An Open Letter to President Zelensky

Dear President Zelensky,

First, allow me to apologize on behalf of the American people and the United States of America for the disrespectful treatment you received from President Trump and Vice President Vance at the White House on Friday.  Their behavior toward you was not just a breach of protocol - it was inhospitable and - there's no other word for it - rude.  President Trump's and Vice President Vance's disgraceful and sordid conduct was an embarrassment to the very idea of the United States of America - that ineffable ideal that exists in the hearts of Americans as a concept but that also exists as the political entity that we have been proud to call our nation and our home.  It was an embarrassment to me personally, as an American, just as it was to millions of my fellow Americans.  It was an embarrassment to us domestically because, acting in our name, President Trump failed in the very first duty of a host: to conduct himself graciously while treating his guest with courtesy, dignity and respect.  It was also an embarrassment to our nation on the world stage of international diplomacy.  The damage that Trump and Vance have done (this includes Vance's pro-neo-Nazi speech at the Munich Security Conference last month) to America's standing and reputation as a stalwart defender of freedom, democracy and the international rule of law is incalculable.  I can only hope that you can look beyond the pettiness, the smallness, the personal self-interest, the vindictiveness and the boorishness that are the stock-in-trade - the very essence - of Donald Trump and that you will continue to regard the American people and the United States as allies in Ukraine's courageous struggle against Russian aggression, imperialism and cultural genocide of the Ukrainian people.  

Speaking to you as an American, I also want to take this opportunity to set the record straight.  President Trump lied when he called you a dictator.  When he uttered that calumny, he was not speaking for the American people.  The American people know that you are a democratically-elected president who won in a landslide with 73 percent of the vote in 2019 and whom history has since thrust into the position of having to rally your countrymen and -women in support of the sacred cause of defending your nation's very existence; a duly elected leader upon whom circumstances beyond your control have imposed the unenviable task of seeking the financial and military assistance of freedom-loving democracies around the world in support of that noble cause. 

Trump also committed a lie - a lie of omission - when he refused to admit that it is Putin who is the real dictator.  It is not enough, you see, for Trump to try to discredit you.  He is also doing everything he can to legitimize a former KGB agent who "won" his fifth and most recent term as president in an election in which "[a]ll genuine opposition candidates were barred from running, imprisoned, dead, or in exile."   A dictator who has presided over massive and systematic political repression and wholesale human rights abuses in Russia.  An oligarch worth an estimated $200 billion (which would make Putin the third richest man in the world) under whose dictatorial regime numerous political opponents, free-speech- and democracy advocates have been murdered.  You may wonder, President Zelensky, why Trump is so obsequious to Putin - so nauseatingly servile on his behalf, parroting his lies and promoting his interests over Ukraine's and even over the interests of the United States.  All I can tell you is that we Americans, who are proud that our nation, along with our NATO allies, won the cold war, are wondering the same thing. 

Trump also lied when he claimed that your nation, Ukraine, started the war with Russia.  The world will always know - and history will always record - that Putin's war against Ukraine began when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of your sovereign territory on February 24, 2022.  Since then, Ukraine has "endured relentless death, destruction and displacement," including the deaths of over 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, the deliberate targeting and destruction of civilian infrastructure, including a devastating and deadly attack on Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital, and the widespread use of torture and sexual violence against civilians and detainees.  One can scarcely fathom the depth of moral depravity of the man responsible for all this.  Likewise, it's almost impossible to fathom the depth of moral depravity on display at Mar-a-Lago recently when Trump literally added insult to injury by accusing your nation, Ukraine - Russia's victim - of being the instigator of this horrific war.

Trump and Vance also lied when they accused you of being insufficiently grateful to the United States for its support of Ukraine - to say nothing of the arrogant, condescending and totally inappropriate tone and manner in which they did so.  Numerous (credible) media outlets have documented at least 33 occasions on which you expressed your thanks to us and to our country sincerely and enthusiastically.  Please be assured that America acknowledges your gratitude and appreciates it.

Since our nation's founding, the United States of America has sought to embody the ideals of liberty, justice, and democracy.  We have fallen woefully short of our founders' aspirations for much of our history, beginning with the founders themselves when they wrote inequality on the basis of sex and race  into our founding document.  But the saving grace of our constitution was that it also included a mechanism for improvement - for an expansion of liberty and justice.  

As a nation that has formed alliances and waged wars, the United States has also gotten many things wrong.  But there are some things that we got right.  In World War II, for example, we were not only the right side of the war but on the right side of history.  One of the things the United States fought (and sacrificed more than 400,000 American lives) for 80 years ago was the principle that a powerful nation may not simply invade and conquer a less powerful one and be permitted by the other nations of the world to get away with it.  Because of this, the United States has long enjoyed a reputation for throwing in its lot with the underdog - and backing that up with our considerable military might.  We have not always been consistent and we have not always deserved that reputation.  There have been many occasions throughout our history, especially during the 20th century, when the United States helped to install or supported dictatorships in other countries, most notably in South America.  

And yet, because of our unique position in world history - from our humble beginnings as colonies that banded together to overthrow an oppressive distant monarchy to our present position as a superpower -  because of the enduring nature of our democracy, because of our wealth (the envy of the world), because of our formidable military strength, our role in defeating the Axis powers in WWII, and, above all, because of the ideals that we profess to ourselves and to the world, the United States has been looked upon as a defender of just causes - a bulwark of last resort against tyrants.  If this is how Ukraine has looked upon America from afar, it is also how Americans have come to view our great nation from within.

Helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian imperialism would not, of course, simply be an act of altruism.  Much of the good the United States has done around the world since WWII has been a manifestation of enlightened self-interest.  That is the principle behind much of the "soft power" that the U.S. has projected around the world.  By improving conditions for citizens in poor and underdeveloped countries, we can reduce armed conflict, war, criminality, poverty, starvation, disease, and political radicalization (all of which have led to large numbers of émigrés seeking to enter the United States any way that they can) while fostering good will toward the United States.  At the same time, the U.S. has filled a void - support for healthcare, nutrition, education and infrastructure - that our adversaries, such as China, would otherwise be only too happy to fill.  (This is one of the reasons why the wholesale dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development is ultimately so counterproductive to U.S. interests, to say nothing of the absolute moral abomination of allowing thousands of people to suffer and die for want of adequate medical care and nutrition). 

Additionally, history teaches us that those who would wage war on their neighbors for the purpose of territorial expansion and conquest do not stop of their own accord - they must be stopped.  You were absolutely correct, President Zelensky, when you reminded President Trump that, although we have "a nice ocean" between us and Europe and "don't feel now" the effects of Russia's aggression, unless Ukraine prevails it is inevitable that we "will feel it in the future." 

There is every reason therefore, why the United States should continue to support Ukraine in its fight for survival as a sovereign nation against its Russian would-be conqueror.   Not simply because it is in our own strategic national interest to do so but because, morally, it is the right thing to do.  And, as I have said, because doing so is consistent with the principles that the United States prides itself on standing for. 

It is against this historical background and in the context of all of these strategic and ethical considerations that the world witnessed - and you bore the brunt of - the current president of the United States effectively siding with Putin and Russia against you and the people of Ukraine at the White House last week.  As an American, to see the president of the United States denying and repudiating America's role as a champion and supporter of peace and democracy was profoundly demoralizing.  But, for now, we here in America are, indeed, protected (at least to some extent) by an ocean.  For America, it is only our nation's good name that Trump is destroying.  For you and your people, the stakes are incomparably higher: without the necessary political, financial and military support, it is your freedom and your very lives that are on the line.  That President Trump would abandon you and your nation or do Putin's bidding by attempting to strong-arm you into what would amount to an abject surrender is reprehensible.  It is an affront not only to you and to Ukraine but to everything that America stands for.  Liz Cheney put it succinctly:

Generations of American patriots . . . have fought for the principles Zelenskyy is risking his life to defend.  But today, Donald Trump and JD Vance attacked Zelenskyy and pressured him to surrender the freedom of his people to the KGB war criminal who invaded Ukraine.  History will remember this day - when an American President and Vice President abandoned all we stand for.

I can only express my support of this sentiment and my solidarity with you and the Ukrainian people.  I sincerely hope that you will not view Donald Trump's betrayal of America's values and his betrayal of the Ukrainian people as a reflection of the American people themselves.  On a purely human level, President Trump's and Vice President Vance's conduct at your last meeting was as antithetical to our values as Americans as their hostility to the cause of Ukrainian independence and sovereignty is antithetical  to our political values as Americans.  It is precisely because we are Americans - with all that that means to us - that millions of us continue to support Ukraine and encourage you not to lose heart nor hope.  A free and independent Ukraine will prevail.

Sincerely,

David Balashinsky

 

Massachusetts Becomes the Third State to Protect Cats' Right to Bodily Integrity. Boys and Girls Assigned Male at Birth Are Still Waiting for the Same Right.

by David Balashinsky

Before I say anything else, let me state for the record that I am a cat-lover and that none of my cats ever has or ever will be declawed.  I have long believed that cat declawing is both inhumane and unethical, which is why I supported efforts to ban this practice in my home state of New York and support banning the practice nationwide.  As a New Yorker, I am proud that my state became the first to institute a statewide ban on cat declawing.  Maryland became the second state to do so in 2022 and, now, Massachusetts becomes the third.

Still, I have mixed feelings about these laws.  The reason is that they create a legal protection for cats that, to this day, is denied people like me.  I am referring to human males and transwomen (anyone born with a penis) and to the practice of removing penile foreskins when not medically indicated, a practice known as nontherapeutic penile circumcision or, simply, "circumcision."  As much as I love cats, it is impossible for me not to view these anti-declawing laws from the vantage point of someone who had part of his body cut off without his consent.  Given that the part of me that was ablated without any rational reason or justification is just as important to me as cats' claws are to them, it is hard not to look at cats now without feeling some envy.  I feel demeaned by the fact that my cats now have a greater legal right to bodily integrity than I did when I was an infant and would still if I were under 18.  (By the same token, if my twin sister and I had been born after 1996, she would be legally protected against genital cutting whereas I would not.)

