less rational than people in “modern” societies and justifies a heavy-handed approach that strives to teach (or preach to) people who are seen as “ignorant.” In my view, an elitist and ethnocentric attitude does not offer much hope for productive dialogue and mutual understanding. Female circumcision is neither a taboo subject—the fact that “we” didn’t know much about it does not mean it was secret—nor is it done without thought.
That said, I must also note that some people with insider status who are ardent activists against the practices do accuse those who allow complacency of succumbing to a taboo. For example, Somali activist Raqiya Haji Dualeh Abdalla comments, with reference to “the ancient custom of genital mutilation of women”:
Almost no one, so far, has had the courage to speak openly about it because of the taboo attached to sexual matters.
This taboo and secrecy surrounding the continuation of this brutal practice, the unwillingness of those involved in it to face reality, and the excuse that cultural practices are sacrosanct, are no longer convincing to many Somali women today. (Abdalla 1982:2)
Abdalla writes to motivate action, and the use of this word taboo seems intended to jolt her Somali sisters into action, lest they be branded as backward thinking. Others refer to female circumcision as a “silent issue.”
The Khartoum Context
After I moved to Khartoum in 1974, it took me many months to develop a perspective on my own horrified reaction to female circumcision. During those first months in Sudan’s capital city, the subject rarely came up with my Sudanese colleagues or students. The elegant Sudanese women at the university wore Western dresses covered by sheer, white, wraparound veils called tobes that modestly covered their heads and bodies nearly to the floor but did not conceal their hair, forearms, or faces. Women students in Khartoum generally spoke softly, carried themselves gracefully, walking in twos and threes, seldom alone, their high-heeled shoes or sandals clicking on the tiled corridors. Many wore bouffant hairstyles that lifted their tobes into impressive crowns framing their faces, and most wore some jewelry.
Their modest elegance was in stark contrast to women’s styles at the U.S. universities I had attended (Stanford and the University of Connecticut); I was used to jeans and sweatshirts or dressing up in pants suits or miniskirts. My friends and I seldom wore earrings, and my jewels in those days consisted of “love beads” left over from California in the 1960s. Our feminism emphasized health, outdoorsy looks, and a strong, witty intellectual style, with relatively little interest in, and even distaste for, what we saw as traditional feminine delicacy. By contrast, in this middle-class milieu of 1970s Khartoum, femininity was clearly marked, stylized, and valued. The women (about 10 percent of the students in those days) always sat in the front of the classrooms, a location that allowed them to concentrate on the lecture and afforded them the chance to discreetly rearrange and adjust their tobes after class without having to make eye contact with the male students while doing so.
It was difficult to imagine that it was these women who were the ones who practiced female circumcision. And could these affable, joking, confident men at the university be the fathers, husbands, and brothers who expected women to be circumcised?
I remember sitting with our friend and colleague Mohammed on one of those very hot, slow afternoons after lunch at the University of Khartoum Staff Club. Most offices closed about 1:30, and Jay and I usually drove our battered Volkswagen home by 2:30 or so, but we had decided to wait that day until the weather cooled off a little. We sat inside, away from the blinding tropical brightness outdoors and as close as we could get to the evaporative cooler that was built into the wall. Jay always complained that the ceiling fans—meant to circulate the cooled air—were so slow that the flies rode around on them. That day I believed him.
“Ya, Salim!” Mohammed called. He knew all the waiters’ names. The middle-aged man in a worn jalabiya, loose turban, and scuffed leather loafers took our order for another round of Pepsis and then returned with the heavy tray. “Sorry, no more ice,” he said as he set the thick, refillable bottles in front of us. They were barely cool to the touch.
Mohammed insisted on paying for all of them, treating us like guests again, even though we had been there for several months. More than once we had been accused of not respecting their cultural values if we tried to resist someone’s hospitality. Even after I learned the Arabic for “No, by God, it’s my turn,” and Jay could say “By the divorce!” (which meant “I’ll divorce my wife if you don’t let me pay,” which always got a laugh), we still did not often succeed in paying. To get a turn, one of us usually had to find the waiter in the corridor and pay him halfway through the meal before the others knew about it.
We learned much about Sudan from Mohammed. He often spoke passionately about politics, criticizing the latest policy of the minister of social affairs or passing on one of the many President Nimeiri jokes with which Sudanese expressed their dissatisfactions with the government. At first I was surprised that he would speak so frankly to foreigners. But he had spent several years as a graduate student in Britain and had traveled widely to international conferences, so he had numerous foreign friends and a cosmopolitan outlook. He was quite at home, however, in the small villages of Sudan. He was a man who combined a strong sense of cultural pride with a genuinely global view of humanity: we humans were all in this together, he seemed to be saying, so why bother hiding anything?
That day our conversation turned to the situation of women. His wife was a homemaker, though she had finished high school, had been abroad with him for part of the time, and spoke English fairly well. When we visited them, their home seemed very traditional to us. Several female relatives who lived nearby came and went through the women’s entrance and stayed on the private side of the house, while Jay had to stay with Mohammed on the formal side of the house, which consisted of the living room and courtyard by the main entrance. Although Mohammed’s wife, dressed in a colorful tobe, had ventured in to greet Jay, she seemed to prefer the company of the children and other women who were helping her prepare the meal while Mohammed relaxed with us. Did he prefer this division of labor and space, I wondered?
In fact, Mohammed was critical of the situation of women in his own culture. Many aspects of women’s roles didn’t matter much to him—separate entrances at the mosques and whether one wore a tobe or not—those were just traditional. “When people are ready to leave those things, they will. But for now they are comfortable with them.” He thought the division of labor in the family might also change.
But there were two things that Mohammed thought were real injustices: the limited educational opportunities for girls and female circumcision. As the father of several daughters, he wanted them to have excellent educations and good career opportunities. Since most schools—except for a few of the elementary schools—were sex segregated, there were far fewer schools for girls than boys. Whenever a village or town set out to build its first school, it was almost always for boys. Only many years later would the girls get a school. Mohammed’s urban residence and influential occupation meant that his daughters would get elementary school places, but the competition was very tough for the much smaller number of places available at each higher level.
Mohammed told us that he was also worried about female circumcision for his daughters. He had told the women of his family that he did not want them to be circumcised. I naively assumed that in a culture where the males are clearly dominant, his decision would be enough to protect them.
Not so. He was afraid that if he left the country to go to the conference he was planning to attend, the grandmothers would simply arrange everything and have the older two daughters circumcised in his absence. He was sure his wife would not oppose her own mother.
“Wouldn’t they be afraid you would be angry?”
Of course. But they just go along with me when I’m here. Among
