Her interesting article raises several questions. She argues that we cannot
explain the hostility that clitoridectomy arouses by reference to the fact
that, for example, it causes pain, or mutilates the body, or imposes health
threats. For there are practices in our own society (from orthodontic work to
breast implants) that we tolerate and that have each of these consequences
taken separately. But this leaves open the possibility that clitoridectomy
combines all of these objectionable effects (and others), and, in addition,
lacks any of the compensatory intrinsic or instrumental benefits of practices
here.
Tamir believes instead that "the major problem with clitoridectomy. . . is
socio-political. . . . [I]t is not a particular practice but a set of
ill-motivated efforts to control the sexuality of women and to restrict their
ability to compete for social and political resources that we should find
reprehensible." This analysis focuses on bad effects. But my sense is that, if
a culture limits the mobility of women by binding their feet, this is worse
than if it limits their mobility by house arrest or severe psychological
pressure to stay home. There is something special about physical intrusions
and changes wrought without competent consent. Tamir argues that this is only
true if the physical change is bad, and she points out that different cultures
have contrasting views on what is a bad or ugly physical change.
Leaving aside for a moment the problems with this form of cultural
relativism, if clitoridectomy (or footbinding or sterilization) had the effect
of strengthening the power of women in society (which would follow from her
contention that "men in our society are more intimidated by women who do not
enjoy orgasms than by women who do"1), I would not think it morally right to
perform these physical changes on children, though other means of producing
the same effect might be permissible. Sometimes, she notes, troubling
practices are justified by their good effects: for instance, in her example of
Amazon women choosing to remove one breast to perform better as warriors. But
this, of course, does not mean that the same practice is good when it does not
have this good effect and when it is not chosen. Nor does it mean that it
wouldn't be better if we could achieve the desirable effect some other way,
and thereby avoid the bad intrinsic properties of the practice. And if a
society arranges for good effects (e.g., liberation, or marriage and children)
to come only from a troubling practice, even though they might come in some
other way, this is a bad state of the world. If the choice to undergo a
radical physical change that limits opportunities exists in a pressured
context-such as poor people being offered money to be sterilized-we think this
is bad, and even worse than their being offered money to perform uninteresting
work. The same is true of clitoridectomy by contrast with non-physical
intrusions.
Tamir believes that objections to clitoridectomy "commonly reveal a
patronizing attitude toward women, suggesting that they are primarily sexual
beings." But I doubt that if men were being castrated in some culture, concern
over this would reveal the attitude that men were primarily sexual beings. It
is the physical intrusion resulting in a big effect that would be significant.
(If clitorally-based orgasms were connected with the maintenance of a
nonpassive, nonmasochistic personality in women as Freud thought, the concern
with clitoridectomy could also be with its malign effects on women's
personalities.)
Finally, on the appropriateness of cross-cultural criticism: I do not
believe we should have stopped criticizing Communist societies for their lack
of freedom because our society practiced racial segregation. Moreover, if
criticizing others makes us more aware of our own defects, then there is all
the more reason not to stop criticizing across borders. And if this opens the
way for others to criticize our defects, that would also be a good thing.
Tamir may believe that there should be a double standard for Third World
societies-that they should be freer to criticize us than vice-versa-since they
have so many other problems, and are not as well-positioned to solve them as
we are to solve ours. But in these worst-off countries, women are often the
worst-off class. Helping these women may therefore be the most important task
of all.
Is Body Intrusion Special?
F. M. Kamm
A response to Yael Tamir's "Hands Off
Clitoridectomy," from the October/November 1996 issue of
Boston Review.
Yael Tamir argues that, while clitoridectomy is deplorable,
it is no worse than many things that we commonly do to young females in this
society. She attempts to show that the properties of clitoridectomy deserving
of moral outrage are not distinctive to it, but rather are present in many of
our own practices, which therefore warrant the same hostility.
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