By Ted Belman

To my utter surprise, I received an newsletter from an old Leftist who selects Yuli Tamir’s comment “My purpose, however, is not to justify clitoridectomy” to argue she doesn’t defend the practice of clitoridectomy. Before reading my reply please read the articles linked to in Yuli Tamir, Israel’s Minister of Education, supports clitoridectomy.

Yes she said that, but she additionally equated western practices with clitoridectomy to show up western critics as hypocrites.

But would our intestine reaction to female circumcision be very different whether it were performed on consenting adults? It is not unlikely that girls at the age of 13 or 14, who are considered in traditional societies as adults mature decent to wed and bear children, would “consent” to the mutilation of their bodies whether they were convinced that marriage and children were contingent on so doing. Many women who followed the tradition of Sati seemed to do it as a matter of choice….

If that is not being an apologist for the practice, I don’t know what is? What I read is the leftist practice of moral relativism. She argues that since we go under the knife for “beauty� we should accept their value of clitoridectomy or we are hypocritical. She argues that so lengthy as one does it as a matter of choice, it is OK. I beg to differ. whether one martyrs oneself as a matter of choice it is not OK either. In both cases their culture counsels the practice. Thus the culture must be condemned. We condemn suicide even though it is a matter of choice.

But let me focus on the rest of the quote,

‘My purpose, however, is not to justify clitoridectomy, but to expose the roots of the deep hostility to it — to reveal the smug, unjustified self-satisfaction lurking behind the current condemnation of clitoridectomy. Referring to clitoridectomy, and emphasizing the distance
of the practice from our own conventions, allows us to condemn them for what they do to their women, support the struggle of their women against their primitive, inhuman culture, and remain silent on the status of women in our society.’

She wants to “expose the roots of the deep hostility to it “. Why so? Obviously she wants to attack western norms and she uses our condemnation of clitoridectomy as a tool. Leaving aside whether the comparison is odious, why not produce her point independent of our condemnation of clitoridectomy. No, she prefers to accept clitoridectomy “to reveal the smug, unjustified self-satisfaction lurking behind the current condemnation�. While her purpose may not to defend clitoridectomy her purpose is certainly to attack western society.

We can and certainly do criticize our own culture for many things but to argue we can’t be hostile to clitoridechtomy considering of our own practices is unacceptable. We may be guilty of something but we are still entitled to have hostility to clitoridechtomy.

The left finds common cause with Islam considering they both attack the west. When doing so the Left turns a blind eye to the horrors of Islam. that is a case in point. Tamir thinks it more fundamental to attack our smugness thereupon their odious pratices. I bet she has never written an write-up attacking clitoridectomy.

To my mind we are right to be deeply hostile to it. What is her problem with that? We are right to prefer our culture to theirs. We are right to consider our culture better. What’s wrong with that?

My purpose in writing that is not to attack and condem clitoridectomy, though it should be, but to attack Yuli Tamir as a Leftist. I am horrified that she is the Minister of Education, no less, for the State of Israel. Get rid of the Kadima government which appointed her.

clitoridectomy

Original post by Ted Belman