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Male circumcision can be worse than FGM rules senior judge

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One of the country’s most senior judges has courted controversy by declaring that male circumcision can be more harmful than female genital mutilation (FGM).

Sir James Munby acknowledged he was entering “deep waters” by highlighting inconsistencies in the law, but said it would be “irrational” to dispute the fact that male circumcision can be more harmful than some forms of FGM. The High Court judge made the comments as he passed judgment in care proceedings brought by a local authority seeking to take a brother and sister, from a Muslim family, into care on the grounds that the girl was a victim of Type IV FGM.

While the case failed on the grounds that damage to the girl’s genitals was probably caused by a condition called vulvovaginitis, Munby, who is president of the family division, felt compelled to highlight the sexist double standard that the case brought to light.

In summing up the judge noted that while subjecting a girl to Type IV FGM could result in that child being taken into care, male circumcision would not lead to a boy being removed from his family, even though the procedure is more harmful than at least some forms of Type IV FGM.

An inconvenient truth 

Campaigners against male circumcision have long been hampered by the myth that subjecting girls to FGM is different and always worse than circumcising boys.

The uncomfortable truth, to which Munby has now given judicial credibility, is that male circumcision is different and sometimes worse than FGM.

This is particularly true of Type IV FGM which incorporates practices such as pricking, piercing and nicking the genitals, which are less harmful and invasive than removing the foreskin in it’s entirety.

Male circumcision in the UK is often performed without anaesthetic, in non-medical conditions and can cause complications such as life threatening haemorrhage, shock, sepsis an in extreme cases death.

In 2012 a Freedom of Information request revealed that two boys a week are admitted to the emergency department of Birmingham children’s hospital as a result of male circumcision.

Society more tolerant of male circumcision 

However, despite Munby’s assessment that ”on any objective view” male circumcisions is sometimes worse than FGM, he also made clear that current judicial thinking is that there is no equivalence between the two practices.

“In 2015 ,” he said in his judgment, “the law generally, and family law in particular, is still prepared to tolerate non-therapeutic male circumcision performed for religious or even for purely cultural or conventional reasons, while no longer being willing to tolerate FGM in any of its forms.

“Given the comparison between what is involved in male circumcision and FGM WHO Type IV, to dispute that the more invasive procedure involves the significant harm involved in the less invasive procedure would seem almost irrational. In my judgment, if FGM Type IV amounts to significant harm, as in my judgment it does, then the same must be so of male circumcision.”

The phrase “significant harm” is important as this is the first threshold that must be crossed before a child can be taken into care under section 31 of the Children’s Act 1989. There is another criteria which must also be considered in care proceedings and this is whether the care given to a child is “what would be reasonable to expect a parent to give”.

Why the law is different 

According to Munby, while it can never be reasonable parenting to inflict any form of FGM on a child, the position is quite different with male circumcision.

Munby argued that there are at least two important distinctions between the two practices. Firstly, that FGM has no basis in any religion, while male circumcision is often performed for religious reasons. Secondly, that while FGM is said to have no medical justification and confers no health benefits; male circumcision is seen by some people as providing hygienic or prophylactic benefits, although opinions are divided.

Even taking the conflicting medical evidence on any perceived benefits into account, Munby concluded that “reasonable” parenting should be seen to permit male circumcision.

And that is where UK law stands on the matter today. The Head of the Family Division of the Family Court has judged that while male circumcision is sometimes worse than FGM, it is deemed to be reasonable for parents of all backgrounds to circumcise their sons, while carrying out a less invasive and less harmful from of Type IV FGM on their daughters is not considered reasonable parental behaviour.

A welcome coup for campaigners

Having a senior judge acknowledge that FGM can be less harmful than male circumcision is a welcome coup for those of us who advocate for the right of every human being to enter adulthood with intact genitals, except in rare cases where therapeutic surgery is unequivocally unavoidable.

The fact that our society, led by politicians and the judiciary, is still prepared to tolerate greater harm happening to boys than to girls, reveals a great deal about the sexist double standards we apply to the issues that affect men and boys in 2015.

The fact that we are collectively more tolerant of the harm that happens to men and boys, than the harm that happens to women and girls, doesn’t begin and end at genital mutilation.

