How does this compare to violence against men and boys as a cause area? Worldwide, 78.7% of homicide victims are men. Female genital mutilation is also generally recognized as being a human rights violation, while forced circumcision of boys is still extremely prevalent worldwide. For various social reasons, violence against males seems to be a more neglected cause area compared to violence against females.
Hey everyone, the moderators want to point out that this topic is heated for several reasons:
abuse/violence is already a topic people understandably have strong feelings about
the discussion in this thread got into comparing two populations and asking which of them has it worse, which might make people feel like the issues are being trivialized or dismissed. I think it might be best to evaluate the issues separately and see if they are promising as cause areas (e.g. via the ITN framework).
We want to ask everyone to be especially careful when discussing topics this sensitive.
Edit: see below for a version of this comment that is hopefully better, more balanced, and more charitable. I leave the original version here for posterity, and to remind myself to write less emotionally ;)
It is very clear that violence against men is less of an issue than violence against women. It is probably good for this question to be discussed, but let’s not belittle violence against women by implying that it would be comparable in magnitude to violence against men. In the same vein, comparing female genital mutilation to forced circumcision is… let’s say ignorant of the effects of FGM.
Akhil’s post does a good job of explaining how big the problem of violence against women is, and I have never seen anything that comes close for violence against men. And among my own friends, the people who have experienced serious violence are all women.
While I expect you are correct that violence against women is a much bigger issue than violence against men overall, I would be more convinced if you were able to share some comparative data. The one comparative datapoint we have here, provided by Question Mark, is that men are more likely to be homicide victims.
About 3% of American men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime, vs ~19% of women.
https://ncadv.org/STATISTICS has data specifically on intimate partner violence, that is, the subject of the interventions in this post. Women are more affected than men in all categories of violence listed there.
These are just two data sources… but I find it enough gruesome stats for a day.
I think that comparisons about which is a greater scale and which is more neglected is unlikely to be solved in this thread.
I focused on violence against women and girls because the root causes, types of violence and interventions for violence against women and violence against men were sufficiently different that it did not make sense to consider them together.
However, I would certainly be interested in seeing a report on violence against men; I have relatively little knowledge on the field, so don’t feel qualified to make claims about whether it might be a promising cause area.
While it’s true that women are more likely to be victims of sexual violence, men are more likely to be victims of non-sexual violence, such as murder and aggravated assault.
Yes, men are more likely to be victims of non-sexual violence, but you are omitting a fact of vital relevance in all this, resulting in a biased opinion. While the majority of men murdered are at the hands of other men who are strangers to them, the percentage of women who are killed by their partner or their family is around 50% every year on a global scale (1) (2)
Also is the fact that “while men are more likely than women to be victims of homicide, they are even more likely to be the perpetrators.”
Recognizing the gender disparities in terms of understanding the kind of violence that occurs is key to ending it. We must not only look at the victims but also at who the aggressors are, and seek a solution always taking into account the power dynamics that are embedded in the construction of gender and its oppression and discrimination.
I notice that this comment was pretty controversial (16 people voted, karma of 3). Here is how I would rewrite this comment to better fit in the EA forum:
Yes, this is true that men are more likely to be victims of non-sexual violence. However, note that most men are killed by other men, whereas a large number of the women who are killed (50% according to the UN) are killed by their partners or family. (1) (2). So “while men are more likely than women to be victims of homicide, they are even more likely to be the perpetrators.”
I think that recognizing gender disparities is important for understanding what kind of violence occurs, and that that this is key to ending it because [and here goes a few specific pathways]. For example, if we look at the power dynamics between aggressors and victims, we can [do some example specific thing differently.] [1]
I think that for me the thing that was most missing is a pathway between noticing gender disparities and taking a different action, rather than caring about it in the abstract. I haven’t really looked, but this might also be what’s going on in some of your other unpopular comments.
For a toy example of something you might say: “If we look at the power dynamics between aggressors and victims, we might notice that a specific cluster of violence is husbands beating up or murdering their wifes, and we can do things like putting up billboards encouraging women to leave their abusive husbands. This seems like it would have a different cost-effectiveness profile than other kinds of murders, and I personally think (but can’t prove/and here is a study that suggests that this is the case) that it might be pretty cost-effective.”
