Thread by @briandavidearp

Take this chapter by Birgitte Essén, perhaps the most senior gynecologist & medical expert who has extensive clinical experience working directly w. women affected by FGC. She notes that for over 50 years, the @WHO has published guidelines on FGC re: health consequences ... 6/

& other empirical claims concerning different types of FGC, but "without the usual concern" for high quality evidence, based on "uncritical" thinking re: causes & consequences, "skewed or insufficient data" & "misleading conclusions." This has v. bad real-world implications 7/

Focusing on a Danish case for which she served as an expert witness, Essén notes that trial doctors -- whose testimony led to conviction & more than a year of imprisonment of 2 parents of Somali origin, separating them from their children -- had *NO EXPERTISE* in FGC 8/

They used the wrong examination procedure, concluding erroneously that "some millimeter of tissue of the labia minora had been cut and the prepuce of the clitoris seemed to be shortened and compressed along the edges." Even though there was no evidence of cutting or scarring, 9/

the doctors were so convinced that "mutilation" must have occurred -- apparently relying on @WHO characterizations of "FGM" as being too deeply "embedded" in practicing cultures to "completely eliminate" (thus ignoring evidence of cultural change after migration) -- that they 10/

... expressed complete & unshakable confidence in their incorrect diagnosis, leading to unjust and unnecessary suffering on the part of the Somali family. Just look at this testimony of the forensic doctor who, to repeat, had *no* prior clinical or scholarly experience w/ FGC 11/

As Sara explains in her own excellent (yet also heartbreaking) chapter, the "mythology" re: non-Western FGC promulgated by @WHO in its materials - constantly conflating all forms of cutting w/ the most extreme & rarest types, for instance - crowds out all contradictory data: 12/

Here, 10 yr-old Swedish Somali girl who (as chapter makes clear) suffered a genital injury during a bicycling accident when 5 yrs-old, is harshly interrogated by officer who simply cannot fathom any other explanation for the injury than "mutilation," causing her to breakdown 13/

The girl also had 2 go through multiple rounds of invasive, potentially humiliating genital examinations in search of "evidence," leading 2 further harm & suffering. Consider also the chapter by Dellenborg & Malmström, who have done groundbreaking anthropological work on FGC 14/

They show that @WHO claim that 'FGM' is best explained as sexist discrimination & gender-based violence is dubious. First *both* boys & girls are 'circumcised' in virtually every culture where FGC occurs, & the men often favor *ending* FGC while women defend it: 15/

In Senegal, FGC initiations are sites of women's bonding; many men *don't* want their wives cut; chastity is *not* highly valued in Jola ethnic group, & married women may take lovers during the FGC ritual process. As Elisabetta Grande & others have shown, in many contexts, 16/

the idea that FGC is about "men trying 2 control women's sexuality" so as 2 subordinate them is false. Rather, women-led FGC initiations are often primary sites of female *resistance* to male power in societies that are gender-unequal in other spheres: researchgate.net/publication/34… 17/

Dellenborg & Malmström stress responsibility 4 genital cutting is "primarily a question of power relations between *adults & children* where women cut girls & men cut boys." Yet @WHO's "Euro-American story of FGM as patriarchal" ironically leads 2 "missing women's agency" (!) 18/

And this, in turn, makes it harder to campaign successfully against FGC in societies where it is common, b/c arguments fall on deaf ears -- due to fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of the ritual based on simplistic & misleading claims of @WHO. In my own work, 19/

I argue *all* vulnerable children - female, male, & intersex: anyone incapable of consenting - should be protected from painful, permanent cutting on 'private' anatomy, until they can choose for themselves. But @WHO "ethics" of genital cutting is unprincipled & biased: 20/

Given necessary role of @WHO as 1 of few generally-trusted sources of public health info -- especially during global pandemic -- it is time they scrapped their unscientific, biased "FGM" policy, & wrote a new one based on *consent* & equal human rights to bodily integrity /END