Gender and Technology Spring 2009

On Wednesday’s class we were supposed to bring in/blog about examples of our gender/technology utopias. To be honest, I couldn’t find many examples and I struggled for most of the week in my endeavor to find something that inspired me. Initially, I thought a utopic example of gender and technology would be a “world without gender” as Haraway points out–a world where the boundaries between man and woman are indistinguishable that gender becomes obsolete. Then I thought about gender neutrality and how there are a lot of devices out there that are designed to appeal to no specific sex. My iPod shuffle for example is colored silver, a popular color among electronics, and I though “Huzzah! An electronic device that is silver and therefore unisex and the only way I could distinguish it from one to another would be to listen to the music contained within”. But then I read Halberstam’s analysis of the Apple industries and its logo’s connection to the creationist theory–a belief Haraway argues is irrelevant to today’s post modern society. Damn. I guess my iPod is a wrong example. To destress I decided to look at some runway podcasts from Style.com I stumbled upon Balenciaga’s Spring/Summer 2009 ready-to-wear line.
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Perfect! I do love fashion, or rather am obsessed with it. Interviews with model, Natalia Vodianova; head designer, Nicolas Ghesquiere; Balenciaga shoe designer, Pierre Hardy; and actress, Selma Hayek all hint at the idea of futurism. Pierre Hardy brings forth the idea of a fusion between the body and the clothing since the shoes encases the platform heels therefore looking as if the shoes are part of the body. Hayek points that the line seems to present “a new race of human”. To me, this line is Haraway’s cyborg. The woman’s body has constantly been focused on and now body and technology are one.  In class, it was mentioned that perhaps humankind is now evolving through technology rather than through biology. This line, I believe, presents an artistic fusion of body and machine–my utopia.

Along with the article I chose to read “The Face-Value of Dreams: Gender, Race, Class and the Politics of Cosmetic Surgery.” From what I read in the two pieces, I believe they contain an underlying theme of “illusions.” I think it was this idea that got me so frustrated with the women undergoing the two respective surgeries in both articles.

The first article spoke about Muslim women’s desire for the illusion of their former virginity. David Sordella stated: “These women can live in Italy, adopt our mentality and wear jeans, but in the moments that matter, they don’t always have the strength to go against their culture.” However, I disagree with this. I feel that it’s not that these women don’t have the strength to go against their culture–for once they’ve lost their virginity, they’ve already done that. I think it’s that they do not (or believe they do not) have the strength to face their culture’s consequences for their actions. Of course, I realize that those consequences, especially when they could very well involve death, are extremely serious which means that for Muslim women the act of losing one’s virginity before marriage really should require serious, serious thought. I don’t think that it frustrates me that Muslim women (and men) are expected to save their virginity until marriage due to their religion or the fact that some do uphold this practice—one should be free to practice whatever religion they chose. I just think hiding behind an illusion of virginity is repressive (and dishonest to both the family and to the woman) to the point that makes a woman’s virginity more important than the woman herself!

In the second reading, the women too, hide under an illusion, that of “conformity”. Now going into this article, I was never comfortable with the idea of cosmetic surgery, and by the end of the article, I was even more uncomfortable with it. While I agree there are two sides to every coin, and these women in Peru could very well use the economic boost that cosmetic surgery can offer them, I cannot bring myself to believe that conforming to a western ideology of beauty, hiding oneself and moreover (just as the previous article) lying to oneself, is the way to go.  Once again, it frustrates me that a woman’s ability is completely glazed over, and that she is only defined by her body. Also, in an earlier post, Mawra said that these women do not want a “Caucasian” look, but more so an “exotic” look, because people always want what they can’t have. A part of me agrees with that statement, because maybe these women don’t exactly want to have a Caucasian look. What these women want is not necessarily the LOOK, but what the look brings them. As Bañales says with use value and exchange value, having a straighter nose rather than a curved nose has no real use value because both allow for breathing, but these women believe that the straighter nose can score them that job that they very much want, and in most cases, need. If instead, a large more curved nose was the look that got them the job, I believe the women would suddenly take great pride in their noses. Yet I think I disagree with the with the whole exotic aspect since I find it a bit strange that there seems to be only one kind of “exotic” for these women. Besides, what I find interesting is that if so many women want to become “exotic” and give into the reality of their “exotic” look, which is conformity…then really, they are not becoming exotic at all. If everyone has the same look, then no one is really exotic at all.