Our shared cultural beliefs that “boys don’t cry”; that men should “man up”; that women have problems and men are problems; that females are the weaker sex and that we should always put the protection of women and girls first; is reflected in our inability to tackle a whole range of social issues that, predominantly impact men and boys, head on.

Why this is a men’s issue

These include male suicide; male homelessness; the high rate of male workplace deaths; men’s lower life expectancy; the expulsion of boys from school; the exclusion and marginalisation of separated fathers from their children’s lives; the way we respond to male victims of violence and the harsher treatment and sentencing of men and boys in the criminal justice system.

What Sir James Munby has uncovered is an inconvenient and important truth about men, manhood and masculinity in 2015 which is simply this—while the harm that happens to men and boys in our society is different and sometimes worse than the harm that happens to women and girls, we still view any harm that women and girls experience more seriously.

Munby is part of the problem he has raised, for while he acknowledges that male circumcision can be more harmful than FGM, he has essentially declared that while it’s reasonable for parents to harm their sons, it is never reasonable to harm their daughters.

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Guardian newspaper tries to silence victims of genital mutilation, because they are men

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The Guardian newspaper has publicly confirmed its policy of banning discussions about genital mutilation in the comment section under articles about genital mutilation.

To be more precise it is trying to ban commentators from sharing views about male genital mutilation that contradict its left-wing, pro-feminist, editorial views on female genital mutilation (FGM).

Many of the people impacted by the ban are committed campaigners against all forms of genital mutilation and men who were victims of genital mutilation themselves.

Campaigners told insideMAN last night that the practice of “moderating” male victims of genital mutilation (and their supporters) who call for all forms on non-consensual, medically unnecessary genital cutting to be banned has been going on for several years at The Guardian.

This week, apparently for the first time, the media group decided to openly “pre-moderate” comments on an article about FGM warning readers that “to keep circumcision of boys out of this particular conversation… comments specifically about male circumcision will be removed by mods as ‘Off Topic’.”

Debating the ban is banned! 

The reason The Guardian gave for banning discussion of male circumcision was that “the effects and cultural practices/significance are very, very different, and essentially they’re two separate debates”.

One campaigner accused the newspaper of issuing a “fiat” that censored fair and reasoned debate and banned commentators from even discussing whether the two practices are linked or not.

To prove the point, another campaigner from New Zealand posted a comment explaining the historical links between FGM and male circumcision in the US and the UK and his comment was removed.

Boys have human rights too! 

The same campaigner, who claimed on a separate forum that The Guardian allows posts supporting male circumcision, told insideMAN:

“It is legitimate for a site like the Guardian to not want every thread on FGC (female genital cutting) to be dominated by MGC (male genital cutting). What is less legitimate is to suppress every mention of MGC, and what is completely disgustingly illegitimate is to allow praise of MGC but not refutation of that praise, which seems to be what they are doing.”

“You could argue that to discuss FGC in isolation from other GC allows you to conflate harm with human rights violation…all GC is a human rights violation regardless of the degree of physical damage.”

Marilyn Milos, a US campaigner who began advocating for genital autonomy after observing the circumcision of baby boys as a nurse, agreed that the focus should be on human rights for everyone. She said:

“I’ve said many times before, genital cutting is not an issue of competitive suffering. The screams of infants and children undergoing genital cutting are genderless and both genders die from these harmful traditional practices. Both are human rights violations and should be dealt with as such.”

Men Do Complain

One man who has been making the case to the UK government that both practices violate human rights, Richard Duncker of Men Do Complain, explained his thinking to us. He said:

“It is difficult to see how a child’s human rights are not breached by non-therapeutic genital modification. The European Court of Human Rights has set a very low threshold for a breach of article 3 – that no one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment  – for example the application to the court No. 9078/06 Tarhan v Turkey (17/07/2012) found that the applicant’s Article 3 right had been breached by the forced shaving of his head and beard.”

“Children are equally entitled to the protection of their human rights. There is a misuse of Article 9 of the Human Rights Act 1998 when adults state that it is their right to manifest their beliefs by modifying their children’s genitals. Article 9 is a qualified right in that a person cannot infringe the rights of another, even if that other is his or her child.”

