The Unkindest Cut

Genital mutilation - and I include male circumcision in this - is a primitive and barbaric procedure, aimed at removing sexual pleasure.
Unregulated and uncommited sexuality is condemned by most religions. Male circumcision was instigated to curb the onanism of the male, particularly the teenage male.
Female so-called circumcision, denies women any sexual pleasure and keeps her faithful and subservient.
A high percentage of these procedures results in death and mutilation for both sexes, statistics that are kept under wraps.
And they are nearly always perpetrated on young children and/or babies who have no say in the matter. Brutal child abuse which is completely ignored and rarely discussed publicly.
I have seen the mutilated genitals of both sexes as a result of these botched procedures and was sickened.
So completely preventable. The helpless bodies of our most vulnerable are demeaned so thoroughly by these so-called religious butcheries.

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This barbarous mutilation has been condoned by the major superstitions for millennia, and they'll continue as long as people are stupid to believe that their sky-god demands a piece of flesh as a pact. Why not offer an I.O.U, payable upon death? If sky-god meets his responsibilities he receives some clitoris or foreskin.
As long as men think that they're the sole decision makers on this planet mutilation will continue.
Now "science" is advocating male circumcision as a way of slowing the spread of AIDS - instead of having the spine to push for making correct hygiene a human right.
10 years is too lenient a jail sentence; he needs a "date" with Lorena Bobbitt, so that he can spend the rest of his life having to sit to pee.

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Yes, female genital mutilation is awful, dangerous, and unethical. It is also extremely rare in the United States. Meanwhile, millions of male babies are routinely subjected to genital mutilation that is also awful, dangerous (death and complete removal of the penis are among the worst outcomes, but lesser unintended problems are much more common), and unethical. Why? Why do we continue to allow one gender to have perfectly healthy and functioning flesh sliced off without medical necessity or consent of the patient while we continue to condemn and voice concern over similar mistreatment of the other sex when it is already illegal and extremely rare in the U.S. or anywhere in the West?

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Circumcision is backed for Africa (John Donnelly, Globe Staff | March 29, 2007)

WASHINGTON -- The World Health Organization and UNAIDS yesterday recommended that African males living in the heart of the AIDS pandemic protect themselves against HIV by undergoing circumcision -- medical advice that could lead to surgical procedures on tens of millions, from infants to elders.

Dr. David Serwadda , director of the Institute of Public Health at Makerere University in Uganda, one of the leaders of the Uganda circumcision trial, said that "my worry is as people would like to have this service," people who aren't qualified to perform it will rush forward to meet the demand.

"We're 20 years into AIDS and we still have communities, constitutuencies, and countries that are reluctant to make condoms freely available," he said in an interview. "People will find the 150 reasons not to go into [circumcisions] just as they opposed use of condoms."

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Once again, ignorance and sadism hiding behind "religion" which is always untouchable to criticize or prosecute. And once again, religion imposing on the sanctity and privacy of women's bodies, psyches and health. Religion should stick to moral guidance and spiritual uplifting, not torturing and maiming our most personal temple: our physical selves. No god could be this disgusting, this is the handicraft of man alone and needs to be prosecuted as criminal.

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MS. Dudones-You have no journalistic integrity. You must know for sure that 35 percent of women who undergo circumcision do not die from it. That is absolute nonsense and you are simply making up figures out of thin air to gain sympathy for your arguments.

I am someone who has a PhD having done research on women's sexual health in a country where circumcision is prevalent. It is particularly insulting to me to find people like you trying to garner sympathy by twisting facts. Are you so incapable as a journalist of finding real reasons to reject this practice that you have to make up lies in order to do so? Do you think that women in these countries are so stupid that they will stop doing circumcision when they hear that 35% of women die as a result? Of course not, because they know from their own community that your figures have no basis in reality!

In short, you have little respect for the intelligence of your readers or the women you purport to be saving from themselves.

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Was religion mentioned anywhere in the article? Can you show me one religion that actually supports this practice?

This is not a religious practice, it is a cultural one.

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Yeah, as far as I know it's a cultural practice and not a religious one.

