Abstract This is a serious look at the way women are treated in Kenya. The paper goes out to explain the various consequences and types of Female Gentalia Mutilation . It also tries to justify why the practice is still carried out through the eyes of the traditional people. . The author argues that there is a need for strong outreach, education at the grassroots and family life education: that involves the communities and addresses the main reasons to discontinue the practice. This should be done in compromise but not by attacking the practicing few.
From the Paper "According to the Kenya demographic Health Survey (KDHS), female circumcision is the partial or complete cutting away of a woman's external genitalia. While the practice is thought to be a cultural tradition in Kenya, KDHS says its origin and underlying cultural rational is not clearly understood. It is commonly referred to as female circumcision mostly to imply that it is similar to male circumcision. However, the degree of cutting is more extreme and often impairs a woman's sexual and reproductive functions. It is because of this that the name female genital mutilation is starring."
Tags: circumscision, clitoridectomy, passage, rights, rite, womanhood, women
Abstract This paper explains that incest, which is one of the most taboo topics in today's society and has close ties to child abuse, involves sexual relationships between people who are genetically related to one another. The author points out that, in the Middle East, clitoridectomy, the removal of a woman's clitoris, is often performed on a girl by her own mother in response to the rampant pedophilia of the men and thus is a form of incest prevention. The paper relates that incest is often associated with in-breeding and increased rates of birth defects, but some cultures, such as the Pharaohs of Egypt, the royal family of Hawaii and the Hapsburg dynasty of Austria, encouraged inter-family marriage to strengthen their bloodlines and maintain their purity.
From the Paper "It has been proposed that the prohibitions against incest developed as a means to prevent the gene pool from deteriorating. This theory is much disputed, with the arguments against it being backed by the nature of the various prohibitions, which, as stated earlier, often allow sexual relations between genetically related individuals. However, this argument against incest has begun to lose its efficacy through the development of effective contraception. Other reasons for the taboo against incest are based around the nature of the family. Preservation of the family unit and promotion of family wealth/power become the focus around which anti-incest prohibitions are developed."
Abstract This paper briefly describes traditional feminist methodologies for analyzing cultural practices that are unfamiliar or challenging. It highlights the shortcomings of the methodologies and discusses potentially more appropriate methodology. The writer considers how the task of finding more appropriate methodologies is made more difficult for her by the fact that it frequently challenges her own culturally normative ideas about gender relations.
From the Paper "For many years Western feminists have positioned themselves within their own Western culture, assuming that they occupy higher ground, in the sense that the Western culture is liberal, individualist, and a lot less sexist than non-Western cultures. From this point of view, Western feminists have felt free to pity their non-Western sisters, and also to attempt to "save" them - for example, Abu-Lughod (2002) takes issue with the fact that Americans have taken it upon themselves to "save" women in Afghanistan from the Taliban and the burqa. Volp (date) sums it up, stating that Western women theorizing about non-Western women living within Western nations have erred because of their "conflation of racialised immigrant communities and regressive sex-subordinating culture in a variety of contexts, including female genital surgeries and so-called "cultural defenses" (p. 109). It has become clear that this way of analyzing other cultures has serious shortcomings. For one thing, as Narayan (1997) points out, it distorts analyses. When information is gathered about women in other countries, this information crosses borders, and loses much in the crossing. The information becomes distorted. Another problem is that culture is blamed for the problems of non-Western women, in a way that is never done for Western women, with the result that Third World women are deemed to have suffered "death by culture" (Narayan, 1997, p. 84). For example, a woman in the West who is shot or strangled by her husband is deemed a victim of domestic violence, but a woman in India who is burnt to death by her husband is deemed a victim of culture, because this method of murder is seen as exotic, and therefore culture-specific. One of the problems with this mode of analysis, as Narayan (1997) points out, is that the Western feminist is unable to even see the connection between domestic violence and dowry-murders - the connection is invisible to her. Moreover, many American feminists are unaware that at least 1,400 American women are killed by their domestic partners annually - but extremely aware of dowry-murder. However, what is the real difference, apart from a difference in choice of murder weapon? Guns are the weapon of choice in the USA because they are ubiquitous, while fire is the weapon of choice in India, because fires are ubiquitous there."
