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The AFP is reporting that Egypt has banned all circumcision for females. This is major news in a country where, despite a past limited ban on the surgeries the vast majority of girls were circumcised anyway.
I'm not entirely clear yet on a key aspect of the ban. The AFP article linked, via Yahoo!, above, contains the following statements which appear to me to conflict:
On Thursday, Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali decided to ban every doctor and member of the medical profession, in public or private establishments, from carrying out a clitoridectomy, a ministry press official told AFP.
and
Any circumcision "will be viewed as a violation of the law and all contraventions will be punished," said the official, adding that it was a "permanent ban".
If the first statement is taken literally, then that could drive circumcision back into the less controlled less sanitary, and generally more dangerous traditional settings (a very negative unintended consequence). On the other hand if the second statement is taken literally, then all circumcisions no matter who performs them, will be banned.
This is a very important distinction. Currently in Egypt the vast majority of circumcisions of girls occur in medical settings, and not in traditional settings. In fact, according to the US State Department's most recent figures for Egypt 97% of women surveyed in 2000 had undergone one form or another of genital cutting, and more than half of genital cuttings are now done by doctors and not by traditional birth assistants.
While I am happy to see the cutting of genitals taken this seriously, I am concerned about the possibility that, rather than becoming less popular, the practice will now be driven back into more traditional, more dangerous settings.
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
Blog: Literate Perversions
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This is from the US State Department report that i cited in my original post :
A recent clinical study indicated that 19 percent of the procedures involved only the excision (removal) of the prepuce (clitoral hood) with or without removal of a part or all of the clitoris (Type I). Sixty-four percent involved the excision (removal) of the prepuce (clitoral hood) and clitoris together with part or all of the labia minora (inner vaginal lips)(Type II). In eight percent of the cases, only the labia minora were removed
So, in the majority of cases the clitoris is removed. That's hardly akin to what we do in the US to baby boys. If we cut off their glans it would then be a parallel procedure I suppose. But in somewhere between 8 and 27% of cases in Egypt, anyway, the procedure really is much more like male circumcision at least in terms of the physical structures that are cut away. (The kind of procedure called "infibulation" -- where not only is the clitoris removed and much of the labial tissue as well, but also most of the vaginal opening is sewn up -- is extremely rare in Egypt.)
I raise this just to point to the range of procedures that seem to fall under the heading "female circumcision" or "female genital mutilation."
My preference is that nobody's genitals are altered without their consent -- and that means they must have a real ability to say no. But I don't think we should be equating the removal of the clitoral hood with the excision of the clitoris or with infibulation, just as I wouldn't want to see the removal of the foreskin equated with the cutting off of the glans of the penis. This isn't a "Hey, what about teh men" kind of response, either. I think the language we use to conduct these debates doesn't always lend itself to fine distinctions. The word "circumcision" obscures details just like the word "mutilation" obscures details. We'd be better able to discuss these things if we could be explicit and specific.
(As for the broken glass, in Egypt right now anyway most genital surgeries, regardless of type, occur in doctors' offices or clinics. It's the driving of people back to traditional/ritual settings with unsafe conditions that concerns me as an unintended consequence of the new law. I hope that enforcement will target those traditional knife wielders as well as the medically-trained ones.)
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
