The Other FGM Debate: Is Male Circumcision Also Child Abuse?
There is currently very serious concern in the UK about the increasing numbers of small girls – estimated to be over 20,000 annually – who are at risk of FGM (female genital mutilation). This is indisputably a matter of child abuse; discussion and news on action about #NoFGM in the UK can be found on this website here. But many maintain that male circumcision is also child abuse and should be banned in the UK. You are therefore welcome to share information and (evidenced) views about male circumcision as well, via the Comments box below.
Some initial thoughts:
FGM: The Difficult Debates (considers also male circumcision)
Global information:
Circumcision Information (official positions in Australia, UK, South Africa, Canada, Netherlands, USA, Finland, Sweden, Denmark)
Pros & Cons:
About Kids’ Health: Circumcision (The Hospital for Sick Children)
Male circumcision and FGM are not equivalent (Margaret Nelson, The Answer’s 42 blog)
Circumcision Policy Statement (American Academy of Pediatrics, 27 August 2012)
The case against (male, child) circumcision:
The WHOLE Network
End Routine Infant Circumcision
Confessions of a Circumcised Woman
Integrity × Intactivism = i² / Discussion of genital integrity and intactivism
Circumcision Should Be Banned (Paul Livingstone)
Wider perspectives:
University of Oxford, Practical Ethics debate: A fatal irony: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa will increase transmission of HIV by Brian Earp
Chapter 18 of “Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy” by Edward Wallerstein (Springer, 1980)
The items above are of course just a small sample of possible reference points.
Please feel free to add further information and (evidence-based) opinion via the Comments box below…
Please support our NoFGM campaign by signing and forwarding this e-petition (for UK citizens), posted 25 June 2012 on the HM Government website:
STOP Female Genital Mutilation (FGM / ‘cutting’) in Britain
If you have a Twitter account and would like to draw more attention to these issues, please use the hashtag #NoFGM and follow @NoFGM1. Thank you.
For more general information on FGM please see: #NoFGM: A Listing For Action & References On Female Genital Mutilation.
Thanks for raising this Hilary – please see our online petition on tackling Unnecessary Male Circumcision in the UK here: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/uk-government-end-unnecessary-male-circumcision-in-the-uk
And also a list of some of the key organisations working on this issue in the UK here: http://endmalecircumcision.blogspot.co.uk/p/friend-of-foe.html
And news of A July conference in England on male circumcision here: http://endmalecircumcision.blogspot.co.uk/p/july-2012-mini-conference.html
Best
Glen Poole
The Men’s Network
http://www.themensnetwork.org.uk
Thanks for all this info, Glen! Very helpful.
PS I wonder if you might also like to join us in trying to establish exactly why our own H.M. Gov. e-petition was rejected? Background info here: http://pinkpolitika.com/2012/05/29/h-m-government-e-petition-on-fgm-rejected/
We felt it was really important to post a petition on the HMGov website, and really can’t understand the objection to date….
I’ve never understood the double standard of a zero-tolerance approach to female cutting, while male cutting is commonplace.
It’s illegal to cut off a girl’s prepuce, or to make any incision on a girl’s genitals, even if no tissue is removed. Why don’t boys get the same protection? Everyone should be able to decide for themselves whether they want parts of their genitals cut off. It’s *their* body.
Reblogged this on Far be it from me -.
Am sharing and re blogging Hilary thanks for this very important post
The word “mutilation” seems to raise people’s hackles when they support the practice, whether male or female. For that reason I always call it “cutting”, which can’t be denied. We constantly hear that they can not be compared, but ethically, as human rights violations, they certainly can, when ALL FGC is outlawed, regardless of severity.
Thanks Hugh (and everyone else who’s contributed above).
Re: ‘cutting’ … Yes, you are of course correct that some people prefer that word to the more direct description of ‘mutilation’; but in fact – for girls anyway, and for boys some places (NB I’m referring here to minors, not adults who can choose for themselves) – the ‘cutting’ is a grave crime, child abuse, so why not use a word which more accurately reflects this?
