Is Body Intrusion Special?
F. M. Kamm
Yael Tamir argues that, while clitoridectomy is deplorable, it is no worse than
many things that we commonly do to young females in this society. She attempts
to show that the properties of clitoridectomy deserving of moral outrage are
not distinctive to it, but rather are present in many of our own practices,
which therefore warrant the same hostility.
Her interesting article raises several questions. She argues that we cannot
explain the hostility that clitoridectomy arouses by reference to the fact
that, for example, it causes pain, or mutilates the body, or imposes health
threats. For there are practices in our own society (from orthodontic work
to breast implants) that we tolerate and that have each of these consequences
taken separately. But this leaves open the possibility that clitoridectomy
combines all of these objectionable effects (and others), and, in addition,
lacks any of the compensatory intrinsic or instrumental benefits of practices
here.
Tamir believes instead that "the major problem with clitoridectomy.
. . is socio-political. . . . [I]t is not a particular practice but a set
of ill-motivated efforts to control the sexuality of women and to restrict
their ability to compete for social and political resources that we should
find reprehensible." This analysis focuses on bad effects. But my sense
is that, if a culture limits the mobility of women by binding their feet,
this is worse than if it limits their mobility by house arrest or severe psychological
pressure to stay home. There is something special about physical intrusions
and changes wrought without competent consent. Tamir argues that this is only
true if the physical change is bad, and she points out that different cultures
have contrasting views on what is a bad or ugly physical change.
Leaving aside for a moment the problems with this form of cultural relativism,
if clitoridectomy (or footbinding or sterilization) had the effect of strengthening
the power of women in society (which would follow from her contention that
"men in our society are more intimidated by women who do not enjoy orgasms
than by women who do"1), I would not think it morally right to perform
these physical changes on children, though other means of producing the same
effect might be permissible. Sometimes, she notes, troubling practices are
justified by their good effects: for instance, in her example of Amazon women
choosing to remove one breast to perform better as warriors. But this, of
course, does not mean that the same practice is good when it does not have
this good effect and when it is not chosen. Nor does it mean that it wouldn't
be better if we could achieve the desirable effect some other way, and thereby
avoid the bad intrinsic properties of the practice. And if a society arranges
for good effects (e.g., liberation, or marriage and children) to come only
from a troubling practice, even though they might come in some other way,
this is a bad state of the world. If the choice to undergo a radical physical
change that limits opportunities exists in a pressured context-such as poor
people being offered money to be sterilized-we think this is bad, and even
worse than their being offered money to perform uninteresting work. The same
is true of clitoridectomy by contrast with non-physical intrusions.
Tamir believes that objections to clitoridectomy "commonly reveal a
patronizing attitude toward women, suggesting that they are primarily sexual
beings." But I doubt that if men were being castrated in some culture,
concern over this would reveal the attitude that men were primarily sexual
beings. It is the physical intrusion resulting in a big effect that would
be significant. (If clitorally-based orgasms were connected with the maintenance
of a nonpassive, nonmasochistic personality in women as Freud thought, the
concern with clitoridectomy could also be with its malign effects on women's
personalities.)
Finally, on the appropriateness of cross-cultural criticism: I do not believe
we should have stopped criticizing Communist societies for their lack of freedom
because our society practiced racial segregation. Moreover, if criticizing
others makes us more aware of our own defects, then there is all the more
reason not to stop criticizing across borders. And if this opens the way for
others to criticize our defects, that would also be a good thing. Tamir may
believe that there should be a double standard for Third World societies-that
they should be freer to criticize us than vice-versa-since they have so many
other problems, and are not as well-positioned to solve them as we are to
solve ours. But in these worst-off countries, women are often the worst-off
class. Helping these women may therefore be the most important task of all.
