Cultural Relativism vs. Universalism: Female Genital Mutilation, Pragmatic Remedies

This essay will discuss both universalistic and cultural relativist approaches as applied to female genital mutilation.  Universal and cultural relativist feminists have vastly different views on this matter, my intention is to parallel each view and offer insight on the reason why Western feminists have coined this practice as “mutilation” as opposed to “cutting”.  The intent of this paper is to explore efficient grounds for abolition while proposing antidotes using both cultural relativist and universalist perspectives.