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Thanks, folks... nice to know when it comes to a practice that is FAR more widespread and FAR more accepted in the mainstream that it simply doesn't matter and shouldn't be talked about... because its victims are MALE.

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It continues to amaze me that in 2007, over a decade after the rise of the Intersex movement around the globe, that writers - and especially feminist writers - can craft stories about "female genital mutilation" that ignores the mutilation happening everyday in this country. While the writer mentions that clitoridectomy "was prescribed as a cure for such 'female deviancies' as lesbianism, masturbation, nymphomania and even epilepsy" in the past, she completely ignores the fact that intersexed people (previously labeled by the derogatory term "hermaphrodite") continue to be mutilated (this is the term used by intersex people) by medical doctors in this country every single day. Inherent in discussions of "FGM" in the US are racist notions that create binaries between those of "us" in the west who do things because of "science" and "medicine" and those "others" (in Africa, the Middle East, and US immigrant communities) who do things because of "tradition" and "religion" (read superstition). Crucial to any discussion of gential cutting in any cultural context is the notion of bodily integrity and the right to self-determination. I am disappointed that a feminist writer and a feminist magazine such as Ms. failed to address these linkages or to take this opportunity to force Americans to take a look at themselves and their own problematic cultural practices. For more information on intersex surgeries and the ever growing intersex movement visit the ISNA website at http://www.isna.org

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Think about it. What makes this a female issue? Why do we have a national law against female genital mutilation, yet when legislation is proposed again and again to afford male the same human rights protections as females, as is the case right now in Congress and 16 states, it gets no attention in the press or public and legislators openly refuse to take up the issue. And here we are, most of us wagging fingers and lobbing bomb shells about those ignorant and barbaric African and Middle Eastern cultures? Please!

Let's get a few things straight. Our own culture is quite backwards and hypocritical about its stand on forced genital mutilation at the hands of parents (and with the backing of the law and financial support of Medicaid and insurance). Our own culture holds up the religious defense for Jews and Muslims as part of its rationale for continuing to allow genital mutilation of boys who have no say in the matter. Our own culture is dividing this human rights issue on gender lines. And our own culture is ignoring the more common and bigger threats to life and body integrity of the select females it continues to target for articles like the one above:
(1) Several of the countries in which FGM is most prevalent and damaging, such as Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia, are mired in horrible poverty and blood letting that Western Nations are not doing anything meaningful to stop;
(2) When refugees from countries where FGM actually takes place in significant numbers arrive in the U.S. and seek asylum to escape FGM, there is not a clear pattern of granting such asylum, or even allowing passage in the first place; and,
(3) What actually is occurring with some regularity in the U.S. is pressure and encouragement by parents for teenage girls to get boob jobs and such, but there is no very little if any movement to condemn that.

I say, before we dive into a pool of our own prejudices again, perhaps it is time to do a little self examination and see how well we are really doing in terms of protecting human rights? Which gender is really at substantial risk of genital cutting without consent in this country? Where are the cultural biases and hypocrisy really resting in support of infant genital mutilation? And how many mothers and female nurses are taking a stand on genital mutilation imposed on boys, even as most of them, as with men, seem all to eager to show how righteous they are in terms of opposing this human rights violation when it is directed at girls?

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Though there are worse situations to be in, I would hate to be in Misha's position. Alternet may be willing to do a story on Misha's case. See http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/info/appeal.html (Link length was being exceeded, so you have to copy and paste). A 12 year old and a parent are trying to fight the other parent's attempts to mutilate the child by circumcision based on religious beliefs. Two lower courts have approved. This case cries out for justice. It is a good example of violating a child's rights for religious beliefs.
For all those sympathetic to genital mutilation of any sex, this is a case that can address the widespread male genital mutilations and child's rights. Whoever is sol willing, should try to not only contact relevant Alternet staff, but also other media outlets.
Sincerely,
Aouie

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For all of this talk of female genital mutilation, hardly anyone bats an eye these days regarding male genital mutilation (otherwise known as circumcision). Circumcision is still a routine procedure in America.

