saying, that "female sexuality" is bad? Oh no, I won't even go
there! Sexuality is whatever each of us chooses to make of it. We have the
right to define it whatever way it suits us, but not the right to impose our
particular definition of it on other women. Personally though, at the level
of practice, if I had the resources, I would first set up a revolving loan
scheme for the women in my village, install labor and time-saving devices
for their palm-oil and garri-processing work, ensure a direct supply of
fertilizer for their overworked farms, build a primary health care centre
for them, drill huge communal water boreholes in the middle of the village,
and set up a scholarship fund so every girl in the village who wants to go
to school can. After that, I can talk to them about "female sexuality."

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