Human Rights Violation?
There are three reasons that female circumcision is viewed as a human rights violation:
- Informed consent
- Patriarchic oppression
- Violence against women
The type II and type III forms of female circumcision are most often performed on young girls. Because of their young age their parents are the ones who give consent for the procedure. With such an traumatic and scarring procedure many people believe that it should not be allowed until the child is old enough to make an informed decision herself about whether she should have the procedure or not.
FC is thought of, especially in Western cultures, as a way to control women. Men take away women’s sexual freedom, effectively taking away women’s personal freedom. It could be argued that within the cultures of those that perform FC gender roles are defined differently than in cultured that condemn the practice of men’s oppression of women.
Female circumcision is usually a violent, painful, and traumatic process. Therefore it is easy to think of it as violence against women. The argument that could be made against this is that it is almost always older women circumcising the young girls. Although, if female circumcision is being forced on the women through their oppression by the men of the community, than it could be argued that FC is violence against women.
Image of tools from DW-World. Distraught image from Tribute.