While reading these two pieces, I remembered back when I was in sixth grade, a friend of mine who was Asian tried to explain to me what “double-eyelid” surgery was. Now, my twelve year old self was mainly thinking about how strange and honestly, silly, that sounded. I mean, eye-lids were, eye-lids, right? I couldn’t understand why my friend was so proud to be born with creases in her eyelids, after all, before that conversation, i didn’t even realize that people did (or didn’t) have creases in their eye-lids. However, as we grew older the topic kept coming back in our conversations, about how so many Asian women feel the need to have this pricey surgery done to have “bigger-eyes” because they were considered more beautiful. So, after I read the two articles for class, I searched online and found this article  to bring to class on the practice, and different opinions on the practice itself.

The readings for this week have given me plenty of opportunity to think about my own reactions to the concept of using surgery to remake one’s body. In my mind, there’s “okay” surgery- getting fixed back up after an accident, transforming one’s body from one sex to another- and then there’s “really, really vain” surgery- breast augmentation, facelifts, liposuction. What I’m trying to figure out is why I consider it okay for a man seeking a woman’s body to get breast implants, but not okay for a woman already in posession of breasts to make hers larger. Both individuals are attempting to fix perceived defects which would (in theory) aid in a self-confidence boost and greater degree of comfort in their own bodies. Both feel that their physical form doesn’t match up with their claimed gender. Is my distinction made because one individual is comforming to her society’s standards of beauty (and thus “not really in need” of surgery) while the MtF is doing something that, in my county, would get you run out of town with torches and pitchforks*?

Before anyone jumps me, I’m not suggesting that sex reassignment surgery is on par with plastic surgery used to maintain a façade of youth. I’m just trying to poke at my reasoning- playing devil’s advocate with myself- that the first is okay and the second is just a waste of money, even though in the end both hypothetical individuals end up with a degree of breasts that wasn’t there before. This doesn’t even take into account the Bañales article wherein women use plastic surgery not to make themselves feel better and pander to sexist views on the female form, but to attempt to have a decent, normal life. I don’t know how I’d classify this type of surgery- probably in the “really unfortunate, but given the circumstances quite possibly a terrible necessity” camp.

I did read over the article on reconstructing hymens (owwwwww holy bejeezus) but I’m still ruminating on that subject. We’ll see if I have any illuminating input later on in the week.
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*Comment may suffer slight exaggeration.

Things said by my dear friend Rebecca in her post about cyborgs made me think a bit about boundaries. What I was reminded of was some of the things I learned in a Medieval Lit class last semester about monsters. Specifically, I’m reminded of Jeffery Jerome Cohen’s work Monster Theory (University of MInnesota Press, Minneapolis), which we read a chapter from. The chapter, entitled “Monster Culture,” discussed the way in which monsters are potrayed, and said that the thing that usually makes a monster monstrous is that it blurs boundaries that we normally consider solid.

Several times, he references the monster in the Alien movies (yes yes I know I discussed it already hush), which is to me the most interesting monster and the best example of Cohen’s “category crisis.” Cohen says: “This refusal to participate in the classificatory ‘order of things’ is true of monsters generally: they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions.” (Cohen 6)

Does this sound at all familiar? To me, this is exactly what the concept of “cyborg” in our readings has sounded like: an unfamiliar hybrid that exists between forms and threatens to destroy those forms. They are unfamiliar, but more importantly they threaten to destroy our familiar worldview. They are therefore frightening.

The meshing of the technological and the organic brings with it many ethical concerns also, as we saw in this week’s article. People often choose to alter their bodies not by choice, but for social or economic concerns. The context of such decisions are very tricky also; certainly, we don’t condone a system that encourages women to undergo surgery to appeal to Western, white ideas of beauty, but do we frown upon a woman who gets such surgery so that she can be employable? She is reinforcing the system, but can we blame her when her job and the security of her family may be at stake?

Not only does technology push boundaries of what we’re used to in a way reminiscent of monstrosity, but it also raises severe ethical concerns. Let me be clear, however, in stating that I think the march forward of technology regardless is not only inevitable but desirable. Technology WILL move forward, and if we are ready to meet it then we will benefit from it.

