This practice is illegal in the UK but authorities have never enforced it.
Who can disagree with asking for action? Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a barbaric practice with no justification save the removal of sexual pleasure from women. And it produces all kinds of medical complications, some of them debilitating or even fatal.
In case you’ve forgotten what FGM involves, The World Health Organization describes the various types:
Female genital mutilation is classified into four major types.
- Clitoridectomy: partial or total removal of the clitoris (a small, sensitive and erectile part of the female genitals) and, in very rare cases, only the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris).
- Excision: partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (the labia are “the lips” that surround the vagina).
- Infibulation: narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the inner, or outer, labia, with or without removal of the clitoris.
- Other: all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.
The medical consequences:
- recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections;
- cysts;
- infertility;
- an increased risk of childbirth complications and newborn deaths;
- the need for later surgeries. For example, the FGM procedure that seals or narrows a vaginal opening (type 3 above) needs to be cut open later to allow for sexual intercourse and childbirth. Sometimes it is stitched again several times, including after childbirth, hence the woman goes through repeated opening and closing procedures, further increasing and repeated both immediate and long-term risks.
WHO also estimates that 140 million women are living with the results of this practice, most of them in Africa. Though it’s often practiced by Muslims, I’m not aware that it’s mandated by any specific religion. Rather, it appears to be a cultural practice designed to keep women faithful by eliminating the possibility of sexual pleasure. Men, of course, are free to philander.
I also wasn’t aware that FGM is regularly practiced in the UK—and without penalty. Since doctors surely won’t do such operations, they must be performed by laypeople, which makes it even more barbaric.
FGM has been outlawed in the UK since 1985 and, as a new article in the Guardian notes, since 2003 it’s also been illegal for Britons to have it done overseas. Nevertheless, it’s been done thousands of times in Britain, without a single prosecution:
According to the report more than 66,000 women in England and Wales have undergone FGM and more than 24,000 girls under the age of 15 are at risk of it.
Despite its regular occurrence, FGM has not resulted in a prosecution in Britain, whereas in France there have been about 100.
The “report” mentioned above is the good news: it’s a document about to be presented to the House of Commons by its authors, the Royal Colleges of Midwifery, Nursing and Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Unite union and Equality Now. And it recommends that FGM be treated as child abuse. Here are its recommendations:
- The report recommends that FGM must be treated as child abuse and evidence of it should be collected by the NHS and shared with the police and education officials. It also recommends that health workers who detect evidence of FGM should treat it as a crime and inform the police.
- The report recommends that health workers identify girls at risk and treat them as if they were at risk of child abuse. Girls at risk are defined as girls born to a woman who has undergone FGM or a child who lives closely with someone who has.
- It also calls for a government-funded awareness strategy, similar to the HIV campaigns, and for health workers to be held accountable for their success or failure in monitoring FGM among patients and sharing information.
What I’d like to know is why this hasn’t been done before, and why there have been no prosecutions for the practice in Britain. Since it’s illegal, is this a concession to religious sensibilities? If so, it’s time to prosecute those who practice it, and damn the cultural and religious sensibilities. (I’ve actually seen FGM defended by Western feminists who, on the grounds of relativism, are loath to condemn other “cultures”.)
This is one case where a religious organization—a Muslim one—appears to be farther along the moral arc than is the British government:
The report clearly emphasises the importance of an individual’s safety over the respect for religious and racial sensibilities, a point welcomed by Shaista Gohir, the chairwoman of the Muslim Women’s Network.
“We need to be mindful of cultural and religious sensibilities but safeguarding the child from FGM has to be the priority. If a child is at risk it is better to protect them rather than religious and cultural feelings,” she said.
It’s shameful that the British government has simply ignored the laws on FGM, and it’s time to fix the situation. As Janet Fyle, an advisor to the Royal College of Midwives, argues:
“If we are applying child protection laws, we cannot pick and choose which crimes against children we pursue,” she said.
