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/
"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/
"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: "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/
"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/
"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…
On the failure of academics to concern themselves with the essential questions of human existence, meaning, value, instead tending to their “little farms” of specialisms. “Other teachers will emerge and will be followed.” — Wolfgang Köhler
And the counterpoint (in Köhler’s own voice), “When asked to choose between writing badly about the greatest questions and well about more modest topics we prefer the second alternative.”
Followers who consider themselves straight males - does this resonate with your experience growing up? 🤔
From Sexual Revolution by Laurie Penny. I don’t know how much ‘straight boy’ accurately describes my childhood self, but must confess that I, too, do not recall experiencing anything remotely like this (mostly, premarital sex meant going to hell; certainly not an entitlement)
And to the extent that sexual feelings or desires weren’t just repressed or associated with shame, I would say that connotations of gentleness, exploration, awe - almost unworthiness - and mutuality would have been the prevailing themes or attitudes I had toward sex
Pretty horrifying. This should be a major concern. "A Drug Addiction Risk Algorithm and Its Grim Toll on Chronic Pain Sufferers" buff.ly/3sdSwvS - excerpts below
Secret 'credit score' for controlled substances based on opaque, often biased algorithm
There is a lot of work on this; much of it is cited in this review article by Sara Johnsdotter and myself nature.com/articles/s4144… … I’ll add refs to individual papers by (eg) post colonial and African studies scholars below
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/
Heartbreaking: up to 40% of Filipino boys experience infection (drdf.org.ph/sites/default/…), and up to 70%, PTSD (sciencedirect.com/science/articl…), from their public circumcision rites each year. I wonder why @WHO doesn't view this as a human rights violation? One possibility is that ...
routine & religious male circumcision—common in U.S. & Jewish/Muslim families, respectively—is a tradition among many of the most influential “gatekeepers” of the global human rights agenda: “the practice is prevalent in their own social networks”(amazon.com/Lost-Causes-Ve…) ...
Per Carpenter: “Unlike other practices human rights professionals condemn but don't participate in, circ was widespread” among them. "Confronting it evoked defensiveness from those who had circumcised their own boys, loath to think of themselves as human rights abusers” ...