Female Genital Cutting and Aboriginal Australia
"Secret women's business" should be respected, yes. I am not female or Aboriginal, but here discuss indigenous female genital cutting practices only in an effort to understand the whole picture of sex discrimination law, in Australia, and how it may relate to the fundamental human right known as genital integrity. I had my (what should be!) secret men's business sliced up as a helpless newborn infant who could not give informed consent. Over sixty years later I still have extra holes in my penis that shouldn't be there, and a missing foreskin.
A year or so back, former Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, attended the big anti-FGM summit. During her term, as Commissioner, Aboriginal boys, who were sitting in pools of their own (circumcision) blood, had to be airlifted to hospital for lifesaving emergency treatment. I did notice Broderick would not ever defend genital integrity as a human right; not if it concerned male children. Nor has any other Sex Discrimination Commissioner, for that matter, ever done so. Not in thirty years!
In fully understanding Australian and international human rights law, as regards genital cutting and sex discrimination, it would seem appropriate and necessary to compare how Australia's First People are treated, and why, when both male genital cutting and female genital cutting traditions were practised in Australia for hundreds, if not thousands, of years before colonisation. The fact is, Australian Aboriginals practise/d both types of genital cutting. One type is now penalised, and one is not. One gender is protected by law, and the other is not. I am a broadminded civil libertarian, and believe adults should be free to cut up their own genitals as they see fit. However, it would appear to be sex discrimination if children of one gender are protected by law and the other is abandoned to the knife.
Why would any (competent and responsible) Sex Discrimination Commissioner leave one gender to be cut and to bleed , undefended, and, at the same time, be an active proponent of genital integrity as a human right for females? There is a lot of differential and unfavorable treatment of males, going on, it would seem, by various (misandrist) Human Rights Commission staff. Surely male children, whether Aboriginal, or not, should deserve equal treatment on grounds of their gender (whether that means equal right to genital integrity or equal right to be cut)?
So, a quick look, here in this video, at female genital cutting in Australian Aboriginal society. Please keep in mind, too, that 85% of all female genital cutting, done worldwide, is less severe, less neurologically damaging, than is male genital cutting.
Here are the links discussed in this video:
http://www.nofgmoz.com/
https://www.adelaide.edu.au/apsa/docs...
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Public...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-23...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-23...
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