Okay, finally back at my computer so adding these refs now - someone asked whether there are post-colonial critiques of tendency to think of African child genital cutting as 'barbaric' while white Western/US child genital cutting is 'civilized/respectable' - yes. Some highlights:
Among many other excellent discussions of this issue, I recommend "Dualisms and female bodies in representations of African female circumcision: a feminist critique" by Wairimũ Ngaruiya Njambi journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14… 1/
"Female Genital Cutting (FGC): Who Defines Whose Culture as Unethical?" by Naomi Onsongo utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.313… 2/
"Bridges and Barricades: Rethinking Polemics and Intransigence in the Campaign against Female Circumcision" by L. Amede Obiora core.ac.uk/download/pdf/2… 3/
"Female Circumcision as Female Genital Mutilation: Human Rights or Cultural Imperialism?" by Abdulmumini A. Oba degruyter.com/document/doi/1… 4/
"Equality, not special protection: multiculturalism, feminism, and female circumcision in Western liberal democracies" by Fuambai S. Ahmadu books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr… 5/
"Evolutionary cultural ethics and the circumcision of children" by Nahid Toubia link.springer.com/chapter/10.100… 6/
"Circumcision: an African point of view" by Godfrey Tangwa link.springer.com/chapter/10.100… 7/
"Genital surgeries on children below an age of consent" by Hanny Lightfoot-Klein et al. wiley.com/en-us/Psycholo… 8/
Also relevant are such texts as: "Intersex surgery, female genital cutting, and the selective condemnation of cultural practices" by Nancy Ehrenreich and Mark Barr catedra-laicidad.unam.mx/sites/default/… 9/
And: "A rose by any other name? Rethinking the similarities and differences between male and female genital cutting" by Robert Darby and J. Steven Svoboda anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.152… 10/
And "Male and female genital alteration: a collision course with the law" by Dena S. Davis scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewconten… 11/
And: "Framing Male Circumcision as a Human Rights Issue? Contributions to the Debate Over the Universality of Human Rights" by Debra De Laet tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… 12/
"SHAPING GENITALS, SHAPING PERCEPTIONS: A Frame Analysis of Male and Female Circumcision" by Marjolein van den Brink and Jet Tigchelaar heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/ge… 13/
"Local rites and body politics: Tensions between cultural diversity and human rights" by Lenore Manderson tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… 14/
"The cultural debate over female circumcision: the Sudanese are arguing this one out for themselves" by Ellen Gruenbaum anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.152… 15/
"Genitals and ethnicity: the politics of genital modification" by Sara Johnsdotter and Birgitte Essén sciencedirect.com/science/articl… 16/
"What about 'FGM'? And why understanding culture matters in the first place" by Richard Shweder: jstor.org/stable/2002767… 17/
"Ban without prosecution, conviction without punishment, and circumcision without cutting: a critical appraisal of anti-FGM laws in Europe" by Maria Caterina La Barbera researchgate.net/publication/31… 18/
"The normal and the aberrant in female genital cutting" by Janice Boddy journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.14… 19/
"Hegemonic human rights: the case of female circumcision. A call for taking multiculturalism seriously" by Elisabetta Grande academia.edu/14381184/Hegem… 20/
"Genital cutting and Western discourses on sexuality" by Kirsten Bell cirp.org/library/anthro… 21/
"Critiquing circumcision: in search of a new paradigm for conceptualizing genital modification" by Zachary Androus tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108… 22/
Okay, realizing I should stop here as this is an ENORMOUS literature, and anyone who wants to get a handle on the basics can start with these
Well, also: here is a really nice recent one that adopts an explicitly post-colonial lens: "Interrogating the politicization of FGC within conditions of asymmetrical cultural convergence" by MacNamara et al. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
And I can't help myself ... there are just too many really good critiques. See: "Femonationalism and populist politics: the case of the Swiss ban on female genital mutilation" by Bader and Mottier onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
and ... "Female genital mutilation/cutting in the UK: challenging the inconsistencies" by Moira Dustin journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…
"Why UK doctors should be troubled by female genital mutilation legislation" by @ArianneShahvisi journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…
"Exorcising excision: medico-legal issues arising from male and female genital surgery in Australia" by Christine Mason cirp.org/library/legal/…
etc. etc. etc.
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