Genital cutting : protecting children from medical, cultural, and religious infringements ; proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Circumcision, Genital Integrity, and Human Rights, 29-31 July 2010, University of California-Berkeley

This volume contains the proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Circumcision, Genital Integrity, and Human Rights. Authors are international experts in their fields, and the book contains the most up-to-date information on the issue of genital cutting of infants and children from medical, legal, bioethical, and human rights perspectives. Front Matter....Pages i-xii Tortured Bodies, Tortured Doctrines: Informed Consent as a Legal Fiction Inapplicable to Neonatal Male Circumcision....Pages 1-28 Routine Infant Circumcision: Vital Issues that the Circumcision Proponents may be Overlooking....Pages 29-54 The Smart Penis....Pages 55-58 The Harm of Circumcision....Pages 59-68 Evolution of Circumcision Methods: Not “Just a Snip”....Pages 69-83 Penile Wounding: Complications of Routine Male Circumcision in a Typical American Family Practice....Pages 85-99 Male Circumcision and the Potential for Unexplained Male Adolescent Suicide in Northern Ireland....Pages 101-106 Healing the Harms of Circumcision: A Nursing Case Study....Pages 107-130 Ten Years of Training: Family Medicine Residents as Conscientious Objectors to Circumcision....Pages 131-135 Intersex Surgeries, Circumcision, and the Making of “Normal”....Pages 137-147 Intersex Genital Autonomy: A Rights-Based Framework for Medical Intervention with Intersex Infants....Pages 149-184 The SAR/ROHAN (The Possession): A Response of Somali Women to Pharaonic Circumcision/Infibulation (PhC)....Pages 185-194 Genital Stretching Among the Venda Ethnic Group (South Africa)....Pages 195-208 Male Circumcision Among the Venda of Limpopo (South Africa)....Pages 209-218 Critique of African RCTs into Male Circumcision and HIV Sexual Transmission....Pages 219-242 Randomized Controlled Trials for HIV/AIDS Prevention Among Men in Africa: Untraced Infections, Unasked Questions, and Unreported Data....Pages 243-270 Dangerous Myths and Tragic Misconceptions: Fighting HIV and AIDS Cases in Africa with Male Circumcision Strategies....Pages 271-283 Defying the Enlightenment: Jewish Ethnicity and Ethnic Circumcision....Pages 285-296 Circumcision: Gender and Power....Pages 297-305 Reclaiming Circumcision: Armenian Stories....Pages 307-315 Self-Made Intactivism in the Middle East....Pages 317-326 Genital Autonomy: A New Approach....Pages 327-334 Back Matter....Pages 335-337 Every year, across the globe, an estimated 13.3 million boys and 2 million girls are involuntarily subjected to genital cutting. Both male and female genital cutting persist, generating a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry that is defended by its proponents with dubious studies, manipulated statistics, and an appeal to "custom." Physicians and parents alike have been misled into believing that these mutilations are beneficial, necessary, and harmless. Today, flawed studies have allowed the promotion of circumcision as a way of combating HIV/AIDS in Africa, an experiment that failed in the USA, where a half-million circumcised males have succumbed to AIDS. These facts notwithstanding, the public and legal outcry against these abuses is increasing. For instance, the high court in Cologne, Germany ruled in 2012 that circumcision harms the child, that the harm is irreversible, that it denies the child the right to his own body, and that circumcision denies the individual the right to choose his own religion. Thus, the issue of circumcision has expanded beyond the arena of medicine and is firmly established as a human rights and legal problem. The contributors to this volume, an international panel of experts in the fields of medicine, law, ethics, anthropology, sociology, history, religion, and politics, thoroughly examine and elucidate this violation of human rights