Dr Brian Earp1
1National University Of Singapore, Singapore
Biography:
Brian D. Earp, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore, and Associate Professor of Philosophy by courtesy. Brian directs the Oxford-NUS Centre for Neuroethics and Society and is Associate Director of the Yale-Hastings Program on Ethics and Health Policy.
Brian D. Earp, PhD
Centre for Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore, Singapore and Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; brian.earp@gmail.com
Abstract:
The WHO condemns all medically unnecessary female genital cutting (FGC) that is primarily associated with people of color and the Global South, claiming that such FGC violates the human right to bodily integrity regardless of harm-level, degree of medicalization, or consent. However, the WHO does not condemn medically unnecessary FGC that is primarily associated with Western culture, such as elective labiaplasty or genital piercing. Nor does it campaign against any form of medically unnecessary intersex genital cutting (IGC) or male genital cutting (MGC), including forms that are non-consensual or comparably harmful to some types of FGC. These and other apparent inconsistencies risk undermining the perceived authority of the WHO to pronounce on human rights.
In this talk, I consider the practice of female ‘circumcision’ (WHO FGM Type 1a, 2a, or 4) as it is largely practiced within some Muslim communities in South and Southeast Asia. In these communities, the practice for girls is typically less severe than the analogous one for boys, while serving similar socio-religious functions. I ask whether the WHO can justify its selective condemnation of non-Western-associated FGC of all types – including Asian forms – by appealing to the distinctive role of such practices in upholding patriarchal gender systems and furthering sex-based discrimination against women and girls. Rejecting this view, I argue that dismantling patriarchal power structures and reducing sex-based discrimination in FGC-practicing societies requires principled opposition to medically unnecessary, non-consensual genital cutting of all non-consenting individuals, including children, irrespective of their sex traits or socially assigned gender.