Yesterday we published a final-year law degree paper by a 27-year-old American lawyer, Andrew DeLaney, concerning the double standards behind international initiatives to ban FGM, whilst doing nothing about male circumcision. In some countries, most notably the US, medical establishments actively support MGM, presumably because it’s a lucrative business.
We’ve just received some characteristically insightful comments from Herbert Purdy, and thought it was worthy of a blog piece. It takes up the rest of this piece:
“This is an astonishingly lucid and balanced discussion of the entire issue of male and female circumcision, and Andrew DeLaney should be applauded for his scholarship, balance, and sheer common sense. I urge people to read this paper. It is well written and as clear as a bell.
When one does so, one realises how even the terms that are used, female genital MUTILATION versus male CIRCUMCISION, an accurate and non-emotive term, differentiate the feminist dogma and motives gliding like a viper through the entire issue.
Given that female circumcision (I choose not to use the emotive term; I refuse to play the game) is, and always has been carried out by women, and given that it is women following their ancient customs in the society in which they live, who not only practice it, but promote it and even defend it against attempts to ban it, the undoubted anti-male, anti-patriarchy, western, feminist agenda behind the drive to ban it worldwide is exposed as yet another feminist canard.
It actually doesn’t matter whether one agrees with the principle or the practice of genital mutilation, the undoubted double standards being applied by national governments and international bodies such as the UN who are enslaved to feminism, is what should be concerning us. For what amount to absolutely equivalent procedures, carried out for the same reasons, somehow it is wrong for girls and OK for boys? I don’t think so. It needs to be considered as a whole, not a gender issue.
If feminism really was a movement concerned with equality, feminists would be working to further equality and human rights across the board. It would be taking on the entire subject, rather than slanting it only to women’s perspectives. The hypocrisy makes me heave. Is there no end to how far this rabid feminist ideology will go in furtherance of its undoubted gender-based war on men, fathers, boys? When will the world wake up to the hypocrisy and cultural hegemony of this divisive creed?”