just got a letter/receipt from Tostan (the US office) in the mail, for my donation – they even put a nice hand written “thanks from halfway around the world!” note……chuffed.

thought you’d appreciate this update from them:

The groundswell against FGC is steadily continuing towards the unprecedented full abandonment of this practice in Senegal. More than 2,300 Senegalese communities have already organised public declarations for the abandonment of FGC and child/forced marriage, and they are now becoming international events as thousands of villages in Mali and Guinea have also joined in this movement. We believe that with sustained support, Senegal will achieve total abandonment and this wave of change will spread across all of Africa.

Hurray!

Here are two tough measures to deal with this monsterous crime:
[i] Break off all diplomatic, trade and cultural links with each country that fails to take firm measures to stamp out Brutal Mutilation of Little Girls within its borders. Launch serious moves to have that country expelled from the United Nations and to have tough sanctions imposed on it. Concentrate on one country at a time. The business community will howl, of course, but if they’re stupid enough to invest in a country that allows these atrocities to happen then they deserve to lose their money …. come to think of it, don’t our new anti-terrorism laws allow for the detention of such businessmen and the confiscation of all their assets?

[ii] Where there has been the Brutal Mutilation of A Little Girl in Australia that the entire family be stripped of their citizenship, have all of their assets confiscated, be given 10 strokes of the rattan[Singapore-style], have their faces branded “Friend Of Satan; Hater Of God” in the relevant language …. then kick the lot of them out of Australia and replace them with a family that does not mutilate its daughters.

Piracy wasn’t stopped by sweetness. Slavery wasn’t abolished by kind words. The Brutal Mutilation Of Little Girls won’t be wiped out forever by merely telling the perpetrators that they are naughty. This is one place where toughness and ruthlessness are both necessary and good.

WTF?

Where you been, man?

This was a while back so I don’t have the details, but the project appointed elder women in communities who might otherwise have been doing the cutting for leadership roles in teaching against FGM. This aimed to;

+model the capacity of women to change social norms, as it’s bound up in women’s lack of status overall
+ circumvent women being pressured to take intergenerational sides on the issue by high status males, by giving women with the most status already external supports.

500 comments is a Birdy.

Hey, how about a bloggers’ golf day? Now I’m getting older and fatter and slower, I’m seriously thinking about getting back into golf again. I’m sure I could get my handicap down to double figures eventually. Plus I’m sure some of the more go ahead sandbelt clubs in Melbourne would or should be thinking that their pins would make excellent wifi station aerials for laptops plugged into the golf cart batteries.

Does that count as:

indulging in disputation about religion, politics, culture wars, or clashes of or within civilisations

?

Not from the Strochmeister! That’s a remarkably uncontroversial comment from Dr J to the S. And we’re now at 97, if you include this comment, which according to the rules, you probably shouldn’t …

I hope that community based campaigns to end FGM are as successful and really see them as the only path that is likely to eradicate the practice.

indulging in disputation about religion, politics, culture wars, or clashes of or within civilisations

?

I think we—especially those of us who consider ourselves politically progressive and opposed to all forms of oppression—have beentoo quick to assume that feminism and multiculturalism are both good things which are easily reconciled.

I shall argue instead that there is considerable likelihood of tension between them—more precisely, between [individual right] feminism and a multiculturalist commitment to group rights for minority cultures.

I see Ms Bone and Ms Toynbee got their permanent residency just the other day. At this rate it wont be long before the Strocchiverse and the actual universe are one.

Only seven more to go…

The successful strategy was in persuading high-status families to pledge against foot-binding their own daughters and then extend the pledge further into the community until at least a few hundred people in the community had taken the pledge, thus giving them local solidarity in keeping true to the pledge over subsequent years. This was especially important in persuading the communities that their daughters would be marriageable within the other families who had also taken the pledge, as the major fear/justification for the practise is that the daughters won’t be able to find a husband unless it is done.

And where there are pockets of society where it is regarded as legitimate, the reward is unlikely to be effective. I’m sure there are rewards out there to try to help capture Melbourne drug lords, but there aren’t many people jumping forward to claim them.

(OK, there’s a lot of broad brushwork here, but I’m trying to get the serious comment count up!!)