A word about the male prepuce, or foreskin, is in order.  Like cats' claws, the prepuce has evolved and been retained through millions of years of evolution because it serves important physiological functions.  One of these is providing protection for the glans penis in exactly the same way that the clitoral hood, its homologous counterpart in females, provides protection for the glans clitoris.  (Anatomically, both the male foreskin and the female clitoral hood are identified as the prepuce.  Unlike boys, however, in Massachusetts and the rest of the United States, girls are allowed to keep theirs.)  In addition, histological studies demonstrate that the male prepuce contains numerous sensory receptors.  These specialized, light-touch mechanoreceptors (known as Meissner's corpuscles), are found in particularly dense concentrations in the body where light-touch sensation is most important, including the finger tips, the lips and, it should come as no surprise, the prepuce.  Several studies have demonstrated that the male prepuce is, in fact, the primary sensory apparatus of the penis.  All of the sensation that the prepuce enables an individual to experience is lost forever when this part of his penis is removed.  Moreover, once the glans penis has been permanently deprived of its natural protective covering, the glans, itself, becomes keratinized (dried out and "toughened up"), making it even less sensitive.  In short, the male prepuce is not "excess skin."  It is an integral and essential part of a person's penis.  It is a part of his body that that individual has as much a right to keep as he has to keep any other part of his body.  And it is a part of his body that he has as much a right to keep as cats have to keep their claws.

A word about nontherapeutic penile circumcision is also in order.  Non-therapeutic neonatal penile circumcision (like cat declawing) is always performed without the consent of the one subjected to it.  It always entails the painful removal of a normal, functional and highly erotogenic body part.  And, in virtually all cases, penile circumcision is imposed on a child not because there is a pathological condition that needs to be treated or a congenital deformity that needs to be corrected but, rather, for reasons involving custom, social conformity, convenience, socially-influenced aesthetics about human genitals, specious medical rationalizations and medical profiteering (often at tax-payer expense through Medicaid funding).

Both cat declawing and penile circumcision, then, have a lot in common.  Both entail the removal of a normal, functional body part.  Both entail a surgical removal of healthy tissue without any regard to the wishes of the cat or infant human male who is subjected to it.  Both practices are inhumane, unnecessary, unjustifiable and unethical.  Not surprisingly, because the campaigns to ban both practices are based on the same philosophical and moral principles - especially, respect for the rights, the bodies and the welfare of living things - many of those who oppose cat declawing also oppose nontherapeutic penile circumcision.  

Also not surprisingly, just as there are parallels between the practices themselves, there are parallels between the movements to eradicate them.  Consider the legislative history of the New York bill banning cat declawing.  Passage of Senate Bill S5532B / Assembly Bill A1303B  did not happen overnight but was the culmination of a long, arduous process that required its sponsors to persevere against the stiff headwinds of an entrenched practice.  The legislation had to overcome the opposition of the New York State Veterinary Medical Society (NYSVMS), which opposed it for perfectly rational and, it could be argued, even humane reasons.  It had to overcome the resistance of legislators who, no doubt, initially scoffed at the notion that this is a matter worthy of the legislature's time.  It had to overcome the opposition of those who believe that cat "owners" have a right to make such medical decisions on behalf of their cats.  And it even had to overcome the opposition of those who profess to love cats and probably do love cats just as much as I do.  It is important to remember, in this regard, that people who subject their cats to declawing are not evil, sadistic monsters who want to harm their cats.  These are people who love their cats but who, for one reason or another, believe declawing to be beneficial, appropriate and ethical.  Thus, it was the combined resistance of societal and institutional acceptance of cat declawing, including, especially, the normalization of it, that the bill's sponsors had to overcome in order to get it passed.

These types of opposition to New York's anti-cat-declawing bill all have parallels in the campaign to eradicate nontherapeutic penile circumcision which, like the campaign to ban cat declawing, also faces stiff institutional and cultural headwinds.  Banning nontherapeutic circumcision is opposed by medical trade associations (whose members profit handsomely from the procedure), such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, both of which have issued statements that implicitly or explicitly endorse nontherapeutic circumcision while conceding that it is not medically necessary.  These position statements include one rationalization after the other that exaggerate the purported benefits of penile circumcision while minimizing or ignoring its incontrovertible harms.  In certain crucial respects, these organizations' position statements on nontherapeutic circumcision are strikingly similar to that of the NYSVMS on cat declawing.

Then there is the reluctance of legislators to take on this issue for a variety of reasons, not least of which is their mistaken belief that a ban on non-therapeutic circumcision would violate the first amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion. Of course, numerous state legislatures have demonstrated no such qualms about banning female genital cutting for religious reasons. 

Added to this is the persistent cultural view of children as property. Many parents who support nontherapeutic penile circumcision claim that, because their children belong to them, they (the parents) have a right to cut off part of their children's genitals.  This, too, mirrors the view of people who regard companion animals as property, to do with whatever they choose.

Finally, the genital autonomy movement has had to contend with the deep-seated conviction of those who endorse nontherapeutic circumcision that this is not something that one does to a child but for a child.  Those who practice genital cutting of any type - whether of boys, girls or intersex children - sincerely believe that the genital-modification surgery to which they are subjecting their child will benefit that child.  At the very least, they regard it as harmless.  Even when this blithe fantasy collides with the reality that any surgery is traumatic for an infant - especially one performed on one of the most sensitive parts of the body (and, typically, with insufficient or even no anesthetization) - still such parents reason with themselves that, in any event, "the benefits outweigh the risks" ("risks" serving, in this case, as a conceptual stand-in for "harms").  Those who opt to have their sons circumcised thus make a moral calculation that the overall good that results outweighs the potential and even the actual harms of the genital cutting itself.

Similarly, those who defend cat declawing do so on the principle that it produces an overall good when the alternative is abandonment or euthanasia.  (This was one of the rationales in support of cat declawing formerly offered by the NYSVMS.)  These cat-lovers likewise have made a moral calculation that the overall good that results from having their cats declawed outweighs the actual harms of declawing.

