I try not to be a hypocrite. I've been one on occasion as I believe in the rule of law but also enjoy driving faster than the speed limit. We all do it to some extent. It's worse if you loudly preach against the things you do and give yourself a pass for.
I saw PETA chuckleheads boycotting a store one time. They had signs bitching about fur coats. All while wearing leather boots / belts / watch bands / and purses.
I think that's a bit reductionist and is also an example of why we'll hit a wall. We don't know if the men being wealthy or Sudanese or polygamist are confounds or if they limit generalizability. The vast majority of psychological studies on done on college students, but they don't say "we found that young, unemployed, unmarried, Coors Lite drinkers tend to remember negative news more clearly than positive."
And that's exactly why less than 50% of them can be replicated. Too complex of an issue/behavior measured by too few variables. This only adds to my point. You have to see what is being studied - physiology of innate universal behavior like aggression vs culture specific behavior like FGM; the former could be generalizable to the entire primate order, the latter very hard to say.
We've hit a wall because neither of us are schooled enough to know which additional variables matter or if they constructed their study in a way that negates those variables. If "female control theory" is based on the idea that older women keep vagina rare to help younger women get better mates, then, as Kafir-Kun said, it would only make sense to interview older men.
You'd like to hit a wall, but the glaring problems with the overview you linked are obvious without knowing the cultural intricacies of Sudan.
1. We can do a crude calculation on the sample size alone. According to Kafin, 385 is the recommended sample size for Sudan. We got slightly lower in 300. That's okay. It's hard to find stats on how many marriages are polygamous, but let's be generous and say 50%. That would already put a big dent in generalizability.
2. Even if we grant those men being representative of Sudan (say 100% of the men are polygamous), that's only a fraction of where FGM is commonly practiced. In fact, if we look at the Nigeria link, even within the country itself, we see a decent amount of variability, and the very important fact that some groups don't do it altogether. That's odd, women there must have missed the memo that FGM was an environmental necessity.
Not to mention the starting assumption doesn't hold up, being that it's contradicted by vast amounts data about cultural and political treatment of women in Africa. That's the opposite of a scientific approach, this is akin to creationists starting with the assumption that the world is 6k y/o and then working from there to prove the eye couldn't have possibly evolved because there's not enough time.
My approach is the opposite of reductionism, it's a specific and pointed criticism of the overview. I don't need to be schooled enough in all the variables to point out massive methodological flaws.
What is reductionist, is that from this extremely limited amount of data of arguable validity, the overview reduces the conclusion to - "female control theory" is what is driving women to mutilate themselves.
Feel free to point out where I'm wrong.
No, the goal wouldn't necessarily be the best possible outcome for the most amount of people. Again, this is why it takes a fuller understanding of culture and context. For example, there's a bird (I can't remember which) that, upon hatching its eggs, will occasionally eat the smaller of the two babies. Why? Resources. While it is possible that she can provide for both children for a while, she decides that it would be better to cut her expenses in half, regain some lost pregnancy protein, and take her chances raising only one child. Is this the best outcome for the most amount of people? Would it be better to have two birds survive for six months each or have one bird survive for a year (at which point, it may be mature enough to live on its own)?
The goal here is maximizing chances of passing on your genes. Sure. Scarce resources = easier for 1, as opposed to 2, to survive and pass on your genes.
The fact that we are the fittest species on the planet, don't usually eat our children, are communicating through a computer, are able to improve our health, or simply: have the cognitive ability to modify our environments, should clue you in that we are capable of inventing new and complex ways to solve our innate needs.
Seeing as a myriad of other species, but most importantly - cultures (even living alongside with FGMers in similar environments) have devised ways of maximizing offspring survival without mutilating said offspring, the practice does not seem to confer much advantage.
Again, in a resource scarce environment, a family that lands a wealthy son-in-law may go from among the poorest families on earth to middle class by Western standards in two generations. Is it not worth making a small sacrifice of one individual's clitoral pleasure (woman can still be sexually stimulated through the vagina, to a degree) to potentially increase the quality of life of dozens of individuals?
Then the question your overview should be asking is, why do you need to mutilate the female out of sexual pleasure in order for her to land a wealthy husband? This seems to contradict the polygamous Sudanese men who apparently prefer non-FGM'd wives.
The question of whether this practice should continue is certainly worth asking, but who is supposed to answer it and which answer will we accept? The experts who study the phenomenon say it's fine. The women who practice it say it's fine.
The experts you linked are using very flawed methods. I can link you just as many experts who'd call it a gross violation of women rights. I don't think the consensus of experts would be in your favor.
The reasons given for FGM
(your study: "These surgical practices are explained by the women with various justifications that appear on inspection to be dubious if not outright wrong"; Nigeria study: "This practice is tied to culture, religious belief, and myth." )
and the fact that the women don't seem to know the health risks
(your study: "Some women claim that the surgery improves health, whereas in fact it produces some significant risks to health.")
confounds the responses. This is how:
How would a woman respond if she didn't undergo FGM, yet still successfully married?
How would she respond if the myth that perpetuates some of it gets dispelled?