Sadly, such considered comments from committed campaigners like Richard Duncker are not welcome at The Guardian.

What debate is allowed? 

To its credit, The Guardian probably generates more debate about male circumcision AND female circumcision than any other mainstream media operation. The coverage is heavily weighted towards FGM, which has been the subject of five articles this month alone, compared with male circumcision, which has generated 5 articles all year.

Furthermore, while The Guardian’s coverage of FGM is unequivocally opposed to the practice and strongly rooted in discussion about the UK’s role in ending the practice at home and abroad; The Guardian’s articles about male circumcision offer a mix of pro-circumcision; anti-circumcision and neutral viewpoints and are often presented as “world news” and not connected to the need for the UK to end the practice at home and abroad.

The Guardian claims that while “the two issues are superficially related, the … cultural practices/significance are very, very different, and essentially they’re two separate debates”.

What appears to be happening is that The Guardian has mistaken its editorial, gender political, worldview of genital with the absolute truth and is now insisting that any victims of genital mutilation (and their supporters) who think differently are quite simply wrong.

We can only solve this problem together 

I’ll give the final word to Georganne Chapin of Intact America, who told insideMAN:

“I think it’s rather curious. The Guardian is preaching to the choir if it does a piece deploring the evils of FGM. I do not minimize the problem of FGM in the cultures where it is still practiced, and we cannot deny that western countries with large Muslim populations will have to address the practice from a legal standpoint.

“However, as journalism, the topic isn’t even all that interesting on its own; the party’s over. The Guardian’s readership is universally going to condemn FGM.  What IS interesting is that The Guardian and the mainstream western press, in general, are not willing to even entertain the possibility that in order to solve the FGM problem, we might need to address MGM.”

—Photo Credit: flickr/erix

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Why it’s rational to say circumcision is worse than FGM

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Is it rational to compare male circumcision and female genital mutilation and come to the conclusion that one is worse than the other, asks Glen Poole?

If I asked you what’s worse, damaging your arm or damaging your leg what would you say? If you had the most rudimentary skills of rationalization, you’d probably say well that depends what type of damage you’re taking about?

Clearly it’s worse to die of a gangrenous leg wound than to get a small bruise on your arm that disappears after a couple of days. Whereas grazing your knees is not as bad as getting your arm trapped under a rock on a remote mountainside and having to saw it off with a penknife to stay alive.

So which is worse, injuring a leg or injuring an arm?

Well there are so many variables that you can’t simply say that one is worse than the other. It is, however, perfectly reasonable and rational to say that damaging one of your upper limbs is different and sometimes worse than damaging one of your lower limbs—and vice versa. No-one with a sane mind would say otherwise.

And so to ritual circumcision, a practice that’s often viewed as benign and even beneficial, but in reality is a medically unnecessary practice that is both painful and dangerous and can cause discomfort, disease, deformity, disability and sometimes death.

We know that routine circumcision is medically unnecessary because the majority of men and boys all over the world live happily and healthily with their foreskins intact. We know, from research, that it’s painful; that even when performed in a “safe” medical setting that there’s a risk of complications and that in worst case scenarios baby boys and young men die from unnecessary male circumcision every year. We also know that Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is painful and causes many problems and complications including death.

So which is worse male circumcision or FGM?

Many people argue that FGM is worse. Tanya Gold, in the Guardian, for example referred to “the revolting juxtaposition of female genital mutilation, which is always torture, and often murder, with ritual male circumcision, which is neither” (despite the fact that it kills people).

Then there’s Lynne Featherstone who, as the UK’s Junior Minister for International Development, spoke about FGM in way that suggested she was unaware of the practice of male circumcision saying: “Quite frankly if it was boys’ willies that were being cut off without anaesthetic it wouldn’t have lasted four minutes, let alone 4,000 years”.

But aren’t Gold and Featherstone, who both come from communities that cut boys but not girls, simply voicing a view that we all instinctively know to be true—that it’s worse to do it to girls?