In both of these cases, however, it is not the person exercising this surgical option who must live with the consequences of the surgery but the cat or the human infant - and, of course, the man that that infant will one day become, since circumcision is irreversible.  Still, it must be acknowledged that parents who impose their own penile preferences on their sons' bodies are not evil, sadistic monsters who want to harm their sons.  These are parents who love their sons but who, for one reason or another, believe nontherapeutic circumcision to be beneficial, appropriate and ethical.  This is no less true, by the way, of parents who subject their daughters to what is known in our culture as female genital mutilation (FGM).  The parents in these cultures love their daughters just as much as we love our sons.  And when they choose genital cutting for their daughters, they do not do so out of malice, nor do they regard it as "mutilation."  They regard it as beneficial, as something religiously mandated and as something culturally meaningful.  Above all, like parents in our society, they regard it as their right to make this decision on behalf of their daughters.

If the similarities between cat-declawing and non-therapeutic penile circumcision were not  plain enough,  a statement by one of the New York bill's sponsors, Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal, which she made when she first introduced her legislation, underscores the point:

There's no reason to do it unless the animal has [an] infection that is never going away, or if there is a cancer or tumor-related issue in the claw.   It's basically done because humans want it done, and I don't think it's our right to mutilate our animals for our own satisfaction.

Exactly the same can be said of nontherapeutic penile circumcision:

There's no reason to do it unless the infant has an infection that is never going away, or if there is a cancer or tumor-related issue in the prepuce.  It's basically done because humans want it done, and I don't think it's our right to mutilate our sons for our own satisfaction. 

All of which leads me to wonder how, in passing these anti-cat-declawing laws, these legislators can exude such compassion, empathy and respect for the bodily integrity of cats while remaining perfectly indifferent to the bodily integrity and the right to bodily autonomy of people with penises.  After all, don't we deserve to have the same rights as cats?

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About me: I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York.  I am a licensed physical therapist and I write about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, politics, and sometimes cats.  I currently serve on the board of directors for the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and the leadership team for Bruchim.

Some Thoughts on Dress Codes

by David Balashinsky

 

 

It's reported that Spirit Airlines has revised its passengers' dress code.  Section 4.3 of Spirit's Contract of Carriage states that "A guest shall not be permitted to board the aircraft or may be required to leave an aircraft if that guest . . . is barefoot or inadequately clothed (i.e., see-through clothing; not adequately covered; exposed breasts, buttocks, or other private parts), or whose clothing or . . . body art is lewd, obscene or offensive in nature. . . ."  It's not clear to me whether this policy constitutes a clarification, a tightening or a loosening of its dress code but it comes in the wake of a widely publicized incident last fall in which two women were removed from a Spirit Airlines aircraft because they were wearing crop tops.  

Spirit Airlines isn't the only carrier that has created controversy by ejecting passengers because of what they were wearing.  Also last fall, a Delta Airlines flight attendant forced a Marine Corp veteran off of a flight because of a suicide-prevention message that was printed on the veteran's tee-shirt.  The message, which in the opinion of the flight attendant, was "threatening," was this:

Last spring, in another incident involving Delta, one if its employees escorted a passenger off of one of its flights because she wasn't wearing a bra, although, ultimately, the passenger was allowed to re-board on the condition that she layer a second shirt over the one she was wearing.  As NBC4 Los Angeles reported, the passenger had been told by the head flight attendant that "Delta's official policy is that 'women must cover up.'"

Delta Airlines does not, in fact, have an official policy that "women must cover up."  Delta's Contract of Carriage explicitly states (in Rule 7, Section E) that "Delta will not refuse to provide transportation based upon race, color, national origin, religion, sex or ancestry."  However, Delta's Contract of Carriage goes on to say that

Subject to those qualifications, Delta may refuse to transport any passenger, or may remove any passenger from its aircraft, when refusal to transport or removal of the passenger is reasonably necessary in Delta's sole discretion  [my emphasis] for the passenger's comfort or safety, for the comfort or safety of other passengers or Delta employees, or for the prevention of damage to the property of Delta or its passengers or employees.  By way of example, and without limitation, Delta may refuse to transport or may remove passengers from its aircraft in any of the following situations. . . .

The contract then lists eight "situations."  Situation number two is "When the passenger is barefoot" and situation number eight is "When the passenger's conduct, attire, hygiene or odor creates an unreasonable risk of offense or annoyance to other passengers."

The problem that immediately arises here is the ambiguity written into this and similar airline policies and, therefore, the subjectivity that these policies authorize in those who are delegated with the task of enforcing them.  As the Times explains in its coverage of this story,  "Clarifying all this tends to fall to airline employees, including the flight crew."  But airline employees, whether flight attendants or pilots, are people just like the rest of us, with their own cultural baggage, unconscious biases, prejudices, deeply ingrained concepts of gender, and standards of propriety.  Inevitably, offensiveness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  Who's to say whether someone is "adequately clothed" or "inadequately covered," as Spirit puts it?  If a woman were wearing a crop top, her breasts (assuming she has breasts) would be covered but her abdomen would not be.  Is this woman "inadequately clothed" or is she, rather, "adequately covered"?