“We are not asking for more money or legislation, we are just asking that child protection laws should work for all children not just some.”
[Note: in the comments, you can weigh in on male circumcision if you must, but please don’t let this degenerate into a discussion solely of that issue, which is not nearly as damaging to health and sexual pleasure as is FGM. And such discussions tends to bring out the cranks.]
h/t: Chris
Yep, hole in one Jerry. But it isn’t so much that “because it is their religion it is ok”, it’s more that to even suggest that families in the UK might be doing this to their kids is an outrageous slur on those communities, the sort of thing that “racists” say, and is thus “Islamophobic”.
Illegal, but (unlike France) enforcement is notoriously absent. This says something about the pusillanimity of the UK authorities.
Not only about Islam. the UK has laws against race and religious discrimination, but the government is dragging its feet about outlawing caste discrimination.
FGM is outlawed in the majority of countries in which it is practiced, but the laws are very poorly enforced. FGM is very common in the Horn of Africa, including Kenya and Ethiopia, despite it being illegal in both countries. In recent years, both Ethiopia and Kenya have seen increasingly strong public awareness campaigns against FGM, but these tend to consist of posters / billboards in most towns and poorly-funded travelling anti-FGM clinics, with just about zero enforcement of the laws. Having said that, there are many things that are illegal in both of these countries to which the law routinely turns a blind eye.
Being illegal, no legitimate MD will carry out the operation, so it is always done behind closed doors, and only comes to light when complications, such as Jerry has highlighted, come to light. Because of the illegality, real statistics on FGM in either country are impossible to compile, but by extrapolation from cases of post-FGM complication, the practice is known to still be very widespread indeed.
The population of Ethiopia is about 63% Christian and 34% Muslim, and that of Kenya 83% Christian and 11% Muslim. FGM is a barbaric practice, but has its roots in culture, rather than any particular religion.
This is really infuriating. I’m sure Britain like any other nation has some bone-headed people but what’s the excuse of the supposed intellectuals, feminists, liberals, and the humanists? Call me cynical but I suspect if the victims were white this would have been stopped in its tracks long time ago; there is the ridiculous fear of getting accused of racism for outlawing “cultural” practices, but there is also the dampened empathy for the non-white victims.
I’d imagine there are a few reasons why the law isn’t enforced – not least because demanding an intimate examination of a child without prior cause, SOLELY on racial grounds is problematic to say the least.
And because the of high levels of immigration from countries like Somalia, people tend to form isolated communities which enforce their own social norms. People are less likely to report FGM, despite the fact that it’s a criminal offence, because it’s seen as the norm WITHIN those communities.
I would have supposed most girls at some stage have a pelvic examination? Not that I know anything about how health checks work with GPs…
I don’t think children have routine gynaecological exams, but like you I’m not sure.
I suspect that these girls and women don’t go for pelvic exams and the mutilation is performed in secret by non professionals so it is difficult to detect.
Even when a woman/girl does go for an initial pelvic exam, and the doctor notices FGM, it will probably still be challenging to gather all the necessary evidence of who mutilated her, where and when.
This may be a crime where the level of reporting is so low that the number of arrests/prosecutions is not that useful a measure of the effectiveness of the law. Perhaps it would be more useful to measure changes in the incidence of FGM?
I think there should be an entire information campaign launched by governments that target young girls and let them know that this is not acceptable and what to do if they think they will be harmed or are harmed. This is similar to other child abuse awareness campaigns. There should also be campaigns aimed at the female guardians of these children. It may not change things over night but it’s a start.
“If somebody cut off your child’s nose with a broken piece of glass, you’d call on the police to catch the monster.
“If somebody touched your child ‘down there,’ you’d call on the police to catch the monster.
“If you let somebody take a piece of broken glass to your child ‘down there,’ you’re the worst monster of the lot.”
b&
You forgot the phone number to call…
Oh, that’s easy: 9-1-1.
b&
“There should also be campaigns aimed at the female guardians of these children.”
