Female Genital Modification

In '"The Price to Pay for our Common Good": Genital Modification and the Somatechnologies of Cultural (In)Difference', Nikki Sullivan draws attention to the biased 'white optics' that form our perceptions of Female Genital Modification (FGM) in Australia. In this video from the ABC, the focus is on surgery performed on children without consent, by women who lack medical training.

It is important to address incidences of FGM without consent, such as those presented in the video. However, the question remains as to why it is still illegal for a consenting adult to undergo FGM? Why are other forms of genital surgery widely accepted, yet so called 'Female Genital Mutilation' positioned as deviant?

Sullivan describes FGM as "a Eurocentric discursive construct that emerged in a particular time and place and in accordance with specific ways of seeing, knowing and being... a bio-political technology; one that establishes and polices boundaries and borders between "us" and "them", between proper and improper bodies - both individual and social - and evaluate their worth in terms that replicate the civilising presumptions of the past, silence subjugated knowledges, and pathologise difference." (2007, p. 400)

FGM is often described in terms of 'mutilation' and 'barbarism' (as can be seen in the ABC video), while cosmetic genital surgery is promoted, reinforcing ideologies of what is normal. Who are we to pass ethnocentric judgement on women who want to undergo surgery to live up to cultural expectations? The same happens here in Australia, accepted and normalised under the title of cosmetic surgery.