I have mixed and contradictory feelings about dress codes.  I support them, in principle and up to a point, but I am also bothered by the fact that they can privilege one standard of dress by imposing it broadly on a society that consists of a diversity of standards.  Moreover, the standards that they impose may be sexist, racist or discriminatory in other equally invalid ways.  It should not be lost on anyone that two of the most notorious recent episodes of passengers having been removed from aircraft or otherwise chastened (I use that word advisedly) for their attire involved women passengers.  Just to be sure I wasn't jumping to conclusions or succumbing to the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, I typed into my browser's search box the following questions: What is the most common reason women are removed from airplanes? and What is the most common reason men are removed from airplanes?  The AI-generated response surprised me but also confirmed my suspicions.  The most common reason (according to google AI) that women get kicked off airplanes is because they have engaged in "disruptive behavior caused by excessive alcohol consumption" but the second most common reason (I have to assume the reasons are listed in order of their rate of occurrence) is because they were "wearing attire that is considered too revealing or offensive according to airline policies."  In contrast, while the most common reason men get removed from airplanes is also because of "disruptive behavior," the AI-generated overview includes not one mention of men being kicked off of flights on account of being "inadequately clothed."  Instead, the overview lists four "key points about men being removed from flights," including "alcohol related issues," "verbal aggression," "non-compliance with safety rules" and "physical altercations."  The third, fourth and fifth reasons women get kicked off of airplanes are, respectively, "poor hygiene," "non-compliance with instructions," and "medical emergencies."  (Call me old fashioned but I'd much rather be seated on a flight next to an "inadequately clothed" woman than next to a verbally aggressive and pugnacious man.)

I suggested that it should not be lost on anyone that incidents in which passengers have been removed from flights or threatened with removal tend to involve women specifically because of how these women were dressed.  It hasn't been.  The DailyMail.com, for example, ran a story last fall reporting four such incidents, the two I cited at the beginning of this essay and two others.  (This article also describes an incident in which a male Trump supporter was thrown off a flight because of the shirt he was wearing but, in contrast to most of the cases involving women, it wasn't because his shirt revealed too much skin but because of the picture and text that were on the shirt, itself.)

This phenomenon - which, so far as I can tell, amounts to institutionalized slut-shaming - is not confined to airlines.  neaToday ran a story back in 2018 (When School Dress Codes Discriminate) that explains how "Student dress codes continue to unfairly target girls and students of color."  It begins:

While a dress code is supposed to make the school environment more conducive to learning, it frequently does the opposite.  In the past year, schools all over the country made national news for the ways they enforce their dress code - asking a student to put duct tape over the holes in her jeans, suspending a student for a skirt that was too short, or sending a student to the office for not wearing a bra - all of which take the focus off learning and place it on girls' bodies.

This article cites one high school, in Massachusetts, in which six out of the nine regulations in its dress code "targeted female students."  A crucial element of such dress codes is that they are based on the archaic view that girls' and women's bodies are so innately sexually arousing that boys and men - utterly powerless to resist such temptation - cannot but be distracted by them.  Accordingly,  the onus to cover up for the benefit of boys and men is placed on girls and women.  As one fourth-grade teacher quoted in the article characterized it, "A boy's education can be compromised by your gender.  Please do what you can to neutralize it." At the same time, such dress codes, according to one of the co-authors of a study issued by the National Women's Law Center in 2018, send the message that "What a girl looks like is more important than what she learns and thinks."   (As noted, this article also describes how school dress codes unfairly penalize and discriminate against Black students and, especially, Black female students.)  

Although my own childhood experience with dress codes differs in important ways from that of middle- and high school girls nowadays, a part of me is still hostile to dress codes because I remain deeply resentful of having been forced to wear what was basically office attire (minus the sports jacket) from the first through the sixth grade.  Back in the 1960s (when I was in elementary school) boys had to wear ties (yes, even in the first grade) and girls had to wear skirts or dresses.  Sneakers, except on gym days, were verboten.  Any infraction would get one sent home or to the principal's office.  This happened to me once when one of my teachers capriciously (since this is what I wore every day) decided that my bolo tie didn't count as a real tie.  Everything that was required by the dress code was, it goes without saying, physically uncomfortable for a young child but beyond this was the complete deprivation of one's self-expression and the negation of one's individuality.  Looking back on my elementary school experiences, it has always seemed to me that the effects of compulsory schooling, if not its explicit purpose, were to enforce social conformity, to suppress individuality, to stifle creativity, to discourage independent thinking, and, of course, to reinforce gender (hence the buttoned up shirts and ties for the boys, the skirts and dresses for the girls). 

What about dress codes for employees?  The dress code at the hospital where I work prohibits bluejeans; this seems perfectly reasonable to me yet it also seems perfectly illogical since denim of any other color is permitted.  What is it about the color indigo that makes bluejeans inappropriate for the office or in a hospital?  It can't be the color because indigo khakis are perfectly okay.  Rather, it seems to be the particular combination of denim and indigo that makes bluejeans unacceptable.  Obviously, this is an example of the power of the cultural meaning that clothing - especially certain articles of clothing - acquires.  Except in certain jobs, jeans (by which most people automatically assume I am speaking about bluejeans, which tends to prove my point) are considered the unofficial uniform of leisure, or downtime.  They are what one wears on weekends.  My ability to perform my job would not be adversely affected one iota if I were to perform it in jeans and yet, if I sought medical care from a healthcare professional, I would be bothered and feel even a little insulted if she walked into the exam room in jeans.  It is unquestionably a social construct - as propriety always is - but that does not make it any less the case that wearing jeans in this context telegraphs a lack of professionalism.  (The first hospital I worked in, NYU Medical Center, prohibited, of all things, ankle socks.  In regard to this the physical therapists in my department used to quip, "nothing says 'unprofessional' like exposed malleoli!")

