Cultural Relativism and Its Limits: How Discussions of Gendered Body Modification Have Failed the Cause of Human Rights by Centering the West

A road sign paid for by the Family Planning Association of Uganda that reads “Stop female circumcision: It is dangerous to women’s health.” Photo by Amnon Shavati.

Discourse surrounding gendered body modification has occurred for decades, notably regarding practices such as foot-binding in China, infant ear piercing in Latin America, female circumcision in Africa, and cosmetic surgery in the West. Despite their evidently global prevalence, these practices are discussed in isolation and rarely considered in a broader context of gendered body modification practices. When they are considered in the larger context of body modification, it is usually only done to justify or condemn global practices of body modification by comparing them to Western equivalents, or highlighting the lack of a Western equivalent. This framing causes Westerners to passively engage in discussions of body modification because they are primed to believe that the existence of Western equivalents to cultural practices is the sole determinant in a cultural practice’s status as being just or unjust. This passivity also takes the guise of cultural relativism—the idea that a person's views and beliefs should be understood in the context of that person's culture. As a result, “liberal” Westerners, as defined by Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin, tend to opt out of conversation about human rights by labeling practices of body modification as being "cultural" and thus immune to criticism.

Western narratives and practices are too often centered in discussions of body modification. This bias against non-Western practices of body modification is clear in the glorification of western intervention in areas where practices of body modification are prevalent. Some academics argue that the anti-foot binding movement in mid to late 19th century China was heavily influenced by Western missionaries who placed an emphasis on gender egalitarianism. At the turn of the 20th century, Western public opinion condemning foot-binding encouraged and mobilized the anti-foot binding movement in China. The emphasis on gender egalitarianism by these missionaries supposedly “set the stage” and “reinforced” secular egalitarian ideologies, even among non-Christian Chinese natives. Yet this allegation of influence completely disregards the anti-foot binding movement that took place almost 40 years earlier in the 1850s and 1860s by the Taipings, a rebel group that imposed a form of communism on the Yangtze Delta and advocated for the social mobility of women. Though the aforementioned scholars also claim that the Taipings’ influence in the anti-footbinding movement was a result of Western ideals, this holds little ground and disregards the cultural motivations that the Taipings had for preventing foot-binding. 

In her article “Do Muslim Women Need Saving?” Columbia professor of Anthropology Lila Abu-Lughod discusses the instinct of Westerners to view themselves as saviors of women overseas and to view Muslim women as victims. This instinct perpetuates harmful narratives about Muslim women as it assumes they are a homogenous group and all undergo the same oppressive experiences, helpless to advocate for themselves. Consequently, Westerners believe that the oppression of one woman is the oppression of all and use this stance to justify imperial practices as part of a phenomenon known as colonial feminism. However, the misunderstanding of cultural practices is not what makes the Western savior complex so conniving. Rather, it is the feigned pursuit of justice that comes from this misunderstanding. There is no doubt that the female covering burqa and footbinding practices have at times been used as oppressive tools, but using foreign intervention to claim credit for activism and imply cultural superiority is part of a larger pattern of exploiting human suffering.

The West also often serves as the standard of comparison when trying to justify practices of body modification. Sulkin writes about the practice of female circumcision in Sierra Leone and how it is regarded within the Kono tribe. He makes several comparisons between Kono practices and Western practices, claiming that female circumcision is to Kono women what elegance is to North American women, in that it is both a status symbol and a mark of beauty. Another comparison he makes in defense of female circumcision is one where he critiques the double standard in how we regard male circumcision versus female circumcision. 