To argue that the ethical concerns I mentioned, at least regarding gender or race (women changing their appearance surgically for socioeconomic status, etc.) are a result of technology is not getting at the heart of the matter. Technology in these cases is a vessel, a method, rather than a cause. The prejudices that cause women to undergo these surgeries are embedded in the culture; the technology itself is not a pressure to get such an operation. If anything, the technology is exposing these cruelties in a very obvious, and frankly quite disturbing, way that will hopefully draw attention to the prejudices that cause them.

That technology threatens our current notions of humanity and gender is something that is trickier to reconcile because, frankly, it does. With technology comes new bodies, obviously, and who is to say wehre that will end? That someday bodies may be entirely artificial is not wholly out of the question. And then what of gender? It may be rendered vestigial and cumbersome, and even if it is not wholly done away with it will assuredly be changed. The line between the sexes (one another), between the sexes and technology, and between humanity as a whole and technology is rapidly vanishing. No doubt, some of what is being produced in the process is at first quite frightening. I myself was treated to a dream last night night probably inspired by this very topic; the subject of said dream was the most horrifying thing I’ve seen in a dream in years, and I’m certain that technological progress will produce creatures not wholly dissimilar. (don’t ask me to describe it. I don’t want to think about it, and I swear you don’t want to know about it.) But I feel that these concerns and fears are  just a sign of progress, of change. Change is uncomfortable, and living creatures naturally fear it, but overcoming that fear will, I believe, open up many more possibilities for humanity and expand our thinking radically.

I know we’re starting to talk about cosmetic surgery, but I didn’t get a chance to blog earlier about some of the stuff we talked about in class this past week. First of all, the image I chose to connect gender and technology was the depiction of female characters in video games. I found an article that talked about the disconnect between women and video games. Sheri Graner Ray, a game designer, argues that “most video games are like bad boyfriends- they’re too involved with their own male sexuality to even try to crack the female sexual code” and goes on to describe the typical female character displaying physically traits humans get when they’re ready for sex: partially open mouths with large red lips and heavy eyelids (“bedroom eyes”). Female characters are also dressed in sexually explicit clothing and placed in sexual poses, whereas male characters aren’t. The best image I could think of was an image of Lara Croft from Tomb Raider:

Another interesting image I came across, which I had never thought about before was the logo for Volvo. Many people don’t notice that figure surrounding the world “volvo” is also the male symbol. According to a history of the Volvo logo from The Volvo Owners Club, the symbol is the ancient chemical symbol for iron. It was used because it symbolized the Roman god of warfare, Mars, and the masculine gender. An early relationship was established between the Mars symbol and iron, from which most weapons were made. It has since become the symbol of the iron industry, symbolizing strength, safety, quality and durability.

From the article we read by Halberstam, something that stuck out to me was the concern with “the replacement of organic memory by an artificial substitute” and the fear that humans and machines will “slur/blur ever into one another, humans becoming more cold, the machines acquiring more soul.” It’s also interesting that people have been mentioning the NY Times article, “What Women Want” because I am about to give an hour long presentation in my neural behavioral sciences seminar on Tuesday about the genetics of sociality. Although genetic manipulation and biological technology isn’t often thought about as being machines… it’s extremely relevant. Basically, two neuropeptides, oxytocin and vasopressin, have been shown to be responsible for monogamous pair-bonding (or “love”) in prairie voles. By injecting the voles with these neuropeptides, researchers can artificially create a long-lasting monogamous pair-bonds. And the same thing has been shown in non-monogamous vole species. So of course, we want to know whether the same physiological mechanisms can be seen and manipulated in humans. Although, there is no hard evidence yet, the two neuropeptides are undoubtedly involved in various aspects of human sexual arousal. Another study was able to see a correlation between the encoding genes for the neuropeptides, and human partner bonding, perceived marital problems, and marital status. The fear is that there will soon be a “love potion” that can be slipped into someone’s drink to make them fall in love with the next person they see… Personally, it’s a horrifying thought that technology might be able to manipulate human emotion.

I read the article by Victoria M. Bañales “The Face Value of Dreams”: Gender, Race, Class, and the Politics of Cosmetic Surgery. I really liked how she dealt with both ends of the spectrum of feminist views on Cosmetic surgery. I found it refreshing the way she didn’t ignore that there are some benefits, that these women are not just “blindly seduced and ‘lured’ by a sexist and racist politics of appearance” but at the same time there is a historically significant social context as to why these women want to look a certain way.