There may (?) be a case sometimes for describing FGM and circumcision as ‘cutting’ when in conversation with people who must be persuaded within traditional communities, but even then not routinely in the UK, where the law on FGM at least is clear that it is a serious criminal act.
I would like to draw your attention to the charity Genital Autonomy (GA) http://www.genitalautonomy.org which is a human rights charity using the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to protect male, female and intersex children from unnecessary genital surgery on children.
With regard to the issues surrounding male circumcision, anyone who is interested in exploring this important issue should consider attending a one day mini-conference and workshop in July at Keele University, run by Genital Autonomy on how to prevent unnecessary male circumcision. Around 90% of circumcisions – including those carried out for medical reasons – are believed to be medically unnecessary. We believe that if more people were aware of this issue they would want to take action to reduce the number of unnecessary male circumcisions performed every day in the UK.
You can find more information about this event by clicking the following link: http://www.genitalautonomy.org/#/one-day-workshop/4563218566
We are also running a three day international symposium in Helsinki in September. Here is the link: http://www.genitalautonomy.org/#/genital-autonomy-2012/4563224012 This symposium will deal with genital cutting of male, female and intersex children and will bring together experts from around the world who deal with this issue.
Genital cutting of children must stop, full stop
Thank you David (and other contributors). Your input is very helpful.
In turn, you may find these posts of interest:
#NoFGM: A Listing For [UK] Action & References On Female Genital Mutilation
The Other FGM Debate: Is Male Circumcision Also Child Abuse? (this post, just for ref.)
HM Government e-petition on FGM rejected
FGM: The Difficult Debates
FGM In Britain: Professional Culpability, Public Responsibility, Private Peril
FGM – Professional Neglect; Legitimate Moral Panic
FGM is a universal horror, not just in Britain
Women under threat world-wide (still); demand action now.
FGM (female circumcision) is illegal and cruel – and culturally challengeable everywhere
Thank you Hilary, It is good to see so many people working in unison to deal with this issue. It is nice to see at last some unity in the approach to both male and female genital sutting which in the past has been frequently fragmented by the distracting debate as to which is worse, FGM or MGM when we should be campaigning to ensure neither sex suffers from this appalling practice. I hope to meet as many campaigners as possible in Helsinki.in September.
Thanks for this Hilary. For me there need be no debate about whether forced removal of male foreskin is abuse – it clearly is. It’s half his penile skin, and with a unique concentration of nerve endings has a clear role in his sexual joy, as well as a more obvious comfort/protection function (for both him and his partner).
Compare this drastic excision to the minor incision of the female foreskin (type IA FGM) which the WHO says is one of the most prevalent forms internationally. In Malaysia it’s performed on little baby girls in clinics by a doctor. It removes nothing. The American Medical establishment have tried to introduce it twice to placate immigrant parents, calling it ‘harmless’.
And both times this has caused outrage. The WHO weighed up the issue of type IV female cutting and pronounced it mutilation, saying that, “the guiding principles for considering genital practices as female genital mutilation should be those of human rights” In other words she owns the skin she’s in. All of it.
How on earth can we claim that a man or boy doesn’t own the skin he’s in?
Is he less human? Or did someone quietly typex out ‘Human’ from the ‘International Declaration of Human Rights’ and scrawl in ‘Women’s'?
Even on a pragmatic level discriminating against boys in this way does society no favours. Children live what they learn. If society hates their body, why should boys grow up to respect other people’s bodies? I believe that it’s no coincidence that societies where forced genital mutilation is practiced on boys are also societies where violence against women is particularly notable.
And where male genital mutilation is practised female genital mutilation usually is too (including the US where thousands and thousands of normal women are pressured to excise significant nervous tissue in a type IIA FGM every year). One of the bullying refrains which push labiaplasty on vulnerable teenagers in the West is that large labia imply promiscuity or that they will disgust a man (see my blog). Once you begin to examine these issues, and the racist misogynist history of labiaplasty, you quickly realise that we are morally threadbare on FGM issues. As we are on MGM.
