Sexual Mutilations: A Human Tragedy. - Review - book review

Journal of Sex Research, August, 2000 by Mary S. Willis

Sexual Mutilations: A Human Tragedy. Edited by George C. Denniston and Marilyn Fayre Milos. New York: Plenum Press, 1997, 237 pages. Cloth, $104.50.

The topic of female circumcision continues to elicit strong reactions throughout the world. Perhaps more accurately described as genital mutilation, the practice has been the subject of novels, nonfiction volumes (both academic and popular), and newspaper and magazine articles. Bestsellers such as Walker and Grose's (1992) Possessing the Secret of Joy and Kassindja and Bashir's (1998) Do They Hear You When You Cry, have served to inform the world's population that the practice has not ceased and that in some cases, such "gender-based persecution" has provided the justification for asylum in Western countries. Additional works regarding female genital mutilation (FGM) are released annually, and the year 2000 is no exception. New volumes will cover an array of related topics: international laws and policies (Rahman & Toubia, 2000), anthropological perspectives (Gruenbaum, 2000; Shell-Duncan & Hernlund, 2000), and a children's educational novel (Kessler, Gauch, & Colon, 2000), to name a few. In the first six months of 2000, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor published nearly 20 articles that referenced FGM, each of these educating the reader and keeping the issue in the public eye.

Although all of the recent publications contribute to an understanding of the practice of female circumcision, none has integrated material on the more widely practiced circumcision of males. Moreover, few of these efforts have incorporated descriptions of the actual physiological and biological changes that are associated with the alteration of one's genitalia. Finally, seldom does one see a volume that incorporates the cultural diversity associated with these proscribed genital alterations and the historical perspective that can be linked to these often painful and debilitating changes. Understanding the need for an all-encompassing volume, Denniston and Milos have edited presentations from the 1996 Fourth International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations within Sexual Mutilations: A Human Tragedy. The 23 resulting chapters cover the gamut of issues related to genital mutilation and a wide range of perspectives from many disciplines. In addition, the volume includes a much-needed FGM resource list as well as a chapter devoted to The Ashley Montagu Resolution To End the Genital Mutilation of Children Worldwide. The difficulties for the reader, however, are many. These include the need to wade through repetitive material; a lack of organization regarding the order and content of chapters; limited ethnographic material regarding circumcision of both males and females; a heavy emphasis on the white, Western, male experience; inclusion of papers as they might have been delivered at the conference rather than as book chapters; and a number of disconcerting cultural descriptions.

Sexual Mutilations: A Human Tragedy begins with a chapter on the geography of genital cutting, reviewing the regions of the world that have historically practiced circumcision on one or both sexes. The author, James DeMeo, also includes a very interesting distribution map illustrating the age at which males are circumcised throughout the world. A comparable map has not been constructed for females and the reader is not provided with information regarding the age of FGM among communities practicing female circumcision worldwide. Unfortunately, the remainder of DeMeo's contribution includes a psychoanalytic framework of those communities that perform circumcision on one or both sexes, reducing cultural diversity and history to a simple formulaic list. Moreover, general descriptions of circumcision are both Western and derogatory. For example, women within a "cultural unit" are said to "gather about the poor girl to chant and beat drums and tambourines" (p. 7). Clearly not all of the peoples that practice FGM have such a gathering, let alone chant or possess drums and tambourines. DeMeo suggests that "female mutilations exist within an hierarchical, sex-repressive and child repressive cultural complex" (p. 9), and although reference is made to cultural myths, citations are not provided. Finally, DeMeo compares genital mutilation to child abuse. This comparison cannot be a valid one given that FGM is a culturally-sanctioned behavior whereas child abuse, as uniquely defined by each culture, is both forbidden and taboo.

DeMeo's work is followed by that of Frederick Hodges, an historical piece detailing the way in which genital mutilation was institutionalized in the United States. Well written and engaging, the reader learns that, in fact, genital mutilation became a rather common treatment for masturbation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the U.S. Moreover, for most of the twentieth century, articles were published describing the health benefits of male circumcision, ending in 1986 with the notion that circumcision could prevent HIV transmission. Hodges also outlines the various industries that have grown out of the practice of male circumcision in the United States, such as the Gomco Clamp and the multimillion dollar business of supplying foreskin to research laboratories. One also discovers that the U.S. has the highest rate of circumcision as well as the highest rates of genital cancers and sexually transmitted diseases: Ergo, circumcision does not reduce the incidence rate for diseases previously linked to uncircumcised males. More recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics has revised its policy statement. Although they continue to claim that there are positive benefits that result from circumcision, routine circumcision is no longer recommended.