My personal story is not full of awful childhood tanting and a feeling of being forced into surgery. When I was in 6th grade I was playing field hockey with my 24 person class. I was playing defence when a guy from the other team’s offence came charging up and I don’t know exactly what happened, but sufiecet to say the end of his stick met my nose with some distinct force. I was rushed off to the nurse and then my dad came and picked me up and brought me to my hospital (my school was several towns away from where I lived). I was lucky on one level, it wasn’t broken, instead the cartiledge had been moved about and my nose was now slightly crooked. Now as I look back on it I realize that there was never a thought of just leaving it. I could still breath and it wasn’t that crooked, but we were definitely going to get it fixed. The surgery was short, no actual cuts made, and I only missed one day of school. When I went back to school I had a little hard plastic thing suck to my nose and then I quickly the got the nickname “Plastic Surgeon” and “Plasty”. I remember being extremely offended by the nicknames that suck with me through middle school. I didn’t like the connotations that I had been imperfect and had needed the surgery for asthect purposes. I needed the surgery to be able to breath evenly, especially when I was asleep. I think I was also offended because I have always been proud of my “English bump” nose and the idea that my nose had been made to look the way it does now and it hadn’t been that way before was offensive.

In 6th grade plastic surgery offeneded me and today it still bothers me. People are free to do what they want, but it makes me really upset to think that people would want to change what they had naturaly for a “more beautiful” version. I would be devistated had my nose had lost it’s bump (my mother infact is upset that she chiped off the bump of the bone when she was a kid) I think more work needs to be done to promote the beauty in everyone and there need to be fewer shows glorifying plastic surgery. It is surgery and can really help some people( e.g. burn victums) , but it is not a comodity to be taken lightly.

I found Victoria Banales article “‘The Face Value of Dreams’: Gender, Race, Class, and the Politics of Cosemetic Surgery,” raised more questions for me than I expected. I liked her argument about the third world women’s need for plastic surgery for economic reasons. I found this part of the chapter the most complelling.  One thing that bothered me about her argument was that it was all about women. What about men with ethnic features? Do they get plastic surgery? I am assuming they do not, so is it hard for them to find well paying jobs? I agree that, “according to racist, Western standards of feminine beauty…” women gain opportunities for “socioeconomic mobility” (133). Her article along with other things I have read convinced me of the truth in this statement. There was a news segment, years ago that I watched on the Asian women’s double eye surgery. When I first heard, that Asian women wanted to widen their eyes I thought it was the silliest thing I had ever heard! Then I heard the testimonials. Many of them said that after the surgery, teachers and employers told them they looked more “awake.” This just re-inforced the concept that they had made the right decision in overcoming an “imperfection.” This just made me sad. Also, I wonder if no one had these surgeries to change their racial features, would these Western concepts of beauty disappear? Would their societies move past the Western features and come to value their own, again?  Has post-colonialism had such a deep influence that technology is leading us to become clones? I know cosmetic surgery is used in other ways that I do not dispute.  This article however, tried to focus on the paradox that plastic surgery has created for native women.  Perhaps it is a catch-22, but I somehow, don’t want to accept that.

The other day, I was watching the pilot episode of “Mad Men.” There is this one scene that related perfectly to our class. Within the scene the new girl, Peggy, is being introduced to new technology. The more experienced woman says to “try not to be overwhelmed by all this technology. It looks complicated, but the men who designed it made it simple enough for a woman to use.” Here is a link to the espisode: http://www.fancast.com/tv/Mad-Men/95854/790004075/Mad-Men-Pilot:-Chapter-1/videos

The scene is about 10 minutes in. I couldn’t find just a clip of it on its own.

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Victoria Banales’ thesis that “institutionalized sexist, racist, and classist ideologies… make cosmetic surgery…not a choice but an economic necessity for many Third World women in Peru and elsewhere in the Americas,” and her subsequent claims about the nature of Western society limiting the extent to which “choice” is even possible for many women regarding cosmetic surgery have succinctly summarized the fundamental discomfort I have always felt regarding cosmetic surgery that is not used for reconstructive/medical purposes. As someone who believes in trying to find the rips in the fabric of institutionalized oppressions, I’ve always had a problem with the idea of elective cosmetic surgery, but found it hard to voice what exactly the problem was without denigrating the personal agency of women who have it.

