SWAZILAND: Ingatja Men Reject Circumcision on Cultural Grounds

The Times of Swaziland
January 22, 2015

Ingatja: Circumcision against Swazi culture

by Siusiso Shange

 NGABEZWENI – While the Church Forum and other organisations have embraced circumcision, some members of Ingatja have not.

In an interview, some members of Ingatja, who were found debating about the subject while they waited to be dispersed by the King, said circumcision was against culture. They said the removal of the foreskin was not good for them because it was necessary to ensure that the traditional attire attire known as imvunulo stayed on. “Ideally, when a man dons traditional attire, there is no need for him to wear underwear,” they said.

“Nawulijaha uyancwadza futsi nebetemphilo bayakukhutsata kushaywa ngumoya. Ngaphandle kwemvunulo kufana nekutsi uhamba ngcunu, pho ungahlalaphi nasesisokile,” wondered Bheki Mnisi, who was found buying a product to make umncadvo, which is worn as underwear by males in traditional regalia..

ILLINOIS: AAP exhibits cultural bias in its denial of it

March 21, 2013

AAP Task Force reveals cultural bias while denying it

by Hugh Young

Last August, the American Academy of Pediatrics released its new circumcision policy in a flurry of publicity. The policy claimed that "the benefits outweigh the risks" (without actually comparing them). It fell short of recommending universal infant circumcision, though it was widely reported as having done so, and it recommended that insurance pay for this "non-recommended " procedure.

This week, Pediatrics published a rebuttal from 38 heads or spokespeople for the paediatric associations of Austria, Britain, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, and senior paediatricians in Canada, the Czech Republic, France and Poland, accusing the AAP of cultural bias, and finding fault with its methodology, its conclusions, and its ethics.

The AAP has published their letter with a reply from its "Task Force on Circumcision" that just underlines the same cultural bias for which it was criticised. It basically says "You're another!" without noticing that leaving a child's genitals alone, doing nothing to them, is medically and ethically a different kind of thing from cutting part off.

They reveal their bias even while denying it: they refer to the whole penis as "uncircumcised" and discount the sexual value of the foreskin found by some studies because "the relevance to individuals undergoing circumcision during infancy was questionable." but with no consideration of their relevance to individuals not undergoing circumcision during infancy.

They falsely claim that "approximately half of US males are circumcised, and half are not." In fact, a chart in their own policy indicates the rate is more like 80%. This is in order that they can say "Although that [50:50 ratio] may lead to a more tolerant view toward circumcision in the United States than in Europe, the cultural “bias” in the United States is much more likely to be a neutral one than that found in Europe, where there is a clear bias against circumcision."

In fact, in Europe, the default position is to do nothing, simply to leave the child's body alone. No need for any "cultural bias" or any Task Forces on Leaving Children's Genitals Alone.

They go on "... a culture that is comfortable with both the circumcised penis and the uncircumcised penis would seem predisposed to a more dispassionate analysis of the scientific literature than a culture with a bias that is either strongly opposed to circumcision or strongly in favor of it."
In what mad world is the United States "a culture that is comfortable with" the whole penis when the Task Force won't even call it that? When a TV show can include nine negative references to foreskins and the men with them without exciting comment? (Positive references are virtually unknown.) To rebut the claim of the 38 that the foreskin has a sexual function, the Task Force says:

Members of the task force appreciate that the foreskin has nerve fibers: the task force clearly recommends adequate pain control for infants undergoing circumcision. However, the task force did not move beyond what these studies actually reveal (the foreskin has nerve bundles and pain fibers, the foreskin contains Meissner corpuscles, the inner surface of the foreskin resembles a mucous membrane) to speculate about the effect that circumcision might have on sexual function or pleasure.
The 38 European critics do not need to "speculate": its male members or their male partners will have foreskins. Of course the inner foreskin resembles a mucus membrane, because it is one - like the lips. The lips also "have nerve fibres". Whose first thought about those would be about how to minimise the pain of lip-removal? Who either doubts, or can find a study to prove, that the nerves of the lips are intimately involved in the pleasure of kissing? Who needs one?

The Task Force, both in its policy and this response to its critics, criticises the only study that actually attempted to measure the sensitivity of the foreskin itself by ignoring its main finding - that "male circumcision [removes] the most sensitive part of the penis."

They now admit that the critics' "argument about the basic right to physical integrity is an important one, ..." yet they ignored this important argument in their 2012 policy, and now they contrast it with a new, unmeasured and undocumented claim that "...it is also true that some males will be harmed by not being circumcised." By that reasoning, the man who had to cut his own arm off after it was trapped under a boulder in the desert was "harmed by not having had it previously amputated" but nobody would ever think that meant infant amputation should be given even a moment's consideration - yet this is just "to prevent zipper injury" writ large.

The Task Force says nothing about the critics' case, based on the AAP's own policy, that the diseases circumcision reduces are so rare, or of such late onset, or so readily prevented or treated, that circumcising infants to prevent them is a bad option compared to letting the child grow up to decide the fate of his own genitals.

Its claim that "the benefits outweigh the risks" is now nowhere to be seen, and goes undefended.

Earlier story

MALI: Link between FGC and abuse

Chicago Tribune
September 24, 2012

Genital cutting tied to later abuse risk

By Amy Norton
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who underwent genital cutting as young girls may be at increased risk of physical, sexual or emotional abuse from their husband, a study of women in Mali suggests.

The study, of nearly 7,900 women, found that 22 percent of those with genital mutilation said they'd been physically abused by a husband or male partner. That compared with 12 percent of women who'd never been subjected to the procedure.

...

In the new study, researchers looked at whether there's a link between genital mutilation and a woman's odds of suffering abuse from her partner.

In Mali, where the vast majority of women have undergone genital mutilation, the government has taken steps to raise awareness of the consequences of the practice. But genital mutilation has not been outlawed.

The difficulty is that genital cutting is widely seen as an important cultural tradition, rather than a form of abuse.

"If something is entrenched in a culture, it is difficult to change," said Dr. Hamisu Salihu of the University of South Florida in Tampa, the lead researcher on the new study.

On the other hand, physically abusing your wife - though common in Mali and other African countries - does not have that cultural acceptance, Salihu told Reuters Health.

So being able to frame genital cutting in the context of domestic violence might help change people's views on the practice.

The study, reported in the obstetrics and gynecology journal BJOG, included 7,875 Malian women. The large majority - 6,919 women - had genital mutilation.

Of those women, 22 percent said they'd suffered physical abuse from their partner, while five percent reported sexual abuse and 12 percent emotional abuse.

When the researchers accounted for other factors - like education level and poverty - genital mutilation was linked to two- to three-fold increases in the risk of all three types of abuse.

One of the possible limitations of the study, according to Salihu's team, is that women were asked about sensitive issues. The actual levels of abuse may have been higher than women reported.
Past studies have suggested that across sub-Saharan Africa, half of all women have been abused by a husband or partner.

Salihu said these latest findings suggest that women with genital cutting may be in particular need of screening and counseling for abuse.

...

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/NCx4Kw BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, online August 24, 2012.