What about clothing that may be offensive by its very nature because of its cultural meaning?  No one can pretend that a white robe and hood, because of their well-documented history, do not constitute hate speech in and of themselves.  But what about hijabs and abayas?  Are these intrinsically offensive or disruptive in Western contexts?  In 2023, France banned these in public schools on, ostensibly, liberal-secularist grounds.  But the ban has been criticized as Islamaphobic and even mysogynistic.  At the same time, the obligation of women to cover up in in certain Islamic countries, such as Afghanistan, has itself been criticized as a human rights violation and as a manifestation of the oppression of women.  Writing in 2009, Mona Eltahawy argued for a ban on the burqa:

I am a Muslim, I am a feminist and I detest the full-body veil, known as a niqab or burqa.  It erases women from society and has nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the hatred for women at the heart of the extremist ideology that preaches it.

We must not sacrifice women at the alter of political correctness in the name of fighting a growingly powerful right wing that Muslims face in countries where they live as a minority.

As disagreeable as I often find French President Nicolas Sarkozy, he was right when he said recently, "The burqa is not a religious sign, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women.  I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory."  It should not be welcome anywhere, I would add.

I don't mean to wander too far afield - the topic here is dress codes and, more particularly, the dress codes that airline passengers are required to abide by.  But I raise the examples of white robes and hoods and burqas not necessarily to compare them but to point out that it's not just possible but perfectly reasonable for a person to be deeply offended by one or both of them.  And if the regulation in an airline's Contract of Carriage states that a passenger may be removed from a flight, as Delta's does, "when the passenger's . . . attire . . . creates an unreasonable risk of offense . . . to other passengers," what then?  Ejecting a white-robed and -hooded Klansman from an airplane (preferably, after it has taken off) would seem to be a no-brainer.  But what about a Burqa-wearing Muslim woman?  And how, in this case, would Delta reconcile its policy of not allowing a passenger to cause other passengers offense with its other policy in which it promises not to refuse to provide transportation to any passenger on the basis of, among other things, religion and sex?

Patently offensive symbols or articles of clothing, in some sense, represent less of a grey area.  One would hope that there is, at least for now, still a broad consensus that a swastika displayed on an article of a passenger's clothing is sufficient grounds for removing that passenger from a flight.  But what about a confederate flag appliqué?  What about a MAGA hat?

If dress codes are intrinsically problematic and contradictory - as I believe they are - so, too, are my own feelings about them, as I have already acknowledged.  I will use a dining experience I had at the local Olive Garden several years as a concluding illustration of how and why.  

 

Binghamton, where I live, is a small Rust-Belt metropolis (and the hometown of Rod Serling).  This area is surrounded by farms and countryside but it is also home to one of the nation's premier public universities (Binghamton University) and a number of tech companies.  Within the greater metropolitan area of Binghamton (in the village of Endicott, to be exact) the original campus of IBM stood (and still stands, although IBM has since pulled up stakes, leaving a toxic plume in its wake).  With cultural and economic diversity like this, one sees all types here in all manner of dress: from hardcore rednecks in hunting camo to BU students in crop tops.  Once, when my wife and I were out to dinner, a very slovenly looking man was dining one or two tables away. He was probably about 225 pounds, very hairy, and wearing a very loose-cut tank top, by which I mean to say that the openings for his arms (where the sleeves would have been) descended halfway down his rib cage displaying copious amounts of pimpled skin folds and body hair.  Every time he brought his fork up to his mouth, his axillary hair came prominently into view.  It was a decidedly unappetizing spectacle.  Besides being physically repulsed, I was indignant that there was not a dress code requiring this patron to cover up or, if there were, that it had not been enforced.  

 

As I have examined my reaction to this diner over the years, however, I have had to confront my own inconsistency and subjectivity insofar as dress codes are concerned.  It is these two things - inconsistency and subjectivity - that are the problem at the heart of dress codes.  What if the diner had been not the man whom I have just described but, instead, an attractive, svelte young woman?  Would I have been offended, let alone appalled and disgusted, if someone fitting this description were seated directly in my line of sight wearing a loose-cut tank top?  If the man should be prohibited from wearing a tank top, shouldn't she?  Should we have different dress codes for men and women?  For overweight people and thin people?  For elderly people and young people?  For hairy people and hairless people?  If we insist that the man should cover up, are we fat-shaming him?  If we insist that the young woman should cover up, are we slut-shaming her?  Is having to look at men dining in tank tops the price we have to pay for not slut-shaming young women?  Is slut-shaming young women the price we have to pay for not having to look at men dining in tank tops?  Alternatively, how can one justify, with a straight face, having different dress codes for different types of people depending on what they look like?

 

The only equitable solution to all this is a either a uniform standard for dress codes - on planes, in schools, in restaurants - or no standards at all.  And if there is a standard, whose?  A uniform standard entails drawing the line somewhere.  But where?  Someone, some category, some class, some culturally-significant article of clothing is going to fall outside of that line.  Is it even possible to draw a line anywhere now without offending someone?  For that matter, when has it ever been possible to rub elbows with the rest of humanity, in all its multifariousness, without being offended?

