On “Female Circumcision/Genital Mutilation and Ethical Relativism” (590 Words)

In “A Defense of Ethical Relativism,” anthropologist Ruth Benedict makes the case that there are hundreds of cultures in the world, and within them, an even larger number of socially appropriate ways to live one’s life. For example, homosexuality is a majoritally accepted way of living in most first-world countries, but in other parts of the world, homosexuality is frowned upon, sometimes even punishable by death.

It is a well established fact that what is acceptable in one place may not be acceptable in the other, and Benedict uses this fact to make the assertion that there is no ethical right or wrong, only ethical difference, because after all, who are we to say that the way another society of individuals behaves is wrong?

Empiricists are who we are. At least some of the time.

In her essay “Female Circumcision/Genital Mutilation and Ethical Relativism,” Loretta M. Kopelman responds to Ruth Benedict’s idea of ethical relativism by arguing that there are some cultures which engage in practices which are objectively harmful for little to no rational reason and therefore could be subject to judgement. Her primary example in this case: Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

Kopelman explains that in Northern Africa and parts of Arabia, “many girls undergo ritual surgery involving removal of parts of their external genitalia,” and that “about 80 million living women have had this surgery, and an additional 4 or 5 million girls undergo it each year.”

The reasons for these procedures range from religious to medical to sexual to traditional, but Kopelman promptly debunks each one.

1. Practitioners claim that this is a practice which is required religiously by the Quran. However, nowhere in the Quran is this named explicitly as something which must be done.
2. Practitioners claim that this practice creates a sense of group identity among the culture. While this may hold true for some amount of people, there is a large amount of disagreement within both the culture and the region with regards to the ethicality of the surgery.
3. Practitioners say that, similarly to male circumcision, female genital mutilation promotes cleanliness and health in the recipients body. This could not be less of the case however, as the practice has been found to cause infertility, infection, and incontinence among other problems.
4. Practitioners claim that the surgery preserves virginity and prevents immorality in the form of pre-marital sex or infidelity. However, no form of the surgery is known to diminish female libido in any way.
5. The final argument made by those in support of female genital mutilation is that it preserves the goal of marriage such that it makes women more appealing to men as marriage partners. While this might be true, it is not true in 100% of cases. Some men within these cultures either don’t look for it or simply don’t care.

What she suggests we do instead of write something off as ethically relative is view the situation from an empirical standpoint, using logic to evaluate and explain. We know from scientific and medical evidence that this is not a harmless practice, and even if it were, it is not being gone about in a harmless way. This, coupled with the fact that these procedures do not do what they claim to, give anyone all the reason in the world to call them unacceptable in the most objective sense of the word.

With this, Kopelman seems largely to shut down or at least provide reasonable doubt for any kind of ethical relativism, because in reality, many things are not as relative as they may at first seem.