In response to my post “Quick, let’s talk about my pee pee” commenter namae nanka provided a link to an article entitled “A Rose by Any Other Name? Rethinking the Similarities and Differences between Male and Female Genital Cutting.” I read the entire thing from start to finish, and all I can say is thank you. I found it extremely illuminating, and I implore anyone considering becoming a parent to read it through and thoughtfully examine your position on circumcision.

The article cogently addresses the main point of my previous post — the assertion that consistently drawing a comparison between FGM and MGM can be useful:

[Some researchers] criticize the fortresslike separation of male circumcision from FGM and suggest that the real issue in the debate is child protection: “Whether we should be subjecting any children to . . . procedures involving the excision of healthy tissue” (Fox and Thomson 2005a:467). In a further article, Fox and Thomson (2005b) develop these arguments and criticize medical and legal authorities for neglecting the rights of children and failing to undertake a full cost-benefit analysis of the effects that routine circumcision has on males.

From an ethics perspective, no coherent criticism of FGM on the basis of a child’s right to bodily integrity can be mounted without also being a criticism of MGM. I think that’s an extremely important point to grasp. The authors drive it home by observing that practitioners of FGM often point to MGM as an equivalent Western practice, saying that it’s hypocritical of us to decry FGM while routinely circumcising our infant males. And in America, you’re cutting boys!

The authors also make an interesting conjecture about Western studies addressing the cost/benefit of circumcision:

…[O]ne wonders whether it is culture or medical science that is really in the driver’s seat here. The evidence thought to show a “potential health benefit” for MGA may in fact be an artifact of its cultural acceptability and long history in U.S. society. By the same token, the absence of any culturally conditioned demand for FGA has discouraged researchers from seeking evidence of the potential advantages of such surgery. It is the cultural demand for MGA that generates the research that appears to implicate the foreskin in whatever disease is holding the public’s attention (Goldman 2004). In a culture that values science, medical (usually miscalled scientific) justifications for cultural rituals must be found, hence the numerous horror stories about the terrible risks of retaining normal human anatomy (Van Howe et al. 2005). As Lawrence Dritsas (2001) has eloquently argued, the cultural tail would appear to be wagging the scientific dog.

Indeed.

One final excerpt, because everyone loves an appeal to evolutionary biology :)

All mammals have foreskins; males are what they are because that is how they have evolved … Evolution, however, appears to be favoring ever-longer foreskins in males (Cold and McGrath 1999), suggesting that they improve survival chances and reproductive health rather than the reverse.

Definitely worth the read.

It’s a well-documented internet phenomenon that threads about female genital mutilation tend to be hijacked by discussion of circumcision. A while back, PZ brought attention to this fact, after just such a thread was hijacked on his blog. I think this betrays a loathsome societal tendency to ignore women’s issues in favor of more trivial male issues. We’ve seen this before elsewhere. A dominant social/economic group manages to puke up some twisted rhetoric that makes them seem like they’re the ones who are oppressed (Christians, “objectivists,” I’m looking at you). And, since they’re the dominant group, they get to hog the megaphone and drown out the voices of those who are actually disadvantaged. Really nothing new here.

However, I would like put forward a reason why I think the incessant comparison between FGM and MGM is understandable (not always warranted, but at least understandable): male genital mutilation is happening here.

The majority of infants in the US are still being circumcised, so drawing the comparison is at least useful in the sense that it illuminates how such a practice could arise and perpetuate itself. It’s difficult for an American to imagine how a parent could look lovingly into the eyes of their daughter, and then hand them over to someone who is going to razor off her labia. However, we have an innate cultural understanding of circumcision, so we can introspect on our own attitudes towards a similar tradition. Also, if you accept the premise that circumcision is morally wrong, then its defenders become proxy defenders FGM, and we gain great insight into the cognitive biases that drive these barbaric rituals forward through the generations.

Handicapping the discussion at the outset by prohibiting mention of circumcision seems to be an unnecessary, reactionary position on the part of those who would advocate it. Although I’m tempted to agree, because it’s utterly inexcusable that no discussion of FGM can get started without being totally derailed three comments in. Comparison is fine, but cooption is retarded.