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About me: I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York.  I am a licensed physical therapist and I write about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, and politics.  I currently serve on the board of directors for the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and the leadership team for Bruchim.

 

"He who is without ovaries shall not make laws for those who do." Tell it to Harry Blackmun.

by David Balashinsky

Because I don't follow right-wing groups or pages on Facebook (I know, I know - Facebook is old hat: for "boomers") and because, by now, I've unfriended or been unfriended by just about anyone who does, most of the memes that show up in my newsfeed align with my own point of view. It's not that I'm living in one of the "echo chambers" or "filter bubbles" that social scientists are always warning about: Facebook is not where I get my news - it's just where I get my memes. And yet, politically cocooned as my social-media experience may be, there are still memes that reappear regularly, like comets, that are sufficiently offensive that eventually I get around to writing a rebuttal.

Today's example of the sort of meme I have in mind is this:

Taking this statement at face value, it's easy to appreciate the principle here: it is the height of injustice when someone in a position to legislate should not have to suffer the consequences of that legislation himself.  To put that in more general terms, it violates basic fairness when those who create or enforce rules that others have to follow don't have to live by those rules themselves.  Although I do not have ovaries and although this meme obviously is referring to abortion restrictions, I, like many New Yorkers, have experienced this sort of unfairness every time I received a parking ticket from the police department while the police themselves park their cars illegally (including in front of fire hydrants), flagrantly (by placing a 5 x 10 placard conspicuously on the dashboard identifying the owner of the private vehicle as a cop so the car will not be ticketed or towed) and with complete impunity.  This double standard is so offensive to my sense of justice that it is actually one of the reasons I decided to leave New York City (my home town) twenty years ago.

The right to own one's own body is incomparably more important than the right to park one's car on a city street - that's a given.  Yet that is one of the reasons why this meme is so problematical.  Instead of making a positive argument for a right to abortion by grounding it on the fundamental right to bodily self-ownership, it makes a negative and far more narrowly circumscribed argument against restrictions of that right and, then, only when these restrictions are imposed by men.  This begs the question: is the purpose of this meme to advocate for women's right to abortion or is it simply to bash men?  It also leads to the companion question: is a law enacted by women (or, to be consistent with the language of the meme, people with ovaries) that restricts a woman's access to abortion any less an abridgment of her freedom than a law enacted by men that accomplishes the same thing? 

That's not a purely theoretical question.  The implication of this meme is that it is men who are primarily if not exclusively responsible for curtailing women's reproductive rights in the United States.  And although I am focusing here on this meme only, this is an assertion that I have seen made again and again in one form or another on social media.  The facts, however, do not support this contention.  As far as public attitudes are concerned, according to the Pew Research Center, as of 2024, 61% of men believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.  While that number is less than the percent of women who believe the same thing - 64% - that's not a large difference and certainly not large enough to justify the implication that men are the problem and that it is men (and only men) who are standing in the way of women's reproductive rights.

The notion that it is men who are responsible for restricting women's access to abortion in the U.S. also wholly discounts the critical role that women have played and continue to play in the ongoing campaign to deprive (other) women of their reproductive rights.  Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, for example, was founded and is run by women.  One of the founders and earliest presidents of the National Right to Life Committee, Mildred Jefferson, was a woman (and was, in fact, the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School).  Likewise, NRLC's current president (Carol Tobias) and Federal Legislative Director (Jennifer Popik) are women.  Students for Life of America, another major, national player in the anti-choice movement, has a leadership that consists overwhelmingly of women, including its current President, Executive Vice President, National Field Director and Director of Leadership Initiatives. The current CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) is a woman and so was her predecessor.  Out of thirteen sitting AAPLOG board members, ten of them are women.  Feminists for Life of America is yet another prominent anti-choice organization founded and run by women.

Then there are the legislators themselves.  Here a case for male culpability for abortion restrictions is easier to make.  Currently, out of over 7,000 state legislative seats across the country, a mere 32.8% are held by women.  Significantly, as of June 2023, out of the 1,573 legislators across the country who, since Dobbs, have voted to restrict women's access to abortion, the vast majority of them were men - 1,347.  (It's probably not worth mentioning but 225 of those politicians who voted to restrict or eliminate access to abortion are women - 214 Republicans and 11 Democrats.)  Clearly, there should be more women holding elected office.

But would the outcome of these votes to restrict abortion rights have been different if the number of women serving in state legislatures was proportional to the 50.5% of the population that is female?  One would certainly hope so, but then there is also the structural obstacle to electing pro-choice legislators - of either sex (or intersex) - that has been created by Republican gerrymandering.  As Sonali Seth and Michael Li point out,

The majority opinion in Dobbs asserts that women need not worry about the impact of the decision on reproductive autonomy because they can turn to the political process and vote out lawmakers who pass abortion restrictions and bans.  But the reality is that by failing to rein in partisan gerrymandering and consistently gutting voting rights protections, the Supreme Court has rendered that impossible.

One researcher looked specifically at the influence of gerrymandering on abortion policy in the United States and found that

states with a pro-Republican gerrymander were considerably more likely to impose a pre-viability abortion ban in 2023.  Across the 50 states, the logistic regression results suggest an increase in the odds of an abortion ban by more than 40 times as a result of a pro-Republican legislative map gerrymander.  Notably, a pre-viability abortion ban is in place in nine of the 10 states where public opinion favors abortion rights but where the legislative map is biased toward Republicans.