I’m touching the third rail here, but I think there probably is a nuanced comparison to be made that considers the different forms of FGM (including the prevalence of the most minor forms – involving making small nicks or pricks in the skin – which are less invasive than male circumcision) along with its prevalence globally (30% of men are circumcised while 5% of women have been subjected to FGM).
There’s also the legal/societal/neglectedness comparison: FGM is widely condemned and illegal in most countries, with prohibitions extending across jurisdictions (in some countries it’s a criminal offence for citizens to have FGM done in another country). Compare male circumcision, which is legal nearly everywhere.
These issues are of indeed difficult to talk about. And I admit that I haven’t been very friendly in this discussion so far. Apologies for that.
Even with nuance, the difference between FGM and male circumcision seems staggering to me. Here’s an example of a study that estimates a 3% life quality loss due to FGM. Over an entire life, that amounts to more than 1 QALY lost due to the mutilation. Granted, there are less severe forms… but I find 1 QALY a horrifying amount.
Male circumcision on the other hand has positive effects as well as negative. I don’t want to downplay the negative effects… but circumcision is probably legal nearly everywhere because these effects are small.
[am stepping back from this thread now as it’s getting a bit distant from the original post and I don’t wish to derail it]
Quite horrifying, I agree. But scale is notable here: 6 times as many men are circumcised, so if the quality of life lost was 0.5% then the total lost utility is the same between the two groups.
And given that some number of circumcisions go wrong, leading to loss of sensation, pain during sex, rarely partial or total amputation and other forms of suffering (“the constant discomfort of a genital injury creates a covenant of pain,” writes one individual with PTSD from the suffering from his botched circumcision), 0.5% overall seems really not hard to fathom.
The benefits are minor (your comments elsewhere about better sexual performance are not supported by the literature), and not justified by the harms. This position has broad agreement from public health bodies. The UK’s National Health Service, and many other like it, made the decision decades ago to stop funding neonatal circumcisions for this exact reason.
circumcision is probably legal nearly everywhere because these effects are small.
This just seems like post-hoc rationalisation (‘it can’t be bad because it’s legal’). I could just as easily say that laws on circumcision are thirty years behind laws on FGM.
More likely is that the practice plays a prominent role in Abrahamic religions and attempts by countries to outlaw it (there have been a few) fall foul of laws around freedom of religion. Several such examples here, see e.g. Iceland and Denmark.
This is an updated version of my initial comment, hopefully more polite and fact-based.
I would agree with Question Mark that it is worth exploring opportunities to reduce violence against men, in addition to what the present post does for violence against women. Like Question Mark writes, the scale of this problem is large. Presumably, males experience violence more often than females, albeit for different reasons.
That said, I think the comparisons put forward by Question Mark are creating a biased impression. Here are a few points to keep in mind for a balanced picture:
Keeping the focus on intimate partner violence rather than general violence also makes interventions more tractable. General violence / homicide are broad topics with complex reasons for why men are more affected, including reasons that have to do with male behavior.
Question Mark’s comment also compares female genital mutilation (FGM) with male circumcision. My impression was that the comment considered them comparably harmful (but maybe this is just an uncharitable reading of my part; apologies in this case). I believe that there are good reasons to think of FGM as a larger problem, such as:
In one study, women estimated that FGM led to a 3% decrease in life quality, which would amount to roughly one QALY lost due to the intervention.
While male circumcision is more prevalent, we should consider that it is often elective and that it has benefits as well as risks. The negative effects occur for the 1.5-6% of cases where there are complications (Wikipedia: Circumcision). In contrast, the 3% life quality loss due to FGM is an average, not an estimate for cases gone wrong, and not an estimate of only the most severe forms.
With these considerations in mind, I think that interventions focused specifically on violence against girls and women make sense. Girls and women often suffer from particularly gruesome forms of violence, which are also tractable to address, as shown by the interventions in this post.
In the same vein, comparing female genital mutilation to forced circumcision is… let’s say ignorant of the effects of FGM.
This lecture by Eric Clopper has a decent analysis of the differences between male circumcision and FGM. Male circumcision removes more erogenous tissue and more nerve endings than most forms of FGM.