Who, in most cases, are the ones doing the cutting.
Yes, and this should come as no surprise. The oppressed often participate in the on-going oppression. Social pressure for men and women in our own societies keep both in-line with what is expected. There is still uproar in some circles when a woman does not take her husband’s name in marriage or when couples do not have children. An example removed in space & time, is Roman slaves working on farms where the appointed slave foreman was substantially more cruel than the slave owner.
Further, this particular mutilation ritual is rooted in the perversion of sexuality and women who do not go through this mutilation are considered whores for having normal genitalia.
Quote “Since doctors surely won’t do such operations, they must be performed by laypeople”
Recently the Sunday Times went undercover and found several Doctors who would be willing to do this and bizarrely one Dentist. Some of them would do it in the UK but others would facilitate it when the girl went on “holiday”.
It may be mainly an East African cultural practise but from reports, I’ve seen, in the West it is almost exclusively practised by muslims.
It is not islamophobic or racist to condemn a practise mainly carried out by muslims, cultural or religious practises can never be used as a smoke screen to hide barbarism.
Misguided cultural relativism.
Is there any other kind?
You are right… this is so depressing – 21st century yet we are still fighting such absurd cruel vindictive uncultured behaviour, aimed at subjugating women.
I often wonder how cultural relativists decide where to draw a line. In the antebellum South, slavery was their culture. For the Aztecs, human sacrifice was their culture. Etc, etc.
And sexual relativism.
The critical issue has to be that of informed consent. Mutilation should be a matter of personal choice.
“All other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area” are classed as genital mutilation.
Quite rightly so. The same must, of course, be true for boys.
Actually, it doesn’t remove all sexual pleasure. The clitoris is a huge organ that plunges deep into the body. What is cut (in those female “circumcisions” that are not limited to removing the hood) is only the tip, the glans, of the clitoris. The rest of the clitoris still gives enormous sexual pleasure. But I do agree with everything else you wrote.
See http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Clitoris_anatomy_labeled-en.jpg
What people don’t realize often is the trauma to the area is often so bad that these females suffer life long pain and if they weren’t forced to have sex and reproduce, they’d certainly avoid it because of the pain. It’s just awful.
I think you really needed to have a hilighted “necessarily” in there. Even then I would want to know what your motivation for making this comment is.
If you meant it as something like, “not all hope is lost, there is some hope for girls and women mutilated in this way to be able to have some physical pleasure from sexual relations if they decide that is what they want to try,” that is not so bad. But your comment does not read like that at all.
If it was pedantry for the sake of pedantry, it is in pretty poor taste in this context.
If it was meant to suggest that this type of mutilation is not quite as bad as suggested, then, given the context, your comment was in very poor taste indeed.
Agreed. And I think being forced into an arranged marriage with a man 30 years your senior and then being raped on your wedding night (at age twelve) might also “remove all sexual pleasure.” And that has nothing to do with the size of the clitoris.
Just child abuse? How about assault?
Child abuse is of course bad, but doesn’t sound as bad as ‘genital mutilation’ to me! Re-labelling doesn’t seem to have much point anyway. What we need to do is start prosecuting.
Child abuse is an understatement.
FMG is mutilation.
It’s nothing other than grievous bodily harm.
“Though it’s often practiced by Muslims, I’m not aware that it’s mandated by any specific religion. Rather, it appears to be a cultural practice designed to keep women faithful by eliminating the possibility of sexual pleasure. Men, of course, are free to philander.”
First, it doesn’t matter if it is mandated by any religion. Suppose it were—would that make anything different? In practice, it is supported by religious leaders who justify it on religious grounds. Why does it matter what the Pope says if Christianity is described in the Bible? Similarly, just because it isn’t in some holy book doesn’t mean it isn’t part of some religion.
Second, most FGM is done by women. OK, one can argue that it is under the pressure of the patriarchy, but still.
