The Female Circumcision Controversy. Ellen Gruenbaum
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for a variety of medical reasons,” including hypertrophy, tumors, and “infantile, adolescent or adult masturbation regarded as excessive” (1976:128).
Elizabeth A. Sheehan offers a fascinating account of one of the European medical advocates of selective female genital cutting in the mid-nineteenth century, Isaac Baker Brown (Sheehan 1997), who was active during the period of greatest popularity of biomedical declitorization in England during the 1860s (Huelsman 1976:29). Although removal of clitorises in cases of disease was known in European medicine for centuries, Brown’s ideas emerged in an era of debate over whether the clitoris had any role at all in the female enjoyment of sex; some came to consider its removal as a “harmless operative procedure” (a phrase that was used in 1866, see Sheehan 1997: 328). An expert in various operations on the female sexual organs, Brown had founded the London Surgical Home for Women. From the observation that many of the female epileptics in his institution masturbated, Isaac Baker Brown developed a theory of causality that masturbation led to a progression of stages from “hysteria” to epilepsy and eventually “idiocy or death.” Particularly frightening in the long history of European understanding of women’s psychology is Brown’s assertion that danger signs of such possible degeneration might include becoming “restless and excited, or melancholy and retiring, listless, and indifferent to the social influences of domestic life.” “Often a great disposition for novelties is exhibited, the patient desiring to escape from home, fond of becoming a nurse in hospitals … To these symptoms in the single female will be added, in the married, distaste for marital intercourse” (Brown 1866, quoted in Sheehan 1997: 327).
Map 1. Types of Female Genital Cutting in Africa and Arabian Peninsula. Shaded areas indicate prevalence of some form of “female circumcision.” Darker shading indicates prevalence of infibulation. See Map Key on facing page.
Key for Map 1
COUNTRY
1 Benin
2 Burkina Faso
3 Cameroon
4 Central African Republic
5 Chad
6 Côte d’Ivoire
7 Democratic Republic of Congo
8 Djibouti
9 Egypt
10 Eritrea
11 Ethiopia
12 Gambia
13 Ghana
14 Guinea
15 Guinea-Bissau
16 Kenya
17 Liberia
18 Mali
19 Mauritania
20 Niger
21 Nigeria
22 Senegal
23 Sierra Leone
24 Somalia
25 Sudan
26 Tanzania
27 Togo
28 Uganda
29 Yemen
30 Oman
31 United Arab Emirates
Brown’s cure for such “feminine weaknesses” was removal of the clitoris. Recommending chloroform and scissors rather than a knife for the removal, Brown described cases of immediate improvement of his patients. There was widespread acceptance of his theories and some acceptance of his surgeries, both in Britain and North America. In modern times, even as late as the 1940s, biomedical physicians in England and the United States have done clitoridectomies for the treatment and prevention of masturbation and other “deviant” behaviors and psychological conditions such as “hysteria,” particularly for mental patients (Ehrenreich and English, 1973:34).
Ethnographic Research
Although this book is intended to offer breadth on the practices in their variant forms, I also offer data from my ethnographic research on rural women in communities in Sudan. This northeast African country is a valuable case because the most severe form of the surgeries—infibulation—is widely practiced there.
Over a period of more than two decades, I was able to spend about five and a half years in Sudan, which afforded me the opportunity to reflect on, and conduct ethnographic research on, female circumcision (see Map 2 for specific locations). My first trip to Sudan began in 1974, when my husband and I took teaching jobs at the University of Khartoum. The language of instruction at the university was English, but to delve into the society we studied Arabic and gradually became more proficient at speaking Sudanese Arabic. During the next several years, we lived in two urban contexts that afforded ample opportunities for participant observation: Khartoum, the capital city, and Wad Medani, the capital of Gezira Province, where my husband, Jay O’Brien, worked for a year at the University of Gezira. Some of my observations are drawn from these urban experiences, but I was fortunate to have opportunities for rural research in several parts of the country. (See Map 2, page 145.)
In 1975–76, I worked with the Economic and Social Research Council of the National Council for Research on the Jonglei Research Team that focused on the region in southern Sudan where the ill-fated Jonglei Canal was planned. Our multidisciplinary team collected data to enable us to analyze political, economic, and cultural patterns, local interest in development projects, and existing environmental adaptations and migration patterns of local herding, agricultural, hunting, and fishing practices. There I interviewed (with an interpreter) eighty women of the noncircumcising Nuer ethnic group on their work roles and reproductive histories (Gruenbaum 1990). We interviewed in a sample of Nuer communities clustered south of the confluence of the Sobat River with the White Nile in Jonglei Province, and I did participant observation in the village of Ayod, a Nuer community in Jonglei Province.
For the Sudanese Ministry of Social Affairs, I led a survey team to study the utilization of health and social services in Sudan’s premier area for irrigated agricultural development and cotton production, Gezira Province (located south of Khartoum in the peninsula formed by the Blue Nile and White Nile), and I conducted community case studies in Wad Sagurta and Abdal Galil villages. That 1977 research, together with archival research before and after it and additional research visits to Abdal Galil village, contributed to my dissertation on the impact of the Gezira Irrigated Scheme on health and health services in Sudan (Gruenbaum 1982).
In 1976–77, I also participated in research in two villages on the Rahad River, east of the Blue Nile, where my husband, Jay, and a colleague were studying economic organization and labor migration. The villages of Urn Fila and Hallali afforded a rich opportunity to compare ethnic differences in female circumcision practices, as well as patterns of family life (Gruenbaum 1979).
I went to Sudan for a short period of follow-up field research in 1989 that included work in the cities of Khartoum and Wad Medani and the villages of Abdal Galil in Gezira Province and a new village, Garia Wahid, where the families from Urn Fila and Hallali had been resettled for a development project, the Rahad Irrigation Project. Although I was only able to spend a few hours at the old Um Fila site with the families who had declined to relocate, the weeks of research in Garia Wahid afforded valuable insights into the process of change and the interethnic influences that were taking place.
In 1992, I returned to Abdal Galil in Gezira and Garia Wahid in the Rahad and also spent brief periods in the cities of Khartoum and Wad Medani. Although the time was short, just a little over a month, I was able to note the changes and to focus on interviews with people already well known to me.
Whenever possible, I have taken opportunities to continue discussing female circumcision and change efforts with Sudanese and other African women in international contexts. Most memorable was the Beijing Conference in 1995, when I had the opportunity to spend many hours over several days