Not to say that I am against this cause but this is a false equivalency between physiology and pleasure. What ratio of total erogenous tissue is removed in each procedure, and what impact does it have on ability to achieve an orgasm, as well as pleasure? Is it still higher for male circumcision relative to FGM along these measurements?
… which arguably gives circumcised males the benefit of longer sex ;-)
More seriously: FGM can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths (WHO).
I stand by my point, even after all the downvotes: claiming that FGM is comparable in harm to male circumcision is an offense to all the FGM survivors out there.
+ 1 to the point that it doesn’t really make sense to compare FGM and male circumcision. I support bodily autonomy and lean towards believing that parents should not circumcise male infants. I’m also not claiming that there are no negative effects to male circumcision. And as Henry said, some forms of FGM are indeed quite minor (a symbolic ‘nicking’ or small cut).
Some types involve cutting out the clitoris (which is more equivalent to the whole penis than to the foreskin); other types involve sewing up the vagina. Because of its relative rarity I’m not sure it qualifies as a sensible EA cause area, but I think the horror and outcry against it seems very merited and it makes sense that more countries have outlawed it than have outlawed male circumcision (though as I say, I’d tentatively support making that illegal also and don’t want to ignore the fact that that’s also a harm).
On a meta level, I’m surprised by how unpopular Sjlver and DukeGartzea’s comments are in this discussion relative to others’. It doesn’t seem that controversial to argue that women face more violence, particularly of certain types, than men (though it’s fair to argue the other side, of course).
On a meta level, I’m surprised by how unpopular Sjlver and DukeGartzea’s comments are in this discussion relative to others’.
For me it was seeing arguments made from emotion (“It is very clear that violence against men is less of an issue than violence against women”, no evidence provided) when responding to comments that contained data on men being the majority of victims of violence. When challenged they performed a bait-and-switch by offering stats for sexual assault (which is indeed more common in women, and a deeply serious issue, but is a subset of assault generally).
Agreed that FGM is horrifying beyond belief. But the flippancy from Sjilver around male circumcision and its purported sex benefits to men (which are not backed by the evidence), accompanied by a winky face, were enough to earn a downvote from me.
I could completely agree with your argument, but I see a lack of criticism of various comments, where one of the well-known dog whistles used by those who deny the existence of particular violence against women is used.
Likewise, extract the fact that the majority of homicide victims are men, deliberately ignoring the reasons for this violence and their differences, data that I contribute not using Wikipedia pages but global studies on homicide from the United Nations. The comment where I added that data, by the way, got several negative votes originally. I find that worrying enough, and it is worse coming from a community like EA, where these basic things should be already mostly established
If we are going to criticise Sjilver answers, as you say “arguments made from emotion”, it seems -to me- more serious to criticise responses that originate in a supposed rationalization argumentation and are still biased and, the worst thing of all of this in my humble opinion, the instrumentalization of deaths that are used as a weapon against the fact that there is particular violence against women that does not exist in the other way.
I think this was a thoughtful comment and I also think that Sliver and Duke’s comments seem normal and reasonable.
Also the deeper issue here isn’t violence but the abuse, mistreatment, control, of other people. For prosaic and sad reasons, I expect women to be systemically much more vulnerable to this than men.
It’s not the physical act, it’s the fear, the powerlessness.
(Note that none of these thoughts alone suggest this is an EA cause area.)
More seriously: FGM can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths (WHO).
Other than complications in childbirth, malecircumcisioncanalsocause all of these complications. According to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is herself a victim of FGM, boys being circumcised in Africa have a higher risk of complications compared to girls subjected to FGM. Circumcisions/mutilations in Africa are often performed in unsanitary conditions, which is true for both boys and girls subjected to genital mutilation.
To understand the seriousness of the mutilations, I personally consider that we must focus on the reason that leads to them. Are you religious? Is it cultural? Is it a medical reason? and so on.
