Thanks to Mosquewatch for catching this. John Tierney uses “third wave feminism” and it’s inclusion in the American Anthropological Associations debate on female genital circumcision in Africa, as a device to conclude that Black women in Africa oppressed by an Islamist, slave owner view of Black African sexuality and women’s sexuality in general, should be circumcised.

Pure multiculturalist pablum Tierney concludes his piece with this quote, which can only have been made by a rich White man who never has to worry about such practices:

Dr. Shweder says that many Westerners trying to impose a “zero tolerance” policy don’t realize that these initiation rites are generally controlled not by men but by women who believe it is a cosmetic procedure with aesthetic benefits. He criticizes Americans and Europeans for outlawing it at the same they endorse their own forms of genital modification, like the circumcision of boys or the cosmetic surgery for women called “vaginal rejuvenation.” After surveying studies of female circumcision and comparing the data with the rhetoric about its harmfulness, Dr. Shweder concludes that “‘First World’ feminist issues and political correctness and activism have triumphed over the critical assessment of evidence.”

If I were asked to make a decision about my own daughter, I wouldn’t choose circumcision for her. But what about the question raised by these anthropologists: Should outsiders be telling African women what initiation practices are acceptable?

A better question would be if these women were White, if the screaming little girls who were having their genitalia mutilated by religious fanatics looked like Tierney, would he question the evilness of the practice at all?