Avoiding Ethnocentrism: Rethinking “FGM” and “Sex Trafficking”

For the past few weeks, we’ve been reading about and discussing some of the many ways that women’s bodies and behaviours are controlled by patriarchal institutions and systems. These have included: the education system, health care and medicine, organized religions, and formal politics. This coming Tuesday and Thursday, we’re going to add to these the general conversation that predominates in the global West regarding “female genital mutilation” (FGM) and “sex trafficking.”

In other words, our next two class meetings will be all about what we in the global West think we know about these particular practices, and how our misunderstanding of these issues actually prevents genuine attempts to make women’s lives better. In very particular ways, assumptions that all forms of female genital surgeries and all forms of transactional sex are always already forced/involuntary, “bad” for women, and/or happen “over there” (and, thus, not “here”) are ETHNOCENTRIC. And, as you know, ethnocentrism is something that Burn, in chapter 1, admonishes us to avoid as we study issues for women globally.

Administrative Stuff
Before I get into all that, though, let me talk about a couple of more mundane items:
1. Make sure to make an appointment with me to discuss your Term Project as required by the assignment. You must meet with me before March 3rd, and you have to do a bit of prep work in advance of that meeting, so make sure you’re familiar with what I’ll be looking for. You can learn all about the Term Project by clicking on the link under “Assignments” on the left here on this blog.
2. Our reading materials this week come from Seager and from Blackboard and not from Burn. There was some confusion last time we had readings that weren’t from our books, so make sure that when it says “(Blackboard)” next to an article in the syllabus that you go to the Blackboard site, click on the “Additional Readings” tab and scroll down to the author’s last name. All the links are working, and clicking on them will enable you to access PDFs of each article.

How to Read a Scholarly Article
With regard to the reading materials for this coming week, please be aware that they are a bit different than the stuff we’ve been reading so far this semester in that they are scholarly articles written for an academic audience. So, you may find that you’ll need to work a bit harder and spend a bit more time with them than you normally would when you read and prepare for our class meetings.

But the time and effort will be worth it, so give yourself permission to struggle a bit; good learning can only come from having lots of questions, and it is my hope that these articles will provoke some really excellent questions!

That being said, let me make a few suggestions for how to make sense of these materials that are quite a bit more complex than the stuff we’ve been reading so far in this course:

1. Pay attention to titles and subtitles! What does the title of the article suggest to you about what the article might be about? And what does each subtitle say about what each subsection might be about? If you jot down just a sentence or two in answer to these questions, you’ll go a long way toward helping yourself understand the arguments and points the author is trying to make.
2. You can also get the basic gist of what the author’s main point or argument is by reading the first few paragraphs (the introduction) and then the last few paragraphs (the conclusion). Often, scholars will tell you what they’re going to talk about in the beginning and then, at the end, tell you what they just talked about.
3. It might help, also, to take a look at the suggestions for how to prepare for class and create your own study notes that I’ve provided my other class on feminist and queer theories of the body.
4. And, as always, use this week’s Worksheet to guide you as you read. The Worksheet is where I have identified the salient terms and concepts that you should be able to understand and knowledgeably discuss, but in class and on any exams during the semester. And, with a bit of effort on both our parts, you’ll also carry that understanding and knowledge with you beyond our classroom.

How to Avoid Ethnocentrism
Although Burn identifies four themes that should guide our study of global women’s issues, by far the most difficult one for those of us who live in the global West is Theme #3 in which she encourages us to use a multicultural, intersectional, and contextual approach to study women’s lives and experiences. To apply this theme forces us to do our best to recognize and understand both the similarities among and the many differences between women based not only on their common identity as women, but also on their various experiences based on race/skin color, ethnicity, ability, national origin, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, and so forth. This, as you know, is called INTERSECTIONALITY.

Adhering to Theme #3 is the best way to avoid ethnocentrism, but it’s by no means easy.

For example, we had our first challenge to avoid ethnocentrism a few weeks ago when we were reading about and discussing organized religions as patriarchal structures. For a variety of social, cultural, and historical reasons, the religion that we in the global West hear most about these days in terms of its alleged oppression of women is Islam. But now we know, of course, that Islam is most certainly not the only organized religion with a troubled history with regard to the role and treatment of women, but that, like all the five major religions, it can also be a source of strength and a site of feminist activism. This is one of the overarching themes of Under One Sky, the documentary that you were required to watch for that day. (That film will remain on reserve in the library throughout the semester for those of you who have not yet had an opportunity to view it.)

But we learned from Kristoff’s experiences in Afghanistan: He arrived thinking he knew what was going on, but he learned quite quickly that he only thought he knew. As he finally came to realize, those of us who live in the West who feel sorry for Muslim women “not only come across as patronizing but also often miss the complexity of gender roles in the Islamic world” (154).

As we’ll discuss this week, one of the major reasons that avoiding ethnocentrism is such a tricky goal to achieve is because so much media coverage here in the global West tells a very limited story about the allegedly “poor, brown” women of the Third World. The causes of this are complex, having to do with POWER: Who benefits from telling some stories and not others? Why? What are the rewards?

The trouble is, though, is that as our readings and discussions since the beginning of the semester have made clear, it is overwhelmingly poor, rural, women of colour who are negatively affected by the “issues” for women globally that we’re studying this semester. So, our challenge is to separate the myth from the reality and figure out what’s really going on and how best to approach solving some of these problems.

This is where we can and must rely on Burn again: Theme #2 rightly emphasizes that global women's studies is about activism and empowerment, so it is imperative that we not think of the “poor, brown” women “over there” as victims, but, rather, as agents of change in their own lives. Remember those Muslim women from Under One Sky who choose the veil as an act of identity formation and feminist solidarity with other Muslim women? Remember those Muslim women in Kristoff and WuDunn who express anger and frustration at Westerners who try to “liberate” them from their “oppression?” These women are certainly not the “victims” that the media in the global West would have us think they are.

Just like those Muslim women who are agents in their own lives, there are women who, for a variety of complex reasons, advocate female genital cutting and/or who resent Western (i.e., ethnocentric) approaches to eradicating it. And there are women (and men) who call themselves “SEX WORKERS” and demand that their work be recognized as a legitimate part of the global economy. These women are not the poor “victims” in need of rescue that we in the global West think we know about, and that’s what we’ll be reading and talking about this week.

That being said, if you need a basic refresher on (some of) the different types of female genital surgeries, review Burn, pp. 45-49 and have a look at the relevant pages in Seager. For more info about the basics of sex trafficking, Seager’s discussion is useful, as is the UN Trafficking Protocol, itself. You might also like to have a look at Human Rights Education Associates’ guide to the Protocol as well as Rights Work Initiative’s critique of the Protocol.

Interestingly, one of the global debates about sex trafficking is that it is neither the only nor the most prevalent form of HUMAN TRAFFICKING, yet it is the only form that gets wide media coverage in the global West. Why do you think this might be? Have a look at this article for more info.