Interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Ayanna Davis, a 22-year-old political science graduate, said she was improved by attending a course called Cultural Diversity and the Law, which focuses on cultural rituals. Thanks to the class, Davis was able to be "more open-minded" about female circumcision in Kenya. The procedure, customarily forced on young girls, often results in infections, tetanus, blood poisoning, hemorrhaging, inability to urinate, painful intercourse, scars, cysts, infertility, bladder stones, and greater susceptibility to AIDS. Maybe so, but as Davis explained, Western women have different standards than their counterparts in Kenya. "We can't just overpower their culture," she says, calling circumcision a woman's right.

Andrea Park grappled with the same question in an editorial in the Stanford Daily, December 1, 1992:

How can I argue against a culture I haven't tried to understand? Is it relevant that I, an outsider, may find [clitorectomies] cruel? As hard as it is for me to admit, the answer is no. To treat the issue as a matter of feminist outrage would be to assume that one society, namely mine, has a privileged position from which to judge the practices of another.

[Ed.: It is time to recognize a brand new field of study: anthroapology.]

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