I am taking cultural anthropology right now in university as one of my electives. So far i really am enjoying it as my prof is a female who recognizes class struggle, white privilege and power struggles. She always tells us she wants us to change the way we think about other cultural practices and even if we don't "support" them, we should try and understand why people do what they do. This sounded fair to me until she brought up female genital mutilation. The topic is something most feminists feel strongly about, obviously and i feel the same way. My professor wanted us to think about female genital mutilation, she wants us to try and understand it from that culture's perspective.
How the hell am i supposed to do this? I am trying, I'm trying to be less bias. But come on, this is a fucking serious topic, and it's hard to stay objective. She claims though, that she's a post-modernist and thus she believes in no "absolute truths". So, according to her, female genital mutilation can't be absolutely wrong - all this PoMo shit is rather frustrating. I swear if it wasn't for her post-modern shit i would like her way more, I just find it so hard to wrap my head around how anyone can justify or attempt to justify female genital mutilation.
I was curious if anyone else looks at things in this view, without absolute truths? Am i being overly dramatic or just? I'm curious what you all think as feminists and pro feminists...
The fabulous thing about PoMo is that you can use it to undermine anything.
ReplyDeleteSo the next time your prof says she is PoMo just say "No, you're not."
And when she fights you just tell her not to impose her fascist PoMo opinion of herself on you. It's such a dogmatic drag.
And THEN assign all her PoMo proteges self-inflicted genitalia-mutilation homework. When they complain it may hurt explain that their anticipated pain is simply a fixation on absolutist ideals--no one can really say for SURE that inflicted pain *causes* pain.
Have a field day with this one.
Pisaquari, you literally made me lol. I have always wanted to make that jump in pomo reasoning but never had the guts to do it.
ReplyDeletePost modernism shits me. It ignores the fact that there are franchised and disenfranchised classes, and at the same time takes everything and is like "oh it's xyz because i say it is".
ReplyDeleteI had the same problem with my womyns studies lecturer last semester. So I just stopped going.
Exactly. I'm in a woman's studies course now, i start today, i reallllly realllly hope she's not a libertarian/poMo sex pos...seriously.
ReplyDeleteOooo. I hope it goes well for you, sadly though, so many of these "womyn's studies" courses that are still going are just gender studies post modern bullshit that goes by another name (that they've plagiarised) - but it always kinda fun getting under people's skin with our "conservative femenazi claptrap" as mine's been called.
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