FGM is distinguished (beyond the forms in which it occurs) in that there are no medical reasons for doing it, nor does it have any health benefits for women. In particular, quite the opposite, since it leads to numerous problems such as infections, complications in childbirth and in sexual relations, and more (1). It is also given for a cultural reason, not only is it “socially accepted” in their society and therefore the norm to follow but also ideas and beliefs of femininity associated with it. For example, it is considered that a genitally mutilated woman has an easier time finding a husband and will remain pure until marriage (2). There is also the fact that in some of these cultures and societies the clitoris is considered a male organ or non-feminine, therefore it is essential for women to have it removed for their own good. The reason for the existence of this mutilation is purely a product of the existence of gender, or what in social sciences is also called the sex-gender system (3)
Mutilation is understood as a violent act itself and we tend to talk about female genital mutilation, and in cases like Question Mark bring up male genital mutilation. But we leave aside the mutilations of intersex people, genital mutilations without any consent carried out legally and that do not have any benefit in terms of health for the person to whom it is done (4.1, 4.2). This kind of mutilation is also the result of the previously mentioned sex-gender system. Specifically, it is its application in our society and culture (5). Understanding these three apparently so different forms of mutilation as a product of the same thing is necessary in terms of understanding their motives and giving them an effective solution.
FGM is distinguished (beyond the forms in which it occurs) in that there are no medical reasons for doing it, nor does it have any health benefits for women
if anti-FGM campaigners and organizations such as the WHO continue to play the “no health benefits” card as a way of deflecting comparisons to male circumcision, it will not be long before medically-trained supporters of the practice in other countries begin to do the necessary research. …
I suggest, therefore, that by repeating the mantra—in nearly every article focused on female genital cutting—that “FGM has no health benefits,” those who oppose such cutting are sending the wrong signal. The mantra implies that if FGM did have health benefits, it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
But that isn’t what opponents really think. Regardless of health consequences, they see nontherapeutic genital cutting of female minors as contrary to their best interests, propped up by questionable social norms that should themselves be challenged and changed.
I do not think that the argument of “no health benefits” is used in contrast to male genital mutilation, since it is known that the benefits are small and still today in many countries it is done without the person’s permission, breaking their right to bodily autonomy as happens with neonatal circumcision.
Also today in many societies and cultures, male genital mutilation is given apart to the medical and health system, which influences an increase in infections and problems related to sexual health.
But I agree that repeating that mantra in a decontextualised way is harmful. The way in which I have tried to use it is to contrast it with the mutilations of intersex people, who are operated on these days in medical centres under the idea and dogma “it is for their health” when really that is a lie, there are not benefits in it.
How does this compare to violence against men and boys as a cause area? Worldwide, 78.7% of homicide victims are men. Female genital mutilation is also generally recognized as being a human rights violation, while forced circumcision of boys is still extremely prevalent worldwide. For various social reasons, violence against males seems to be a more neglected cause area compared to violence against females.
Hey everyone, the moderators want to point out that this topic is heated for several reasons:
abuse/violence is already a topic people understandably have strong feelings about
the discussion in this thread got into comparing two populations and asking which of them has it worse, which might make people feel like the issues are being trivialized or dismissed. I think it might be best to evaluate the issues separately and see if they are promising as cause areas (e.g. via the ITN framework).
We want to ask everyone to be especially careful when discussing topics this sensitive.
Edit: see below for a version of this comment that is hopefully better, more balanced, and more charitable. I leave the original version here for posterity, and to remind myself to write less emotionally ;)
It is very clear that violence against men is less of an issue than violence against women. It is probably good for this question to be discussed, but let’s not belittle violence against women by implying that it would be comparable in magnitude to violence against men. In the same vein, comparing female genital mutilation to forced circumcision is… let’s say ignorant of the effects of FGM.Akhil’s post does a good job of explaining how big the problem of violence against women is, and I have never seen anything that comes close for violence against men. And among my own friends, the people who have experienced serious violence are all women.While I expect you are correct that violence against women is a much bigger issue than violence against men overall, I would be more convinced if you were able to share some comparative data. The one comparative datapoint we have here, provided by Question Mark, is that men are more likely to be homicide victims.
Doesn’t this get the burden of proof wrong? I find it awful that we so often ask victims to prove that they really are victims.
After this rant, here you go:
rainn.org has statistics for the US. They say for example that:
82% of all juvenile rape victims are female.
90% of adult rape victims are female.
