The Redhunter

Unbelievable that this is going to even be debated. If there's still any doubt in your mind that the AAA is infected with the worst sort of cultural relativism, Tierney puts it to rest in a discussion of " critique of the global campaign against female genital mutilation, written by another participant in Saturday’s discussion, Richard Shweder of the University of Chicago."

Dr. Shweder says that many Westerners trying to impose a “zero tolerance” policy don’t realize that these initiation rites are generally controlled not by men but by women who believe it is a cosmetic procedure with aesthetic benefits. He criticizes Americans and Europeans for outlawing it at the same they endorse their own forms of genital modification, like the circumcision of boys or the cosmetic surgery for women called “vaginal rejuvenation.” After surveying studies of female circumcision and comparing the data with the rhetoric about its harmfulness, Dr. Shweder concludes that “‘First World’ feminist issues and political correctness and activism have triumphed over the critical assessment of evidence.”

I rather think Dr Shweder has the political correctness part backward.

To be sure that Tierney's description was right, I downloaded the good doctor's essay, and sure enough, right there on page 5 I found this

In this essay I suggest that in at least one very intimate cultural and family life domain the rules of the game have been imposed by the rich nations of the world in such a way that they invite moral critique. The critique is invited because activist organizations and governments in the rich nations of the world have tried to universalize their own cultural preferences and tastes with little regard for truth in advertising, and with considerable contempt for the democratic voice of majority populations in the particular poor countries most directly affected by the forceful expansion and willful imposition of American and European cultural perspectives. I am going to suggest that these “First World” governments and activist organizations (who, ironically, often frame their campaigns in a discourse of human rights) have actually acted in violation of several human rights, including rights to self-determination and rights to family privacy, among others, which they themselves often invoke in defense of their own cultural preferences and practices.

So opposing female genital mutiliation is rich countries imposing their morals on poor nations. This is bad because Dr Shweder maintains that a majority of the women in these countries support the practice, therefore it is ok.

Lisa Schiffren makes the obvious retort that "when the British forbade sutee, the locals, some women included, wanted to keep burning those widows." Did that then, make the burning of widows ok? According to Dr Shweder, apparently so.

All of this reminds me of nothing so much as the words of Malcolm Muggeridge, as he observed Western liberals as they traveled about the Soviet Union in the 1930s

They are unquestionably one of the wonders of the age, and I shall treasure...the spectacle of the travelling with radiant optimism through a famished countryside, wandering in happy bands about squalid, over-crowded towns, listening with unshakable faith to the fatuous patterr of carefully trained and indoctrinated guides, repeating like school-children a multiplication table, the bogus statistics and mindless slogans endlessly intoned to them.

There were...earnest clergymen who walked reverently through anti-God museums and reverently turned the pages of athiestic literature, earnest pacifists who watched delightenly tanks rattle across the Red Square and bombing planes darken the sky.... The almost unbelievable credulity of these mostly university-educated tourists astonished even Soviet officials used to handling foreign visitors....

From Muggeridge, "Chronicles of Wasted Time", as quoted in Paul Hollander's "Political Pilgrims"

Just as Western intellectuals then justified Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, and Castro's Cuba, today they justify female genital mutilation. They'll justify anything as long as the participants are anti-Western and they don't have to partake themselves.

If the American Anthropological Association had really wanted to learn something, they would have invited Ayaan Hirsi Ali to their little conference. It'll never happen, but I can dream.

Update

More on the Western moral confusion front from Mark Steyn:

Just to reassure Jonah, my head did not explode at the BBC's description of the Sudanese mob as "good-natured". In fact, I didn't even roll my eyes or give a mild tsk. Such is the way of the world. Thousands of Sudanese men calling for the execution of a middle-aged schoolma'am over a teddy bear are "good-natured", while Martin Amis is a "racist" and I'm a "flagrantly Islamophobic" hatemonger.

Even so, it's impressive to see the speed with which poor Mrs Gibbons has been consigned to the same camp. As Tammy Bruce reports:

When asked by FOX News for a comment about the situation, a National Organization for Women spokeswoman said they were "not putting out a statement or taking a position."

Fortunately, other members of the sisterhood are. From The View:

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: You’d think if you’re going overseas, I mean, we had this discussion yesterday about people coming to America and learning the customs and knowing what is cool, and what isn’t cool. But I find that maybe we are not- and I say we just as European and American, we’re not as anxious to learn the customs before we go places. It’s just one of the reasons we’re called the ugly Americans.

What's so "ugly" about a British schoolteacher taking a job teaching Muslim schoolchildren in Khartoum? Never mind, the victim must have been asking for it. And, given that the prohibition against Mohammedan teddy bears was concocted out of whole cloth, even the most abjectly "sensitive" are bound to fall afoul of something or other. As The Belmont Club puts it:

The incitement here is not entirely on the Sudanese side. The supine behavior of the West, abject surrender to every demand, its willingness to shame and degrade itself without limit, is in large part responsible for the provocations now directed toward it.

Which is why there'll be more. In hostage negotiations, tough-talking governments say they won't make "concessions to terrorists". They mean prisoner releases and cash handovers. Yet we make equally critical psychological concessions with nary a thought.