From the Washington article: "At the heart of the controversy is the emergency contraceptive pill, commonly called Plan B or morning-after pill, which some equate with abortion."

Gee, that's fair and balanced. Don't bother to point out that those people are completely wrong. You presented both sides of the issue, so your journalism is done!

Going along with the Abortion Project, there was a great first person article in the Washington Post this weekend about a 40-something mother of two who had an abortion after she was unable to get anyone to prescribe her emergency contraception. (I hope the link works).

Genital "mutilation" is a very misunderstood practice, and I feel like people in the United States and other "1st world" countries judge it simply on the basis that Africans are performing it. My Women's Studies teacher is part of a tribe in Africa that performs clitorectomies as a coming-of-age ceremony, as the article said, but rarely do these women have problems later, and it's not like they're picking up the first broken glass bottle they see and having a man slash them. Clitorectomies in many African countries are important cultural practices that are carried out with rituals and ceremonies embedded in the culture. Oh, and these are women-only ceremonies, therefore a lot of times it is empowering, not demeaning, and definitely not mutilation. If you want to talk about when men perform genital mutilation on women outside of the cultural norms, I'm fine. But to support an article that purports assumptions and biases as fact in a feminist blog is unacceptable to me. We need to be more accepting of all our sisters and their different practices.

i am sorry YWTF feminist but you are horribly, horribly wrong. I have done alot of studying on female genital mutilation and personally i am sick and tired of liberal's being ok with certain cultural practices in the name of multi-culturalism. what IS important is to realize WHY these things occur in the cultures and not to dismiss the cultures as across the board violent etc etc. the reason almost all cultures do this is bc these women cannot get married without being genitally mutilated. if they cannot get married, they have absolutely no other option. so while it IS other women carrying it out,(the reasons the are doing it ARE for the good of their daughters) it's because they know they daughters won't have a viable life without being married.
No matter what your culture, cutting off the clitoris has its roots in an innate fear of women. there is just no two ways about it.

I am the first person to admit you dont dismiss cultural practices without examining the reasons behind them first, however, the reasons these mothers carry on the practice is NOT bc its some empowering thing, its bc men in their culture wont have a woman without it, and being a single unmarried woman is a death sentence.

In America and many other places, women routinely tell their daughters to suck it up if their husband is beating them. Since DV is practically an epidemic in America and one could say almost a cultural norm, do you think that is ok as well?

But to support an article that purports assumptions and biases as fact in a feminist blog is unacceptable to me...

Perhaps, but a feminist blog is a good place to start challenging these assumptions too.

also, "clitorodectomies", while horrible, are the cutting off of the clitoris. in most places, not ONLY do they cut off the clitoris, but the inner ANd out labia, and then proceed to sew shut the vagina which makes even urinating difficult. it's scary to see how little you actually know.

and no, i am not judging anything based on the fact that it's "Africa" and for some reason i doubt Anne is either.

"Women in predominantly Judeo-Christian nations should look at their own oppressive regimes before "taking pity" on women in Muslim countries, Laila Lalami writes."

I don't know how anybody who read the article could come to that conclusion. It was a pretty horrible article in that it was nothing more than an apologist piece for the mistreatment of women in most of the Muslim world.

While her "It's not so bad!" tact was pathetic, at least her argument wasn't that its critics come from oppressive regimes, which Ann seems to imply. Because that would just be off the charts of silliness.

ywtf_feminist;

The Lancet article didn't find any evidence of clitorectomies resulting in problems giving birth. It's just the results were all blurred together in the reporting.

But to support an article that purports assumptions and biases as fact in a feminist blog is unacceptable to me...

With the Weekly Feminist Reader, I don't link to articles to show my "support" for them. I simply find links I think will be of interest to feminists, who may agree or disagree with the content and slant of each article.

C'mon now, that was actually a brilliant article that perfectly summed up my own love-hate relationship with Islam. The point is that the women who wrote those books are seeing Islam as completely bad, and the West as completely good, when neither are true. It's just EASY for Westerners to dismiss any good in Islam, or Islamic culture, in much the same way you just did.

I have lived in Muslim countries, and was raised as a Muslim. As a child, I remember thinking that wearing a light, airy burka that protected you from the sun was better than a bikini that would result in a sunburn. (Of course, women should have the option of wearing bikinis. I'm not disputing that.)

In another thread, someone posted a link to an article about Duke girls which basically illustrated the way women in our supposedly progressive Western societies are still taught to seek approval above anything else. They do things they know are intellectually beneath them, and don't know why.

Lalami writes that acting like Western culture is a magic elixir for the problems in the Islamic world is ridiculous, and she is right. There are just as many problems in the West, they are just of a different nature. I see the way the Christian right misrepresents their arguments to manipulate the average person when it comes to emergency contraception and abortion and just as much bad as in the way women are treated in Islam.

In the end, I'm skeptical of everyone. No one's culture is any better than anyone else's, and we all suck.

how anybody could defend clitorectomies in the name of cultural diversity is a classic example of defending the indefensible. i don't care what culture performs clitorectomies. or how my "western bias" somehow makes my thoughts on this to be insensitive. clitorectomies are barbaric, injurious to women (both individually, and as a group), and should not be supported, justified, or their wrongness minimized all for "cultural sensistivity".

whether it is muslims, atheists, or tree nymph worshippers doing it, it's still wrong.

as for "no one's culture is any better than anyone else's"?!?!?! i hope you are joking

of course some cultures are better than others. was the culture of nazi germany ok? or is our culture better?

cmon. spare me the "all cultures are valid" rubbish.

The cultural relativism argument doesn't work with me either. If a practice seems like a human rights violation, it should be suspect. I hope FGM goes the way of footbinding.