Vices Here and Abroad
Robert P. George
Yael Tamir states that her purpose in "Hands Off Clitoridectomy" is
"to reveal the smug, unjustified self-satisfaction lurking behind the current
condemnation of clitoridectomy." Although she makes plain her own strong
opposition to female genital mutilation, and, indeed, urges her readers to "support
those who struggle to end it," she is highly critical of familiar objections
to the practice advanced by Western intellectuals. "Despite their liberal
appearance," Tamir charges, "references to clitoridectomy commonly
reveal a patronizing attitude toward women, suggesting that they are primarily
sexual beings."
In my experience, the clitoridectomy example makes its appearance whenever
someone elects to defend multiculturalism by appeal to some form of moral
relativism. The (entirely justified) point of the example is to embarrass
the relativist by citing a practice that everyone in the discussion can be
counted upon to agree is vile. It is not surprising that anti-relativists
should deploy such a strategy. It is interesting, however, that clitoridectomy
has become the preferred example among liberal intellectuals. Why not put
the spotlight on vices that flourish in our own culture-including that segment
of the culture inhabited by academics, journalists, and other elites? Why
not confront the relativist with, say, lying, promiscuity, recreational drug
use, abortion?
Ironically, these are among the vices pointed to by the decidedly non-relativist
Africans and others who practice and defend clitoridectomy. Recently, the
New York Times quoted Mohammed Ali, a young Egyptian who cites Western permissiveness
as a trump card of his own against arguments for
prohibiting clitoridectomy: "Banning it would make women wild like those
in America."
Of course, Ali is wrong to suppose that possession of a clitoris makes women
wild. He is, however, right to believe-and Western intellectuals are wrong
to deny-that the chastity of women, and men, is important, and that the loss
of a cultural milieu that is supportive of marriage and conducive to the exercise
of sexual restraint has been a tragedy for people in the West, especially
for women and children.
The clitoridectomy example is uniquely powerful in contemporary elite culture
because liberal ideology rejects traditional ideas about chastity and the
sanctity of human life in favor of a "right" to "sexual expression."
It is not just women who are perceived by Western elites as "primarily
sexual beings," it is all of us. Sexual "fulfillment" is presented
as something desirable-indeed, essential-quite apart from marriage, and even
at the price of more than a million abortions per year.
We can reject liberal ideas about sex and its alleged primacy while in no
way denigrating human sexuality or denying the obvious (and wonderful) fact
that people are, among many other things, sexual beings. When properly integrated
into our lives, our sexuality fits us out for marriage and procreation, even
if not all of us can realize these goods and some of us have reason not to.
And the pleasure of marital sexual union is part of its perfection. This helps
to explain why clitoridectomy is morally abhorrent (in a way that male circumcision,
by contrast, is not): Even when motivated by a concern for chastity, it violates
the good of marriage of which sexual union is no mere incident, but an intrinsic
aspect. It relegates wives to second-class status within marriage and encourages
husbands to understand and treat them as objects for their own gratification,
rather than as complementary equals in a relationship whose sexual dimension
enables them to become, in no merely figurative sense, "one flesh."
A concern for the equality and dignity of women, and for the integrity of
marriages, fully warrants our condemnation of clitoridectomy. At the same
time, we should have little difficulty understanding why Ali remains unmoved
by the criticism of clitoridectomy he hears from Western critics who surely
strike him, as they strike Tamir, as "smug" and "unjustifiably
self-satisfied." Tamir is right: Reflection on clitoridectomy, and its
role in contemporary debates about multiculturalism, should give us "a
sharper vision of our own vices," and move us "to understand and
improve our own culture."
n
Originally published in the October/ November
1996 issue of Boston Review