How would one enforce it in practice? The only way is regular genital exams. Add to that the fact that when it is discovered, it is too late. Any punishment hard enough to make a difference would leave the victim an orphan (since the parents are in jail) or in a substantially poorer family, and of course she will be blamed for this.
Of course the reason is false respect for religion. Witness the recent debate over circumcision in Germany: After a judge ruled that it was unnecessary bodily harm, the law was changed to allow it for religious reasons. (Of course, FGM is worse, but that doesn’t mean that everything not as bad as FGM should be allowed.)
It seems that the only person who has made some progress here is Rüdiger Nehberg. His route is to convince religious leaders to change the local sharia to forbid FGM and has actually been successful here. While normally I wouldn’t support anything which encourages people to follow sharia, this might be a case in which the end justifies the means. I’m sure Nehberg is aware that this is a double-edged sword (an appropriate metaphor, in this case), but what is the alternative?
All governments should announce in no uncertain terms that it is not only illegal but will be enforced. This will mean required genital exams for all girls and women. (OK, you can try to do it via racial profiling.) When a case is discovered, the child must be taken from the parent forever and placed in foster care. If the parents are not citizens of the country, they are immediately deported forever. They are fined the entirety of their fortune. Make sure such stories get wide press coverage.
Will any UK government implement anything to actually enforce it? No.
Please allow me one small correction regarding the German law allowing circumcision. It’s often reported as allowing circumcision for religious reasons, but that is unfortunately wrong: if it were allowed for religious reasons only, that would have been an unconstitutional law, doomed to be immediately shot down by the Constitutional Court. No, our lawmakers instead chose to allow it for _any_ reason whatsoever, as long as it is conducted by a professional according to medical standards.
Parents can go to doctors willing to conduct the procedure and have their child circumcised if they wish to. The child’s right to bodily integrity was basically ruled to be subordinate to the parents’ right of education or freedom of religion or whatever. There have even been reports of doctors fraudulently diagnosing phimosis, thereby providing the parents with a medical indication to help getting the operation paid for by their health insurance. Additionally, I came across the report of a pediatrician who was told by one of his patient’s parents that they were going to have him circumcised because they found it “aesthetically more pleasing”.
Best,
Chris.
A question about your legal system (which I don’t know about). As I understand it the original ruling against circumcision was made on the basis of the German constitution. Since the re-enabling of circumcision was done by the legislature, can this still be challenged as unacceptable under the constitution?
Phew, I’m not an expert of constitutional law at all, but I’ll try my best.
Generally speaking, I’d say that it can be challenged just because any law is eligible to be brought before the Constitutional Court if the complainant can demonstrate one of their constitutional/civil rights to be affected by said law.
Your understanding of the original ruling is correct IMO, as far as I understand the legal mumbojumbo of the reasons given for the judgment. 😉 The court referred to article 2 of the German Constitution (right to bodily integrity) stating that this right of the child constituted a limit to the parents’ right to freedom of religion (article 4) and their right to care for and education of their children (article 6). The court especially took into account that a) newborn children or infants cannot effectively express their consent to such a permanent measure, and that b) bhe exercise of parental care has to benefit the wellbeing of the child.
However, many/most civil rights granted by the Constitution can be limited to some extent by a law; wherever this is possible, it is explicitly stated in the respective articles (that includes article 2, bodily integrity). And that’s what I think the Bundestag did by putting into effect the law allowing circumcision: they limited the children’s right to bodily integrity by granting the parents’ rights precendence over it.
And yes, that indeed leads to the conclusion that the new law allows circumcision even for “educational” purposes (“our child shall not masturbate in the future”) or aesthetic reasons, which I personally find especially disgusting.
Chris.
“Generally speaking, I’d say that it can be challenged just because any law is eligible to be brought before the Constitutional Court if the complainant can demonstrate one of their constitutional/civil rights to be affected by said law.”
