American Academy of Pediatrics softens its stance on FGM

Link

Quote :

International human rights organization Equality Now is stunned by a
new policy statement issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics
(AAP), which essentially promotes female genital mutilation (FGM) and
advocates for "federal and state laws [to] enable pediatricians to
reach out to families by offering a 'ritual nick'," such as pricking or
minor incisions of girls' clitorises.

Minor incisions... how minor are we talking about, here?

Also, chance for infection, yaaaay

Quote :

Taina Bien-Aime,
Equality Now's Executive Director explains, "Encouraging pediatricians
to perform FGM under the notion of 'cultural sensitivity' shows a
shocking lack of understanding of a girl's fundamental right to bodily
integrity and equality. The AAP should promote awareness-raising within
FGM-practicing immigrant communities about the harms of the practice,
instead of endorsing an internationally recognized human rights
violation against girls and women."

Exactly! So why the fuck are they soft-pedalling this?

Quote :

In contrast, the new 2010 statement no longer uses the term "female
genital mutilation" but refers to the practice as "female genital
cutting (FGC) or ritual genital cutting," makes no reference to the
discriminatory aspect of FGM, and selectively opposes only those forms
of FGM that in its view "pose the risk of physical or psychological
harm."

Non-consensual slicing on someone else's genitals in an extremely painful and potentially physically devastating way is by definition potentially psychologically harmful, DURRRR.



Oh well, I'm sure a 'minor incision' or a ritual pinprick is just another unnecessary procedure that the docs can potentially bill people for. There's an incentive! We'll poke your minor daughter's clit with this scalpel and then send you the bill for it!

Ugh.

Perhaps they're trying to make the procedure milder until it becomes something that isn't as physiologically destructive as removing anything that can be gotten at with a knife, but saying that it's alright at all is sending out the message that it's okay to control female sexuality so long as you do it in a way that doesn't offend Westerners.

Sutremaine wrote:

Ugh.

Perhaps they're trying to make the procedure milder until it becomes something that isn't as physiologically destructive as removing anything that can be gotten at with a knife, but saying that it's alright at all is sending out the message that it's okay to control female sexuality so long as you do it in a way that doesn't offend Westerners.

What Sutremaine said. With an extra dose of WTF.

Sutremaine wrote:

Ugh.

Perhaps they're trying to make the procedure milder until it becomes something that isn't as physiologically destructive as removing anything that can be gotten at with a knife, but saying that it's alright at all is sending out the message that it's okay to control female sexuality so long as you do it in a way that doesn't offend Westerners.

According to this, it's pretty much the opposite of that. More like, try to talk them out of it, but if they're going to do it anyway at least try to keep the damage to a minimum. (Fake edit: link doesn't quite work, click the pdf download.)

What is sounds like is "Well, they're gonna do this anyway, so it might as well happen in a doctor's office with a clean scalpel, right?" Still, I did a fair impression of Malganis's avatar when I read that.

maladroit_mooncalf wrote:

According to this, it's pretty much the opposite of that. More like, try to talk them out of it, but if they're going to do it anyway at least try to keep the damage to a minimum.

That's giving up, and if they were going to do it anyway then they'd have no problem going ahead in a case where they thought the doctor hadn't done a good enough job. Not only that, but given the slow move away from male circumsicion it's ridiculous to start allowing female circumcision (which it would be, in the case of an incision minor enough to be compared to a pricking. That doesn't make it acceptable though).

Maybe it'll work out somewhat in the long run, with the AAP's procedure becoming the norm and the current procedure being seen as old and barbaric. But I doubt it, and even if the perfect compromise is reached between the AAP and the people who cut off everything and pin it to a corkboard it won't change the views that led to it being done in the first place.

I would comment more, but first... *crosses legs*

This is awful. Again. And yet I keep coming back for more.

Well this has been going on for a while now. It's a lot easier to get people to be more mild and then work to stopping it as opposed to getting them to stop.

This practice ought to be completely outlawed, with whoever performed surgery like this facing charges of Actual Bodily Harm, Assault of a Minor...etc. Sorry, but mutilating childrens genital organs is just warped and wrong on all kinds of levels, it's barbaric and it's completely unnecessary. It's a proven fact that women who undergo FGM more often than not suffer from sexual problems when they grow up, which can range from orgasm being impossible to intercourse itself being painful. It's Muslim cultures that perpetrate this sort of violence against women, because although FGM is not something found in Islam itself, Islam does view female sexuality as inherently evil, for that reason it comes as no shock that Muslims routinely mutilate their daughters. They should be made to understand that this kind of shit is not acceptable in the West, by sending them to jail whenever they perform such barbaric actions.

Ezri Dax wrote:

It's Muslim cultures that perpetrate this sort of violence against women, because although FGM is not something found in Islam itself, Islam does view female sexuality as inherently evil, for that reason it comes as no shock that Muslims routinely mutilate their daughters.

First off, FGM is practiced in cultures that are NOT Islamic, such as animistic societies, as well as Muslim ones and (IIRC) some Christian ones. It probably has as long a history as male genital alteration.

Also, you might wanna notice that FGM was popular in the West, too, for a while. Being practiced by.... *drumroll* "good Victorian Christians" who wanted to keep their pwecious wittle daughters from discovering what their clits were for, so, among other things, they used carbolic acid on girls' genitals.

I realize that in all likelihood you're just shitting us and sitting back right now having a laugh at your awesome troll powahz, but really now.

The body is the biggest thing we invest politicising efforts into. Policing the body. I can't for the life of me understand why. Except, of course, to retain gender classism.

Fucking putrid.

