It’s Not Your Father’s Circumcision

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

There is a practice in some countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in which girls, typically between infancy and adolescence, are subject to the removal of some or all of their external genitalia. This is done with a knife or scissors or a piece of broken glass or, you know, whatever the ritual performers have at hand.

Some folks refer to this cultural tradition as female circumcision, which is a questionable reference, but, if they like to compare things to penises, I can go with that.

In circumcision, some or all of the penis foreskin is removed, leaving the rest of the penis intact. However, this practice is under increasing scrutiny, because it is not actually medically necessary, although it can reduce the likelihood of infection. (For you nasty boys, let me just point out that infection is something a little soap and water — and maybe some fun — can prevent.)

Anyway, the folks who liken the female practice to circumcision are, I suspect, desperately attempting to dismiss it as, oh, inconsequential to our spiffy culture. (A culture that assures I can amble into the local grocery store and purchase twenty-seven different sizes and styles of menstrual cycle absorbent thingies, four distinct brands of end-o female odor products and seven brands of cramp-, bloat- and get-away-from-me-you-irritating-bastard pills.) What these folks fail to comprehend, though, is that what is being done to female genitalia is not comparable to male circumcision.

What’s being done to females is more like lopping off the penis.

Imagine that — and I am serious. Imagine a young boy held down by a group of adults, his legs forcibly spread, as his penis is cut off. The skin is pulled from either side of the boy’s wound and stitched together with thorns or who knows what, leaving just enough of a hole for urination.

Now, if we hold true to the comparison, the range of excising done on females — from part or all of the clitoris, to clitoris and labia, to sewing the whole thing shut — means it’s possible the hypothetical male ritual might demand only half of the boy’s penis or maybe a quarter. But I think that’s still gotta really hurt — in more ways than one.

Regardless, if the child survives the shock and pain, the inevitable infections and all the other dire and truly fanny-puckering consequences, he grows into adulthood with his manhood mutilated.

And if this were actually happening to boys in Egypt or Indonesia or Ethiopia or Iraq, we’d be horrified, right? And what if people wanted to do it here, in the United States? No way, right?

Thankfully, boys are not mutilated in this way, and the United States has made the practice on females illegal, regardless of their families’ cultural traditions. In fact, just about every single mainstream U.S. and international medical organization involved in girls’ or women’s health is adamantly opposed to the practice in any of its forms and they call it like it is — female genital mutilation.

Except the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). AAP called it female genital mutilation (FGM) in their 1998 policy statement on the practice. But then its Committee on Bioethics released an updated FGM policy in April that declared “female genital cutting” is really a much nicer term for this thing adults do with sharp objects to girls genitalia. “Mutilation,” the Committee on Bioethics determined, is an inflammatory word, and we surely don’t want anyone swelling up in offence.

Now, I have to bring us back to the penis scenario for just a moment, because I believe most reasonable folks would agree that, if the practice were perpetrated on boys’ penises, they wouldn’t hesitate to call it mutilation. This makes me wonder why the committee — or anyone else — would shrink from accuracy when the female clitoris is being butchered? “Female genital cutting” is just another coddling euphemism for what’s actually going on.

The AAP’s Committee on Bioethics dropped another bomb in its updated policy: The committee suggested that U.S. law prohibiting FGM might be changed to allow U.S. physicians to demonstrate their great capacity for cultural sensitivity by performing a “minor” form of the practice. The committee’s recommended alternative procedure was a ritual “pricking or incising [of] the clitoral skin.” They opined that this would accommodate cultural requirements for a girl’s initiation into her ethnic community while serving as a deterrent to immigrant parents who might otherwise ship their girls back home to give up the whole shebang down there.

After an onslaught of letters from peers and laypeople, the policy was rather swiftly retracted and a “rewrite” is in the works. But consider for a moment the committee’s originally proposed accommodation of this particular immigrant cultural tradition. It is akin to suggesting that we be sensitive to the cultural tradition of stoning women for adultery by allowing the offended man to throw, say, only one medium-size rock at his wife’s or daughter’s head. And I suppose we could consider whacking a fingertip off a thief, instead of a whole hand. That might be a nice culturally sensitive compromise. Now, what sort of sensitivity might we demonstrate toward the cultural tradition of murdering the victims of rape?

OK, OK, ridiculous considerations, all. And it is tempting to urge the members of the AAP Committee on Bioethics and its liaisons, consultant and staff to be the first to spread their legs for some culturally sensitive ritual nicks.

But at the core of this controversy, it is much more frightening than it is ridiculous.

In the United States of America in 2010, we have a group of esteemed, medical professional men and women who talked themselves into believing that it might be OK to cut girls’ genitalia a little as a demonstration of cultural sensitivity and a deterrent to cutting girls’ genitalia a lot.

We can only hope this is not indicative of females’ standing in our culture.

Except, gee, this happened here.

Love,
K-B

NOTE: The Girls Protection Act of 2010, HR 5137, sponsored by Reps. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) and Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), would make it illegal to transport minors out of the United States for purposes of female genital mutilation. You might like to write a letter of support to your elected representatives.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt