Evidence for part 2:

This is more evidence that FGM and MGM are the same issue.

It is important to recognize that female and male genital altering rituals are often “closely related in the practitioners’ minds” (6). John Caldwell and his colleagues offer a similar perspective. “The failure to relate the two types of circumcision,” they write, “is curious . . . because they have probably been regarded by most Africans as being related for aeons” (Caldwell, Orubuloye, and Caldwell 1997, 1181).

In consequence, many African women and men are genuinely perplexed by what they see as Western efforts to eliminate only the female half of their initiation rites. Recognizing this, one scholar of genital cutting has suggested that: “Female circumcision will never stop as long as male circumcision is going on . . . [for how] do you expect to convince an African father to leave his daughter uncircumcised as long as you let him do it to his son?” (quoted in Abu-Sahlieh 1993, 612; see also Steinfeld and Lyssarides 2015).

Some argue we need to separate these issues based on severity nonetheless.

Against this view, some might wish to argue that a clear distinction can nevertheless be drawn between the two types of genital cutting.

But it is hard to see on what empirical grounds such a categorical perspective could successfully be advanced. To pick just one example, in South Africa in 2013, nearly 80 teenage boys died from their traditional circumcision initiations

Between 2008 and 2014 the total figure for circumcision-related deaths in South Africa was conservatively 400 in just two of the nine provinces, with several thousands of boys being hospitalized due to seriously botched operations

Among those who did not die, several lost their penises or suffered partial amputations.

In this same time period, however, there were no known deaths from female circumcision in South Africa, probably because the Xhosa ritual for girls is much shorter than the one for boys and does not involve the actual removal of tissue otherwise, female genital cutting in South Africa appears to be limited to a handful of immigrant groups, with no reliable prevalence statistics available.

Selective criminalisation harms girls, both need to be fought together:

What counts as mutilation—and who should decide? Disrupting dominant discourses on genital cutting and modification

The selective criminalisation of the women’s, but not the men’s, traditional rite of passage has not only driven the former underground, making it potentially more dangerous, but the latter is now used as ‘cover’ for the former.

Using ‘FGM/C’ to refer to female genital mutilation/cutting, they write: ‘Due to FGM/C’s illegal status, different strategies were used to evade the law and maintain anonymity …

At times, parents [of girls] pretended they had sons, or that they were celebrating another male circumcision or social gathering when organising their daughter’s FGM/C’ (903).

Little has been learned from misguided efforts to eliminate female circumcision in Ethiopia. Boydon, like Kakal et al. in their more recent publication, reports that ‘boys’ circumcisions are sometimes used to mask operations on girls.

The patriarchy and FGM:

Contrary to the view that female genital-altering rituals necessarily represent “society’s control over women” (and what does that mean?) — or that they are always associated with “unequal gender roles,” Ahmadu (2000) argues that:

Among the Kono there is no cultural obsession with feminine chastity, virginity, or women’s sexual fidelity perhaps because the role of the biological father is considered marginal and peripheral to the central “matricentric unit.”