About 3% of American men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime, vs ~19% of women.
https://ncadv.org/STATISTICS has data specifically on intimate partner violence, that is, the subject of the interventions in this post. Women are more affected than men in all categories of violence listed there.
These are just two data sources… but I find it enough gruesome stats for a day.
I think that comparisons about which is a greater scale and which is more neglected is unlikely to be solved in this thread.
I focused on violence against women and girls because the root causes, types of violence and interventions for violence against women and violence against men were sufficiently different that it did not make sense to consider them together.
However, I would certainly be interested in seeing a report on violence against men; I have relatively little knowledge on the field, so don’t feel qualified to make claims about whether it might be a promising cause area.
While it’s true that women are more likely to be victims of sexual violence, men are more likely to be victims of non-sexual violence, such as murder and aggravated assault.
Murder is not a global top-10 cause of death or suffering. Sexual abuse could very much be a global top-10 cause of suffering based on Akhil’s post.
Yes, men are more likely to be victims of non-sexual violence, but you are omitting a fact of vital relevance in all this, resulting in a biased opinion. While the majority of men murdered are at the hands of other men who are strangers to them, the percentage of women who are killed by their partner or their family is around 50% every year on a global scale (1) (2)
Also is the fact that “while men are more likely than women to be victims of homicide, they are even more likely to be the perpetrators.”
Recognizing the gender disparities in terms of understanding the kind of violence that occurs is key to ending it. We must not only look at the victims but also at who the aggressors are, and seek a solution always taking into account the power dynamics that are embedded in the construction of gender and its oppression and discrimination.
I notice that this comment was pretty controversial (16 people voted, karma of 3). Here is how I would rewrite this comment to better fit in the EA forum:
I think that for me the thing that was most missing is a pathway between noticing gender disparities and taking a different action, rather than caring about it in the abstract. I haven’t really looked, but this might also be what’s going on in some of your other unpopular comments.
For a toy example of something you might say: “If we look at the power dynamics between aggressors and victims, we might notice that a specific cluster of violence is husbands beating up or murdering their wifes, and we can do things like putting up billboards encouraging women to leave their abusive husbands. This seems like it would have a different cost-effectiveness profile than other kinds of murders, and I personally think (but can’t prove/and here is a study that suggests that this is the case) that it might be pretty cost-effective.”
I’m touching the third rail here, but I think there probably is a nuanced comparison to be made that considers the different forms of FGM (including the prevalence of the most minor forms – involving making small nicks or pricks in the skin – which are less invasive than male circumcision) along with its prevalence globally (30% of men are circumcised while 5% of women have been subjected to FGM).
There’s also the legal/societal/neglectedness comparison: FGM is widely condemned and illegal in most countries, with prohibitions extending across jurisdictions (in some countries it’s a criminal offence for citizens to have FGM done in another country). Compare male circumcision, which is legal nearly everywhere.
These issues are of indeed difficult to talk about. And I admit that I haven’t been very friendly in this discussion so far. Apologies for that.
Even with nuance, the difference between FGM and male circumcision seems staggering to me. Here’s an example of a study that estimates a 3% life quality loss due to FGM. Over an entire life, that amounts to more than 1 QALY lost due to the mutilation. Granted, there are less severe forms… but I find 1 QALY a horrifying amount.
Male circumcision on the other hand has positive effects as well as negative. I don’t want to downplay the negative effects… but circumcision is probably legal nearly everywhere because these effects are small.
[am stepping back from this thread now as it’s getting a bit distant from the original post and I don’t wish to derail it]
Quite horrifying, I agree. But scale is notable here: 6 times as many men are circumcised, so if the quality of life lost was 0.5% then the total lost utility is the same between the two groups.
And given that some number of circumcisions go wrong, leading to loss of sensation, pain during sex, rarely partial or total amputation and other forms of suffering (“the constant discomfort of a genital injury creates a covenant of pain,” writes one individual with PTSD from the suffering from his botched circumcision), 0.5% overall seems really not hard to fathom.
The benefits are minor (your comments elsewhere about better sexual performance are not supported by the literature), and not justified by the harms. This position has broad agreement from public health bodies. The UK’s National Health Service, and many other like it, made the decision decades ago to stop funding neonatal circumcisions for this exact reason.
