Cultures: The Case Of Genital Mutilation

Cultures The Case Of Genital MutilationThis article explained the reasoning and differing views on female genital mutilation. The article describes in detail the three types of female genital mutilation, or FGM. The first is called clitoridectomy, in which part of the clitoris or the whole clitoris is removed. The bleeding caused by this operation is usually stopped by either applying direct push or stitching the wound. The second type of genital berth is call excision. In this procedure, both(prenominal) the clitoris and the labia minora be removed, and the bleeding after the procedure is stopped by stitching up the wound. The third and most extreme method of genital biting is called infibulation. In this method, the entire clitoris and labia minora atomic number 18 removed, and incisions argon made into the labia majora. The raw surfaces of the labia majora are then either stitched together or made to be held together until they heal together. The newly formed skin covers t he urethra and the majority of the vaginal opening. Infibulation is non used as frequently as the clitoridectomy or excision, provided it is still used on rare occasion. No matter which form of genital stinging is used, there brook been many extensive and both(prenominal)times degenerative health hassles associated with female genital mutilation. These include chronic and repeated infections, difficulties in urination and menstruation, pain during intercourse, infertility, and obstruction during childbirth, causing painful tearing and excess bleeding. most(prenominal) of these are caused most by the infibulation method, as it obstructs the most. However, major complications trick still arise from the another(prenominal)(a)wise two methods as well. These complications are generally ignored in cultures where female genital mutilation is legitimate as a cultural norm. This practice is seen as a cultural norm in such countries as Africa and the put East. The World Health O rganization states that between 85 and 115 million women worldwide have undergone genital cutting. Most of these instances have occurred in regions of Africa or the position East, although there are now beginning to be small numbers of cases telled in countries such as Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.It seems that the conclusion world argued for in this article is that the mutilation of female genitalia is wrong, regardless(prenominal) of any persuasion cultural or otherwise. This article makes reference to several cases that argue for the ethical firmness of purpose of female genital mutilation, and it refutes each of these as invalid arguments.The first of these arguments states that it is morally wrong to ping the practices of another country unless we are prepared to compeerly criticize similar practices in our own country, and states that the United States is guilty of doing this. musical composition it may be true that the United States can tend to be oblivious to the rent of other countries in some respects, body image is not one of them. American women are all too aware of what it means to feel pressure to adapt to the right or ideal body image, because of the heavy influence the Western culture feels from the media to look a trustworthy way. The tacit influence the media has on the Western culture is that if you do not look like the women on the television screen, you are a failure. It is untrue for this argument to state that the United States is not critical of themselves in the same way. Therefore, this argument is not valid.The second argument states that it is morally impermissible to criticize the practices of another culture until their own culture is alone free of all evil and immoral practices. This argument is, to put it plainly, ridiculous how can it be morally permissible to ignore a cry for champion just because the one who hears the call is not perfect? This would make helping anybody at any time totally immoral. For shell, a doctor would not be able to help a patient if he engaged in a morally questionable activity at any time in the near past. This goes directly against the Hippocratic Oath that the doctor snaps that explicitly states that he is to help people. This argument is also invalid.The third argument says that female genital mutilation is equal in morality to dieting and body influence in the Western culture. However, there are several basic deviances between the two practices. The first difference is that while dieting and body shaping is completely voluntary, genital mutilation is an involuntary procedure. The father makes the decision about whether or not to make is daughter get into in genital mutilation. The girl is then held down by several grown women while the procedure is performed so she doesnt jerk away. Dieting and body shaping are completely by choice, regardless of the pressure one may feel from the media or their peers. Another difference is that genital mutilation cannot be undone. Dieting, on the other hand, is very easily reversed. A third difference is that genital mutilation is mostly performed in unsafe and unsanitary conditions that children should not be exposed to, and dieting is not. A fourth difference is that female genital mutilation causes extreme health risks, not limited to death. Dieting only causes problems like this when taken to extremes, such as anorexia and bulimia. These are both reversible and treatable. A fifth difference is that female genital mutilation is usually performed on girls much too young to know the difference, or unconstipated give consent. (Even if she were old enough, consent would be irrelevant anyway.) Dieting, on the other hand, is something young adults and adults partake in. All of these differences illustrated are more than enough to prove that dieting and genital mutilation are not even close to being related in any sense. Therefore, this argument is also invalid.The fourt h argument states that female genital mutilation involves the loss of a function that is not vitally essential to the lives of those losing it, and that the Western culture attaches far too much significance to it. To imply that genital cutting is depriving a woman of sexual pleasure is to say