DOUBLE STANDARDS

Regarding the article by Ella Whelan on the problems of feminists (usually white middle class) taking on the issue of FGM, I was filled with gratitude and relief that someone had written about this issue.

Relief that someone, somewhere has said the obvious, that this is not an issue for virtue signalling, western idealists who think they know better than the communities they feel it necessary to represent. A few years ago while lecturing at a university, a professor of International Development Studies (white, middle class) who was an “expert” on FGM was overheard by several people saying that “the FGM bandwagon was a very good one to be on.”

It is not without irony that the same professor is now decolonising her curriculum and expostulates loudly and vociferously against white privilege whilst she tells African women and families how to live their lives.

At the same time she tells her students how they have to give ethnic minorities a voice and show respect. Eurocentric feminist women’s ideologies reject the cultural practices of others which are outside their own world and at the same time continue to demand consideration of their otherness.

The aforementioned professor, at a conference I attended, told a male African PhD student who had nine sisters all of whom had been the recipients of a form of FGM, that he was wrong about his approach (community education and guidance) and that “we” should just ban it. Simple as that. His anger was visible but he did not retaliate as his PhD was going to be examined by the academic concerned.

Thank you for giving me a chance to purge myself of this unhappy memory, coming from a non academic background I was truly shocked at the event I mentioned — my first experience of an academic conference. I stayed in academia for five years before leaving to go back into the real world. The hypocrisy was utterly repulsive in every way. Sue Diamond

Southsea