How would she respond if she was educated on the health problems her daughter will sustain?
And one that you found: how would she respond if she wasn't pressured by a culture where the provider is apparently expecting an FGM'd wife?
Again, this overview (as is presented) doesn't have nearly enough information to warrant their grandiose conclusion.
In fact, the only people, ironically, who would say "no, please, stop fgm" are the men from these cultures, who you somehow believe to secretly be behind the practice.
I find it more ironic that these men say "no, please stop FGM", yet by your own explanation of the practice they won't marry someone who didn't get FGM'd.
Of course. That's my point. I've never argued that women in these cultures have less agency. Agency is a range and they're on it and they're fine. You're saying that because they can't make this one decision during childhood, they have no agency. Or don't have enough?
But they do have less agency, that's precisely what I'm arguing. By the mere fact that a male won't marry a female if they haven't been FGM'd, as per your defense of the practice above. This correlates with other measures of women rights in those countries.
You were discussing aggression and risk-taking behavior in the context of males. You said that it is biological for males and, thus, cannot be addressed.
I was discussing aggression and risk-taking behavior as being innate and inherited in both, males and females. It is expressed by both in different contexts.
The contexts appropriate to express aggression, the degree of expression, the way of expression - are malleable (can definitely be addressed, that's my whole point with FGM). The fact that we physiologically have the capacity to express aggression is not malleable - it's innate, inherited and essential for survival.
But you counter your own argument here. If the way that aggression is expressed is malleable, then there is no male aggressive or risky behavior that must be acceptable. It's culturally determined.
For the bolded: not at all, why would you think that? 2 examples: a pitbull is attacking your child, your child is hanging off a cliff and you need to risk your life to save it. And the same would work for a female.
Aggression is malleable, but it won't be eliminated in all contexts, and it shouldn't be (examples above). It may get fully eliminated in inappropriate contexts like FGM, racism, rape, etc but humanity would have to work long and hard for that goal, definitely modifying culture along the way. And it's not a given we'll succeed.
So when men work in a coal mine, we don't have to say "well, the men must have chosen that. It's natural." We can say, "Our matriarchal culture forces men to express their risk-taking behavior in this way. Poor men would never choose this for themselves." To quote your words, the men only work in the mine "to cope with culturally expected" male servitude.
The problem is that you're confusing what is innate (passed on by genetic code - very little variability) and what is learned (contexts in which that code is expressed - extensive variability).
The miners are coping with innate need for sustenance (inherited/non-variable, you don't work = you don't eat, and conversely you don't eat = you don't work, that is true for every bio organism from bacteria to humans) for themselves and often their offspring, through working in a mine (learned/variable - context in which the search for sustenance is expressed).
We've come up with mechanisms to do that without eating our children. The miner could have very well met that innate need through plundering a neighbor and cannibalizing his family (which in this context would be an inappropriate display of aggression). The need is innate (inherited), yet the means to achieve the need are learned (variable).
There is an innate need to pass on one's genetic material. You're arguing that FGM is a mechanism to maximize that goal, I agree it may play a part. What I'm arguing is that innate need to maximize the chance of passing on your genes (inherited) can be met with a different strategy (variable) that doesn't involve depriving half your population of sexual pleasure through a procedure that has severe health complications, and is self-based on nonsensical superstitions.
I've answered a barrage of your questions, riddle me a couple now.
If criticism of the practice is ethnocentric and therefore invalid, wouldn't a study of the practice be just as ethnocentric and just as invalid? Surely tribal women didn't come up with the study's hypothesis, methodology, gathered the data and then churned out that conclusion, no?
Since it seems you're applying the logic: FGM serves an evolutionary purpose of maximizing genetic replication in their environment, thus "leave it alone"; would you apply the same logic to rape? After all, since some species eat their offspring to maximize their fitness, others rape to maximize theirs, why wouldn't we leave rape alone? Or literally any behavior that could be explained in terms of maximizing fitness in a particular environment?
And last one, would you support campaigns/programs for women in Africa dispelling myths surrounding FGM and educating on the health issues associated with it?
And that's exactly why less than 50% of them can be replicated. Too complex of an issue/behavior measured by too few variables. This only adds to my point. You have to see what is being studied - physiology of innate universal behavior like aggression vs culture specific behavior like FGM; the former could be generalizable to the entire primate order, the latter very hard to say
There are two points here. The first is a criticism of the field as a whole, which is valid, but not really worth discussing further. The field indeed has flaws. I think we can both agree that the field's flaws don't necessarily support or refute this specific study.
Your second point is a repetition of a fallacy I've already address, though maybe not directly enough. All the culturally-specific risky and aggressive things men do are justified by putting them in a blanket category of "innate aggression/risk-taking." You are putting them in that category because there is biological basis for it. Why not put FGM into a category of intrasexual competition or female sex policing? These both have biological basis. I'm comparing male risk-taking to female sex policing, both of which are biological. You're taking FGM separately as a cultural expression of that sex policing, but not comparing it to risky male equivalents, such as coal mining or wingsuit flights, which is what I'm doing.
