De-colonising FGM a paper in BMJ

[Imnobody4]

Harms of the current global anti-FGM campaign

Abstract

Traditional female genital practices, though long-standing in many cultures, have become the focus of an expansive global campaign against ‘female genital mutilation’ (FGM). In this article, we critically examine the harms produced by the anti-FGM discourse and policies, despite their grounding in human rights and health advocacy. We argue that a ubiquitous ‘standard tale’ obscures the diversity of practices, meanings and experiences among those affected. This discourse, driven by a heavily racialised and ethnocentric framework, has led to unintended but serious consequences: the erosion of trust in healthcare settings, the silencing of dissenting or nuanced community voices, racial profiling and disproportionate legal surveillance of migrant families. Moreover, we highlight a troubling double standard that legitimises comparable genital surgeries in Western contexts while condemning similar procedures in others. We call for more balanced and evidence-based journalism, policy and public discourse—ones that account for cultural complexity and avoid the reductive and stigmatising force of the term ‘mutilation’. A re-evaluation of advocacy strategies is needed to ensure that they do not reproduce the very injustices they aim to challenge.

https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2025/09/25/jme-2025-110961

One of their points is that if you want to engage in conversation with people who currently support or engage in these practices then using terms like "mutilation" will not be very helpful.

I doubt anyone on MN is going to be in favour of FGM but the only way to stop these practices is going to be by changing the opinions of those who currently are. You can pass whatever laws you want but at the end of the day people will ignore them. You need to educate and enage with those people.

"their points"?

Some of the people who wrote the paper support FGM.

Another paper by one of the authors Natasha Carver.

'The Princess, the Witch and the Fairy Godmother: Colonial Legacies in 'FGM'.'

research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/the-princess-the-witch-and-the-fairy-godmother-colonial-legacies-/

Abstract
This article analyses the discursive construction of what has become known as ‘Female Genital Mutilation’ (FGM) in colonial-era debates in the UK Houses of Parliament. The author shows how, in order to bring the topic into the realm of political legitimacy and to be heard in an institution that had only recently allowed women to stand for office, (White) women MPs emphasised their superiority to the African cultures they were talking about. They fought for inclusion as parliamentarians by re-articulating and aligning themselves with Whitely virtues, positioning themselves as noble, respectable and civilised in contrast to the ‘evil’, ‘abhorrent’ and ‘barbaric’ natives. By delineating the moral distance between themselves and non-White men and women, and by (re)stating female parity as the measure of civilisation, they asserted their own right to full inclusion in the nation-state, using the master’s tools to trouble the master’s house. Ultimately, they gained ground for feminism through the re-articulation of racism. Through historicising and deconstructing the narrative as iterated in the seat of government in colonial times, the author furthers the tentative moves towards decolonising the global campaign against FGM. The article sheds light on the coloniality in the present-day hegemonic narrative of ‘Female Genital Mutilation’ and questions whether there might be less harmful ways to articulate opposition to the practice.

Through historicising and deconstructing the narrative as iterated in the seat of government in colonial times, the author furthers the tentative moves towards decolonising the global campaign against FGM.

Or is it not more colonial to pretend that women like Nimco Ali don't exist?

Nothing more colonial than the idea that universal human rights don't apply to 'noble savages'.

That's a bizarre twisting of the truth, which is that female MPs listened to campaigners like Hibo Wardere and the NHS doctors who treat FGM survivors and used their privilege as MPs to act to protect women and girls.

Universities could save a lot of money by sacking these grievance peddlers.

'Carver'. That's a bit on the nose.

Don't think this has been shared yet:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/de26fada-3c33-4dda-bb14-1b27fd7fe57b?shareToken=ac47f707528da595063f3f043b5c251a

Meanwhile:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2d4ryke68o

Because some girls deserve less surveillance than others.

From the Times article

Try telling that to Juliet Albert, a midwife who has been working with women who have had FGM since 1998. She runs a specialist clinic at an NHS hospital trust in London, seeing about 300 women every year.

Of course, it isn't clear, this could be one woman who visited 300 Times.

I doubt anyone on MN is going to be in favour of FGM but the only way to stop these practices is going to be by changing the opinions of those who currently are. You can pass whatever laws you want but at the end of the day people will ignore them. You need to educate and enage with those people.

Actually, the other way to stop these practices - in this country at least - is to enforce the laws against them rigorously. Send people to prison if they're found to be harming little girls. I think you'll find that a stiff prison sentence acts as a remarkably strong deterrent.

Alice Evans: "Across much of the West, there has been declining public confidence and public trust in universities. If universities want continued public support and government financial handouts, academics need to ensure that we’re doing research that serves the public interest in terms of being logical, empirical, rational."

What was it that I said upthread? "Universities could save a lot of money by sacking these grievance peddlers."

I'm looking at my P60 and thinking "how much of my tax bill is being wasted on paying these post-whatever theory wordmincers to publish shite like this, whilst disabled kids languish on the assessment waiting lists?"

Alice is on the inside of the Academic-Industrial Complex and she's issuing a clear warning to universities that they risk the entire Govt revenue stream by wasting money on the salaries of obvious grifters who put out rubbish like this.

