Passing judgment on which oppression is "worse"

"A Collective Response to “To Be Anti-Racist Is To Be Feminist: The Hoodie and the Hijab Are Not Equals”
http://thefeministwire.com/2012/04/a-collective-response-to-to-be-anti-racist-is-to-be-feminist-the-hoodie-and-the-hijab-are-not-equals/#.T4rmg5nhDDd.email

This is an interesting debate about oppressions and how people from outside the affected groups "speak" for people within that group (in this case Muslim women).   The original article ("To be anti-racist is to to be feminist: The hoodie and the hijab are not equal") is strongly criticized by this collective because it "serves to assert white feminist privilege and power by producing a reductive understanding of racial and gendered violence and by denying Muslim women their agency." 

This is a very good point, and is often the issue raised with cultural relativism, which is a way of understanding the behavior and activities of a group (or individual) in terms of culture.  Debates over female genital mutilation, honor killings, violence against women deal with this issue when these practices are defended as "it's their culture."  But who within a cultural decides what are the norms and therefore say these practices are acceptable?  How often is this used as an excuse by those in power to perpetuate harmful practices against people with lesser power as "cultural"?

It is dangerous for others from outside to judge other cultures, but for example, women in cultures who practice FGM are now stepping forward and using a human rights framework to say it's not cultural, it's a violation of women's human rights as violence against women.  They have connected with the global feminist/women's movement to create strategies for change, which can only come from within and is a long and arduous process.