You'd like to hit a wall, but the glaring problems with the overview you linked are obvious without knowing the cultural intricacies of Sudan.
1. We can do a crude calculation on the sample size alone. According to Kafin, 385 is the recommended sample size for Sudan. We got slightly lower in 300. That's okay. It's hard to find stats on how many marriages are polygamous, but let's be generous and say 50%. That would already put a big dent in generalizability.
This is an assumption on your part. You actually have no idea if this puts a dent ingeneralizability because you haven't run any numbers. There are studies that find significant, generalizable results with 20 participants.
2. Even if we grant those men being representative of Sudan (say 100% of the men are polygamous), that's only a fraction of where FGM is commonly practiced. In fact, if we look at the Nigeria link, even within the country itself, we see a decent amount of variability, and the very important fact that some groups don't do it altogether. That's odd, women there must have missed the memo that FGM was an environmental necessity.
Not to mention the starting assumption doesn't hold up, being that it's contradicted by vast amounts data about cultural and political treatment of women in Africa. That's the opposite of a scientific approach, this is akin to creationists starting with the assumption that the world is 6k y/o and then working from there to prove the eye couldn't have possibly evolved because there's not enough time.
This is a false contradiction on your part. Women in America have plenty of freedoms, but they are not allowed to walk around topless in public places. I'm sure I can find some tribe somewhere in which women are oppressed, but they ARE allowed to walk around topless. Is toplessness not a valid freedom, then, if the tribal women receive poor overall political and cultural treatment? Just because a society's women may be treated poorly does not mean that everything that happens to women in their society is an example of poor treatment.
This is even aside from the fact that most studies of female "treatment" come from a modern Western perspective of gender equality rather than the historically dominant and much more prevalent model of gender specialization.
My approach is the opposite of reductionism, it's a specific and pointed criticism of the overview. I don't need to be schooled enough in all the variables to point out massive methodological flaws.
What is reductionist, is that from this extremely limited amount of data of arguable validity, the overview reduces the conclusion to - "female control theory" is what is driving women to mutilate themselves.
What evidence is there of "male control theory," which is the dominant theory on FGM? You argument has been that because men in these societies control other things about women then they must control EVERY thing about women, which doesn't make any sense.
The goal here is maximizing chances of passing on your genes. Sure. Scarce resources = easier for 1, as opposed to 2, to survive and pass on your genes.
The fact that we are the fittest species on the planet, don't usually eat our children, are communicating through a computer, are able to improve our health, or simply: have the cognitive ability to modify our environments, should clue you in that we are capable of inventing new and complex ways to solve our innate needs.
Seeing as a myriad of other species, but most importantly - cultures (even living alongside with FGMers in similar environments) have devised ways of maximizing offspring survival without mutilating said offspring, the practice does not seem to confer much advantage.
1. I think you're overestimating the living conditions of many people on Earth.
2. Not all birds eat their offspring either. It's a specific bird in a specific niche under specific circumstances. You're either arguing that:
a. that bird should stop eating their offspring because other animals don't have to do that so there must be a better way. Or
b. humans are so far removed from being animals that there are uniform solutions to human problems, regardless of context.
Unless you have a third alternative I'm missing, can you see how neither of these make any sense?
Then the question your overview should be asking is, why do you need to mutilate the female out of sexual pleasure in order for her to land a wealthy husband? This seems to contradict the polygamous Sudanese men who apparently prefer non-FGM'd wives.
The experts you linked are using very flawed methods. I can link you just as many experts who'd call it a gross violation of women rights. I don't think the consensus of experts would be in your favor.
The reasons given for FGM
(your study: "These surgical practices are explained by the women with various justifications that appear on inspection to be dubious if not outright wrong"; Nigeria study: "This practice is tied to culture, religious belief, and myth." )
and the fact that the women don't seem to know the health risks
(your study: "Some women claim that the surgery improves health, whereas in fact it produces some significant risks to health.")
confounds the responses. This is how:
How would a woman respond if she didn't undergo FGM, yet still successfully married?
How would she respond if the myth that perpetuates some of it gets dispelled?
How would she respond if she was educated on the health problems her daughter will sustain?
And one that you found: how would she respond if she wasn't pressured by a culture where the provider is apparently expecting an FGM'd wife?
Again, this overview (as is presented) doesn't have nearly enough information to warrant their grandiose conclusion.
You're misunderstanding my point. My point isn't that FGM serves some marital benefit. That was simply a hypothesis of mine based on what I've read about female intrasexual competition. I don't know what purpose FGM serves, if any.
My point was that there is NO evidence of the dominant "male control theory" and significant evidence, in comparison, for the "female control theory." Your disagreement is simply that you disagree with the idea that women in these cultures are capable of having ANY control over their lives.
I find it more ironic that these men say "no, please stop FGM", yet by your own explanation of the practice they won't marry someone who didn't get FGM'd.
But they do have less agency, that's precisely what I'm arguing. By the mere fact that a male won't marry a female if they haven't been FGM'd, as per your defense of the practice above. This correlates with other measures of women rights in those countries.
