International Day Against Female Genital Mutilation (8)
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As one of my professors quipped, one way to be sure to start a riot
at an international medicine conference is to bring up this subject.
I think this controversy highlights what I call the "liberal dilemma"
in development (liberal in the U.S. frame of reference). When I was
starting my Peace Corps service 5 years ago, we were given two rules
of thumb:
1) Respect all other cultures and what they have to offer. Don't try
and impose your culture upon them.
2) Individuals have certain inalienable rights that must be defended,
especially the rights of those who cannot defend themselves (note:
they were somewhat ambiguous about what exactly those rights were).
Problems occurred when the culture we were supposed to appreciate
(relativism) came face to face with practices that seemed to violate
these inalienable rights. If parents smacked their kid around when
they misbehaved, they would claim that that was how they were raised
and they turned out okay.
My point here is not to provide an answer as to what to do. Rather, I
think that before this issue can be fully addressed we must deal with
the cognitive dissonance this scenario exemplifies.
J. Niels Rosenquist
MD/PhD Student
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
The Wharton School
Tel: +1-215-735-2032- Home
Tel: +1-215-266-8388- Cell
mailto:jrosenqu@mail.med.upenn.edu
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