Both male and female circumcision are BARBARIC practices with ignorant roots -- both should be entirely OUTLAWED (female genital mutilation was BANNED in America in the 1990s, but what about male genital mutilation?).

NO ONE has the right to slice up the genitals of a helpless baby, even with the consent of the parents (it is not the parents' body, so they cannot decide to slice up a body that is not their own). Sweden recently passed laws to prevent circumcision -- this is VERY GOOD because they realize that children are not the owned by or otherwise property of the parents and thus the parents (and NO ONE) can authorize the mutilation of an infant's body.

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I am partly posting this to counter the huge number of posts that doesn't directly address the issue that the author writes about.

As we tackle these horrible traditions, we should try to understand where they are coming from (but still oppose the bad practices).

Other postings have addressed the issue of female genital cuttings varying in nature and the extent of harm caused. For the positive side of some Somali genital cuttings (Due to Alternet's limits on link length) go to http://www.ceu.hu/legal/workshops.html and click on the link about "Universalism and Local Knowledge in Human Rights - Humanities Center lecture series" and then select the article "The Moral Challenge in Cultural Migration"

Sincerely,
Aouie
PS: I will post it in parts or simply post portions of it.

Somalis in Seattle.

My fourth and final example is not yet a legal case in the United States. But there is now on the books are Federal law criminalizing a particular cultural practice that is commonplace among immigrants from certain parts of Africa. Sooner or later some African parent is going to be prosecuted, and at that time the constitutionality of the law may well be tested.

Unless you are an anthropologist who knows a good deal about East and West African gender identity and coming of age ceremonies, you may find this final example very difficult to think about in an open-minded way. I believe this is largely because of the way the practice has been represented in a global discourse that bears little relationship to informed anthropological accounts. Many Americans who cherish their liberal democracy like to think of themselves as pluralists who value diversity and believe it is good to be tolerant of cultural differences. Nevertheless, when families arrive in their midst from Somalia, Egypt, the Sudan, Sierra Leone, Mali, the Gambia or Ethiopia these same liberal Americans begin to sound like that police Chaplain from the City of Hialeah. The one who said of Santeria animal sacrifice: it’s a sin, an abomination, don’t let it happen here. I have in mind the reaction of dominant groups in the United States to families such as the Somali refugees who arrived in Seattle in the early 1990s. These families wanted to continue doing what they do in Somalia. Namely they wanted (by their own lights) to improve the bodies and further the normal social development of both their sons and their daughters by means of a cosmetic genital surgery.

When a doctor at the Harbor View Medical Center in Seattle asked a pregnant Somali women if she would like to have her child circumcised, if is it a boy, the woman replied, "yes, and if it is a girl, too" (Coleman 1998). The hospital just happened to be one that is sensitive to cultural issues and has a significant inner city minority group clientele. They formed a committee to look into the possibility of a minor medically safe female circumcision procedure that might be made available to immigrants from cultures where both male and female circumcision is the cultural ideal and viewed as an essential ingredient of normal growth and gender development. The Harbor View committee proposed to do the procedure with the informed consent of both the parents and the child, at around age 12, under hygienic conditions and with a local anesthesia. From a medical point of view the proposed procedure was less intrusive that a typical male circumcision performed in the United States. Nevertheless, when news was leaked that Harbor View, a respected medical institution affiliated with the University of Washington, was contemplating this step, the local mainstream non-immigrant community went ballistic. Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder warned the medical center that they might be prosecuted under a Federal Law, which she herself had sponsored.

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Many people have commented on how male genital mutilation is more prevalent in the United States, perhaps in the world, and that this article is throwing its eggs in the wrong basket. In some ways I agree, but to the extent that this means that male genital mutilation is at once worse and a gender issue is iffy at best and bullshit at worst.

One important fact seperates, or rather unites male and female genital mutilation: the majority of the latter is endured well after infancy, many times in adulthood, whereas the former is predominantly a crime commited against infants. In other words, both acts are equal in their oppression of women and children. Male genital mutilation does not seem to occur because of a systematic, sexist bias against men, but against children, who are treated across America as property more than human beings. The issue of female genital mutilation is just as important as male genital mutilation, because its prevalence elsewhere represents the same rationale behind the prevalence of male genital mutilation in the United States.