The way that Banales described how achieving “beauty” for women who have been racialized within their societies most often equals “softening” racial features struck very close to home for me, because I have had experience with a friend who got cosmetic surgery to reduce a feature which she had always hated. To me her arguments about appearing better in professional and dating situtations seemed like a cover for the subconscious knowledge that this feature was an ethnic signifier. But I love my friend, and she is a adult woman and entitled to make her own decisions, so I voiced my opinions once and then declined to comment further. And now she is pleased with her appearance. Her experience seems to mirror Banales’ idea about how the pain of the surgery is used to relieve the pain of racial/ethnic oppression within societies where the “exchange-value” of a certain appearance is higher than another.

I was also reminded of the documentary film “Nose Iranian Style,” directed by Mehrdad Oskouei, which documents through interviews with teenagers and their parents the fact that Iran is the world’s leader in rhinoplasty, with 60, 000-70, 000 a year. Most of the teenagers and young adults point to the kind of noses they want in Western fashion magazines and films. The idea that a country which, at least on an official policy level, is so opposed to “Western” ideals, in fact leads the world in the cosmetic transformation of people to immitate a “Western” beauty ideal is kind of fascinating, especially since most of the people featured are middle/upper class people who can certainly afford the surgery and are not merely doing it to increase their economic status.  

I am fascinated by the way which Banales used Foucault’s idea of the the body as an “inscribed surface of events” made literal by cosmetic surgery, but in light of the content of the rest of the article, I would contend that the body is instead an inscribed surface of oppressions, and expectations founded upon these oppressions.

To start off, my Utopia was something I had when I was a child, at a time when I was unaware of the fact that sex differences dominated our everyday routines and our usage of technology. Most of my days consisted of watching every other cartoon that popped up on the TV screen. Robots were something which cartoons and TV shows usually incorporated into their story lines as their swift use of practical knowledge overrode a typical human’s lackadaisical one. However, as I got older, I realized that some limitations did lie on my operations of certain technologies. It took less time for my male cousin to set up a computer game and an even shorter time for him to beat me at Grand Theft Auto. When we were younger, there were no such competitions or restrictions since we BOTH had no idea how to work many gadgets. That tranquility has faded away, that tranquility which I now refer to as my Utopia.

Here’s a small 11 minute video link from an episode of ‘Small Wonder’ as well.

In my quest to further explore (and hopefully understand!) Haraway’s article, I came across a very interesting synopsis on, of all things, a yoga blog. SCIY (Science, Culture, and Integral Yoga) states that their mission is “to explore trends within the contemporary science and culture fostering the co-evolution of integral spirituality, scientific research and emerging planetary culture.” While this synopsis (by Carolyn Keen) was not written explicitly for the blog, I do find it interesting that I was lead to it first above others. I think my favorite excerpt from the piece details why cyborgs are so foreign to the human experience:

The cyborg thus evades traditional humanist concepts of women as childbearer and raiser, of individuality and individual wholeness, the heterosexual marriage-nuclear family, transcendentalism and Biblical narrative, the great chain of being (god/man/animal/etc.), fear of death, fear of automatism, insistence upon consistency and completeness. It evades the Freudian family drama, the Lacanian m/other, and “natural” affiliation and unity. It attempts to complicate binary oppositions, which have been “systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of colour, nature, workers, animals” (177).

The cyborg challenges everything we as a society have come up with to define ourselves. Thanks to this article, I think I have finally managed to grasp Haraway’s arguments. I’m also a fan of the image SCIY selected to head the article on their site. It’s a mixture of the goddess and the cyborg- a dual reality with which modern society will most likely have to come to terms. Is this our utopia?

The New York Times article about the debate over Islam and virginity brought up an interesting question – has the prejudice about the importance of woman’s virginity that was supposed to buried years ago returned? While the article talked about some of the different scenarios that had occurred in France, I feel like we got a very European and Western look at the issue. How do the people who actually got the hymenoplasty procedure done feel about this kind of technology?

I was born in Saudi Arabia and lived there for 7 years and then lived in Bangladesh for 11 years. Saudi Arabia has a 100% Muslim population, and Bangladesh has 88% Muslims. Growing up with Islam around me, I saw the importance of virginity before marriage in Islamic cultures. It is important for both men and women (It just so happens that men don’t have a hymen to tear…) Whether hymenoplasty exists or not, the families of the person who has lost virginity will be put to shame in very Islamic societies. The surgery doesn’t change that fact. In fact, the surgery helps restore peace within families in which someone has lost her virginity before marriage. There isn’t a way of finding out if a man has lost his virginity – now a woman has the ability to hide it too. My initial reaction when I had first heard of hymenoplasty was, “Whew, so many people can get back their respect now in Islamic cultures. You don’t know about a man’s virginity for sure, now you can’t be sure about a woman’s either.” While in European societies, this is seen as prejudice towards women since they don’t want the importance of virginity to be there, in Islamic societies, I feel like this might help women, since the importance of virginity will always be part of the culture.

