A Thousand Cuts

Zeemax,
You are a good sport for not blaming the editor for her obvious even-handedness. I have noticed your interactions on several boards. You, my friend, like my arrow-festooned posterior, have a tendency to get very involved in your debate and do engage in rebuttals that get judged equally with the initial provocation of your opponents. At least, now we have a much fairer administration on Chowk that looks at BOTH the aggression and the response. With great difficulty, my friend, I have learned that it is better to take the high road. Never respond to vulgarity with more of your own - then you are just like them. Instead, maintain your cool and use logic, polite words, and determined composure to defeat and expose those profane and vulgar people. Please take my advice, because I am much better for it myself. Good luck and happy interacting.

#301 by Salim_Chauhan

Salim, I too have no qualms about Farzana`s leadership. I think she is a fine leader; fair and even handed; and did the right thing in sending us both to the coolers to cool off.

Nevertheless, I have suggested that some improvements need to be made in case of heated discussions getting out of hand, and other measures may be taken like filtering all interacts by the parties involved on that particular board on that particular day, which will have the same effect, instead of banning them outright on ALL boards.

But this is off-topic. We can keep it in mind, nevertheless.

Saminasha, Bina, Jawahara, ZehraJ

Saminasha said ...After all this, I want to ask all the interactors listed in this post: what do possibly think you have to teach any of us?

I missed that little bit. Following is the crux of the matter.

Reproduced from DM`s board, which is about even worse things done to the cause of womenhood:

DM,

Thanks for an excellant article AND many more thanks for dragging neither Ummah nor Islam into it like Bibi jawahara on the other board, and calling it as it is indeed, a socio-economic problem.

The misery of human condition is so vast that if one would even think of starting to address it, you wouldn`t know where to begin. Social ills are an obvious outcome of undelying causes such as the dowry custom in this case as you pointed out. And why the dowry? It is a premium the bride`s family has to pay because a good groom is hard to come by. And why is that? Because the grooms have to be sole-providers and the bride is supposed to live happily ever after without having to contribute anything economically in the union after that initial `premium` paid. And it goes on and on.

The point is, it is impossible to rid social evils by attacking these `directly`. Outlawing and banning these seldom works because incentives for the same remain. The answer lies in overall rural uplift, economic prosperity and, most importantly, education.

Rgds

#299 by ZahraJ

Thank you. I`m doing fine. But your wishes are appreciated. `That` particular area anyway finds me instead of me trying to find it. There`s so much of it going around.

But no more on that, otherwise FV will boot me again.

SR,

See I can do this? And it is after 9:00 ....:-)

FV,

You have referred to ``biggest bane of Chowk -- trivialising.``

Now, if some author is spreading misinformation through lack of his/her own information, I would still slam the author. I don`t agree that the only views on the central theme are to be discussed and not on how and why an author wrote it, as well as the overall tone and structure; if it is found malicious such as that other article on FP re the Pak Army.

So please some clarification on this.

Thanks.

#297 by Saminasha

I have read FV`s iLog on this, as well as your concerns. To clear them both I will respond to your questions which should make my position on this matter sufficiently clear:

2) Deny the violence of FMG:
I never denied it. There are so many types involved here i.e. clitorodotomy, excision, clitorodectomy and complete infibulation. I was all along referring to the most widespread practice i.e. clitorodotomy which is analogous to male circumcision and not to be confused with FMG because it is not mutilation. However ALL interactors except Urstruly treated it as the same thing.

4)...pleasure ARE a human right.:
The threshold of what a human right is and what is not changes with changes in the human condition. Bodily pleasure is a human right for Somalis right now just as owning a cell- phone is a human right for me; because I got everything else figured out. For most of sub-saharan Africans, their first human right not being preserved by anyone is basic-survival. Of-course mutilation is wrong, no one said it isn`t, but first things first.

5) Claim truly pathoological false dilemmas:
Starvation of sub-saharan africa is not a false-dilemma. If the author has pulled out such vivid images of FMG being carried out on a young child, then images must also be evoked of mothers right in our own backyards maiming and gouging out the eyes of their own babies in order for them to become a begging asset, a bread-winner, which they otherwise would never be if allowed to grow up like everyone else. Just see the implications of this on society as a whole.

6) SHAME them by referring to masturbation:
Yes. Accepted with apologies. It wasn`t entirely unprovoked, however ;-)

It is one thing to see misery on TV with exclamations of ```Hai` Allah``, but quite another to see it up-close with live characters in real time. It sort of changes your point of view.

Once in the pre-modern times in the animal market of Shenzhen, I saw a number of beutiful little deer for sale crawling around on their fore-legs because their hind legs had been snapped like twigs. When asked why through a translator, the vendor replied that otherwise they would run away. When I persisted with ``why doesn`t he tie them down with rope?`` His simple answer was he didn`t have any rope.

Before I start teaching that vendor about `cruelty to animals`, I need to first get moral myself and get him the means to buy that rope without sacrificing his meal. In case of Somalia, this rope is the primary moral obligation for `means of their basic survival`. This is not the same as aid; it is sustainable `means`.

