OK, I've got "Wombs and Alien Spirits" in front of me. Some quotes:
Oh god, the anthropology-speak; "In this sense, women's amplification of
zar beliefs into a possession cult can be seen as a kind of a counterhegemonic process... a feminine response to hegemonic praxis, and the priveleging of men that this ideologically entails, which ultimately escapes neither its categories nor its constraints."
This part was underlined by my college self, and I get it after some squinting, but geez.
OK, this seems to be the most pertinent section:
Quote:As Hayes (1975) has rightly observed, virginity assumes a special significance in northern Sudan, for here its physiological manifestations are socially controlled. Its loss does not entail an absolute and irrevocable change of state, but one which is, in part, reversible. As she succinctly remarks, "In Sudan, virgins are made, not born" (p.622). Contrary to Western assumptions, "virginity" in Hofriyat is a social construct, not a physical condition. and it has less to do with sexual innocence than a woman's dormant fertility....
Thus, while the operation restrains female sexuality, this is not the prupose avowed i by women. Informants asser that it is performed on young girls so as to make their bodies clean (nazif), smooth (na'im, and pure (tahir), this last term furnishing the Sudanese colloquial for circumcision in general: tahur ("cleansing" or "purification"). Women say a girl who has not been purified through circumcision may not marry, thus may not bear children and attain a position of respect in later years. Circumcision prepares her body for womanhood: it confers on her the right to bear children, while marriage provides her with opportunities to advance her position by giving birth, especially to sons.
The promiscuity argument earlier described apparently confuses the sexuality of women with their ability and perogative to bear children, where these aspects of womanhood ought to be distinguished. The pleasure argument, on the other hand, overly dissociates the sexuality of makes from their ability to impregnate women. I once overheard a man talking about his beautiful bit 'amm -- father's brother's daughter and the preferred spouse -- whom he wished he had wed. This woman had been married for over a year and had not yet conceived. Said the man, "By God, if I had married her, she would have ahd twins by now!" Despite appearances, then, fertility is of paramount concern to bother sexes.
Infibulation [fgm] neither increases nor for that matter limits male sexual pleasure -- this is largely irrelevant here -- so much as it ensures or socializes female fertility. By removing their external genitalia, female Hofriyati seek not to diminish their own sexual pleasure -- though this is an obvious effect -- so much as to enhance their femininity. Pharaonic circumcision [fgm] is a symbolic act which brings sharply into focus the fertility potential of women by dramatically deemphasizing their sexuality. In insisting upon circumcision for their daughter, women assert their social indispensibility, an importance which is not as the sexual partners of their husbands, nor -- in this highly segregated, overtly male authoritative society -- as their servants, sexual or otherwise, but as the mothers of men. The ultimate social goal of a woman is to become, with her husband, the cofounder of a lineage section. As a respected haboba[/] she is "listened to", she may be sent on the haj (pilgrimage to Mecca) by her husband or sons, and her name is remembered in the village geneologies for several generations.
Village women do not achieve social recognition by behaving or becoming like men, but by becoming less like men, physically, socially, and sexually. Male as well as female rites stress this complementarity: while the salient female reporductive organ is enclosed by infibulation, that of the male is exposed or, as one Sudanese author states, "unveiled" through circumcision. Only after genital surgery are people eligible to become social persons, to assume the responsibilities of life as Hofriyati women and Hofriyati men,
Ow. My wrist.
Please excuse typos.
I think that whoever thought of the ritual that you described is a genius. In one fell swoop a woman goes through her culture's rite of passage, without being mutilated. Bravo!