Incorrect. The men don't have a choice. The women ensure that all the women have been FGM'd.
Again, the "male control theory" is built into everything you say. You assume the men have some agency here, when the evidence shows that they don't. All the women around them have been FGM'd without their permission, consent, or even knowledge. The men can't choose to refuse an uncircumcised female. That possibility is not presented to them, even though they were explicit in saying that's what they'd prefer.
For the bolded: not at all, why would you think that? 2 examples: a pitbull is attacking your child, your child is hanging off a cliff and you need to risk your life to save it. And the same would work for a female.
I think you misunderstood me. I said "there is no male aggressive or risky behavior that MUST be acceptable." not "all male aggressive or risky behavior is unacceptable." As in, all such behavior is malleable and, in theory, does not have to be accepted simply because biology is biology.
The problem is that you're confusing what is innate (passed on by genetic code - very little variability) and what is learned (contexts in which that code is expressed - extensive variability).
The miners are coping with innate need for sustenance (inherited/non-variable, you don't work = you don't eat, and conversely you don't eat = you don't work, that is true for every bio organism from bacteria to humans) for themselves and often their offspring, through working in a mine (learned/variable - context in which the search for sustenance is expressed).
We've come up with mechanisms to do that without eating our children. The miner could have very well met that innate need through plundering a neighbor and cannibalizing his family (which in this context would be an inappropriate display of aggression). The need is innate (inherited), yet the means to achieve the need are learned (variable).
I think you're misunderstanding why I chose coal mining. I understand that it is a way to put food on the table. I picked it because it is an extremely risky, dangerous, painful way to put food on the table. In the same way that, as you rightly understood, FGM is a risky, dangerous, painful way to maximize mate options (if that is indeed what it is for). I understand there are alternatives to both. So what would you suggest as an alternative line of work for a 1950s American coal miner living in Virginia? Do you not see how the context, perhaps, limits other options? And how FGM may be similar?
My argument is that no one ever talks about male coal miners as being forced to do what they're doing because women demand that men provide. Or because they live in a culture that reinforces the idea that the male body is simply a tool.
When men do stupid, dangerous shit, there is no oppression narrative. Why not?
I've answered a barrage of your questions, riddle me a couple now.
If criticism of the practice is ethnocentric and therefore invalid, wouldn't a study of the practice be just as ethnocentric and just as invalid? Surely tribal women didn't come up with the study's hypothesis, methodology, gathered the data and then churned out that conclusion, no?
Also, let me be clear: there is nothing inherently ethnocentric about criticizing FGM. However, I believe that most of the criticism of it comes from an ethnocentric perspective. There are women from these cultures who criticize the practice who obviously can't be accused of ethnocentrism. It's like when Europeans say that America should just "ban all guns." While there is some validity, perhaps, to the argument, it often comes from a place that doesn't really understand the complex realities of American gun culture.
Since it seems you're applying the logic: FGM serves an evolutionary purpose of maximizing genetic replication in their environment, thus "leave it alone"; would you apply the same logic to rape? After all, since some species eat their offspring to maximize their fitness, others rape to maximize theirs, why wouldn't we leave rape alone? Or literally any behavior that could be explained in terms of maximizing fitness in a particular environment?
And last one, would you support campaigns/programs for women in Africa dispelling myths surrounding FGM and educating on the health issues associated with it?
That's a misunderstanding of my logic that I clarified above. I believe that the women in these cultures aren't idiots and would have stopped the practice if they saw no value in it. I don't know what that value is, but I can hypothesize.
If you find me a culture in which the victims of rape are cool with rape, I would probably imagine they know something about their society that we don't.
As for your last question, absolutely. I think it is currently the choice of the women and should remain their choice. If they look at all the evidence and decide they still want to do it (which I imagine they would since such beliefs are often faith- and tradition- based rather than evidence-based), then that's their choice. If they look at the evidence and find a different solution to whatever problem they were trying to address, that's their choice too.
There are two points here. The first is a criticism of the field as a whole, which is valid, but not really worth discussing further. The field indeed has flaws. I think we can both agree that the field's flaws don't necessarily support or refute this specific study.
Indeed, so the deflection to the unreliability of psychology was useless. Let's try to not deflect moving forward.
Your second point is a repetition of a fallacy I've already address, though maybe not directly enough. All the culturally-specific risky and aggressive things men do are justified by putting them in a blanket category of "innate aggression/risk-taking." You are putting them in that category because there is biological basis for it. Why not put FGM into a category of intrasexual competition or female sex policing? These both have biological basis. I'm comparing male risk-taking to female sex policing, both of which are biological. You're taking FGM separately as a cultural expression of that sex policing, but not comparing it to risky male equivalents, such as coal mining or wingsuit flights, which is what I'm doing.
I am not justifying anything, and certainly not "all" male aggressive behavior is justified (although I gave you examples where it is and where it is not), otherwise mankind wouldn't be where it is. I'm explaining there are different ways of gene expression of inherited code (rape vs courtship to pass on your genes for example).
