Just shy of a month ago, I got a call from David Reimer's father telling me that David had taken his own life. I was shocked, but I cannot say I was surprised. Anyone familiar with David's life—as a baby, after a botched circumcision, he underwent an operation to change him from boy to girl—would have understood that the real mystery was how he managed to stay alive for 38 years, given the physical and mental torments he suffered in childhood and that haunted him the rest of his life. I'd argue that a less courageous person than David would have put an end to things long ago. 

Let’s begin where Shweder begins. In late 1999, Fuambi Ahmadu, a young African scholar took the podium to give a paper at the annual conference of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago, and announced that she had recently undergone traditional circumcision—of her own free will. Ahmadu was born in Sierra Leone, grew up in the United States and studied anthropology at an American university. At the age of 22, she decided to return to Sierra Leone to be circumcised amongst the Kono people to which she belonged. Ahmadu told the conference that she herself was a sexually experienced woman who had made the choice under no duress or pressure. Moreover, she argued, the repeated claims by opponents of female circumcision of ‘adverse effects on women’s sexuality do not tally with the experience of most Kono women’ (quoted in Shweder 2003 p. 171). Most Kono women, she said, felt empowered by the initiation ceremony.