There's an important conversation going on right now about a particularly problematic development project called Clitoraid. The current conversation was started by Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco, whose first post, No, you can't have my clitoris!!, offered a reasoned and thoughtful framing, and most importantly a call for others to join the conversation. I'd also recommend reading Petra Boynton's and Elizabeth Wood's responses to this project.
I don't think it's the right time to take the focus off the fundamentally wrong approach of Clitoraid, but eventually I'm interested in thinking about how this situation might challenge the way helping gets constructed in a sex positive model. In my experience, what I hear much of the time from colleagues, is that wanting to help is enough rationale for people helping however they want. I've never been sure that's the case, and certainly when it comes to Clitoraid I think it isn't.
Read more - Can? We? Save? Africa? ; Feminists Challenging Clitoraid
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