CIN (Circumcision Information Network) 3:24

CIRCUMCISION INFORMATION NETWORK
Volume 3, Number 24, 20 June 1996
E-mail:  CircInfoNe@aol.com

The purpose of this weekly 1000-word bulletin is to educate the public about
and to protect children and other non-consenting persons from genital
mutilation.  Readers are encouraged to copy and redistribute it, and to
contribute written material.  --Rich Angell, Editor.

MUTILATION FEAR WINS ASYLYM BID
Contributed by hugh@young.wn.planet.gen.nz (Hugh Young)
From the Evening Post, Wellington New Zealand, 17 June, p8 page-lead:
WASHINGTON. - A United States ruling granting asylum to an African  woman who
feared ritual genital mutilation if she was sent home to Togo has been hailed
as a victory for women worldwide.

The ruling last week by the US Board of Immigration Appeals in the case of
Fauziya Kasinga found that she should be allowed to stay in the United States
because she had a well-founded fear of persecution in her homeland.

Female genital mutilation is practised in many African countries and some
parts of the Middle East.  It involves removal of part or all of the clitoris
and can cause extensive bleeding and loss of sexual sensation.

The ruling sets a precedent and could lead to a flood of other applicants
seeking asylum on the same grounds.

"The applicant has a well-founded fear of persecution in the form of female
genital mutilation if returned to Togo," board chairman Paul  Schmidt said in
his written opinion.

The ruling was supported by 10 of the other 11 board members.  One member
dissented without a written opinion.
- Reuter.

MALES, TOO, FACE, THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL.
by Lawn Griffiths
Tribune writer
Contributed by typist DYKS96A@prodigy.com (GEORGE HILL)
This article appeared in five Phoenix, AZ metro area daily papers on Sunday,
May, 12, 1996.  They are the Mesa Tribune, Tempe Daily News Tribune, Chandler
Arizonan Tribune, Scottsdale Progress Tribune, and Gilbert Tribune.  Edited
here for brevity.

Our society asks the question:  While we can ignore cultural practices that
violate human rights in Gambia, can we dismiss them when they are brought to
the United States?

Most of us are repulsed that girls 7 to 12 years old are held down and
subjected to such violations of their bodies, forever taking away such
feeling and sensation in a part of their anatomy that so defines their
gender.  Among other things we would call it child abuse.

As I followed 19-year-old Fauziya Kasinga's case, I was painfully reminded
that most parents in our own culture are no less insensitive to the issue --
only the names of the society and he gender have changed.

Each day, many thousands of newborn boys in this country are strapped down
against their will.  Healthy, functional, nerve-rich tissue is irretrievably
removed from their genitals.

Just as Egyptian or Sudanese fathers can confidently explain away the value
of their actions on daughters with broad smiles and sincere arguments, so
American parents smugly rationalize why they circumcise their sons.  They
justify it in so many ways: the majority of American boys have it done to
them, the penis can be kept cleaner, the male organ is already so erogenous
so what's the big deal about losing a few more nerve endings, that daddy is
circumcised so Johnny should be too, that there might be a small chance that
the wife of an uncircumcised male contracting cancer and that circumcision
is, well, "so much more civilized."  Wasn't it Elvis Presley who joked how
his had been left intact and was the 'hillbilly" kind?

Those parents never ask why nature put foreskin on the penis in the first
place. (among other things as a protection of the glans), nor do they wonder
why circumcision is rarely practiced in the rest of the world outside of
Jewish and Islamic religious practices.

For most of my 50 years, I have resented that my registered nurse mother and
farmer father subjected me and my twin brother to the procedure shortly after
our births.  Parents were well-meaning, and Dr. Benjamin Spock advised it.

Beyond the nagging feeling of incompleteness, there has been two other major,
and important issues: 1) I imagine what it would be like to be fully
functional, to have all those nerve endings and fully moveable tissue? 2)
 And there's the issue of having had my body violated, altered forever
against my will.

Early in my marriage I informed my wife that under no circumstances would I
allow a son born in our family to suffer the same fate.  So I was almost
merciless in my remarks to our doctor when our son was born in 1975, and Doc
was ready to perform what's been called "the unkindest cut."  I felt
triumphant having told him -- and the rest of the relatives with vigor that
no such child abuse, no such genital mutilation would ever come to our son.

Circumcision is commonly dismissed as "just a little snip of skin that is
hardly noticeable."

But depending on how much is removed that little snip of skin can grow into
12 to 15 square inches of functioning skin for the adult typically 30 to 50
percent of the area.

And doctors don't report any measurable percentage of uncircumcised adult
male electing to go to their doctors to volunteer to have the procedure done
-- to have carried out what their parents failed to have done.

Ultimately it comes down to the same human rights issue related to the case
of the young woman for Togo.  Whose body is it anyway?

STUPID QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Neurologists have assured us that because a baby's nervous system is
undeveloped at the time of circumcision, he cannot feel pain."
(Rabbi) Eugene J. Cohen
Pres., Brith Milah Board of New York
As quoted in the letters to editor of the New York Times, 20 May 1996

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION call NOCIRC, the National Organization of
Circumcision Information Resource Centers at (415) 488-9883, fax (415)
488-9660.  Ask about the resource provider nearest you.  For written
information, write NOCIRC, PO Box 2512, San Anselmo, CA 94979, with SASE
and/or donation if possible.  For further internet information, contact the
Doctors Opposing Circumcision Web site at
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~gcd/DOC.  For an up-to-date, and mostly
complete archive of the CIN the URL is http://www.cirp.org/CIRP/news/cin/.
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