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Almost all the women I've ever had the pleasure of having say they prefer a circumcised guy to one that looks like an anteater. Much more pleasing to the eye, more tasty and odor free too. Is there a girl out there who really likes the odor of smegma?? I'll bet most of the girls out there have never even had the dubious pleasure of a close encounter with smegma. Guys who have been circumcised in adulthood also say there is some desensitization, and the girls like the fact they last longer.

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In the female snipping countries, the men think that an uncut female is gross, and dirty.

In the male snipping countries, the women think that an uncut male is gross and dirty.

Scar tissue isn't sexy, and poor hygiene isn't either.

I’m sure enough guys here have had the “Tuna town” experience, but we don’t insist that they go get chopped. Take a shower seems more civil.

That’s my 2-cents.

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While I agree that any discussion of genital mutilation needs to include practices of male 'circumsicion', it's pertinent to note that the lived experience of the consequences of genital mutilation by women and men is vastly different.

While MGM involves the 'surgical' removal of the foreskin, when it all goes (as in the majority of cases) the man is capable of leading a rewarding and pleasurable sexual life. FGM, on the other hand, involves removal of one or a comination of the labia majora, labia minora and clitoris, and often the sewing up of the butchered area to create a 'neat' area. This makes urination and menstruation painful and difficult, and sexual penetration impossible without cutting the scarred and sewn up area open. Sexual penetration after this is still egenrally unpleasant or painful, and if the clitoris is removed there is no sexual pleasure at all for the woman. I'm not even going to attempt to discuss the complexities of childbirth for women who have been mutilated.

My point is that the sexual life of a woman who has suffered FGM is vastly different from a male who has suffered MGM, and this gulf of suffering needs to be acknowledged and accounted for when any comparison is made.

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Female circumcision is a tradition clung to more tightly by women than men. What the author also overlooks is that some forms (practiced in parts of Egypt and Iraq) remove only the clitoral hood, enhancing female pleasure, while having little effect on her partner.

And for the 1 millionth time, religion has nothing to do with it. And even if it did, we (Muslims, as well as the world outside the US in general) are thoroughly sick of you trying to "save" us. Take care of your own problems first.

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But some immigrant populations are reviving the practice.

It is nice to finally see that you "progressives" are finally recognizing the problems of immigrants not obeying our laws.

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I don't understand why we don't hear a similar uproar about male genital mutilation. I'm utterly sick of hearing people say "but circumcision is different." No its not -- mutilation is mutilation -- even if its cutting off an earlobe, its mutilation and should not be allowed. If an adult person wants to mutilate him or her self, then fine, but parents should not be allowed to mutilate their children NO MATTER WHAT!!!!!

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It never stops amazing me how incredibly narrow minded and facist these obstensibly liberal Third Wave Feminists truly are.
While this histrionic "faux" concerned Feminist writer takes cheap shot after cheap shot on Somalians "mutilating" their children, she is of course perfectly happy with the wave after wave of "boob-jobbed" bitches running around every major city in the United States flaunting their "perfect" tits and minors begging their parents for nose jobs, breast augmentation and of course braces on their teeth--apparently these are all perfectly "valid" reasons because "little snob bitches from Ivy League Schools know what's best for the entire God Damned World." This little Chic Upper-Class "tramp stamped" tattooed Little Slut probably never even got her hands dirty, but she is going to tell the world how they should live--and of course they must do so by her rules and values.
The essence of Third Wave Feminism today is to feign concern and twist whatever screws are necessary: lie with abandon and misrepresent ad nauseaum for the purpose of getting one's way and thereby promote one's moral bias.
Of course it is perfectly natural, ethical and moral to cut, slice, acid bathe ones face and major body parts to "look a certain way, but totally and morally wrong for someone to do so on the basis of religion or ethnic culture.
What we really need in this world is a law preventing these self indulgent little liberal Hitler wannabes from breeding and thereby passing along their hypocritical self-important myopic genes.

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