You're justifying FGM as appropriate expression of intrasex competition because of their niche environment. This falls flat on the fact that tribes living alongside in similar niche environments are managing to not mutilate half their populations and still successfully pass on their genes.
This is an assumption on your part. You actually have no idea if this puts a dent ingeneralizability because you haven't run any numbers. There are studies that find significant, generalizable results with 20 participants.
Kafir did run the numbers, and even for Sudan ALONE they come up short, but close. If we add entire populations of the regions where it's practiced, the numbers BY DEFINITION (ratios: small/big > small/BIGGER) put a dent in generalizability without getting into cultural intricacies.
Tell me out of these claims where are my assumptions:
1. Sudan = only a fraction of where FGM is practiced (add in Nigeria, Somalia, Chad, Mauritania, Guinea, Egypt, Gambia, etc)
2. Polygamous marriage = a fraction of marriages in Sudan
3. Variability of practice WITHIN a country (Nigeria), not even talking about across multiple countries. High level of variability lowers generalizability, by definition.
The assumptions are all yours:
1. dichotomy between "male control" vs "female control", why?
2. Polygamous fraction of Sudan is generalizable to distinct cultures across vast regions of the continent, how?
3. Assessment of women's attitude in some Sudanese tribes is valid and generalizable, how? Why did you conveniently ignore the giant confounds your study doesn't even mention?
This is a false contradiction on your part. Women in America have plenty of freedoms, but they are not allowed to walk around topless in public places. I'm sure I can find some tribe somewhere in which women are oppressed, but they ARE allowed to walk around topless. Is toplessness not a valid freedom, then, if the tribal women receive poor overall political and cultural treatment? Just because a society's women may be treated poorly does not mean that everything that happens to women in their society is an example of poor treatment.
'False contradiction' is redundant. And there is none. If the mutilations were under the girl's choice once her biological organism is developed (as is toplessness), your parallel would work. Not to mention the reversibility of the action. You can't sow the clit back on like you can put on/take off a shirt. This whataboutism is getting tedious to address. Focus on FGM.
This is even aside from the fact that most studies of female "treatment" come from a modern Western perspective of gender equality rather than the historically dominant and much more prevalent model of gender specialization.
The concept as well as the study of gender specialization comes out of the Western scientific framework of evolution.
You can't have it both ways. If one is ethnocentric, by definition any attempt to study/explain FGM is ethnocentric, unless done by tribeswomen themselves using their own developed methodology based on their own assumptions about gender treatment.
What is instead done, is an overview of the study and examination of the methodology, which you didn't do in this case. Not sure which peers, if any, reviewed this overview. The holes are glaring.
What evidence is there of "male control theory," which is the dominant theory on FGM? You argument has been that because men in these societies control other things about women then they must control EVERY thing about women, which doesn't make any sense.
This is where assumptions (based on data) come in - forming a hypothesis. Data shows females in those countries are 2nd class at best - educational attainment, political involvement, violence and rape rates, etc. That's not to say "male control" is FULLY responsible, it shows the wider culture is less conducive to "female control" if you're using that as a metric.
Your study's "female control" hypothesis hinges on Sudanese women's attitude towards the practice. A better way to form a hypothesis is to assess the attitudes of females in a country like Chad or Liberia (~50% rate of FGM) as opposed to Sudan (~90% rate) to eliminate some of the giant confounds I pointed out.
Not to mention "female control" vs "male control" is a false dichotomy. It may be neither, it may be both - a sliding scale. Assuming it's one or the other, based on peripheral data with glaring holes, is interesting to say the least. I suspect there is more than scientific curiosity at play seeing as LightfootKlein and Greer are cited to support that very weak hinge.
1. I think you're overestimating the living conditions of many people on Earth.
2. Not all birds eat their offspring either. It's a specific bird in a specific niche under specific circumstances. You're either arguing that:
a. that bird should stop eating their offspring because other animals don't have to do that so there must be a better way. Or
b. humans are so far removed from being animals that there are uniform solutions to human problems, regardless of context.
Unless you have a third alternative I'm missing, can you see how neither of these make any sense?
1. I'm not. I'm comparing differing rates of FGM (sometimes ceasing FGM altogether) across similar conditions/environments/contexts in the same species.
2. Indeed, not all birds do.
a. "birds" is a class ranging from ostriches to mocking birds. Homo sapiens is a species. Unless you have a misguided alt-right-esque "asian IQ master race" understanding of biology, these analogies are very pedestrian.
b. Let me quote myself, since you seem to have missed it:
The fact that we are the fittest species on the planet, don't usually eat our children, are communicating through a computer, are able to improve our health, or simply: have the cognitive ability to modify our environments, should clue you in that we are capable of inventing new and complex ways to solve our innate needs.
b.1. They need not be uniform, or perfect. They have to be improving. My assumption here (based on reasons given "why" it's performed, the severe health complications, overall women's predicament in those societies) is that not mutilating half your population is an improvement over mutilating half your population.
What you're missing is a fundamental understanding of behavioral biology as it pertains to a species with the largest and most developed frontal cortex, which allows for modification/attenuation of innate behaviors (to a much greater extent than in birds, or even our close chimp relatives), cooperation, and general life condition improvement - aka increases fitness.
