Thursday, June 12, 2008
"A technical requirement invites a technical solution"
I was horrified to see a header on Slate trumpeting the case for virginity-restoration surgery, but as it turns out, Human Nature columnist William Saletan not only expresses the requisite disgust for hymen-fetishizing fundementalists, but makes the surprisingly subversive (maybe even feminist?) argument for cheap, legal "virginity restoration" surgery.
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3 comments:
I was literally counting the hours until you blogged that story (and/or the NYT article that gave rise to it).
I'm surprised by your response, though. I didn't find Saletan's "case" convincing at all (though of course I appreciated the requisite expressions of disgust). Insofar as I understand his point, to claim that we better undermine the practice by abetting it and making it more obviously unrealistic is precisely the opposite way we approach other gender issues in the West - with open, direct, and honest opposition to a practice we find (to put it mildly) distasteful. Think bride prices, female circumcision, or even the very recalibration of male/female relations in our society over the last 50 years.
The way to oppose ignorant, oppressive cultural practices - whether foreign or domestic - is to oppose them publicly. Doctors should be barred from performing this procedure on cosmetic or "cultural" grounds. Sure, some folks would have it done another way. But it would give cover for those younger ones who looked to the West for refuge from the more primitive aspects of those cultures, and almost as importantly, would stress that in a liberal society, we take gender equality to be a more important value than (occasionally) misguided relativism.
fair - well argued, certainly.
But it does beg the question of what to do about these woman described in the NYT article, like the one quoted as saying “in my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt... right now, virginity is more important to me than life" ?
I don't think it's a relativism vs. equality case, just a question of what to do when the public opposition you suggest does nothing to hurt the perpetrators and everything to hurt the victims.
At a minimum, Saletan’s piece seems sloppily argued. At first, it seemed to me that it was mainly a poke-in-the-eye moral case: “If you jackasses think that a hymen really matters that damn much, well, have fun being oblivious, I guess. What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” This jibes well with my mile-wide screw-you streak. Maybe if they realize they can’t tell the difference, it would be a step toward defetishizing the hymen. Hope springs eternal.
But I do think that there’s another case to be made that’s not clearly laid out in his piece: The way to “oppose ignorant, oppressive cultural practices - whether foreign or domestic” - is indeed to oppose them publicly. But it’s not an ignorant, oppressive cultural practice we ought to be opposing; it’s a system of ignorant, oppressive cultural practices. And I think Saletan makes a compelling case for making a strategic choice in favor of opposing it in other ways.
After all, which is it we really care about? A hymen or a pattern of misogyny and abuse? To be so concerned with hymen restoration buys into this antifeminist notion that the hymen per se really matters – which is part of what we’re trying to fight, no? I’d be wary of being so concerned about the hymen that the real battle against the system of abuse ends up being compromised. (We can argue, of course, whether or not that will be the case, but what I’m saying is that the argument about our approach to hymen restoration specifically should be on pragmatic, not moralistic grounds.)
Also – hello Katie Cristol! I hope post-UVa life is treating you well. My father, bless him, got me a subscription to the Atlantic as a moving-to-Kentucky present, and I’m reminded of you whenever it comes.
Benjamin Van Dyne
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