I think people are missing the point of the article. I've met women who delay accessing healthcare during pregnancy because they feel they are criminilsed purely due to their country of origin. They don't just get asked about it once but at every single appointment. The article is not saying we should approve of it, but questioning who is challenging it and why.

Since when has asking someone whether they've been subjected to FGM constituted "criminalising" them?

We should all be challenging FGM because it is a violation of the fundamental dignity of women and girls, it endangers their health and the health of their babies, and it deprives them of sexual pleasure.

I'm frankly sick of being told that I have to shut up about clear injustices because I'm white, whilst at the same time being told that I'm not doing enough to support Black and brown women. Which is it? It can't be both.

From Reem Alsalem on X
https://x.com/i/status/2002627055565889712

Attempts to embellish #fgm, a heinous crime against women and girls, is shocking and unacceptable. It is an attempt to rewrite international law. Efforts like these are examples of the regression that we are seeing, seeking to upend years of progress and achievements in protecting females against sex and gender bases violence.

I recall in the early 90s, talking to a friend who worked high up with consultants in a London hospital.
On a "cultural awareness" course, the attendees were given three scenarios, only one could be deemed sufficiently risky to the child to necessitate reporting the parent to the authorities.
Mother is African, traditional culture, doesn't speak English, just arrived here, ill, in bed, no father at home.
One was the 9 year son old allowed to walk alone to school, crossing many very busy roads.
Another was the 9 year old allowed to cook for him and mother on a hot oven.
Lastly, the mother has a "very very close" relationship to the son, some "physical closeness" (I really don't want to get banned from here, but you may get my drift), that the boy as a patient mentions to my friend in his professional medical capacity.
When my friend said all three needed to be reported, he was told no, pick one.
When he then chose the extreme physical closeness/domestic sexual abuse option...he was told he was wrong, that he should understand different cultures have different rules, and that even though in an indigenous British family, that would be something to report, in the circumstances of this family, it would be stepping on social mores, and akin to othering the family and their culture.
Now we hear about FGM being re-written from abuse to practice, and I see nothing has changed in the three decades since my friend's experience in the NHS.
The rot has been setting in just as long as society decided that there could be no criticism of any culture and their values and practices.
The changes in FGM are simply the formal confirmation that we've totally lost it in the West.

Yes that works so well with rapists.

You're not one of the Defund the Police lot are you?

Very likely the opposite, that custodial sentences are never long enough.
Rapists are released on the day that victims go into even deeper therapy for their pain.
Men carry on where they left off, women suffer a genuine life sentence.

Its not an either or approach.

The guidelines of when or if health care professionals should report of record that a woman they are treating has been subjected to FGM on one level has a clear medical relevance.

The onus on staff to report I would think is different if say the woman concerned had undergone FGM in her youth, in another country, as opposed to finding say a young women who had recently been taken by family out of the country and it was clear she had been subjected to FGM.

None of this is relevant to whatever campaigns, political lobbying or publicity that are being run by individual women or women's groups.

But what neither scenario needs if self indulgent students in western universities writing and then having published total whataboutery.

" ... it is important that journals do not “give a free pass” to academics and scrutinise their arguments, ensuring they are grounded in logic and reason not ideology.

“The goal of academia is to investigate the truth, not to be ideological, not to be an activist, but to understand what’s going on using all kinds of evidence and whatever tools and methods we can.

“Across much of the West, there has been declining public confidence and public trust in universities. If universities want continued public support and government financial handouts, academics need to ensure that we’re doing research that serves the public interest in terms of being logical, empirical, rational.

“My belief is that the role of academia should be to investigate, to understand and to inform the broader public, using the principles of logic, reason, empiricism.”

This is part of the wider problem of maybe not just queer politics, but how queer politics has infiltrated and diverted universities. Part of the function of queer politics is to "question and disrupt". But never acknowledges that those who can indulge in this type of behaviour are usually people with privilege, who fear no comeback on their mental gymnastics.

Not on the same level of disrespect but this is another example https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5462904-awfully-queer-science

Yes it depends, that is why FGM is categorised into 4 types. Labiaplasty surgery is physiologically the same as FGM type 2 (reduction or removal of the labia major or minor)

What you describe is FGM type 1 (clitoral reduction or removal) combined with type 4 (sewing up, piercing, and other harms)

Not at all. I’m just pointing out that VAWG is not taken seriously in the UK. Look up arrest, charging and conviction rates for any VAWG and you will find laws criminalising VAWG are rarely enforced.

The plastic surgery which does the same things as a few types of FGM is slowly normalising FGM. Families of cultures that coerce teens into FGM are accessing it under these now perfectly legal and socially acceptable plastic surgery routes in the UK. They’ve learned after a couple of generations of being British that it’s ok to convince their daughters to say that they need to be “pretty” down there for future happiness and marriage prospects instead of saying they need to look a certain way down there for modesty.

The increasing popularity of these plastic surgery procedures that would be FGM if it were for modesty and done in a back room with a razor but are apparently ok when done for beauty and done in a doctor’s office and the fact that since 2015 to 2025 we have gone from a few hundred under 18s getting it done to over a thousand every year is a slow creep.

The comparison is valid, but not to justify FGM but to point out that it is colonising us. We are starting to do FGM only in the name of beauty instead of modesty and calling it cosmetic surgery.

It could be banned on under-18s and that would stop this in its tracks.