Out of the other two readings, I did “The Face value of Dreams: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Cosmetic Surgery.” It talks about how cosmetic surgery advertisements focus on the gain but rarely on the complications that can occur, or the painful stage that precedes the final effect of the surgery. It also focuses on how cosmetic surgery reinforces the idea of what is beautiful and what isn’t, where the Caucasian look is considered “beautiful and superior.” While I understand the author’s point of view, I feel that often people just want what they don’t have. Those with curly hair want it straight, and those with straight hair want it curly. Or they want what isn’t common in their nation/area/race – they want an “exotic” look, not necessarily Caucasian.

I thought this news piece would be interesting for this discussion: Do pretty people earn more? “The ugly truth, according to economics professors Daniel Hamermesh of the University of Texas and Jeff Biddle of Michigan State University, is that plain people earn 5 percent to 10 percent less than people of average looks, who in turn earn 3 percent to 8 percent less than those deemed good-looking.”

These are some comic strips I found on the tobyrobotsatan.com site. Who knew that robots could be this hilarious even when they are claiming to be evil? =P

The cosmetic surgery industry relies on “Western notions of beauty that are not only sexist and classist but also inherently racist”, according to Victoria M. Bañales’ article.  This put cosmetic surgery in a whole new light for me.  While before I left off thinking about it as one woman’s personal choice, now I doubt, as Bañales suggests, that any woman can get cosmetic surgery “for herself”.  She is always pushed toward it not only by expectations that she look “beautiful” (for men), but also that she look white, and thereby not lower-class.  The concept of “choice” is not clear-cut at all.  At some level, all women who undergo cosmetic surgery do it “of their own free will”–but for women who live in a deeply racist society like Peru’s, the alternative may be not earning a living wage.   Life or death is not much of a choice.

Although women in “Third World countries” (that term is another can of worms) may have no real choice but to undergo cosmetic surgery, they are not passive victims.   I like that Bañales made this point.  She cites a book called When Women Rebel: The Rise of Popular Feminism in Peru that gives a more true-to-life view how women actually act in response to their oppression.  That is, with huge protests, strikes, and participation in armed resistance.  Even if they’re oppressed by Western hegemony from without and within their own countries, in public and in private, they are not “docile victims”, especially not because they’re women.

Anyway, I digress from how technology fits into this.  Firstly, Bañales talks about how women’s bodies have been “historically constructed”.  The word “constructed” stands out to me as an indication of something at work that we could label technology.    So I had this idea that maybe Histroy is the biggest, baddest technology of all, and is especially the main technology of gender.  Like we call cosmetic surgery a technology because it is a man-made process that we use to create results not found in nature.  But this is only true of History in a very broad sense.  By saying gender is historically constructed, we mean that is biologically, socially, legally made-up (as Bañales says).  I am not a woman because just I am;  I am a woman because first humans evolved to have two separate sets of sex characteristics, and then history constructed lots of different divisions between the two sets.  So:  history constructs gender, thus history is a technology.  I think this is a useful point because if we remember that History is something humans made, we can remember that gender is not only not “natural,” it’s a manmade construct made by another manmade construct (History).

The artefact I have for class Monday is this article and photo essay that I read in the New York Times Magazine a year ago, about female circumcision (aka female gential cutting or, the less politically correct term, female genital mutilation) in Indonesia.  This is another kind of cosmetic/ritualistic surgery that many people in the U.S. consider much more obviously sexist and destructive than the cosmetic surgery we have here.  I would agree that there is no reason for girls to be circumcised; as an expert says in the aritcle, there is no medical benefit to cutting the clitoris, while there is a lot of pain.  But for the circumcisers (all of them women in this article, interestingly), it is “a rite of passage meant to purify the genitals and bestow gender identity on a female child”.  This is strange to me–why would removing part of the most female part of a female body make a girl more female?  What do other people think about this seeming paradox?