“Have you ever seen a circumcised penis? The glans is permanently uncovered! It is a harmful practice, and nevertheless no one says anything. And what about operations, authorized and financed by the state, to change sex? Away with breast, tubes, the vagina: a real butchery”. Carla Pasquinelli, anthropologist, author of the volume Infibulazione. Il corpo violato (Infibulation. The violated body) (Meltemi) invites the champions of human rights to judge with the same coin, all the violations of the human body, before railing against mutilation of female genitals. “For example, why do none of them get angry when they see half-naked young women on TV programmes, next to older, fully-clothed men? Do you not think it represents an analogous example of subjection psychology and of subjectivity to male power?”.

To show the contradictory nature of Western attitudes towards cultural practices which clash with ours, the author chooses to deal with the theme of infibulation starting with the event which happened in 2004, when doctor Omar Abdulcadir decides to put forward to the Health department of the Local Council in the Region of Tuscany, an alternative procedure to mutilation – a local anaesthetic injection on the clitoris, which maintains the tradition without causing pain. A medical uproar thus ensued, which the author records publishing in the book a complete press release on the case. The newspapers talk of “soft” or “sweet infibulation”, definitions which stigmatise the Somalian doctor’s decision, accused of wanting to legitimize an abhorrent practice.

“It is precisely these definitions which have deviated the debate and lead to the cover-up of that proposal”, explains the anthropologist. “If in fact we speak of ‘soft infibulation’ we are still left with the idea that it is a case of infibulation. Whereas in fact it is not like this; the woman’s body does not endure any lesions. But – and this is the key point – the alternative practice maintains the same symbolic efficiency. This last point, as Bourdieu explains well, consists in the possibility of acting on the social reality transforming its representation”. In short, baby girls avoid infibulation, but are still inserted within their cultural context and their social group, which, especially in its male behaviour, push for them to be operated. In fact, it is not a coincidence, adds Pasquinelli, that it is the baby girls themselves who want to subject themselves to the operation (“They run around together saying ‘let me see’”).

But why then has Abdulcadir’s suggestion given rise to a prickly debate? Is it not because – we ask ourselves – the alternative practice reproduces the same symbology of subjectivity to men, in itself negative, even just from the psychological point of view? And how can we compare, as the author does to back up her arguments, the manipulations endured by baby girls with those which Western adults voluntarily inflict upon themselves, such as piercings or plastic surgery? “I am interested in saving the baby girls”, Pasquinelli replies sharply. “Plus in Africa there are alternative practices such as the incision of a tree, perhaps just as stigmatizing from a symbolic point of view: do you think that the excission of the clitoris is worse than the eventual sewing of the labia majora?”. As regards the comparison between their practices and ours, Pasquinelli argues her point refusing every naturalistic and naïve vision of the body, “because everywhere and at every different age in life bodies are culturally manipulated and reflect existing relationships of power”.

From the American front, however, there are additional answers which are very different to the dilemma caused by the collision “between the instances of cultures and religions and the norm of gender equality”. The editor Cortina has recently published (under the title of Diritti delle donne e multiculuralismo (Women’s rights and multiculturalism)) the 1999 discursive essay by the feminist philosopher Susan Moller Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? In this Okin suggests a rethink of the relationship between feminism and multiculturalism which is detrimental to recognizing special rights of groups of minority cultures: which are almost all, more or less visibly, patriarchal and male-chauvinist. Those who believe, as most anthropologists do, the cultural belonging is an essential element for developing “self-esteem and respect for oneself”, the American scholar replies argumentatively that there are many cases where the condition of the individual would improve “if their culture put itself out”. The American feminist’s suggestion is a liberalism which demands “that the education of babies not be circumscribed to the knowledge of the cultures or religions of their parents, and much less make them believe that that is the ‘only’ right way to live”. And which defends with no compromises, and everywhere, a strong package of human rights, with particular attention to women’s rights. A completely different story in short, from the image of African baby girls proud to have been, more or less symbolically, excised.

Therefore, do we have to choose between a “hard” universalistic approach and a more intercultural and relativist vision? The Florentine case (and many others, starting with the question of the veil) would seem to testify that yes, we face a dilemna. Even if, Pasquinelli points out, “in the dictionary relativism does not contradict universalism, but absolutism. No real anthropologist would ever dream to question human rights. Therefore, dialogue is possible”.

Translation by Sonia Ter Hovanessian