Question

Paper instructions

1.Fill in the blanks based on Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar’s film Warrior Marks (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (e-video)

The film is titled Warrior Marks because ……
Walker calls female genital mutilation as a kind of “sexual blinding” that stops women from seeing their lovers ….
The film shows a dance sequence because ….

2.Why do the authors of the reading the document claim that campaigns against FGC using educational, health, legal, and human rights?based approaches are at times ineffective and counterproductive when they frame the practice as a “tradition” rooted in a “primitive” and unchanging culture”?

Notice: Following the reading, film and requirements that teacher give to finish the paper, every question’s answer should show in the eassay.
The film link: http://washington.kanopy.com/video/warrior-marks

Answer

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Female Genital Mutilation

Contents

Part 1: Warrior Marks. 1

Part 2: Female Genital Cutting (FGC). 2

Works Cited. 4

Part 1: Warrior Marks

The film is titled Warrior Marks because to emphasize the degree of suffering that girls who undergo genital mutilation go through. It is a sarcastic title that depicts the girls as warriors for going through the dehumanizing female genital mutilation process and come back alive. The title of the movie refers to the mark that is left on the girls that undergo female circumcision as the marks of a warrior. It implies that going through the process and coming out alive is a show of resilience that deserves the title of a warrior. The process of female circumcision leaves the girls with scars on their private parts. The producer of the film sees the marks left behind as a mark of courage, and therefore refers to the girls who have undergone the process as warriors. Walker views women who have undergone the process as survivors as opposed to being victims. Therefore, they do not have scars but warrior marks.

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Walker calls female genital mutilation as a kind of “sexual blinding” that stops women from seeing their lovers because it reduces sexual sensitivity in women. By removing the clitoris, women can no longer enjoy having sex. The clitoris is the center of pleasure for women. Removing the clitoris, therefore, denies them the natural right to enjoy having sex with their partners. Women who have been circumcised will thus have a reduced sexual interest hence will not be keen to engage in sexual activities with their lovers.

The film shows a dancing sequence because it wants to create the contrast of the practice and culture. While the communities that practice the culture celebrate every time an age set goes under the knife, the tales in the interviews depict a culture that is dehumanizing. The interviews, therefore, come in between the dances.

Part 2: Female Genital Cutting (FGC)

Campaign against FGC that focuses on framing the practice as a tradition rather than exploring the history of the practice cannot succeed in communities that have a politicized past. The community views the effort to end FGC as a wide campaign by the government to marginalize its cultural practices (Hernlund 237). By associating FGC with traditions, it is place in the same light as other cultural practices that include drinking blood and milk, tribal dress, mud houses, and ear stretching. Identification of female genital cutting with the hallmarks of the Maasai culture, breed an image of backwardness that has always been associated with the Maasai culture. Therefore, the Maasai view the condemnation of the practice as an overall campaign against the Maasai hence they become resistant to call for changes in the practice. According to the author, the problem of FGC should be tackled by being looked in the context of the history of the Maasai people as opposed to considering it as a tradition (Winterbottom, Koomen, and Burford 49). Maasai have a politicized history of complicated interactions with other communities, local, national, as well as international communities that have attempted to civilize the Maasai. The maasai, therefore, view the campaigns as politicized pattern against their culture hence are resistant to any form of campaigns that seek to remove the practice. They view the efforts as a part of a campaign against their culture that has been termed by many people as a backward tradition that is part of a static culture.

Works Cited

Hernlund, Ylva. “Cutting without ritual and ritual without cutting: female circumcision and the re-ritualization of initiation in The Gambia.” Female” circumcision” in Africa: culture, change and controversy. Boulder, Colorado, Lynne Rienner(2000): 235-252.

Walker, Alice and Pratibha Parmar. Walker Warriors. http://washington.kanopy.com/video/warrior-marks

Winterbottom, Anna, Jonneke Koomen, and Gemma Burford. “Female genital cutting: cultural rights and rites of defiance in northern Tanzania.” African Studies Review 52.1 (2009): 47-71.