Look at this link guys! -- http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/04/18/black-face-racial-caricature-and-cake-raising-awareness-about-female-genital-mutilation/
My show and tell post is about an artist in Stockholm who raises awareness about female circumcision in a very unique way. In this post, he uses a cake. This cake looks like a naked African Amerian woman. He uses brownish-black icing on the outside for her skin. When people start gethering around, he decides to cut the cake. He gets a woman to do it, and she starts cutting exactly where the clitoris would be. And as soon as she cuts, he starts screaming like he's in agonizing pain. The inside of the cake is bright red. With every cut, the artist gets louder and louder with his cries of agony. More and more people, alarmed by artist's screams, pay attention to the exhibit.
This article addresses many different issues we covered in this class.
We didn't talk about this too much, but we did mention female circumcision in class. Female circumcision is way different than male circumcision. After males get circumcized, they can still have sex without pain and get pleasure from it. However, when females get circumcized, their genital area gets completely mutilated. It honestly probably looks like the cake from this article. They can have sex after, but not comfortably. Sex is painful and contains no pleasure for them because their clitoris has been cut out.
Another topic this addresses is race. Kitimbwa Sabuni, a spokesperson for the National Afro-Swedish Association and a critic of this presentation, called the cake a “racist caricature of a black woman.” But is this cake racist? Or is it just helping raise awareness by showing that this happens a lot in African American communities?
I personally really like what this artist did. The thought of female circumcision sickens me, and I feel like not enough people are aware that it happens. Although what he did was radical, it was effective. Whether they liked it or not, people at the exhibit paid attention to his presentation and probably learned something. People need to do more things like this around the world to raise awareness about cruel things like female circumcision.
I never knew about female circumcision until this class. I didn't know it was worse and painful than when males have it done. I feel bad that they have done that. They should not have done that, people need to know more about a topic, in this context female circumcision. It's sad to know if your a man and your wife has had that operation done, then you can't enjoy making love to your wife because it hurts and is painful to her. I never really thought that much about it until it was skimmed over in class until you mentioned it. I wish we talked about it a little more because I never knew that much about it, and didn't really know that there was a female circumcision. I agree i like what the artist did and i think it showed a lot of creativity on her part but it sickens me that this actually happens. I agree that people need to do more things and get out more and raise awareness about cruel things like that. I found this article interesting but at the same time sickening
ReplyDeleteYeah, same with me. I had never heard of it before this class and it was pretty shocking to hear about stuff like that. I relaly can't imagine the first guy who was like, "Hey,so you know what we should totally do?" Of course it's difficult to imagine the first guy to decide that part of his own genital region was uneccesary (spelling?). But Male circumcision at least has health benifits and is usually (hopefully) done at an age when he can't remember anyway. Female circumcision just seems like a really bad idea from pretty much anyway you look at it. Not to mention, you know, the whole, it's a cruel and painful thing to do to women.
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