Thursday, December 14, 2006

 

Circumcision: No Time to Waste, for Men or Women

We wake up to the trumpet of good news: a new study shows that circumcised men run half the risk of HIV/AIDS infection compared to uncircumcised men. A campaign is already underway to get men to voluntarily get themselves circumcised.

Excellent!

But we should also be acting more strongly on what we already knew: that the practice of female genital “circumcision,” most often carried out on young helpless girls in unhygienic conditions without anesthesia, sharply increases the probability that they will contract AIDS.

Just how sharp is that increase? Well, it would be nice to know, wouldn’t it? Common sense tells us that the practice (which usually involves cutting off the clitoris and labia with a razor or knife, and then sewing up the bloody wound to leave only a small hole for urine and menstrual blood to flow through) makes a woman more vulnerable to AIDS infection because she is far more likely to bleed every time she has intercourse. Indeed, intercourse for young women who have been circumcised can be a nightmare, since the man literally needs to “break into” the vaginal canal, repeatedly opening and tearing the wound.

You would think that given the fact that some 140 million living women in Africa have been subjected to female genital mutilation, studies would have been done by now to measure the connection between FGM and AIDS. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence, and the link is clear to anyone who understands the connection between sex, blood and HIV transmission. But as far as I’m aware, there have been no major research programs undertaken in this area.

Not enough profit in such a study, perhaps? FGM can’t be cured with an expensive vaccine or drug cocktail. Changing cultural practices and beliefs takes a long time, and lots of face-to-face communication with people who are naturally suspicious of outsiders.

Tostan is one African-based group that’s doing outstanding work in educating people in rural communities in Senegal and Guinea about the harmfulness of FGM. This month, 150 villages in the West African country of Guinea (where more than 97% of women undergo FGM) decided collectively, after months of workshops and education by Tostan's community organizers, to abandon the practice. That's great news, and hopefully will give more momentum to the growing movement to send FGM the way of Chinese footbinding of women.

I'm very glad to learn that studies have been done on the benefits of circumcision for men in regards to HIV/AIDS. But if we’re talking about circumcision, it seems at least as urgent, if not more so, to give a push to the campaigns already underway to eradicate the practice of female genital “circumcision” of girls. How about some studies on the health risks of female "circumcision"?

It's estimated that two million girls each year are subjected to this life-endangering ordeal. We don't have time to waste.

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Comments:
The studies you have called for have already been done. Their findings: FGM helps prevent the contraction of HIV as well (see links below from the International AIDS Society Conference 2005). While this conference also created tons of media hype about male circumcision being effective in curtailing HIV, the mainstream Western media chose NOT to run stories on the benefits of female circumcision.

It's nothing new that circumcision is supposed to be the cure-all for almost every major disease known to man (anything from masturbation and hip problems to cervical and penile cancer). For some reason, however, we have a yearly media conflagration about how wonderful the practice is because it cures the disease du jour. What we must understand is that the people doing these studies probably care a lot more about promoting circumcision than they do about fighting AIDS. What we also must realize is that female and male circumcision are one in the same. They are the mutilation of the sex organ. The foreskin, the female part of the man, the enclosure is cut away from the male just as the androgenous part of the female, the clitoris, is cut away from the woman. Forced infant male circumcision is just as much of a human rights violation as holding down a female and cutting parts of her genitals. It needs to be eradicated just as female circumcision does. Humans invented circumcision thounsands of years ago (not to cure AIDS!) and we've been looking for justification ever since. Forced infant male circumcision is just as much of a human rights violation as holding down a female and cutting parts of her genitals. It needs to be eradicated just as female circumcision does.

http://www.ias-2005.org/planner/Abstracts.aspx?AID=3138

http://www.ias-2005.org/planner/Presentations/ppt/3138.ppt
 
I know this is an old article, but a I agree with you. Comparing male and female circumcision is just a distraction from the real problem; FGM.

FGM cant be compared with circumcision, the former damages a girls sex life while circumcision is a benefit for both the male and female; it's cleaner, it looks better and the guy performs better (lasts longer) so both enjoy sex even more. The only concern around circumcision should revolve around how to make more men do it and how to produce an aesthetically pleasing result after circumcision.
 
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