At Risk of Mutilation

In the land to which Lydia Oluloro has been ordered to return, little girls are mutilated. It doesn't matter whether they are rich or poor, educated or illiterate. It can happen in their infancy or in their teens. The age varies among ethnic groups, as does the degree of pain. In some African countries, it is only a piece of the clitoris that is cut off. In others, the labia minora are sliced away. Natural protuberances are viewed as ugly, the unchaste accoutrements of prostitutes. Elsewhere, the entire outer genitalia are removed and the two sides of the vulva sutured together until marriage, leaving only a tiny opening for the excretion of blood and urine. Infections and hemorrhaging are not uncommon; intercourse can be excruciatingly painful. The surgical methods are prescribed not by science but by a tradition that expects girls to go through such rites of passage before marriage. Oluloro is afraid that if she is deported from Portland, Oregon, to Nigeria, her two daughters Shade, 6, and Lara, 5 -- both American citizens -- will be mutilated.

The case is at the center of a multifaceted controversy. Oluloro has, for one thing, asked for "cultural asylum," basing her claim to U.S. residency on her fear for her daughters' physical well-being. The State Department and human-rights activists are watching from the sidelines as an immigration judge prepares his decision, due March 23. It will not be an easy one. Oluloro's arguments are part of a messy battle she is waging with her ex-husband over the girls' custody, and the request for asylum could simply be a legal ploy.

Meanwhile, legislators have expressed concern that female- genital mutilation is being practiced in the U.S. by immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. Though actual instances are rare, a bill to ban the procedure was introduced in the New York State legislature in early March. It mirrors efforts on the national level by Colorado Representative Pat Schroeder to outlaw such mutilation. Says she: "It's terribly important to do so if we're going to preach on this issue in the international community." Yet even as American feminists inveigh against the practice, African professional women in the U.S. decry these protests as arrogant and misguided.

Advocates for women in the U.S. want the Oluloro affair to be a test case. "Claims based on gender oppression have not been recognized as a basis for asylum," says Nancy Kelly, directing attorney of the Women's Refugee Project, a joint program of Harvard Law School and Cambridge and Somerville (Massachusetts) Legal Services. "Harm that is done to women is seen as a personal, private or cultural matter. Genital mutilation has not been seen as a type of harm." The feminist mainstream has been particularly galvanized by the highly personalized documentary film and book on female-genital mutilation, Warrior Marks, co-authored by novelist Alice Walker. Walker sees it as a heinous form of patriarchal oppression, characterized by "the feeling of being overpowered and thoroughly dominated by those you are duty bound to respect." About 25 countries in Africa engage in mutilation: an estimated 98% of women are "circumcised" in Djibouti and Somalia, 90% in Ethiopia, 80% in Sudan, 75% in Mali. Walker and her allies have called for change not only in American law but also in the way African nations enforce their legal bans against the tradition.