Right. However, this has to be done by someone who himself was affected, not by Joe Citizen for idealistic reasons. And by the time that happens, the perpetrators will be dead, the crime can’t be prosecuted because too much time has passed etc. (Interestingly, with regard to sexual abuse—prompted by that of the Catholic Church—this time has been extended because it is clear that the victims sometimes cannot file charges until long after the event.)
Another possibility is that the Bundespräsident refuses to sign the law, in which case the constitutional court has to check it. But he did sign it.
There is no room for accomodation here, at least not within Judaism. In practice, a law would be difficult to enforce and the deed will have already been done. Perhaps there is hope that people will realize that any religion which defines itself via genital mutilation cannot be good.
Although I hope it doesn’t happen for the sake of the child, I wonder what would happen if parents tried to get a baby tattooed. Piercing isn’t a comparable example because many parents routinely pierce the ears of their babys. A genital piercing might raise some eyebrows, though. It would be interesting to see how the court could forbid this but allow circumcision. The parents could even found a religion of which this is part, then the court would have to distinguish between established religions and other religions.
“Please allow me one small correction regarding the German law allowing circumcision. It’s often reported as allowing circumcision for religious reasons, but that is unfortunately wrong: if it were allowed for religious reasons only, that would have been an unconstitutional law, doomed to be immediately shot down by the Constitutional Court. No, our lawmakers instead chose to allow it for _any_ reason whatsoever, as long as it is conducted by a professional according to medical standards.”
I’m not sure of the exact text, but you are probably right. Of course, in practice religion has everything to do with this. At least in Germany, practically all circumcisions are done for religious reasons or for medical reasons. It was a Muslim child in the case, but of course in practice there was the exaggerated fear on the part of German politicians of being seen to be antisemitic if they outlawed Jewish circumcision. (Of course, allowing that and outlawing Muslim is not possible.) Note that while in Islam the circumcision can be done much later, Judaism specifies within a few days of birth (8 IIRC).
I absolutely agree with you that the majority of circumcisions in Germany are done due to religious reasons, but to substantiate my point that the practice is allowed for any reason and to show that this opportunity is in fact being used already: The pediatrician’s report regarding circumcision for aesthetic reasons can be found here: http://bit.ly/1gXkzTs (in German, perhaps Google Translate can help those who don’t read German; if desired, I’d be willing to provide a translation).
Regarding the medical reasons, I’m not so sure what fraction of medically indicated circumcisions might be fake. Even more so, as reports emerged saying that infant foreskins had been successfully used to regrow human hair (Herald Sun, Australia: http://bit.ly/1apm5cL, HuffPo: http://huff.to/1a5uy8a). I suspect that this might prompt medical personnel or players from the cosmetics industry to press (“convince”) parents to opt for circumcision of their child(ren) for their own benefit.
Call the British embassy, consulate, write to their ambassador, tell them you are outraged and how barbaric Britain is, compared to France. Let them know you will not visit their county or buy British goods until they take a more proactive approach. Organize a group to dump British tea in the sewage treatment plant pond in a small community where you can get through the fence (but take news cameras along). Put pressure on your local congressional representative to call for US sanctions against Britain. Get Outraged!
While I am also ashamed to have a government that is so supinely complacent, criticism from other countries will have little effect when the tu quoque argument, no matter how fallacious, is always available. Prosecution of the parents of any child born since the law was introduced must be mandatory.
I’m not sticking up for the British Government on this, but people in glass houses etc….. France has prosecuted 100 people but what is the total number of offences? it is very hard to determine. I don’t know of the figures for the USA, but how many have they prosecuted?
Mohammed mentions the practice only once and in condemnatory terms. The name of the most severe practice–the Full Pharonic–hints at a much older ancestry.
What I don’t understand is how this isn’t the most horrific type of child sexual abuse imaginable.
Our society has some strange ideas about sexuality and children, to the point that parents have been arrested for getting their bathtub photos of their toddlers developed at the photo lab and high school students being arrested for emailing naked photos of themselves to their sweethearts.