You're misunderstanding my point. My point isn't that FGM serves some marital benefit. That was simply a hypothesis of mine based on what I've read about female intrasexual competition. I don't know what purpose FGM serves, if any.
My point was that there is NO evidence of the dominant "male control theory" and significant evidence, in comparison, for the "female control theory." Your disagreement is simply that you disagree with the idea that women in these cultures are capable of having ANY control over their lives.
I addressed this in the above quote on hypothesis formation. You should stop smuggling in absolutist assumptions like "all" and "any".
Incorrect. The men don't have a choice. The women ensure that all the women have been FGM'd.
Again, the "male control theory" is built into everything you say. You assume the men have some agency here, when the evidence shows that they don't. All the women around them have been FGM'd without their permission, consent, or even knowledge. The men can't choose to refuse an uncircumcised female. That possibility is not presented to them, even though they were explicit in saying that's what they'd prefer.
Sudanese polygamous men who had the option (in a population where ~90% of women are FGM'd) to experience BOTH FGM and nonFGM, are explicit in preferring the nonFGM for sex. You assume this is not only representative of half of Africa, but also representative for marriage (as opposed to sex). The data you've provided don't support those assumptions.
I think you misunderstood me. I said "there is no male aggressive or risky behavior that MUST be acceptable." not "all male aggressive or risky behavior is unacceptable." As in, all such behavior is malleable and, in theory, does not have to be accepted simply because biology is biology.
Yup. No qualms there, that's my entire point. Biology is not a justification for anything, it's merely an explanation.
I think you're misunderstanding why I chose coal mining. I understand that it is a way to put food on the table. I picked it because it is an extremely risky, dangerous, painful way to put food on the table. In the same way that, as you rightly understood, FGM is a risky, dangerous, painful way to maximize mate options (if that is indeed what it is for). I understand there are alternatives to both. So what would you suggest as an alternative line of work for a 1950s American coal miner living in Virginia? Do you not see how the context, perhaps, limits other options? And how FGM may be similar?
My argument is that no one ever talks about male coal miners as being forced to do what they're doing because women demand that men provide. Or because they live in a culture that reinforces the idea that the male body is simply a tool.
When men do stupid, dangerous shit, there is no oppression narrative. Why not?
Miners (currently) aren't going into coal mines at 5 years old, with no coming back out of the mine (as opposed to permanent FGM). And certainly coal mining hasn't been "left alone" as evidenced by safety regulations, precautions taken, technology to mine improving, etc.
This is clumsy whataboutism. Coal was (maybe still is in certain industries) essential for energy production. If people device a more useful method of energy production minimizing the risks involved, I argue it'd be very prudent to stop mining coal and use that method. As it is being done right now.
In regards to a parallel to FGM, there are better methods for gene reproduction in the exact same species, in the same or very similar environments, yet you'd rather leave the equivalent of "black lung" alone instead of using better methods.
Of course, researchers always have biases.
Also, let me be clear: there is nothing inherently ethnocentric about criticizing FGM. However, I believe that most of the criticism of it comes from an ethnocentric perspective. There are women from these cultures who criticize the practice who obviously can't be accused of ethnocentrism. It's like when Europeans say that America should just "ban all guns." While there is some validity, perhaps, to the argument, it often comes from a place that doesn't really understand the complex realities of American gun culture.
That's a misunderstanding of my logic that I clarified above. I believe that the women in these cultures aren't idiots and would have stopped the practice if they saw no value in it. I don't know what that value is, but I can hypothesize.
If you find me a culture in which the victims of rape are cool with rape, I would probably imagine they know something about their society that we don't.
Would you take the word of a girl who has been raped since she can remember, and is culturally expected to undergo said rape for the benefit of gene reproduction, as a valid justification of leaving that practice alone?
This flies in the face of everything we know about brain development, especially at early ages.
As for your last question, absolutely. I think it is currently the choice of the women and should remain their choice. If they look at all the evidence and decide they still want to do it (which I imagine they would since such beliefs are often faith- and tradition- based rather than evidence-based), then that's their choice. If they look at the evidence and find a different solution to whatever problem they were trying to address, that's their choice too.
But the choice is not the women's alone, it's cultural. Girls as young as a few months don't get to choose.
Your own hypothesis contradicts your data.
If FGM is controlled by females, yet men don't like it, then landing a wealthy male mate for support should be easier by NOT FGMing the daughter, as opposed to FGMing her, no?
IGNORE ALL OF THIS. This debate is shrapnelling. The only thing that really matters, imo, is the unspoilered stuff. But here are responses to your other points, just cause I don't want to ignore them.
I am not justifying anything, and certainly not "all" male aggressive behavior is justified (although I gave you examples where it is and where it is not), otherwise mankind wouldn't be where it is. I'm explaining there are different ways of gene expression of inherited code (rape vs courtship to pass on your genes for example).
You're justifying FGM as appropriate expression of intrasex competition because of their niche environment. This falls flat on the fact that tribes living alongside in similar niche environments are managing to not mutilate half their populations and still successfully pass on their genes.
