FGM conviction.

[Antepli Ejderha]

A misogynistic shitbag pretending it's about parliamentary procedure.

[E10 Rifle]

If we're talking "special places in hell" …

[MsD]

As posted in its own thread, Christopher Chope has blocked new FGM legislation.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham...gm-legislation

[MsD]

No, no, it was ages ago, but the injustice still rankles. The thread's since disappeared.

[Tactical Genius]

You’re right. The reason I got called an apologist for FGM on here was for using the term ‘male circumcision’, which your man reckoned meant I was saying ‘female circumcision’ was an equivalent thing. I was quoting the WHO and UN at the time. I cross my legs and feel a bit sick whenever FGM is discussed so I’m really not giving the two equivalence, although some boys are injured badly by circumcision.

Who had a go at you for that (I hope it's not me)?

[MsD]

You’re right. The reason I got called an apologist for FGM on here was for using the term ‘male circumcision’, which your man reckoned meant I was saying ‘female circumcision’ was an equivalent thing. I was quoting the WHO and UN at the time. I cross my legs and feel a bit sick whenever FGM is discussed so I’m really not giving the two equivalence, although some boys are injured badly by circumcision.

[Bored Of Education]

I thought that the reason FGM was gradually changed from "female circumcision" was to differentiate it for male circumcision as they were very different - the latter being carried out for all sorts of medical and non-cultural/religious reasons and the potential degree of long-term suffering or discomfort being smaller.

Don't get me wrong, I am firmly in the camp that everyone's bodies should be their own to do what they want or don't want with and, aide from medical reasons when younger, no-one else should make decisions.

[hobbes]

Anyway look, sorry. Don't want to derail the FGM convo. Obviously there's a difference in seriousness between the two and I don't want to get all "poor men" on a thread about bad things happening to women.

[hobbes]

Penile cancer is vanishing rare anyway. And additional risks could be ameliorated with a 2 minute lesson called "the importance of washing your cock."
The HIV thing is more complicated as it's the immune cells present all over your skin, including the foreskin which are susceptible. Do you remove the agency of the child in order to theoretically protect the adult, or let the adult make the choice?
I don't see any rush to remove apendixes from newborns because they might get appendicitis. And those things are properly useless.

[Lang Spoon]

With MGM, there is also the public health issue that this has had an appreciable difference in HIV rates in West Africa where MGM is widely practiced contra East/Southern Africa, where lack of MGM as a cultural norm seems to have (possibly) contributed to a higher rate of HIV infection. Also lower rates of penile cancer among circumcised men worldwide.

[hobbes]

but a lot of people who had something horrendous done to them, want to think that what happened to them was normal, and what was good enough for them, is good enough for everyone else. And that's going to be the tricky bit to deal with.

Which goes some way to explaining the ongoing tolerance of male genital mutilation amongst the general public - even in the "enlightened" West.
(Not comparing the seriousness of MGM and FGM, but the principal is the same.)

[Lang Spoon]

The Symphysiotomy monster at Drogheda maternity hospital delivered my missus and her siblings. There would be a queue of expectant mothers all waiting to see him right up until the moment he was brought down, he was the star of gynie for North county Dublin and fucking Louth. Which prob helped avoid any scrutiny of his and the hospital's sadistic methods.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Also it's worth considering that we're not as far removed from the sort of cultural attitudes that underpin this sort of thing in the west as we'd like to think. TG's post about what his mam had to say had an element of the slightly shocked response that a lot of Irish people had to the 'discovery' of a lot of the shit that we got up to here, that was only coming to an end in my lifetime. The way we treated women in this country for most of the last century was utterly fucking barbaric. And it wasn't just locking up supposedly sexually active young in magdalen laundries and essentially reducing them to a life of institutionalized slavery for nuns, Or snatching children away from women who had children outside of wedlock, and selling their children in america, and making them work off their 'bill'. We did the brutal Surgery thing too. Instead of caesarean sections for tricky births, a lot of our hospitals essentially took an angle grinder to their pelvis.

