A closer look at Genital Mutilation aka Circumcision

*I watched on as the Doctor manipulates the combination of instruments to slowly remove the prepuce while the little baby wriggles in agony and lets out a shriek. Few drops of tears unconsciously rolled down my cheeks as I telepathically felt the pains of being mutilated without sedation, a lot of questions running through my curious mind. My nephew is in the process of becoming a man, at least, that is how they call it in my local parlance.*

It was the first time I will be witnessing a male baby's sexual organ being surgically recreated and the first time I genuinely questioned the practice in my mind, even though I grew up to the consciousness of being circumcised and so are all the men around me, both young and old. Seeing a grown-up man with an uncircumcised reproductive organ in this part of the world will most likely be an exercise in futility. 

The practice of male circumcision is quite old and although the majority of renowned Historians traced it down to the biblical account of Abraham according to the book of Genesis, James Dameo opined that the act has been in existence long before then and actually originated from the Eastern part of Africa. 

In the modern context, there are two opposing schools of thought as far as the practice of male genital mutilation is concerned. While it seems to be of cultural origin, researchers have been able to deduce a lot of medical benefits inherent in it and as a result, the first school of thought consists of people that are proponents of the act based on the medical benefits or promotion of culture or the combination of the two.

The other school of thought consists of people that are against the practice based on the argument that removing the foreskin of the penis can constitute a lot of health and psychological hazards to the male sex. However, while overwhelming evidence seems to exist to show the medical benefits of male circumcision, the same cannot be said for the medical hazards. The evidence to support the latter is far and in between and often based on the error associated with the procedure itself.

Reading through several publications on this subject matter and it can be concluded that male circumcision is prevalent in almost all the countries all over the world although at varying degrees. As at the year 2016, about 37-39% of the male gender all over the world were reported to have been circumcised with the bulk of the percentage coming from African and the Middle Eastern countries. Some of the countries in these regions have as high as 99.8% circumcised males in their populations emphasizing the sentiment in some quarters that the practice is majorly for cultural and religious reasons. 

Whatever figure that exists on the prevalence of male circumcision across the globe might not be totally accurate except if such figure only represents that particular period. The age distribution of the male gender in each country might play a huge role in influencing these figures based on the fact that the age at which a male is circumcised varies from country to country or even from locality to locality within the same country.

How about female genital mutilation?

One of the things that crossed my mind while witnessing the circumcision of my nephew is that if the act can bring so much pain to the male child, how much more to the female child? 

Knowing quite well the difference in the anatomical structures of the male and female sex organ, there is likely going to be a different threshold of pains inflicted during circumcision. Aside from the anatomical difference, research has it that male and female actually experience pains differently primarily due to hormonal difference. This thus means that the pain threshold during female circumcision could be significantly more/less than that of their male counterparts.

Be that as it may, while there are scientifically plausible reasons for male circumcision, the female circumcision does not only lack any scientific or cultural benefits but has a whole lot of medical and psychological hazards to the female child. The few advocates of FGM that I know give a bunch of scientifically irrelevant, culturally barbaric and spiritually corrupt bunch of reasons to support their claims. The most ludicrous of these being that uncircumcised girl child grows up to be sexually promiscuous. What!

Over the years, there has been a worldwide campaign against FGM and the dangers inherent in it but statistics has it that this act is still deeply rooted and widely in practice in some regions of the world - parts of Africa, Middle East, and Asia to be precise. According to the World's Health Organization, about 3 million girls are at risk of being genitally mutilated every year. There is no evidence to show that this figure is on the decline every year.

Playing around a polling App concerning FGM

Lumeos is one of the Dapps on the EOS blockchain specially designed for creating and answering polls. There are between 8,000 to 10,000 globally distributed users of this app and each poll created can be responded to within a period of 7 days. It is on this application I decided to bring up the subject matter of FGM a few weeks ago - precisely on the 17th of May, 2019. The outcome of the poll is in the image below.

Perhaps I did not really capture the subject well as far as the options in the poll are concerned but the outcome clearly showed that the practice of FGM is still in place in several regions. Out of 570 respondents, 26% admitted that FGM is still in practice in their countries while 16% admitted they have never heard of the subject. Interestingly, 40% of the respondents showed their bias for the first option on the app, an option that was made invalid as far as the poll is concerned.

While this poll might not really say a lot about the status quo of the prevalence of FGM all over the world, it definitely says something. I will like to read your opinions on this in the comment section.

Thank you for reading.

Resources

https://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/fgm/prevalence/en/

http://www.noharmm.org/geography.htm

http://www.cirp.org/library/history/

Tobian, A. A., & Gray, R. H. (2011). The medical benefits of male circumcision. JAMA, 306(13), 1479–1480. doi:10.1001/jama.2011.1431

Moses, S., Bailey, R. C., & Ronald, A. R. (1998). Male circumcision: assessment of health benefits and risks. Sexually transmitted infections, 74(5), 368–373. doi:10.1136/sti.74.5.368

Morris, B. J., Wamai, R. G., Henebeng, E. B., Tobian, A. A., Klausner, J. D., Banerjee, J., & Hankins, C. A. (2016). Estimation of country-specific and global prevalence of male circumcision. Population health metrics, 14, 4. doi:10.1186/s12963-016-0073-5

https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/chronic-pain-conditions#2