that she is merely a sexual being, and that is degrading to women. There is no difference between genital cutting and leading a feel of celibacy. While the outcome of genital cutting and celibacy may be the same, we cannot say that the two are equal. Celibacy can be ended at any time, if the individual so take ons. That is the fundamental difference choice. Female genital mutilation is not optional, voluntary, or reversible. Therefore, this argument is invalid because the exposit do not match the outcome.ENTRY 2Sex Consequences World Population Growth vs. Reproductive Rights by Margaret P. BattinThis article addresses the issue of world creation growth while also explaining how the milita ry man race can have children within the carrying capacity of the land and the environment around them, thus proving more responsible.The involution in the article is that tender being can reproduce at a rate that strips the land of vital, intent sustaining resources by overpopulating it. This can be dangerous and life threatening to the sympathetic race as a whole. Land is a finite resource and can only sustain and support a certain number of people. Anything beyond that number could be fatal. According to the author, Battin, our current world population is 5.8 billion people. The growth rate of the population is that it doubles once round every 40 years. At this rate, the population is set to pull ahead 12.5 billion by the end of the century. Another 40 years later, and the population will be at 25 billion, and then 50 billion, 100 billion, and so on. However, the land cannot sustain this many people, so the population will never actually hit this extreme. The population wi ll shrink in size again due starvation or other natural causes before it ever gets that high. Now the problem is, how to keep that from happening? Thomas Malthus theorized that the population needfully to be controlled while he did not advocate direct population control, he thought perchance the morality and common sense of the population would serve as a sort of birth control. However, he knew that the reality was the population would still go by means of stages of overpopulation and starvation. Therefore he said that population control must be exerted from an outside source to keep the human population from dooming themselves to extinction.The feminist group, on the other hand, believes that the controlling of the population growth equates to controlling people. Also, they are convinced that contraceptive programs are analyseed exclusively by first world male doctors, and they test their programs on less privileged third world women. As one feminist movement states, populatio n control is racist, sexist, and classist. It also states that the contraception programs try to king the values of a first world, well-off group of people onto the less privileged. There is a conclusion to help settle this dispute, which will be explored in detail.The solution that the author argues for is that everybody in the world, male and female, should use a form of super effective, easily reversible reflexive birth control, or contraception. There are two major types already on the market for women. These are the intrauteral Copper T380A, and the subdermal Norplant. For men, nothing is readily on the market however, there are several automatic contraceptive options for men being tested for use on humans. If everyone used a form of automatic background birth control, pregnancy would be a choice rather than a chance.The argument for this type of system of logic is that in the United States, roughly 50% of all pregnancies are not planned. Also, half of these unknowledgeable pregnancies are aborted. This is generally due to the fact that the parents are simply not prepared for a pregnancy, including and especially pregnancies that occur because of failed birth control. These pregnancies would most likely be welcomed at a later time, when the parents were more prepared and ready for a pregnancy and to start a family. Granting the individual the ability to choose when they wanted a pregnancy to occur would put much more power in the hands of the individual to help control the population growth. Generally speaking, parents would not choose to have as many children or pregnancies as they would if they left it to chance. Also, women would not fall prey to agreeing to something in the heat of the moment, or being coerced into agreeing to bear a child. A pregnancy would not occur as a result of rape, or because of a misuse or nonuse of a birth control method. This opens a whole new world to women instead of making the option to be pregnant a negative choice to a positive choice. Instead of risking get pregnant, a woman would be able to choose when to allow her body to become pregnant. There would also be a degree of reproductive independence for men as well. They would not have to worry about accidentally causing a pregnancy, and then having to be responsible for the child that they helped create. They would be completely free. While they could still be tricked by a woman who had her device removed without his knowledge, there is much less risk than if the woman forgot accidentally or purposely to use her birth control or misused it. However, the woman still holds the majority of control over the result of the contraception in the intercourse.The logic used here is that if everyone used background contraception, then everyone would be free to make the decision on whether or not to become pregnant or not.Everyone has the right to choose whether or not they want to be pregnant.Background contraception grants that choice.Therefore, a ll humans should be made to install automatic contraception.While this is a valid argument, I am not sure I agree with it. While this would indeed solve the reproduction growth crisis, it would also take away human free will. Many people may not be receptive to this type of control, not to mention that these types of automatic contraception are not particularly inexpensive. It would not make sense to initiate a population growth control based on these two factors alone. As Battin points out, the installment of this type of control has an almost fascist sound. Forcing everyone into the same type of