Further FGM information (sorry, long post).
Basically a selection of posts and information that I've collected:
FGM = BAD; MGM = GOOD, right.
BUT.
If you're in Africa, from African culture.
FGM = GOOD; MGM = GOOD.
No-one gets to keep intact genitals, and they will fight to keep their right to their cultural practices. There are numerous opinions from African men and women on the subject, rather than some patronising Western culture that doesn't understand.
http://www.cafeafricana.com/Mondiat%20Seriki.htmlhttp://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/30/150.htmlhttp://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?R...y=SIERRA_LEONEhttp://www.who.int/reproductive-heal...mes_review.pdf"The three overlapping reasons for the practice at
the center of figure 1 - spiritual and religious reasons, sociological reasons, and hygienic and aesthetic reasons - seem to indoctrinate society into the practice without explicitly addressing women’s sexuality. According to these reasons, the clitoris and external genitalia are believed to be ugly and dirty, and if not excised can grow to unsightly proportions. In addition, they are purported to make women spiritually unclean. Their removal is thus required by religion."
"Like other social behaviours, the practice of FGM derives from varied and complex belief systems. It is tempting to simplify matters by isolating a piece of the behaviour and explaining it as a separate item, for example, “FGM has negative health consequences”. Yet it is crucial to see the big picture - the connections among all aspects of the behaviour. The challenge of taking the whole picture into consideration may seem daunting, but social behaviour involves a vast range of influences - defined by culture. Culture acts as a lens or filter through which people view, understand, and interpret the world. Each culture is selective in what is filtered out and what reaches the human consciousness. Some things may pass unchanged (basic human needs) while others may undergo subtle shifts in emphasis. The filter effect of culture has great importance for health communication programmes."
In fact, if you look at the opinions from people actually IN that culture, the reasons for doing it are astoundingly similar:
http://www.h-net.org/~africa/sources...rodectomy.html
NOW.
If someone has not been brought up in a cutting culture and has not been culturally conditioned to accept it, like 85% of the world, there is no difference in principle between MGM and FGM, just a question of scale of damage.
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This is an excellent paper, comparing FGM,and MGM and comparing Western and African attitudes to it.
Global Jurist Frontiers
Volume 4, Issue 2 2004 Article 3
Hegemonic Human Rights and African Resistance: Female Circumcision in a Broader Comparative Perspective
Elisabetta Grande
Abstract The issue of Female Circumcision is usually discussed in the framework of extreme human rights violations victimizing non western women. This paper questions this approach by broadly comparing Female Circumcision with similar “cutting” practices routinely performed in Western societies. An integrative approach to comparative law is suggested in order to understand phenomena in context and to avoid ethnocentrism.
KEYWORDS: Human Rights, Hegemony, Female Circumcision, Breast Augmentation, Male Circumcision, Comparative Law
"Only a serious and comprehensive approach towards all modifications of sexual organs, African and Western, “theirs” as well as “ours”, using a single, not a double, standard to evaluate all body modifications related to human sexual apparatus, will make the human rights discourse on sexual organs’ modifications or mutilations (whatever we want to call them) less imperialistic, more effective and less assimilating. A more inclusive notion of human rights, a notion that includes “us”- the Westerners- as well as “them” -the “Others” -, serves, indeed, to reduce hypocrisy and gives credibility to the “human rights spirit”9
"1) In Italy and the U.S., M.C. is routinely performed, for no therapeutic reason, in public hospitals right after the baby is born (in the second mentioned country to the extent of at least 60 % of the newborn male population 10) and it is a practice that the law fully accepts. M.C., as everyone knows, consists of removing the foreskin or prepuce, the natural sheath of skin that covers the penis. In the same two countries, however, F.C., even the less extreme of its forms, the so called Sunnah circumcision, is outlawed and criminally sanctioned11. Sunnah circumcision, as very few would know, in its mildest expression is a largely symbolic circumcision that entails a small cut in the prepuce (the hood above a girl’s clitoris). It removes no tissue and leaves only a small scar. It is far less invasive than M.C.. Nevertheless, proposals by doctors at medical centers in the two countries that sought to perform this light form of F.C. at parents’ request (or even with the girl’s informed consent) have produced a major uproar of the anti- F.C. movements and have been deemed unacceptable by the law itself."