Similar does not equal identical and niche does not equal environment. Lions, leopards and cheetah are all big cats in the same environment. They have entirely different physiology, social habits, and hunting strategies. They do not occupy the same niche.
When you say other non-FGM tribes occupy the same niche, you mean they occupy the same environment. Which is pretty meaningless.
Kafir did run the numbers, and even for Sudan ALONE they come up short, but close. If we add entire populations of the regions where it's practiced, the numbers BY DEFINITION (ratios: small/big > small/BIGGER) put a dent in generalizability without getting into cultural intricacies.
The experiment is generalizing to people who practice FGM, not to the Sudanese population.
Kafir ran the numbers against Sudan as a whole because he was trying to show you why what you were saying about sample size didn't hold much water. No offense meant to Kafir, but he's not a social scientist. I don't understand why you would take his quick statistical math over the multivariate analysis social scientists perform.
Tell me out of these claims where are my assumptions:
1. Sudan = only a fraction of where FGM is practiced (add in Nigeria, Somalia, Chad, Mauritania, Guinea, Egypt, Gambia, etc)
2. Polygamous marriage = a fraction of marriages in Sudan
3. Variability of practice WITHIN a country (Nigeria), not even talking about across multiple countries. High level of variability lowers generalizability, by definition.
Again, studies are regularly performed on college students that are generalized to the American population and, occasionally, to the entire human race. Your issue is with the social sciences. You think these things hamper generalizability. They may. But we don't know enough to say that it limits generalizability in this specific study.
The assumptions are all yours:
1. dichotomy between "male control" vs "female control", why?
2. Polygamous fraction of Sudan is generalizable to distinct cultures across vast regions of the continent, how?
3. Assessment of women's attitude in some Sudanese tribes is valid and generalizable, how? Why did you conveniently ignore the giant confounds your study doesn't even mention?
1. Is there an alternative theory that you're familiar with? By all means post a link.
2. I have never assumed this. I have assumed that the researchers assumed this. Whether or not their Sudanese study generalizes to other cultures is irrelevant to my point, to be honest. Again, the only theory on FGM is male control. There is no evidence supporting that theory. This theory has some evidence supporting it.
3. Covered in #2.
'False contradiction' is redundant. And there is none. If the mutilations were under the girl's choice once her biological organism is developed (as is toplessness), your parallel would work. Not to mention the reversibility of the action. You can't sow the clit back on like you can put on/take off a shirt. This whataboutism is getting tedious to address. Focus on FGM.
I said: "Just because a society's women may be treated poorly does not mean that everything that happens to women in their society is an example of poor treatment."
Response?
The concept as well as the study of gender specialization comes out of the Western scientific framework of evolution.
You can't have it both ways. If one is ethnocentric, by definition any attempt to study/explain FGM is ethnocentric, unless done by tribeswomen themselves using their own developed methodology based on their own assumptions about gender treatment.
What is instead done, is an overview of the study and examination of the methodology, which you didn't do in this case. Not sure which peers, if any, reviewed this overview. The holes are glaring.
I think you answered this before seeing my response later in my post. I clarified what I meant by "ethnocentric".
This is where assumptions (based on data) come in - forming a hypothesis. Data shows females in those countries are 2nd class at best - educational attainment, political involvement, violence and rape rates, etc. That's not to say "male control" is FULLY responsible, it shows the wider culture is less conducive to "female control" if you're using that as a metric.
Your study's "female control" hypothesis hinges on Sudanese women's attitude towards the practice. A better way to form a hypothesis is to assess the attitudes of females in a country like Chad or Liberia (~50% rate of FGM) as opposed to Sudan (~90% rate) to eliminate some of the giant confounds I pointed out.
You "giant confound" hinges on male control theory, lol. Which is an assumption that there is no evidence for unless one assumes that any female action undertaken in a patriarchal society should be suspected of being determined by males. Which amounts to, as I already stated, the supposition that women in presumed patriarchal societies don't have ANY agency. If they had even a lick of agency, then the default assumption would be that any activity that appears to be freely undertaken is indeed freely undertaken.
1. I'm not. I'm comparing differing rates of FGM (sometimes ceasing FGM altogether) across similar conditions/environments/contexts in the same species.
See above comment about environment/niche/context.
2. Indeed, not all birds do.
a. "birds" is a class ranging from ostriches to mocking birds. Homo sapiens is a species. Unless you have a misguided alt-right-esque "asian IQ master race" understanding of biology, these analogies are very pedestrian.
b. Let me quote myself, since you seem to have missed it:
b.1. They need not be uniform, or perfect. They have to be improving. My assumption here (based on reasons given "why" it's performed, the severe health complications, overall women's predicament in those societies) is that not mutilating half your population is an improvement over mutilating half your population.
What you're missing is a fundamental understanding of behavioral biology as it pertains to a species with the largest and most developed frontal cortex, which allows for modification/attenuation of innate behaviors (to a much greater extent than in birds, or even our close chimp relatives), cooperation, and general life condition improvement - aka increases fitness.
