Argument from Ignorance and/or Hatred

In a letter to the editor of the Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Utah, a reader attempts to make a point about Sharia Law. I’m not going to wade into the political aspect of this. But the reader makes an informative error. He writes:

When girls reach age 12 to 14 they are held down, naked, by usually their mothers or as many men that it takes to hold them down, as they cut their clitoris off. They say this helps to control them. Then the girl’s legs are wrapped together for 40 days so the wound can heal.

I could quibble, but this more or less sets up the issue. FGM is evil. But the reader loses his narrative in the next paragraph. He gets basic facts wrong that contribute to a mistaken distinction that doesn’t exist within the principles he aims to establish. (emphasis added)

They tell the little girls that this will make it more pleasurable for their husband when they get married while being denied any sexual pleasure themselves. This mutilation of the genitals makes it painful to have sex and extremely painful to bare children. Everyone knows that they have to be covered up head to toe and escorted by a male wherever they go, but I wonder if the American people know that it is OK to beat their wives by hand or by stick as needed. Or that they are forced to perform oral sex with their husbands, who have not been circumcised so the penis stinks due to the buildup of urine. If the woman complains the husband cuts off her nose.

The principles he implies are the basics. Females possess the rights to their bodily integrity and autonomy. They should be free from unnecessary harm without their consent. Cutting their healthy genitals violates them. It is bodily harm. They are mutilated.

The problem here is that the same rights exist for males. Non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting individual, not just the genital mutilation of girls, violates the principles involved, regardless of the extent. The husbands of these women are almost certainly circumcised. Their genitals are not cut to the extent that their wives’ genitals are cut. They are cut, though. I’m not aware of any cultures that cut females that don’t also cut males. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.) In Egypt male circumcision is practiced as a part of Islam.

The reader’s comment that the husbands are not circumcised would be bad enough on its own because it’s inaccurate. The additional “so the penis stinks due to the buildup of urine” is projection. It strives to distinguish forms of non-therapeutic genital cutting with an ignorant dismissal of basic hygiene. It seeks to reiterate a validity and desirability for male circumcision, without regard for the male’s preference. The issue the reader raises but fails to crystallize is the use of force.

Forcing genital mutilation on girls is wrong. Forcing wives to have any form of sex is wrong. That extends to males, as well, if the desire to protect females is to carry complete moral weight. Any system – whether political, cultural, or religious – that permits or encourages the use of force by one citizen against another citizen for any reason other than self-defense is illegitimate. The reader’s core point is correct. He should apply it as a universal to all people, not selectively as an instrument endorsing his own cultural relativism. (He is not unique in this, of course. Commonality doesn’t justify it.)

2 thoughts on “Argument from Ignorance and/or Hatred”

  1. This editorial is so full of misinformation I can’t believe the paper even published it. Surely someone in their newsroom must see shocking number of problems, not just the ones related to circumcision.

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