Malganis wrote:

First off, FGM is practiced in cultures that are NOT Islamic, such as animistic societies, as well as Muslim ones and (IIRC) some Christian ones. It probably has as long a history as male genital alteration.
.

Islamic = Muslim. I don't know if that's what you meant (Islamic != Muslim), but that's what it reads like.

Ezri Dax wrote:

It's Muslim cultures that perpetrate this sort of violence against women, because although FGM is not something found in Islam itself, Islam does view female sexuality as inherently evil, for that reason it comes as no shock that Muslims routinely mutilate their daughters. They should be made to understand that this kind of shit is not acceptable in the West, by sending them to jail whenever they perform such barbaric actions.

What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you listening to yourself? Do you have any understanding of Islam outside of what certain right-wing commentators print? (And before you accuse me of anything I am a white, Tory-voting, Telegraph reading, British Christian). Islam gave women rights in the seventh century that western women didn't have until the 20th. In both this thread and the one in the news forum on the Muslim community centre in NYC you come across as the worst sort of bigot imaginable, the sort who believes that any statment repeated loudly enough is equivalent to fact. Yes, some muslims are anti-feminist, but that is a matter of culture rather than faith. It's like saying that because some Christians are opposed to homosexuality, all of us are homophobes. Like saying that catholicism's refusal to permit female priests means that all those who believe in the divinity of Christ are sexist.

And just in case you think I'm talking out my arse, allow me to quote from "Islam and Human Rights" by AE Mayer (4th ed.) p.114: "[Islam] initially aimed to remove the disabilities women had suffered in pre-Islamic Arabia." The majority of the blame for the inferior positioning of women within Islam can be placed at the feet of cultural tradition, and certain 20th century clerics. Many Islamic jurists, far from viewing female sexuality as "inherently evil", accepted both contraceptives and early term abortions - rather more liberal than, say, catholicism (please note, I'm not picking on Catholics, they just have far more consistent rules about this sort of thing than the Anglican church).

I'm aware that this enlightened view of Islam in no way represents every Muslim, but I feel that tarring every Muslim with the brush of 'evil tyrannical male oppressor' is rather like suggesting that every Catholic, practising or not, is a member of the IRA.

Although I do agree with your rather more rational final point that we ought to throw people promoting or practising FGM in jail pour encourager les autres.

ETA: and yes, now that the first flush of anger is gone, I'm aware I'm probably just feeding the troll. E.

AngryRobotsInc wrote:

Malganis wrote:

First off, FGM is practiced in cultures that are NOT Islamic, such as animistic societies, as well as Muslim ones and (IIRC) some Christian ones. It probably has as long a history as male genital alteration.
.

Islamic = Muslim. I don't know if that's what you meant (Islamic != Muslim), but that's what it reads like.

Yup, that is what I meant, and I was trying to point out that FGM occurs in societies that are Muslim as well as societies that are not... I just... phrased it really terribly. Hurrrr :(

They took it back, they took it back!

Is it strange that I wondered what American Academy of Paediatrics had to say on Female Gay Marriage when I first saw this title?

Somath Cegem wrote:

Is it strange that I wondered what American Academy of Paediatrics had to say on Female Gay Marriage when I first saw this title?

Yes.

ZoZo wrote:

Somath Cegem wrote:

Is it strange that I wondered what American Academy of Paediatrics had to say on Female Gay Marriage when I first saw this title?

Yes.

Nuts to you, It's been a long day.

Now they just have to ban Male Genitalia Mutilation, aka circumcising at birth.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Now they just have to ban Male Genitalia Mutilation, aka circumcising at birth.

Die in a fire.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Now they just have to ban Male Genitalia Mutilation, aka circumcising at birth.

That'll never happen. Too many people here consider uncirc'd weens gross.

Penguin wrote:

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Now they just have to ban Male Genitalia Mutilation, aka circumcising at birth.

Die in a fire.

Seriously, why the vehemence on your part?

Regardless of the amount of tissue removed or the sex of the infant/child it's performed upon, basically what intactivism is saying is that it's a violation of human rights for it to be done on a person who does not understand it and cannot consent to it (and let's face it, the vast, VAST majority of circs performed in America are medically unnecessary and purely cosmetic; they're not done because there is an imminent danger of the infant dying or being sick, they're done because some Americans think a scarred penis with its glans being exposed constantly looks 'prettier' than the natural organ).

It's also ethically... questionable, to put it very mildly, to perform a surgery like that on a child or infant without fully educating people on the very real risks. If more people saw what performing an infant circ actually LOOKS like and SOUNDS like, imagined what it feels like, if more people realized that every surgery has risks of serious complications (doesn't matter if that surgery is billed as "a little snip" or "minor" or "safe"), I honestly think more people would see this as wrong.

That's my point: It's wrong. Regardless of the type or amount of tissue removed. It's wrong to do it to a girl. It's wrong to do it to a boy. It's wrong to do it to an intersex child who might choose to identify as either a man or a woman, or maybe even neither gender or both genders, when they grow up. It. Is. Wrong.

On-topic, I've been thinking about this for a few days and seriously, why is anyone surprised by this? If 'ritual nicks' do end up being performed on girls, does anyone seriously think the doctors doing them would do them for free? Hell no.

I'm just... really disturbed by this. Especially since, contrary to what people like Ezri Dax think, FGM was practiced in America (though never on the same massive scale as routine male circ) roughly up until the '40s and '50s. It's well attested to in medical journals, and there are victims of the practice who are still alive in America today.

but what about the jews

Malganis wrote:

Penguin wrote:

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Now they just have to ban Male Genitalia Mutilation, aka circumcising at birth.

Die in a fire.

Seriously, why the vehemence on your part?

Right back atcha. Seriously, it's not like it's something you'll ever ever have to worry about.