This just seems like post-hoc rationalisation (‘it can’t be bad because it’s legal’). I could just as easily say that laws on circumcision are thirty years behind laws on FGM.
More likely is that the practice plays a prominent role in Abrahamic religions and attempts by countries to outlaw it (there have been a few) fall foul of laws around freedom of religion. Several such examples here, see e.g. Iceland and Denmark.
This is an updated version of my initial comment, hopefully more polite and fact-based.
I would agree with Question Mark that it is worth exploring opportunities to reduce violence against men, in addition to what the present post does for violence against women. Like Question Mark writes, the scale of this problem is large. Presumably, males experience violence more often than females, albeit for different reasons.
That said, I think the comparisons put forward by Question Mark are creating a biased impression. Here are a few points to keep in mind for a balanced picture:
While this post focuses on interventions to prevent intimate partner violence, the homicide statistics by gender look at a different type of violence. This is not an apples-for-apples comparison. If we instead consider sexual violence and intimate partner violence, we find that 90% of (US) adult rape victims are female, and that women are more affected than men in all categories of intimate partner violence.
Keeping the focus on intimate partner violence rather than general violence also makes interventions more tractable. General violence / homicide are broad topics with complex reasons for why men are more affected, including reasons that have to do with male behavior.
Question Mark’s comment also compares female genital mutilation (FGM) with male circumcision. My impression was that the comment considered them comparably harmful (but maybe this is just an uncharitable reading of my part; apologies in this case). I believe that there are good reasons to think of FGM as a larger problem, such as:
Typical forms of FGM have a range of negative effects such as severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths
In one study, women estimated that FGM led to a 3% decrease in life quality, which would amount to roughly one QALY lost due to the intervention.
While male circumcision is more prevalent, we should consider that it is often elective and that it has benefits as well as risks. The negative effects occur for the 1.5-6% of cases where there are complications (Wikipedia: Circumcision). In contrast, the 3% life quality loss due to FGM is an average, not an estimate for cases gone wrong, and not an estimate of only the most severe forms.
With these considerations in mind, I think that interventions focused specifically on violence against girls and women make sense. Girls and women often suffer from particularly gruesome forms of violence, which are also tractable to address, as shown by the interventions in this post.
This lecture by Eric Clopper has a decent analysis of the differences between male circumcision and FGM. Male circumcision removes more erogenous tissue and more nerve endings than most forms of FGM.
Not to say that I am against this cause but this is a false equivalency between physiology and pleasure. What ratio of total erogenous tissue is removed in each procedure, and what impact does it have on ability to achieve an orgasm, as well as pleasure? Is it still higher for male circumcision relative to FGM along these measurements?
… which arguably gives circumcised males the benefit of longer sex ;-)
More seriously: FGM can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths (WHO).
I stand by my point, even after all the downvotes: claiming that FGM is comparable in harm to male circumcision is an offense to all the FGM survivors out there.
+ 1 to the point that it doesn’t really make sense to compare FGM and male circumcision.
I support bodily autonomy and lean towards believing that parents should not circumcise male infants. I’m also not claiming that there are no negative effects to male circumcision. And as Henry said, some forms of FGM are indeed quite minor (a symbolic ‘nicking’ or small cut).
That said, other forms of FGM are...horrifying and just seem way worse than male circumcision. I’m going to drop the wikipedia article here—considered yourself content-warned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation#Types
Some types involve cutting out the clitoris (which is more equivalent to the whole penis than to the foreskin); other types involve sewing up the vagina. Because of its relative rarity I’m not sure it qualifies as a sensible EA cause area, but I think the horror and outcry against it seems very merited and it makes sense that more countries have outlawed it than have outlawed male circumcision (though as I say, I’d tentatively support making that illegal also and don’t want to ignore the fact that that’s also a harm).
On a meta level, I’m surprised by how unpopular Sjlver and DukeGartzea’s comments are in this discussion relative to others’. It doesn’t seem that controversial to argue that women face more violence, particularly of certain types, than men (though it’s fair to argue the other side, of course).
