Glocalizing sexuality: Female genital cutting in the gender studies classes

Female genital cutting or FGC is an age-old social custom, sometimes euphemistically called female circumcision, which has been practiced mainly among some ethnic groups in Africa. Scince the UN Women's Decade, 1975-85, the issue has bought about heated debates among feminists, some demanding outright and immediate eradication of the custom as it violates the basic human rights of women, while some stressing the need for deliberate approaches which integrate abandonment projects as a part of comprehensive social and economic reform with respect to cultural rights of the people who practice FGC. The paper aims to explore how to address the issue to university students in Japan in a classroom of Gender Studies, most of whom are in their adolescence, with its purpose being to raise gender awareness over sexuality and the body. By doing this, the paper also attempts to elicit academic and pedagogical exchange of views from various disciplines among the teaching staffs of Hiroshima University. The first section presents an overview of FGC to share its basic understanding. The second section explains how the issue has been tackled locally and globally with much conflict over cultural rights verses human rights. The third section demonstrates an effective way to approach FGC in a classroom of Gender Studies from a perspective which considers sexuality a social construction. The fourth section shows the success of one Senegalese NGO, a case which presents a dynamic way to transform community in terms of gender with a result of abandoning FGC