It depends what criteria we use to compare

If you look at the scale of the problem, WHO estimates that 125 million women and girls are affected , compared with around one billion men and boys. If you look at the severity of the problem, there seems to be more deaths around the world from male circumcision than FGM, even in a country like the UK where the practices are relatively rare.

If you look at the seriousness with which we, in the West, take the issue, we ban one practice but permit the other. This means that any man who considers himself to be a victim of unnecessary male circumcision, spends a lifetime of secondary victimisation being told that what happened to him wasn’t a crime and he should get over it and move on.

Imagine if the same were true of arms and leg. Imagine if there were many, many more arm injuries in the world; that more people died from arm injuries and that, unlike leg injuries, there was no serious recognition that arm injuries were a problem that deserved equitable attention to leg injuries. If all of these things were true, then it would be rational to argue that arm injuries are worse than leg injuries.

So is the same true of unnecessary male circumcision?

Is it reasonable and rational to argue that it’s worse than FGM? I think that a rational person who cares passionately about the subject could validly make that argument at a superficial level. Taking a deeper perspective, I think, like arms and legs, the rational way to compare the unnecessary removal of healthy tissue from people’s genitals is this:

FGM is different and sometimes worse than unnecessary male circumcision and unnecessary male circumcision is different and sometimes worse than FGM.

If you find this a difficult concept to understand then this 5 minute video explains how the different scales of severity of the two practices overlap with each other—and how one practice is sometimes worse than the other (and vice versa).

Right now, this rational and obvious truth is considered not only a radical view, but often a “revolting” view. I’m sure, in centuries to come, we’ll look back and wonder how rational and intelligent human beings could ever have believed that the practice of FGM was always worse than unnecessary male circumcision, when the practice kills and injures people.

Why is this? I am convinced that the overriding reason why Westerners believe that FGM is always worse than male circumcision is sexism, because when it comes to helping people of different sexes in the West, we remain collectively more tolerant of any harm that happens to men and boys.

So what do you think? Is one practice worse than the other or are they simply different (and sometimes worse) than each other?

—Photo credit: Flickr/Keoni Cabral

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Why the UK has no moral right to tell Africans to stop genital mutilation

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UK girls are being flown to Kenya to have their genitals mutilated but the British have no moral right to complain about this practice when we continue to turn a blind eye to unnecessary male circumcision says Glen Poole.

Wealthy Somalis living in the UK are flying their daughters to Kenya to undergo ritual FGM (female genital mutilation). There they are handed over to traditional practitioners like 80-year-old Dubey Sankader, who uses a support team of 10 women to pin down the girls while performs female circumcision in a temporary shelter made of sticks, wood and leaves.

In an interview published by Bloomberg this month, Sankader is reported to have said: “It’s painful and most of them faint in the middle of the rite, while others make loud noises and cries, but they are subdued by my permanent staff”.

While FGM has been illegal in Kenya since 2011, the practice is still commonplace and the UK is powerless to act when it comes to protecting Somali girls whose families have made Britain their home.

We aren’t legally powerless. Taking a girl out of the country in order to mutilate her genitals is against British law and today the prime minister, David Cameron has announced that new measures will be introduced meaning parents who fail to stop their daughters undergoing FGM will face prosecution.

However, rather than empowering ourselves when it comes to making a difference for women and girls, we disempower ourselves by becoming  moral hypocrites who apply one rule to women and girls and another rule to men and boys. We essentially tell parents from other cultures that their tradition of performing rituals on boys’ genitals is tolerable and but performing rituals on girls’ genitals is intolerable—one act is good and right , the other is bad and wrong.

Men are being forcibly circumcised in Africa

Meanwhile in Kenya, a man was dragged by a gang of men into his local church clinic and forcibly circumcised this weekend, according to media reports. After the operation, the Kenyan Post reported that his wife was overheard saying that she is “now assured of total satisfaction in bed”.

The forced circumcision of men and boys is neither uncommon nor illegal across Africa. There are many forms of ritual circumcisions which kill scores of young men every year, there are incidents of forced circumcision where men belonging to tribes who don’t circumcise are chased and forcibly circumcised by men from tribes who do circumcise and then there is the bizarre importation of circumcision to prevent AIDS by the World Health Organisation, a campaign that has been heavily criticised.  