The thing is though that these attitudes can change quickly for the many, but are difficult to eventually extinguish. Calling something barbaric can go one of two ways for people who were treated in a bad way. Most people want a better life for their children and grand children, but a lot of people who had something horrendous done to them, want to think that what happened to them was normal, and what was good enough for them, is good enough for everyone else. And that's going to be the tricky bit to deal with.

[MsD]

There are organisations linked to in this thread, and when I was working in that field I was in touch with many. It will take time but there’s work being done.

[Patrick Thistle]

(Cue someone turning up to tell me how Amnesty are a front for Big Oil / Israel / ISIS)

[Lang Spoon]

And white liberal interventionism abroad however well meaning (or cynical) is guaranteed to create a reaction if we tried to police other countries. From Gladstone to Blair that shit is counter productive. Change has to happen from within a society, all the west can do is facilitate that change without coming across as Superior arseholes.

this is not the same as arguing we should tolerate this shit here or coerced marriage etc.

[Patrick Thistle]

That's a good point.

Governments can try and exert some influence, and external support of change movements is very important. Amnesty maximise that.

[MsD]

No. I mean his comments about how woolly liberals say we have to respect different cultures regardless of how much they fuck people up. Peaceful democratic self-determinism for me, but not for thee. Sucks to be born brown, female, gay. Oh well, it's your culture, dahling, we can't interfere. I think he was bang on the money with that. It's a way of enshrining white western privilege without possibly being labelled racist. We're so culturally sensitive well try to educate people instead of telling them they just aren't allowed to mutilate their daughters and auction their children.

We can police them here, but not in their own countries. Not practical apart from anything else.

[Patrick Thistle]

Like obviously liberal western culture has its flaws and drawbacks and a horrible historical karmic debt, but still it's a damn site better than theocratic tyranny and tribsl warlordism.

[Patrick Thistle]

If you're trying to say that culture is dominated by religion in most countries where FGM prevails, I fully agree.

No. I mean his comments about how woolly liberals say we have to respect different cultures regardless of how much they fuck people up. Peaceful democratic self-determinism for me, but not for thee. Sucks to be born brown, female, gay. Oh well, it's your culture, dahling, we can't interfere. I think he was bang on the money with that. It's a way of enshrining white western privilege without possibly being labelled racist. We're so culturally sensitive well try to educate people instead of telling them they just aren't allowed to mutilate their daughters and auction their children.

[Tactical Genius]

Holy shit, it is practiced in places where Islam is not the dominant cultural influence. It has no basis in any Islamic theology. If a Catholic has it done to their child, as happens, would you be talking about the need to reform Catholicism?

Looking at the maps, it is practised in many Christian areas so i suspect these practices predated the introduction of Christianity and Islam (both of which only came to West Africa pretty recently).
Additionally, the types of circumcision performed and the ages it is performed seem to vary widely, mainly along tribal rather than religious lines indicating it is driven more by culture than religion.

[MsD]

Read the article I linked to, with the woman from Uganda talking about why she voluntarily had FGM. I don't think God gets a mention.

[Lang Spoon]

Exactly. See also wooly brained Wiccan crusties who argue Pagan Ireland was all about Strong Women bossing the culture, before the Evil Church Patriarchy crushed the utopia, all based on a very partial reading of Brehon law and myth. Women were valued pretty much as slaves for grinding meal, a commodity to be traded like cattle. If anything the early church improved their position slightly.

Cultural practice changes over time and often has very little to do with religion.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

yeah. People get the relationship between Religion and culture completely backwards, Irish catholicism in 1830, Irish Catholicism in 1860, and Catholicism everywhere else were three entirely different things. Also Islam varies massively from place to place and through time.

[Lang Spoon]

Holy shit, it is practiced in places where Islam is not the dominant cultural influence. It has no basis in any Islamic theology. If a Catholic has it done to their child, as happens, would you be talking about the need to reform Catholicism?