The Construction of Gender and Sexuality in the Approach of Key International Law Actors to the Circumcision of Children

Abstract

This article analyses the approach of key international actors to the circumcision of children, seeking, first, to understand why the policy towards the circumcision or genital cutting of girls is so different from that towards boys. As part of this project, the article considers the literature on the situation in international law, concluding that the legal position is unclear and debatable. The article notes, however, that the policy difference is justified not by key actors by reference to international law but instead by reference to their theoretical understanding of how dynamics of gender and power infuse the genital cutting of girls. The article suggests that this approach is deficient because it can only compute inter-gender harm and not intra-gender harm, with the consequence that it fails to protect boy children from harms, which a better crafted theoretical model of gender and sexuality would capture.

Genital Cutting as Gender Oppression: Time to Revisit the WHO Paradigm

“…For decades, scholars have called attention to troubling inconsistencies in the WHO's policies on medically unnecessary 3 genital cutting practices, especially those imposed on children (Junos, 1998;Toubia, 1999;Lightfoot-Klein et al, 2000;Ehrenreich and Barr, 2005;Oba, 2008;Svoboda and Darby, 2008;DeLaet, 2009;Askola, 2011;van den Brink and Tigchelaar, 2012;Svoboda, 2013;Coene, 2018;Johnsdotter, 2018;Sandland, 2019). The WHO conceptualizes "female genital mutilation" (FGM) as all non-therapeutic cutting, however slight, of the external genitalia of (non-intersex) 4 females-irrespective of the individual's consent-and categorically condemns such cutting as a violation of the human right to bodily integrity.…”

Males and females have different anatomy: is this relevant to circumcision? A reply to ‘The prosecution of Dawoodi Bohra women’ by Richard Shweder

“…Cohen (2005) has explored in detail the question of whether ritual male circumcision expresses inappropriate gender inequity. Circumcision has been held to disfavour males, who are singled out for this invasive physical trauma, while females are spared (Coene, 2018), Conversely, circumcision has been said to devalue women (Hoffman, 1995;Sandland, 2019). Bohra practice, ostensibly treating males and females alike, seems to avoid both of these objections.…”