“The Price to Pay for our Common Good”: Genital Modification and the Somatechnologies of Cultural (In)Difference

Abstract

One “folk custom” (or set of practices) that “Australia” seemingly finds “repulsive” is that which is referred to in State Crimes Acts as “female genital mutilation” (FGM). While this term is used in the context of Australian legislation to refer to illegal practices such as “infibulation; the excision or mutilation of the whole or a part of the clitoris; the excision or mutilation of the whole or a part of the labia minora or labia majora; any procedure to narrow or close the vaginal opening; the sealing or suturing together or the labia minora or labia majora; or the removal of the clitoral hood” (Legislative Council and Assembly of Victoria), to date such legislation, and the definition of FGM on which it is founded, has not been used to prosecute surgeons who perform “elective” “cosmetic” procedures such as labiaplasty, vaginoplasty, vaginal rejuvenation, hymen reconstruction, and clitoroplasty on (apparently non-migrant) “Australian” women. Further, intersex and sex-reassignment surgeries are exempt from prosecution, as are surgeries deemed necessary to the health of the person concerned. This paper will explore these inconsistencies and the material, political, and ethical effects they produce. At the same time, it will provide a critique of the notion of the “common good” and the liberal idea(l)s that inform it and that shape both individual and political anatomies in problematic ways.

Keywords:

• Female genital mutilation
• designer vagina
• intersex
• cosmetic surgery
• whiteness

Notes

¹Similarly, in the debate that took place in the New South Wales (NSW) Legislature prior to a decision to criminalise “FGM”, Franka Arena argued that “Above all, it is imperative that we protect our girls. Let us defend them, give them protection, self esteem and freedom from barbaric practices which have nothing to do with Australia, the Australian way of life—or, with the precepts of civilised society anywhere in the world” (cited in Fraser 1995, 355).

² www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,20632997,00.html (accessed 24 October 2006).

⁵Up to 14 years in some other states.

³Queensland (QLD), Section 323 of the Criminal Code; NSW, Section 45 of the State Crimes Act; South Australia (SA), Section 33 of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act and also Section 26A of the Children's Protection Act; Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Part 4 of the State Crimes Act; Victoria, Sections 332 and 33 of the State Crimes Act.

⁴Clearly this move is not unique to Australia. During this period there was an international push to ban “FGM. See Boyle (2005) on the institutionalisation of anti-FGM in the context of global relations. Her account of the situation in Egypt is particularly salient.

⁶By contrast, Canadian legislation does not criminalise procedures where “the person is at least eighteen years old and where there is no resulting harm” (cited in Sheldon and Wilkinson 1998, 269).

⁷In discussions leading to the formation of anti-FGM legislation in the United Kingdom, for example, “FGM” was described by Lord Kennet as “barbaric”, “atrocious”, and a “terrible violation” that is “against all humanity, kindness, respect and love” (cited in Sheldon and Wilkinson 1998, 267). Similarly, in her criticism of the suspended sentences given to some immigrant parents found guilty of “mutilating” their children, a French lawyer stated that “[t]he parents are the real culprits. They know they are going to hurt the child and they nonetheless take the child to the excisors, to the knife … there is no excuse, ever, for such a deed” (cited in Walley 2002, 35). This kind of position is reflected in Australian Child Protection laws that enable government agencies to remove children who they fear are in danger of being physically abused by parents. This applies to children who are perceived as potential candidates for “FGM”. However, Françoise Lionnet (2005) has argued in her critique of the situation in France that, “by criminalizing the practice and sending to jail the parent of … excised girls, the … courts have judged individuals guilty of an act of violence which they had, in fact, no intention of committing, since their behaviour was in accordance with deeply held sociocultural … beliefs about the nature of femininity and the function of sexuality in their respective collectivities” (2005, 99–100). In short, then, current anti-FGM legislation (and its implementation) demonstrates the enactment of white optics and thus necessarily delegitimates other ways of seeing, knowing, being.

⁸In making this claim I do not wish to overlook the fact that certain forms of genital modification, and the particular ways in which they are practised, are the source of much pain and suffering. Rather, my aim is to draw attention to the violence perpetuated—perhaps inadvertently—by the universalisation of particular structures of perception that are particular to twentieth-century western culture, and their enshrinement in law.

⁹For statistical data, see Green (2005, 164).

¹⁰Given this, it is erroneous to speak of female circumcision as something that has not occurred in the West since the nineteenth century.

¹¹For an explanation of the three most common techniques, see Green (2005, 166).

¹²This is not to suggest that all medical practitioners or those associated with the practice of law think in exactly the same way. My critique is of the institutions and the perceptual system that informs them and is reproduced by them.

¹³Adrienne Rich refers uses the term “white solipsism” to refer to the dominant perceptual schema (and its inherent racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and general intolerance of difference). I had originally intended to refer to this way of seeing/knowing as “white myopia” but decided that this implied a skewed way of seeing (which in turn implies the possibility of seeing “correctly”). The term “white optics”, on the other hand, refers to a specific way of seeing that is no less “correct” than other ways of seeing, but nevertheless produces (well-documented) problematic socio-political effects and forms of social relations.

¹⁴Intersex surgeries began to be practiced in the 1950s.

¹⁵Similarly, in a text entitled Vaginal Rejuvenation: Vaginal/Vulvar Procedures, Restored Femininity, surgeons James Apesos, Roy Jackson, John Miklos, and Robert Moore claim that “Society is terrified of emancipated women” (2006, vi), but that their role as surgeons is to assist in the long-due liberation to which women are entitled.

¹⁶However, western women are not alone in arguing that genital modification can result in more attractive genitals and in enhanced sexual pleasure. For example, Suaad, a Sudanese woman interviewed by Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf says: “sex with infibulated women is more enjoyable than with uncircumcised or sunna circumcised women. When the vaginal opening is narrow and tight, the woman enjoys the friction, and the man enjoys a long intercourse rather than akhtif wa aajri [hit and run]. … Infibulation is smoother and much nicer looking than having big labia. … [M]y infibulation did not eliminate my desire to have sex … As a grandmother now … I have sex five times a week. It is very enjoyable and I know too about orgasm, tharwa. I have tharwa jinsia, that indescribable sense of pleasure that gives one the feeling of touching the sky. It makes one shiver” (cited in Abusharaf 2001, 127–128).