contraception would pose as a major threat to free will, and would cause some dire consequences to occur for those enforcing it.ENTRY 3Womens Rights as Human Rights Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights by Charlotte BunchFor centuries, there has been a distinction between human rights and womens rights. This distinction is disconcerting because of it, numerous heinous crimes have been commit ted against women, including mutilation, starvation, and murder. Technically, because there is a distinction, womens rights are not classified as human rights. Since women are humans, wherefore are womens rights not viewed as human rights? Does this make women less human than men? Surely this cannot be so. While it is obvious that women are no less human than men, they are sometimes hardened as such a lower life form. Even in situations that men and women are both treated unfairly, it is the male that is seen as mistreated, and the female almost fades into background noise. In a male-predominate culture, women are seen as not as important, and are often treated as lesser to the male, even in their suffering.While the concept of human rights is one that is widely multinationally known and accepted, womens rights are not as commonly accepted as humane or even right. However, it has been theorized that the universality of human rights can be used as a tie to help bridge the whirl between human rights and womens rights. In 1948, the Declaration of Human Rights was set forth. This outlines the guidelines of the basic rights we as human beings have. In that Declaration, Eleanor Roosevelt fought to add Article 2, which says that all people have the right to everything enclosed in the Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status. The addition of not discriminating against gender was meant to begin to fix the issue of womens subordination.There are four approaches that the author, Bunch, speaks about, which she believes to be an effective way to bridge the gap, so to speak, between human rights and womens rights. While these approaches can apply to several areas of life, she writes that they are particularly helpful in drawing a connection between human rights and womens rights. They also demonstrate how violence toward women is a colza of basic human rights.The first approach that Bunch speaks about is to take into account the specific needs of women as civil and political rights, while also calling to attention the particularly heinous tortures women suffer through simply because of the fact that they are female. bingle instance where this has been done is when the Womens Task Force of Amnesty International took a stand to launch a campaign for women who are held as political prisoners and are sexually abused, which causes them to not be able to care for their children and thus causing a intrusion of human rights on the children. This directly links a violation of womens rights to a violation of human rights. This is a valid and sound argument it shows a clear, direct correlation between the two premises that a violation of womens rights causes a violation of human rights and therefore, it is wrong.The second approach is to regard womens rights as sociostinting rights. This is in regards to food, empl oyment, shelter, and health care. This is the view taken by those who would view human rights as too individualized, and take womens rights as a purely economic issue. In other words, human rights do not have meaning without an economic definition. This helps to galvanize women into protecting themselves from workplace violence, and from being taken advantage of by employers. Women cannot be targeted as cheap, easily exploited employment, because this would violate their human rights. This is also a valid argument.The third approach is to view womens rights through a legal scope. There have been new legal guidelines set in place to adjudge against gender discrimination, and this has added a new dimension to the womens rights debate. The specific laws that state the legal issues behind gender discrimination and violence against women are one major example of this third approach. These laws have made it possible for women to be able to fight for their rights to be treated fairly, as human beings, rather than a lower life form to males. The most important international form of this law is called the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which has been stated to be essentially an international bill of rights for women and a framework for womens participation in the development processwhich spells out internationally accepted principles and standards for achieving equality between women and men. This Convention has been accepted by 104 countries, as of January 1990. This means that all countries that have agreed to and accepted the Convention must adhere to and abide by the laws stated within it, and a report must be submitted to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, proving their compliance to the Convention. However, the Convention never actually directly addresses the issue of violence against women. This is its one mar it does, however, clearly state a human rights outline for women within it. If a ll governments accepted this Convention, this would be a great way to start heading in the right direction toward men and women being treated equally. This is a valid and sound argumentThe fourth and final approach that Bunch explains is to view human rights through feminist lenses, so to speak. What this means is that we are to view human rights in such a way that more thoroughly examines how human rights stir this lives of women in depth, and then asking how human rights can be more responsive and sensitive to women. While the other three approaches merely had a feminist taint, this approach is the most blatantly feminist it clearly takes a stance that purely centered around women, and waits for no one to tell them if their approach is an correct human rights issue or not. The danger in approaching the issue with this narrow scope is that it rules out too much reason. While it may be a valid argument, in my opinion, it has not been thought through thoroughly enough and is simply ignoring some of the basic rules of logic.