Breast Ironing. No, this isn't plastic surgery.

I've wanted to be a human rights activist my entire life, but it's a hard position to maintain. I'm of the opinion that most of us activists (or wannabes, for now) get very passionate about injustice of any sort, unnecessary conflict, physical and sexual mutilation, exploitation, poverty, and starvation, etc. At the same time, we're told to be less culturally normative—to not try to force practices of different societies into molds of our personal ideologies. It's hard, and self-conflictive, and leaves me feeling almost helpless at times.

I'm musing about this because I just watched this video about the practice of breast ironing in Cameroon. Be warned, it contains graphic images and it is likely that you will find it very disturbing.

A general description of the practice: Breast ironing is literally the practice of taking hot stones or irons and using them to flatten a young girl's (usually almost at puberty) developing breasts. This is done multiple times a day over a series of weeks or months until her breasts are flattened, burned, and deformed. They retain scarring, and can cause serious health problems. This procedure is done in order to prevent them from becoming sexually active. Cameroon, like many parts of Africa, has a high teen pregnancy rate. Breast ironing is seen as a way to keep girls from appearing attractive to men; therefore, they will supposedly not have sex until they are married. The statistics I have seen say that one in four girls in Cameroon will be subjected to this practice.

Ideologically, this issue is very similar to that of female genital circumcision (also known as female genital mutilation or FGM). This practice varies, but it can involve:
-the removal of part or all of the clitoris
-removal of part or all of the labia
-sewing together the labia (to make sex uncomfortable or prevent it entirely)
This practice has for a long time been the focus of women's rights and women's health movements. Objection to it, however, is controversial, and is rooted in the two different names: some view this as mutilation, others maintain that the practice is most often a cosmetic procedure, undergone willingly.

However, the most common defense of female genital circumcision (although I am in the objectors' crowd, I choose to use the less polarizing term here) is that it is a cultural practice, and should therefore not be criticized by westerners who are not members of societies that practice it. While I have never debated nor heard debates about breast ironing, I would hypothesize that the same argument is made there.

And herein lies the issue. The humanist activist in me screams "This is WRONG! We should not allow these girls to be maimed, we cannot stand by and let this happen." But the side of me that has been trained to recognize subjectivity reminds myself that "I am not there. I do not know everything about this practice. I cannot blindly criticize and make generalizations about a culture and society that is not my own." But this argument is infuriating—and while it may be my westernized ideology speaking, I believe that physically maiming someone to control their sexuality IS NOT A GOOD THING.

So how do we fix this? (laying aside the debate of whether we should fix it at all, or whether there is something to be fixed). What is the root of these issues?

It's sex again. So often it seems that's the problem. The thing though, is that repression doesn't seem to be a very good answer. There's the dual edged sword: Sex is necessary, but sex is dangerous. Sex is supposedly a "healthy expression of love", but sex can bring with it disease, unwanted pregnancy, and violence. It's a question of morality. It's a question of individual freedom. And it tears at the roots of societies worldwide.

Take the abstinence only movement. Studies have shown that teen pregnancy has gone up with these programs (don't believe me? here's some sources: here, here, and here). I'm not an expert, I can't say that this is causal, but I will say that telling kids that sex is dirty and wrong (when human instinct is that it's good and natural) and then not giving them information on how to be safe does NOT make sense.

And I think the same sort of thing is going on with FGC and breast ironing. These practices teach girls that their body is dirty, immoral, and fetishized. It takes away their power over themselves. And if a woman doesn't have power over her own body, doesn't that make it harder for her to control with whom and when and how she has sex?

In the end, I'm torn between my two humanist impulses. It's hurting women, it's cultural, I want to help them, I don't want to impose my conceptions of right and wrong. But either way, I still find it tragic. Just something to think about.