For me it was seeing arguments made from emotion (“It is very clear that violence against men is less of an issue than violence against women”, no evidence provided) when responding to comments that contained data on men being the majority of victims of violence. When challenged they performed a bait-and-switch by offering stats for sexual assault (which is indeed more common in women, and a deeply serious issue, but is a subset of assault generally).
Agreed that FGM is horrifying beyond belief. But the flippancy from Sjilver around male circumcision and its purported sex benefits to men (which are not backed by the evidence), accompanied by a winky face, were enough to earn a downvote from me.
I could completely agree with your argument, but I see a lack of criticism of various comments, where one of the well-known dog whistles used by those who deny the existence of particular violence against women is used.
Likewise, extract the fact that the majority of homicide victims are men, deliberately ignoring the reasons for this violence and their differences, data that I contribute not using Wikipedia pages but global studies on homicide from the United Nations. The comment where I added that data, by the way, got several negative votes originally. I find that worrying enough, and it is worse coming from a community like EA, where these basic things should be already mostly established
If we are going to criticise Sjilver answers, as you say “arguments made from emotion”, it seems -to me- more serious to criticise responses that originate in a supposed rationalization argumentation and are still biased and, the worst thing of all of this in my humble opinion, the instrumentalization of deaths that are used as a weapon against the fact that there is particular violence against women that does not exist in the other way.
I think this was a thoughtful comment and I also think that Sliver and Duke’s comments seem normal and reasonable.
Also the deeper issue here isn’t violence but the abuse, mistreatment, control, of other people. For prosaic and sad reasons, I expect women to be systemically much more vulnerable to this than men.
It’s not the physical act, it’s the fear, the powerlessness.
(Note that none of these thoughts alone suggest this is an EA cause area.)
Not necessarily. Male circumcision may actually cause premature ejaculation in some men.
Other than complications in childbirth, male circumcision can also cause all of these complications. According to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is herself a victim of FGM, boys being circumcised in Africa have a higher risk of complications compared to girls subjected to FGM. Circumcisions/mutilations in Africa are often performed in unsanitary conditions, which is true for both boys and girls subjected to genital mutilation.
I guess if FGM had some possible sexual benefits, that would make it acceptable?
I would like to state some points to clarify:
To understand the seriousness of the mutilations, I personally consider that we must focus on the reason that leads to them. Are you religious? Is it cultural? Is it a medical reason? and so on.
FGM is distinguished (beyond the forms in which it occurs) in that there are no medical reasons for doing it, nor does it have any health benefits for women. In particular, quite the opposite, since it leads to numerous problems such as infections, complications in childbirth and in sexual relations, and more (1). It is also given for a cultural reason, not only is it “socially accepted” in their society and therefore the norm to follow but also ideas and beliefs of femininity associated with it. For example, it is considered that a genitally mutilated woman has an easier time finding a husband and will remain pure until marriage (2). There is also the fact that in some of these cultures and societies the clitoris is considered a male organ or non-feminine, therefore it is essential for women to have it removed for their own good. The reason for the existence of this mutilation is purely a product of the existence of gender, or what in social sciences is also called the sex-gender system (3)
Mutilation is understood as a violent act itself and we tend to talk about female genital mutilation, and in cases like Question Mark bring up male genital mutilation. But we leave aside the mutilations of intersex people, genital mutilations without any consent carried out legally and that do not have any benefit in terms of health for the person to whom it is done (4.1, 4.2). This kind of mutilation is also the result of the previously mentioned sex-gender system. Specifically, it is its application in our society and culture (5). Understanding these three apparently so different forms of mutilation as a product of the same thing is necessary in terms of understanding their motives and giving them an effective solution.
A small aside on this, which I found interesting:
I do not think that the argument of “no health benefits” is used in contrast to male genital mutilation, since it is known that the benefits are small and still today in many countries it is done without the person’s permission, breaking their right to bodily autonomy as happens with neonatal circumcision.
Also today in many societies and cultures, male genital mutilation is given apart to the medical and health system, which influences an increase in infections and problems related to sexual health.
But I agree that repeating that mantra in a decontextualised way is harmful. The way in which I have tried to use it is to contrast it with the mutilations of intersex people, who are operated on these days in medical centres under the idea and dogma “it is for their health” when really that is a lie, there are not benefits in it.