Moral relativism and tonality

While I agree with most of the author's oppositions to moral relativism and understand the difficulty in drawing a line when it comes to 'grouping', I was highly disturbed by his tonality when giving the example of clitorectomy. I personally do not agree with this practice, but I believe the author is exercising his Western beliefs and judgement when citing this example without looking at it from an objective perspective. If the ethical issue he is refuting is 'genital mutilation', then I believe he should have contrasted female circumcision with the popular male circumcision in North America. Notice, he did not attempt to use the words genital mutilation because it would have created suspicion in the reader's mind about male circumcision and what it means to mutilate an individuals genitalia. The author also uses a negative tonality when describing clitorectomy, which automatically transfers the idea that it is unethical to the reader.

In the following page, page 16, the author states: "What we need to determine, in pursuing moral wisdom, is not just what people believe,but whether there are good reasons for believing as they do." This sentence appears to be contradictory to what he was stating earlier. Perhaps these African cultures believe there is a good reason for clitorectomy and find male circumcision absurd and without a good reason. Who is the final judge in what is good? One's culture would have influence over whether one finds a reason to be good or not. How do we determine a good reason?