Normative and Contextual Feminism. Lessons from the Debate around Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting

Abstract

The case of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is a touchstone for controversies between universalism and cultural relativism, both within and beyond feminist thinking. Revisiting the discussion regarding FGM/C provides important insights for contemporary feminist thinking because it touches upon issues that are highly relevant to today’s discussions involving the question of human rights, individual and collective identity, othering, inequalities between the global North and the global South, the culturalization of gender and the intersection between gender, class, and ethnicity. Discussing feminist universalist and feminist cultural relativist perspectives on FGM/C, the paper reframes the two approaches as mutually constituting and conditioning each other. This mediated model contributes to a normative and simultaneously contextually embedded approach as a basis for a substantial analysis of FGM/C, and for contemporary feminist thinking.