The so called ‘hygiene’ argument for MGM particularly undermines our case against FGM – and it enrages me to hear it cited uncritically by a woman. After all myconium smegmatis is 10x more common in our labial folds than it is on the penis. If forced surgery is genuinely an appropriate alternative to washing, then why shouldn’t you and I be the first under the knife?
In Africa females form a majority of victims of HIV – they are not directly protected by the male circ campaign, so if mass coerced genital damage is really an appropriate response to this disease why aren’t we investigating the ‘benefits’ we might bring women by cutting or otherwise damaging their sensitive bits, including perhaps cauterising the cervix which is particularly vulnerable to HIV? It’s not as if research hasn’t already indicated that genital damage may have a benefit – in Tanzania, after proper data controlling, female excision practices were found to be associated with 40% less HIV in women. See http://www.youtube.com/user/cleansexy who promotes FGM for these reasons…
When we try to create a list of prophylactic reasons why forced male circ could be morally acceptable, all we do is create an opportunity for FGM proponents like CleanSexy to make their case. Zero tolerance of all FGM (forced genital mutilation) is the only way forward.
Please do keep speaking up. Challenge the bizarre ‘mutilation top trumps’ game so many campaigners seem determined to play. And please raise awareness of the huge toll of harm in the UK and Ireland from male circ. Some examples, and some examples of bizarre establishment responses, are found here:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/02/423057.html
I was circumcised at birth and for many years did not perceive the impact that it has insidiously imposed on my life. This is due to two main factors: 1 – someone that was circumcised at birth is unaware of the difference between being intact and being circumcised due to the “you don’t miss what you never had” effect, and 2 – society has become conditioned to accept it due to the medical/religious connotations, and not as a form of genital mutilation and subjugation which in the overwhelming majority of cases it actually is.
I was cut at birth and the detrimental effects of this (psychologically and physically) have been with me ever since. Since 1993 I have been working with others who share my view, that genital cutting of any child is abuse.
The question is one of autonomy.
The removal of normal healthy genital tissue from a normal healthy girl too young to say no and too small to fight back is a violation of her right to autonomy.
The removal of normal healthy genital tissue from a normal healthy boy too young to say no and too small to fight back is a violation of his right to autonomy.
As such the two practices differ only according to the sex of the child.
Is female circumcision worse than male circumcision? I don’t really think that matters since the violation of the child’s right to autonomy is just the same. If it was done to you without your personal consent potential for life-long harm should be obvious.
Thanks for this. The principle of no invasion without informed consent is indeed the same, John. I’d agree that any of these procedures should only be practised on fully consenting adults.
I think however that we must bear in mind, as others have stressed, that the mortality and serious morbidity rate for the male and female procedures are very much not the same – between 10 and even in some places up to 30% of FGM girl victims actually die because of it – but as yet very few people realise this. And such awful prospects for previously healthy child really do ‘matter’. It’s unfortunately a fundamentally different order of likely death.
There are I’d suggest two different lobbies required here: One is, as you say, to prevent all unnecessary violation of any child’s autonomy. And the other is to stop, as a matter of urgency, desparately cruel and hurtful practices on cognisant little girls.
I don’t see these two campaigns as in conflict.
A news story from Germany about banning ‘religious’ circumcision: http://www.rt.com/news/germany-religious-circumcision-ban-772/
An interesting document that also mentions the parallel between FGM and MGM is the Royal Dutch Medical Association’s viewpoint on circumcision from 2010. Interesting read, especially as it strongly contrasts with the AAP’s statement which you referred at the top: http://knmg.artsennet.nl/Publicaties/KNMGpublicatie/Nontherapeutic-circumcision-of-male-minors-2010.htm
Thanks, am always glad to add different ‘national’ perspectives.
NB There is intentionally a wide range of opinion above, but as you’ll have noted, most of it is in fact in sympathy with the case against MGM.