Comparing body modification practices to Western equivalents may be done as a way to cater to the white imaginary and foster understanding in others, yet by doing so we create the assumption that the West must be the standard that others ought to follow. The white imaginary is a concept that has been explored by many critical race theorists such as Jackie Wang and Franz Fanon. Wang writes that the white imaginary refers to a space “which allows white people to narrativize the incidents in terms that are familiar to them.” She uses the example of Trayvon Martin’s murder and the narratives surrounding it to highlight how white sympathy is dependent on the innocence of a victim of police violence because without innocence, white Americans are incapable of humanizing Black people. Wang’s theory states that the only way white people can sympathize with victims of racialized violence is if these victims lie within white experiences and comprehension—in other words, if and only if victims are deemed as innocent and helpless. When Black individuals don’t fit into this white imaginary they enter what Fanon describes as the “zone of nonbeing,” a zone where blackness isn’t seen as fully human.

The problem with catering to the white imaginary as Sulkin does is that it depends on the imagination of others in order to humanize and justify a practice, just as using innocence to condemn racialized violence depends on the white imagination. A person's right to life or right to modify their body should exist regardless of a Western cultural understanding. As Elaine Scarry writes in “The Difficulty of Imagining Other People”, “the problem with the discussion of the ‘other’ is that they characteristically emphasize generous imaginings, and thus allow the fate of another person to be contingent on the generosity and wisdom of the imaginary.” Comparing female circumcision in Sierra Leone to male circumcision in America perpetuates the idea that non-Westerners must refer to Western practices in order to justify their own cultural practices. Not only does comparing cultural practices to Western equivalents hurt the cause of cultural relativism, but it also detracts from the validity of the idea that human rights advocacy is a universal endeavor.

Making the West the standard for comparison weakens the arguments of those opposed to body modification practices. Those who speak out against the use of cultural relativism to justify body modification practices tend to claim that human rights are universal truths which should be accepted despite cultural norms. Because using the West as the standard for comparison weakens both arguments in favor of and against body modification, we must stop centering the conversation around Western practices. Doing this will bring us one step closer to effectively engaging in discourse and reaching a logically sound conclusion about body modification practices.

Another change that must occur in order to effectively engage in conversations about body modification is the neutralization of the language we use to refer to these practices. Calling male genital cutting “circumcision” but female genital cutting “female genital mutilation” primes readers to regard one practice in a clearly negative light. Other body modification practices such as cosmetic surgery or even male genital cutting are not considered as “mutilation,” but the World Health Organization considers any type of cutting or removal of the female genitalia, even that undergone by consenting adults, to be mutilation and a human rights violation. The underlying tones and implications of the language we use to refer to types of body modification create an unfair playing field by instilling bias in anyone willing to engage in the conversation. Standardizing the language we use to describe these practices will account for cultural bias and ensure that opinions are formed solely based on the practices themselves and not on the cultural stigmas behind them. 

Abu-Lughod alludes to the question of how to remove cultural bias while critically engaging with conversations about human rights when she poses the question, “How are we to deal with difference without accepting the passivity implied by the cultural relativism for which anthropologists are justly famous—a relativism that says it's their culture and it's not my business to judge or interfere, only to try to understand?” This is not to say that we shouldn’t form our own judgments of these practices, but rather that we should strive to form judgments independently of our own cultural beliefs. One way to move beyond the passive cultural relativism that Abu-Lughod warns against is by removing any preexisting notions we hold about both the ‘other’ culture and our own culture. This means thinking beyond the western culture of secularism and liberation as well as the Kono cultural significance of genital cutting in social settings and relationships. 

While ridding ourselves of any and all remnants of cultural bias may not be feasible,changing the language we use and approaching all historical accounts with uncertainty might allow us to begin removing some of these biases. Once an understanding of universality is reached, we must not treat such understanding as immune to criticism or reconsideration. An established standard of universality is not enough to dismiss discussions. Crying “human rights violation” instead of engaging in conversations doesn’t allow those in the conversation to understand what constitutes a human rights violation or, at the root of the issue, what universal human rights are.

Alannis Jáquez (CC ‘25) is a native New Yorker majoring in Political Science. She is primarily interested in issues plaguing urban communities such as health, environmental, and housing injustice.