Dervish

I’ve been doing some reading on Australian law regarding female genital cutting and male genital cutting. And it strikes me that Australian legislators’ (and presumably the relevant lobbying groups) attitudes towards genital cutting is largely influenced by Orientalist prejudice i.e. ‘what we do to our genitals is okay, what them savages do to theirs is mutilation’.

I had better put my own biases out on the table: I have a pretty strong aversion to all forms of genital cutting - male and female.  I KNOW it’s sunnah for males, but if you ask me - I prefer the sunnah to come in the form of waiting until they’re old enough to give consent (i.e. how the Turks do it, when the lads are around 12) and gives lots of anaesthetic and analgesia. Nevertheless, I recognise that for Jews and many Muslims it is a religious requirement as they understand it, to circumcise much earlier.  And as Abu Yasmin pointed out, if we (i.e. Western cultures) were all about pain minimisation, then you’d think we would come up with kinder ways to immunise our kids than drive huge needles deep into the thighs of our babies, not to mention piercing ears - remember when it was all the rage to have your baby girl’s ears pierced?

Female genital cutting that is practiced in some Muslim cultures takes different forms from a symbolic nick or prick on the hood of the clitoris, to cutting away the hood of the clitoris, to excising the clitoris entirely, to scraping or trimming away the clitoris and labia, and lastly to infibulation where all that is done and the outer lips are sewn up leaving a small hole for menstrual blood and urine to escape.  The vast majority of Muslim scholars who do speak on this subject, consider practices such as clitoridectomy and infibulation to be haram. (For example, Sh. Afifi, Sh. Rabbani, Sh. Badawi, Sh. Abd al-Rahman etc.) not that you would know this from how Muslim views are reported in Western media and rhetoric.

The only type of female circumcision I feel comfortable with - as a Muslim and as a woman - is the first type which is a symbolic prick or nick. In comparison to male circumcision this barely rates a mention, and yet some Australian laws prohibit this even by consenting adult woman! On the government site: “NSW Education Program on Female Genital Mutilation” there is a pamphlet funded by the NSW Department of Health that says:

“Female genital mutilation” and “female circumcision” are the same thing … Section 45 of the NSW Crimes Act says that FGM is not allowed. A person cannot: “excise, infibulate or mutilate the whole or any part of the labia minora or labia majora or clitoris of another person”; or “aid, abet, counsel or procure a person to perform any of those acts on another person”. This means it is against the law to: Circumcise a woman, girl or female baby… Cut the clitoris or part of the clitoris; or damage the female genital area in other ways … It is against the law to do FGM even if the woman or girl wants it done.

It’s a badly written law, if you ask me, what does “mutilate” mean? This advocate group is interpreting the law as widely as possible, and by this interpretation a consenting woman would not be able to have a genital piercing or cosmetic surgery to trim her labia, a procedure called labiaplasty - both of which are practiced by some Western women. Somehow, I bet they’re not targeting Western women and their cosmetic surgeons in their education programs.

So why the huge disparity? Why is it perfectly legal to crush and cut away the foreskin of a newborn baby boy without anaesthetic or pain relief, yet it is illegal for a grown woman to have her clitoral hood pricked (unless she is Anglo and sticks a piece of metal through it)? 

I am not saying that clitoridectomys and infibulation should be legal in Australia - these practices, along with genital piercings and labiaplasty I find quite horrifying. I also find Botox injections and Chemical Peels to be quite horrifying as well, by the way. I just find Western legislators and the relevant lobby groups to be hypocritical - they have badly written a law because of their own prejudices.

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