Facebook: “Phil N. Molé” – Comparing Circumcisons (2)

Phil N. Molé: “…Katarina, I agree with some of the things you said. But let’s look at it this way. One issue common to both male circumcision and FGM is that the parents/families in both cases (moms, dads, aunts, etc) are the ones that insist on the procedure being done. So this is already an issue of when it’s appropriate for the state, or some form of regulation, to defy what parents want for their own children. There clearly has to be a compelling reason for sch defiance to happen. What would that be based on? It would be based on consideration of the rights of the child, and on the severity with which her/his life is affected and fundamental rights are violated. So, we’re forced to examine the relative harms of male circumcision vs. FGM, and that takes us right back to front…
… Finally, I agree with Katarina that men can should try to empathize with women – not least because it’s the values and norms that men have traditionally enforced that perpetuate awful things like FGM. But again, that empathy has got to be real, and if it involves presumptions, and leads to monopolizing attention, it’s not real. Empathy that’s real won’t lead to guys essentially saying “Oh, I know all about this, and in fact, I pretty much experience the same thing. Now let’s talk about my penis!”
Real empathy is a recognition of, rather than a denial of, differences in experience. And I must say, I do often find it lacking when men are involved in discussions like this.”

Me: @Phil: empathy is lacking primarily in men who have been circumcised in infancy or childhood. It’s an instinctual, subconscious reaction based on the fact that their mother did not protect them from violence. Physical protection of offspring is a mother’s primal instinct, presently distorted by patriarchy (ruling elder males).
An important point when it comes to child genital mutilation being a woman’s rights issue is that a mother is wounded when her offspring is wounded regardless of gender. Because of this MGM too is a woman’s rights issue.

@Morgan: that’s ritualized sadistic pedophilia institutionalized by male elders – the very basis for patriarchal politics/government.

@Jeremy: I very much agree that imperfect allies are better than none. If you were to interview the fans of any movement you would find that no one agrees with everyone on every single detail of an issue. If the general direction is agreed upon by all, it is the number of fans that counts most if the movement, in this case genital integrity, is to succeed. People fighting each other on the details only buys the perpetrators time to traumatize more kids.

@Sandra: it’s not about chastity, it’s about personal and social power. Child genital mutilation, and especially clitoral castration disempowers women. It distorts their sense of self, their self-determination, their self-initiative. They get the message that their place in the world is limited to a role they have to play from that point on; that they are followers of whomever is higher in a given cultural hierarchy. From a socio-political and socio-economic standpoint they therewith have been permanently weakened. Others govern them, they can neither govern themselves nor others. This way women and basically the majority of a given population are kept from achieving positions of power, especially if they disagree with their government. Far from being just about chastity, child genital mutilation is one of the oldest if not the oldest methods of political coercion.
Various degrees of clitoral castration occur in every region on the planet. The Muslims do it and the Jews have done it in the past but it is not exclusively a Semitic custom. The Turks, the Chinese, the Australian Aborigines, Central and South American Aboriginal Tribes, Western Medicine, you name it, it’s happening all over the place.
And let’s face it, it’s happening because we the Western Women, the most powerful women in the world, are asleep at the wheel.

Comparing Circumcisions

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