I have no doubt that vendor would not be carrying out the same practice anymore. It is because the Chinese Govt resisted all pressures and delegated notions of human as well as animal rights to secondary priority, and just got on with providing the `means` of first basic survival and then relative prosperity. Only now it can and does talk about human rights. Did they `trivialize` the `cruelty` issue? In my opinion they did no such thing.

Other anecdotes on how China did it are available-on-demand.

Sincerely,

zeemax

Saminasha #295, {``If Madame Editor Farzana Versey is not ``disgusted`` (her term used in her ilog) by ``zeemax`s`` usage of this term (what ``SR`` calls ``letting the djinn out of the bottle`` once ``provoked``), then we have a serious problem in the vision of the leadership here at chowk.

Let us all bear witness. ``}

Saminasha,
I was an eye-witness to the entire sad saga. First of all, I regret to inform you that by using profanity, vulgarity, and crude references, you managed to trivialize this very important issue that Jawahara has so capably articulated. You have a unique capability in turning whatever issue that is presented into the ``I am the bad, rude, crude, and lewd Saminasha`` show. Zeemax should not have aided you in this kabuki dance and Farzana`s even-handed approach in sending both of you to the showers was a wise decision. Instead of offering an apology to all of us, you are blaming your own ludicrous behavior as a ``serious problem in the vision of the leadership here at chowk.`` Nothing could be farther from the truth and your own behavior is the most appropriate antidote to your irrelevant, malicious, and insidious charge. Please behave.

Jawahara,

Here are the passages that were paraphrased:

``...Let`s stop making excuses, trying to pass the buck, trying to put a psuedo-science spin on this barbaric practice. It is what it is, and hadith or no hadith, it is a cruel and painful way to control women`s sexuality and their bodies.

Having said that, I`d like to make clear, that I don`t see men as the enemy here. That would be a knee-jerk reaction. The villains here, are the system, the secrecy and the ignorance that lets FGM thrive and grow...``

Female complicity in this violence against women is one thing. But how the patriarchical framework in which this violence is constructed (the female body as ``unclean``, sexually ``uncontrollable``, subject to patriarchical control, policy and action, rationalizations of such, discourse around, lack of institutionalized legal response to and prosecution of) is waved away evades a very uncomfortable reality here-that around gendered violence.

Re: # 293

Welcome back. Are you positive that your experience involved `that` particular area of female anatomy? With age and weight, some men can have difficulty with their eye-sight and memory. As a result, they tend to exaggerate. I hope that was not the case. In any case, I am sure after the break you are ready to roll. Good luck.

Saminasha, if you`re going to quote me (with quotation marks and all), at least, follow the first rule of references, and make it an accurate quote. I have no problem standing behind what I say but not behind what others (inaccurately) say that I wrote. Please point me towards this supposed *claim* of mine: ``men arent responsible for fgm at all`` (Jawahara Saidullah)

Re: # 296

9. correction: 1, 4, 5, 6

Re: # 289

SR,

More rationalization of zeemax`s behavior?

Maybe this is part of the problem of why violence against girls and women continue unabated?

1. Treat female genitalia as male territory and present textual images of it and misogynistic discourses around what is ``unnecessary`` about it (Urstruly)

2. Deny the violence of FGM (Ustruly, Zeemax)

3. Deny the violence of STEALING another human being`s determination of their own body.

4. Heckle women interactors by attempting to SHAME for maintaining that a. bodily integrity (the unmutilated body) and pleasure ARE a human right. (zeemax)

5. Claim truly pathoological false dilemmas of starvation (one process of emotional, physical and psychological assault) with another one (fgm) and insist that interactors choose which one is less damaging. (zeemax)

6. Refer to the genitalia of women interactors and attempt to SHAME them by referring to masturbation. (zeemax)

7. Be completely clueless to these tactics and have the GALL to insult those who identify 1, 4, 5, 6 (Farzana Versey)

8. Demonstrate the inability to determine the DIFFERENCE of m.o.`s in posting a whole and healthy vagina with a mutilated vagina (Farzana Versey)

9. Rationalize 1, 4, 5, 5 as ``boys will be boys``

10. Claim that ``men arent responsible for fgm at all`` (Jawahara Saidullah)

After all this, I want to ask all the interactors listed in this post: what do possibly think you have to teach any of us?

Re: # 293

Dear Chowk Community,

Please note that the interactor known as ``zeemax`` has continued to refer to the practice of FGM ( a practice that a majority of interactors on this board have expressed codemnation against) as ``clit chopping``. He has also commented that he is disappointed that ``there is no [more] fun chopping clits here [on chowk]...``

If Madame Editor Farzana Versey is not ``disgusted`` (her term used in her ilog) by ``zeemax`s`` usage of this term (what ``SR`` calls ``letting the djinn out of the bottle`` once ``provoked``), then we have a serious problem in the vision of the leadership here at chowk.

Let us all bear witness.

#289 by SR

...not too may years ago, even good-looking...

Thanks. But what`s a few extra pounds between friends? The old feminazi-busting cylindrical rocket as always shoots great. It ROCKS!

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