Um, and the Difference is, Exactly?
Female genital mutilation wrapped up in a pink and blue flag
This morning, I read an article in the New York Times entitled, Female Genital Cutting Continues to Increase Worldwide. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is the usual accepted term for the practice, which is religiously and culturally based as there are no health benefits for girls or women to having their genitalia cut off or removed entirely, but many harms are perpetrated, up to and including death. For a comprehensive look at why this particular body modification is harmful, the World Health Organization discusses this here.
Some of the reasons used to justify this practice are:
Female genitals are dirty and ugly
This is necessary to become a real woman
Marriage is not possible without this enhancement for a husband’s sexual pleasure
It is ordained by God
It ensures virginity prior to marriage
It cures sexual deviance in women by avoiding excessive arousal and sexual demands
It is important to note that there is no male equivalent for FGM. Apparently in our patriarchal society, male genitals are clean and beautiful, one can be a real man just by leaving his genitals intact (including those men who had their foreskins removed by parental request), God is happy with men’s bodies as they are, virginity in men is something to offload at the earliest opportunity and there are no such things as too much arousal or sexual demands where men are involved.
First, a short wander off the path to talk about male infant circumcision. Some people out of ignorance or an attempt to downplay the horrific consequences of FGM, refer to FGM as “female circumcision” as if this is an analogous procedure to removing the penile foreskin from boys and men. This is like equating the loss of your fingernail to the loss of your arm. I am not saying that it makes no difference whether or not an adult male has his foreskin, but except in cases of severe accidental injury, the removal of this has no known detrimental, lifelong health consequences for men.
For many years American health agencies and UNAIDS promoted male circumcision (mainly in African countries) as a way to reduce HIV transmission, but this was found to be untrue. Circumcision doesn't lessen HIV transmission.
Clearly if you believe that FGM is necessary in your cultural setting, you don’t value women as autonomous, entire human beings who are equal partners in sexual pleasure.
WPATH is right on board with this
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) purports to be the world authority on all things trans, including that nonsense identification of nonbinary and specialist categories such as eunuchs and gender nullification.
For such a fancy sounding organization, they really are a bunch of shoddy human beings. Unlike any other professional organization, you do not need to know anything to become a member of WPATH. Nope, all you need is a bit of cash in the form of a credit card, a total lack of morals or ethics and the desire to cash in on the misery of confused and deluded people, and you’re in! Wowzah, ain’t life grand?!
Some of the chapters are truly entertaining; for a psychedelic trip as guided by Judith Butler, you can’t go past Chapter 8, which focuses on the “nonbinary” population. This sentence: “in some regions in the world descriptive language for nonbinary people does not (yet) exist” really cracked me up as in no regions of the world does a truly nonbinary mammal exist and never will.
I know we do have words in the English language to describe creatures that don’t exist, such as unicorns, satyrs and elves, but everyone older than 10 accepts that these are mythical, not real beings.
But I digress…
The boffins at WPATH go even further than those pushing FGM because they are happy to perform genital mutilation on every sex in the entire spectrum! Oh, happy days. Of course, it is well known that in addition to rendering genitalia dysfunctional, WPATH also advocates for the removal of the part of women’s reproductive system that we call breasts. In the (highly unlikely, according to them) scenario where after maturing, women decide that they are not “really” boys, they’ve met a partner and want to have a baby, but now have no way to feed their babies, this gender doctor has the answer:
The fact that these will be of ornamental value only, of no use for either lactation or for erogenous pleasure is I guess, of no great importance to this gender woo bungler.
The newest trendy thing is nothing at all (or everything!)
“Nullification” is a word that up until very recently meant “the action of a state impeding or attempting to prevent the operation and enforcement within its territory of a law of the U.S.” and was also applied in several other legal situations.
WPATH has expanded this considerably by including recommendations on “nullification procedures” the purpose of which is to create a smooth, sexless appearance for people who identify as neither male nor female. Think Barbie and Ken doll crotches that you can pee through.
Then there are the “bi-genital” surgeries, such as the “phallus-preserving vaginoplasty” and “vagina-preserving phalloplasty,” that some surgeons offer where important questions such as “do you want to urinate sitting or standing?” are more important than “do you want to have any sexual functioning at all?” The impacts on the urinary and endocrine systems, two vitally important bodily systems with far-reaching implications for one’s future health are clearly a distant second to the desires and wants of patient choice.
Adults are free to ruin themselves, but children are not
Most sane people believe in a concept of adult autonomy, where as long as no one else is harmed, well, you do you. Good luck finding a surgeon if your sexual bent means that you want to have your arm removed, but in today’s world any of your sexy bits like penis, testicles, labia, clitoris, breasts, etc. can be “gone by lunchtime” if you can afford to pay for it. Today’s “gender affirmation” surgeries are yesterday’s colonic cleanses on steroids. Although I note that most males in womanface retain that ultimate symbol of masculinity, their penises. Funny that.
FGM is always done to children. Some societies do this to baby girls, some wait for a few years, but it is always done before puberty. I guess men might be put off seeing an unhealed slash between the legs of their new brides.
The consequences of FGM are severe and dire. They are life long and not alleviated because what was removed can’t be replaced.
FGM is universally condemned by Western/Global North and many African nations, many of which have enacted legislation to make this practice illegal and to prevent immigrant girls from being sent “home for the holidays” to have this done to them.
Ridiculously excessive hypocrisy, anyone?
The results of FGM and “gender affirmation” surgeries are the same: loss of normal function and a lifelong loss of overall wellbeing. In fact, “gender affirmation” treatments with hormones leave women (and men) worse off because the combination of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones leads to permanent sterility.
No girls are asking for FGM, but should a girl prefer to play with trucks, rather than dolls, some adult now will probably suggest she question her “gender”, even if she is too young to have any concept of what this means.
So why does a newspaper like the New York Times, along with all every other mainstream media outlet decry the barbarism of Africans cutting bits off of their girls for cultural and/or religious reasons, but when gender ideology proponents want to do exactly the same thing (under more hygienic conditions) they are feted and celebrated? And those of us who state that children are not capable of giving consent to their own mutilation are pilloried, bullied and castigated?
This is the very definition of hypocrisy.
What, indeed, is the difference, except that some girls are forced into getting their bodies mutilated, and some girls are groomed into it.
Why do they bow to gender bullies? Because they are afraid. Women can offer all the logic, scientific and moral jusitification they like, but intimidation works.