It's not about censorship so much as what leads to real change on the ground versus what leads to riled up westerners. If we want them to change we need to lend them a hand. This is an especially complex issue... women become women in these societies, by joining the other women, in this 'rite'. We need to understand them, then help them.
Abusive. Barbaric. Evil. Wrong.<p>These are all words I feel confident in saying are accurate when applied to coerced female genital mutilation. While I appreciate Amnesty International's position - it's obviously impolitic to call someone these things while sitting at the table having a dialog - it's inappropriate to sacrifice our own moral clarity everywhere else.
'Barbaric' stems from a group of people seeing foreigners at their state wall and hearing them as speaking like 'ba ba ba baba baa ba' so they called them barbarians. I can understand Amnesty wanting to avoid being linked with calling people barbarians.
If there were a better balance of stories in the media then this would be much less of an issue. In the west most of stories about the rest focus on the "barbaric" aspects. FGM, despotic dictators, Islamic extremists. If there was an equal representation of all of the kind, loving Muslims working for peace, and all of the compassionate rural mothers and grandmothers that make up the majority of Africans then people would be less sensitive on these issues. It's not about judging individual practices, it's about our subconscious application of those values to a much broader set of people than what is true or just.<p>I don't think that censorship is the right word. But for every time you write about FGM, find a story about an inspiring African grandmother and write about that as well.
The most poignant aspect of the article is when they talk about words sounding judgemental. This was something that was stressed in my Sociology course - how practices and beliefs of other cultures should be observed but not judged, because those practices "work for them".<p>Like the author, I agree that this shouldn't be the case. There are specific things groups like Amnesty International are trying to change - and if you're trying to change those things then you've already passed judgement on them.