The situation for men and boys in the UK is less severe and yet many boys in African families living in the UK are at risk and unlike their sisters, their parents don’t need to take them abroad to have their genitals mutilated. High profile incidents of African boys being subjected to forced circumcision in the UK include Goodluck Caubergs who died aged just 27 days old after being circumcised by a midwife and Angelo Ofori-Mintah who died aged 28 days old after being circumcised by a Rabbi. Earlier this month we also reported the story of a trainee doctor who divorced her African-born husband after he had their son circumcised without her consent or knowledge.

Moral double standards

There is a moral double standard at play here. While we essentially tell people of African heritage that they are wrong to perform rituals on their daughters genitals both in the UK and in Africa, we stand silently by while African men and boys in the UK and Africa are dying as a result of being subjected to ritual circumcision. Worse still, we support the highly contentious export of medical circumcision into Africa in the fight against AIDS.

And therein lies our moral dilemma. Anyone who has spent time studying the different types of male and female genital mutilation knows that the following statement holds true—male circumcision in all its forms is different and sometimes worse than the many different forms of female circumcision (and female circumcision is different and sometimes worse than male circumcision).

If we are serious about protecting the genital autonomy of African girls (and girls of all nationalities), then surely we’ll get there a lot quicker—and with far greater moral integrity—if we also take a stand to preserve the genital autonomy of men and boys in Africa, the UK and the rest of the world.

Photo: Courtesy of DFID shows the UK’s government minister for international development Lynne Featherstone supporting the “FGM or excision can kill” campaign in Burkina Faso.

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

For more information about male genital mutilation, please visit Norm UK and Men Do Complain

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Male genital mutilation: one man’s story

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—This is article #41 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

Photo courtesy Men Do Complain

I and my sister were born in the late 50’s in the UK. Soon after I was born my parents taught me what it is to be discriminated against.

They saw to it that my foreskin was cut off and tossed away, but nothing was cut off my sister’s body when she was subsequently born. If I had been born a female I would still have all the genitals I was born with, just as my sister still has.

We hear a lot about FGM and rightly so, as it is an abomination. Sadly, many think that male circumcision is performed for religious and medical reasons: so it can’t be harmful. The truth is that all those men and boys who were circumcised without their personal consent are the victims of the theft of a functional and erogenous body part.

You do not enrich the life of a man by cutting a part of his body off, you make that man a poorer man, even though he may not realise it because he has never known any different.

‘It royally fucks up a man’s sexuality’

I recently spotted the following comment in response to an online petition against infant male circumcision: “I was circumcised as an adult… I can confirm that it royally fucks up a man’s sexuality.”

This came as no surprise to me since it was as obvious as my lack of a foreskin that my wife was enjoying a more ‘earth-moving’ sexual experience than me. We are now separated after spending almost 30 years together and I reflect that sexual issues were very much the undoing of our marriage. My sex life was not what it should have been. I now live alone and am a chastened man.

It is my personal belief that all infants, whether they be male or female, should enjoy the basic right to be born unto parents that do not feel it is their right to modify the genitalia of their offspring.

‘It should have been my own decision’

My late parents felt that it was their right to condone my circumcision as an infant without medical necessity. This is something that has caused me considerable pain and anguish and I shall eternally regret. It should have been my own decision as to whether or not I chose to give up an intimate and personal part of my body, because once it is done, it is done.

Children are in the custody of their parents until they reach maturity and are not their property. I am not Jewish or Muslim, but there are men I know of that were born unto Jewish/Muslim parents that also resent the fact that they suffered the same indignity of forced circumcision.

The majority of men in this world are genitally intact and perfectly content with their status. I believe that it is a profound injustice that there is not statutory legal protection for all infant boys against non-therapeutic circumcision (such as there is for girls in the UK, US and elsewhere), regardless of the religious affiliation of their parents.

If men want to be circumcised for religious reasons let them volunteer for it once they are adults, and can give meaningful consent.

By Patrick Smyth, trustee and secretary of NORM UK

For more information about male genital mutilation, please visit Norm UK and Men Do Complain

 You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

Further articles:

NHS Midwife referred baby for genital mutilation against mother’s wishes