This is a long winded way of saying what I already stated your position to be, which is basically that humans are so uniquely intelligent that evolution--even though it is very powerful and can almost perfectly explain why men take on jobs and tasks like coal mining and cage fighting at far higher rates than women--can basically be ignored when it comes to female cultural practices like FGM because it has no power.
Sudanese polygamous men who had the option (in a population where ~90% of women are FGM'd) to experience BOTH FGM and nonFGM, are explicit in preferring the nonFGM for sex. You assume this is not only representative of half of Africa, but also representative for marriage (as opposed to sex). The data you've provided don't support those assumptions.
Incorrect. I assume this is a better representation of the realities of FGM than the previous dominant theory of male control.
This is clumsy whataboutism. Coal was (maybe still is in certain industries) essential for energy production. If people device a more useful method of energy production minimizing the risks involved, I argue it'd be very prudent to stop mining coal and use that method. As it is being done right now.
Look at the bolded. This is literally my exact argument about FGM. Let me quote and replace exactly so you can understand what I'm talking about:
"[FGM] was (maybe still is in certain [PLACES]) essential for [UNKNOWN PURPOSE]. If people device (sic) a more useful method of [UNKNOWN PURPOSE] minimizing the risks involved, I argue it'd be very prudent to stop [FGM] and use that method."
The problem is that we don't know what purpose FGM has, we just know that the women who practice it in one specific context (to kill the generalizability debate), according to both formal and informal surveys, seem to be okay with it and are it's main, almost exclusive champions.
When new [technology/social practices] develop and the society no longer sees a need to practice [coal mining/fgm], then I'm in favor of them doing whatever they want. Until then, though, it simply seems to be a really dangerous activity that the [men/women] of a specific culture practice because they think it is overall beneficial to their society.
However, I also understand that even after new [technology/social practices] develop, such as [hydroelectric, nuclear, solar, wind/whatever could replace FGM], I understand that the culture may still hold on to their existing practice for a while, either due to perceived flaws in the alternative, or due to the effort required in changing culture, or simply out of tradition.
Everything else after this is kinda secondary as well. If you want to continue to discuss these other points, I'm willing, but I think the non-spoilered part is really the meat of this debate.
Would you take the word of a girl who has been raped since she can remember, and is culturally expected to undergo said rape for the benefit of gene reproduction, as a valid justification of leaving that practice alone?
This flies in the face of everything we know about brain development, especially at early ages
This is why I said your argument is ethnocentric. In the quoted part above, you have basically defined what cultural difference is. Cultural difference is people doing shit that I think is weird or even harmful, but they all think it's fine. In my culture, when a baby is born, a knife is taken and pressed into the baby's cheek hard enough to draw blood and scar the baby for life. I still have my scar. You probably think this is barbaric, right? We don't. Fuck off. You have no idea why we do it or what purpose it serves. We aren't forced to do it by some mysterious oppressive force.
If there is a culture in which the girls are all fine with being raped, then:
1. It isn't rape, by definition.
2. Then they're fucking fine with it. What exactly would you want me to do about it?
But the choice is not the women's alone, it's cultural. Girls as young as a few months don't get to choose.
Children's opinions don't matter. That's why they can't vote. When things happen to children, their thoughts are irrelevant. Is it harmful for two gay men to raise a child? 80 years ago, I don't know if you could've found a culture on Earth that wouldn't have considered it an abomination that is harmful to children. Now, it's legal and normal in dozens of countries. You know whose opinion about gay dudes raising kids wasn't considered when this social change took place? Kids.
@Leagon
"[FGM] was (maybe still is in certain [PLACES]) essential for [UNKNOWN PURPOSE]. If people device (sic) a more useful method of [UNKNOWN PURPOSE] minimizing the risks involved, I argue it'd be very prudent to stop [FGM] and use that method."
This is the crux. The purpose is obviously based on reproduction aka passing on your genes (as shown by reasons given for the practice).
THE SAME SPECIES, in THE SAME ENVIRONMENT(or similar enough to be considered the same) show extensive variation in the practice (even foregoing all together). Therefore, BY DEFINITION, the purpose is non-essential, yet the risks are huge.
https://www.path.org/files/FGM-The-Facts.htm
section: reasons for FGM, note the correlation with education. Oddly enough, the practice becomes increasingly non-essential as the level of education rises.
Who could have thought that modifying environment (which people, unlike birds or cats, have the ability to cognitively do) leads a change in behavior.
Your argument amounts to "they don't know any better, leave their culture alone" while trying to justify it with inept comparisons (lions, cheetahs and other big cats are DIFFERENT species, we as humans are THE SAME specie - this kills all your animal comparisons so far) and contradicting hypotheses.
EDIT: I doubt we'll reach a consensus here and it's getting tedious. So seeing as I started, you should have the last word. Thanks for your perspective.
Violence/Genocide: Do not condone violence or genocide on a person or group of people. You are free to attack a person or groups ideas but you are crossing the line when calling for violence. This will be heavily enforced in threads with breaking news involving victims.
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