But this? Ritualistic mutilation of a child’s genitalia by an adult? And the perpetrators and their accomplices aren’t serving very, very long sentences alongside child rapists and kidnappers who torture their victims?
What. The. Goddamned. Holy. Fuck!?
b&
Not only is a child mutilated by an adult, but that adult is usually complicit with the girls parents and often is the girl’s aunt or grandmother. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was thus mutilated by her grandmother using a piece of broken glass as a surgical instrument, read her book Infidel for the full horrors of this barbaric practise.
That and the practice of child ‘brides’… all horrific and shameful practices. Makes me sick.
Read this article from Dawkins website : http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2013/11/4/what-happened-when-anti-fgm-campaigner-asked-people-in-the-street-to-sign-a-petition-in-favour-of-mutilating-girls-london-news-london-evening-standard
Wow, that’s really shocking. People are so afraid of being shot down as “racists” that they cannot even think straight through the simplest moral question: “Will you please sign this petition in favor of female genital mutilation?” “I disagree but it’s your “culture” and I respect it.” *sigh*
As I remember Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s account, the grandmother was very much in charge, in her father’s absence, but the deed was done by a (male) member of the butcher clan, on Ayaan and her sister.
sub
Stunning that none of the “medical consequences” listed include the elephant in the room — the loss of sensation and damage to a woman’s ability to achieve a healthy orgasm.
It’s eerily parallel to the massive research effort long underway in the US to harness some of the well-documented medical benefits of marijuana, including in some cases potentially *life-saving* applications, if only some way could be found to prevent the annoying euphoric effects that often accompany its use.
I would suggest that the legal obstacles to prosecution are being seriously underestimated. Assumming FGM is carried out at a relatively young age the victim is almost certainly going to be an unsuitable witness and if the prosecution is against her parents probably a hostile one. A prosecutor is not going to wish to proceed in such circumstances.
Even if this problem can be by-passed any parent or relative involved will almost certainly have legal advice which will be to keep silent. I am not sure if potential witnesses can be compelled to answer police questions in the UK (in NZ they can refuse in most situations) but if not they too will remain silent.
In such cases obtaining sufficient evidence to bring to court is extremely difficult. While the medical evidence may be quite clear, going beyond this to build a case is often an insurmountable barrier.
In NZ I am aware of cases of serious assaults on children leading to death that have clearly ocurred in circumstances where the extended family almost certainly know who was responsible but police inquiries meet a wall of silence. Even if the more obvious candidate is prosecuted a good lawyer can raise enough reasonable doubt to obtain a conviction.
A more interesting figure would be how many cases came to polcie attention but could not be proceeded with.
I believe the lack of prosecutions is due to the legal problems in persuading a young woman to give evidence against her parents, as you say, and the proposed changes are to place FGM on the same basis as domestic violence to make it a “victimless” crime from a prosecution point of view.
Not only in the UK. the US also wants in on the act
http://freethinker.co.uk/2010/06/01/female-genital-mutilation-us-pediatricians-withdraw-outrageous-proposal/
Wow. I almost had a come-to-Jesus moment of doubt about my lifelong, intractable opposition to the death penalty. But no. Thinking out loud here, however, I might consider making restitution to the victims of this abominable practice by presenting them with the male genitalia of the perpetrators in pickle jars of formaldehyde.
The perpetrators aren’t male.
sub
“Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a barbaric practice with no justification save the removal of sexual pleasure from women.”
Phrased a bit awkwardly, this :S, as if the writer agrees with the ‘justification’, which he in fact does not.
I am not banking on the UK government doing anything. They are essentially Conservatives, and the LibDems show too much cultural relativism to be of much use. They love religion and they don’t particularly care much for individuals, especially not of the poor female kind.
They’ve done bugger all in the banking scandal, for libel legislation, or for lobbying legislation. I can’t imagine they will have this high on their agenda.
UK Channel Four tonight 6 November 22.45 – “The Cruel Cut”. Probably will be available on 4OD later.