"According to the WHO’s classification, F.C. ranges from the very mild form of Sunnah, to the most radical practice of infibulation (also known as Pharaonic circumcision). According to the same source, however, the latter practice --which involves the complete removal of the clitoris, labia minora, and part or all of the labia majora, then suturing to narrow the vaginal introitus-- accounts for only 15% of all F.C.. Sunnah F.C. in its various forms (total or partial removal of the prepuce), excision (that involves excision of the prepuce with excision of part or all of the clitoris) – and clitoridectomy (excision of the prepuce and clitoris together with partial or total excision of the labia minora) account for the rest"
"Acknowledging that it is with a great approximation that we can address F.C. as a unitary category, it seems that many forms of F.C., with the sure exception of infibulation, if performed in the same non-septic, safe and hygienic setting of a good hospital, would not entail greater health risks in terms of shortterm and long-term complications than M.C. or B.A. 14. Surgery routinely performed in our countries in case of congenital adrenal hyperplasia, i.e. cliteridectomy for those newborns who have been labelled “intersex babies” -- while incidentally raising the question regarding why we can blamelessly satisfy our social sexual taxonomy by a genital organ removal--, can prove at least the medical point15."
http://www.bepress.com/gj/frontiers/vol4/iss2/art3/
The article is available for viewing if you log on as Guest.
It is very powerful, and explains why the West has picked on female circumcision for eradication and yet has a double standard with regards to male.
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I don't think anyone would argue about the damage that infibulation causes, BUT only 15% of female circs are of that kind. The rest are much less invasive, and cause less damage than a male circ. Why the double standard?
"White Western Values" are being applied to other cultures without understanding them. The people in those cultures defend their practices as being beneficial to themselves, as the WHO document admits - it's no good rampaging around talking about harm if you don't address the whole cultural issue, because they won't believe you, as in the US.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...03/ai_n8794629http://www.arches.uga.edu/~haneydaw/twwh/fgm.html#why
The people who practice FGM do it because they feel it's beneficial, and it's overwhelmingly women who want it. Consent is irrelevant, yes the girls are of an age where they could give consent - but most of them have no idea what's going to happen to them, and if they did they have no choice anyway - like little boys in the USA.
The reason why Amnesty and the WHO have not been able to bring themselves to condemn male circumcision in quite the same way is obvious to anyone who knows how they are funded. They would not be able to operate without funding from the West and the USA in particular, and which country carries out almost all of the worlds routine infant circumcisions? There is also the religion question, they probably can't see any disadvantage if they try to end FGM because they receive nothing in the way of money from Africa, and the US is against FGM anyway, but try and end something that is considered essential to Judaism and Islam, and which most of the great American Public consider their right, and that's going to be political suicide.
As an example, this is what happened when the WHO released a not-very-complimentary-to-the-sugar-industry set of diet guidelines:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...940287,00.html
Can you imagine the uproar there would be if they dipped their toes into the male circumcision issue? They cannot afford to upset their main source of income.
Amnesty claims to be independent of any governmental organisation, but in the case of male circumcision, it isn't the government that they get their funds from, it's the people who are doing the circumcising! ie. They rely on contributions from the public of the USA, I can't imagine that they will be about to start attacking American culture any time soon.
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http://www.state.gov/g/wi/rls/rep/crfgm/10102.htm
That's from the State Dept.
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http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dlj.../dlj47p717.htm
Interesting article.
http://law.case.edu/student_life/jou...11-2/59105.pdf
Another interesting paper.
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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...877760147.html
In the cut - FGM in Indonesia, hospital circs.
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Circumcised women also state that they are happy with their sex lives and find that they orgasm just as well as intact women.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2837
Genital Cutting May Alter, Rather Than Eliminate, Women's Sexual Sensations
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2905103.htmlhttp://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi....x?cookieSet=1
The Sexual Experience and Marital Adjustment of Genitally Circumcised and Infibulated Females in The Sudan
The Journal of Sex Research Vol.26. No.3, pp.375-392 August, 1989
http://www.fgmnetwork.org/authors/Li...experience.htm
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""Religiously, it's recommended," said Traore who, like most Malians, is a Muslim. "And, of course, it's good for the girls' hygiene.""" But ask Gamara what she thinks of female circumcision, a practice denounced by women's-rights activists around the world, and her response is a positive one.
"Circumcision is one of the foundations of the society," the petite, rotund woman said decisively in a recent interview in Bamako. "It helps women maintain her purity and cleanliness." http://www.upi.com/ConsumerHealthDai...8-122737-2173r
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: 
Ya know what I mean?