It's not news that Republican gerrymandering in red states has resulted in the imposition of abortion restrictions that, at least in some cases, a majority of those states' citizens do not want.  This has been confirmed by popular votes, since Roe was overturned, in favor of abortion rights in such decidedly red states as Kansas and Kentucky.  But Republican gerrymandering creates "affirmative action" for Republicans - not for men.  If Republicans were overwhelmingly male and Democrats overwhelmingly female in red states, then the effect of Republican gerrymandering would clearly be to disenfranchise women.  Yet if one looks at the constituencies, by sex, of the Republican Parties in each of the fourteen states with the most restrictive abortion laws ("total" bans, as defined by The Fuller Project), it turns out that, with only a few exceptions, there is a fairly even distribution of women and men among Republicans.  Two of these states have noticeably lopsided constituencies in which a sizable majority of Republicans are men: North Dakota and Oklahoma; but in three of these states (Arkansas, Idaho and Kentucky), Republican women outnumber Republican men.  Here is a table showing the breakdown of Republicans by sex in these fourteen states.  (These figures come from the Pew Research Center.) 

Women as a Percent of Those Who Identify as Republican or Who "Lean" Republican in States With Total Abortion Bans

Alabama.............  49%

Arkansas...........   52%

Idaho..................  53%

Indiana ..............  47%

Kentucky............  52%

Louisiana ........... 50%

Mississippi.......... 50%

Missouri.............. 50%

North Dakota...... 40%

Oklahoma.............43%

South Dakota .......48%

Tennessee.............47%

Texas....................49%

West Virginia.......49%

For all their success at unleveling the playing field, then, Republicans have, for the most part, not privileged the views of men who oppose abortion rights but of Republicans who oppose abortion rights.  And before they could create those political gerrymanders, Republicans first had to get elected to office.  There isn't a single congressional district in the United States in which women do not have the same right to vote as men have.  And if the votes of pro-choice women now effectively count for less than the votes of anti-choice men because of Republican gerrymandering, that is no less true of the votes of pro-choice men relative to the votes of anti-choice women in these same districts. 

The reason we're where we are today, of course, with women being denied access not just to abortion but to life-saving reproductive healthcare, is because of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.  Dobbs  swept away a fundamental right that had been recognized and reaffirmed by the Supreme Court for nearly half a century.  The person who made that possible was Donald Trump.  The people who made Donald Trump possible (that is, made it possible for Trump to eliminate the right to abortion) was every person who voted for him in 2016.  How many of those voters were women?  Depending upon which source one uses, of all the women who voted in the presidential election in 2016, as many as 42% of them voted for Trump.  The Pew Research Center puts that figure lower: 39%.  But, since women made up 55% of the electorate in 2016, what that means in raw numbers is that, out of the nearly 70 million votes cast by women in that election, approximately 27 million of these women's votes were for Trump.  That's 27 million votes by women for a candidate who explicitly and repeatedly promised to appoint supreme court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade.  (Worse, more White women voted for Trump in 2016 than voted for Clinton.)  Lest anyone forget, Trump was the candidate who stated on national television in March of that year that "there has to be some form of punishment" for women who obtain abortions.  In contrast to Trump's promises during the campaign to overturn Roe if elected, Hillary Clinton, Trump's opponent, unambiguously and repeatedly promised to defend a woman's right to choose.

None of this is meant to suggest that there isn't a "gender gap" in politics or that men, as a group, aren't even more culpable for ending the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S. than women are.  After all, 52% of male voters voted for Trump in 2016 as opposed to the 41% of them (including me) who voted for Clinton.  But, notwithstanding the effect that the electoral college has in facilitating (and increasingly guaranteeing) minority rule in the U.S. (Clinton got about 3 million more votes in 2016 than Trump did), the fact remains that were it not for the approximately 27 million women who voted for Trump in 2016 Roe would be the law of the land today.  Numerically, there simply aren't enough eligible male voters in the United States to prevent women from electing pro-choice legislators and presidents if only they chose to do so.

Even if the prevailing opinion among men weren't solidly in support of abortion rights, and even if much of the organizational leadership of the anti-abortion-rights movement weren't comprised of women, and even if the votes and party identification of women weren't necessary to install anti-choice politicians in legislatures and in the White House, there still would be a compelling reason not to reduce (and to misrepresent) the conflict between abortion-rights opponents and abortion-rights supporters as a conflict between men and women (as this meme and others like it do).  The reason is simply that a person's values and beliefs are not determined by that person's sex.  To assert that they are is to engage in the most basic sort of stereotyping, namely, that a person's sex is more determinative of their beliefs (and temperament and intellectual ability) than anything else. Women, as a class, have never benefited from that kind of stereotyping. Nor does the fact that they have been justify turning the tables on men and doing the same thing to them. The logical inference of this sort of essentializing or generalizing, after all, is that a person's sex may legitimately be regarded as a disqualifying characteristic. Not only disqualifying insofar as voting is concerned (as women were disqualified until ratification of the 19th amendment), and not only disqualifying insofar as enacting legislation is concerned (as the meme that I have been discussing here proclaims) but even disqualifying insofar as having an opinion on abortion is concerned. Explicitly expressing this attitude is this meme:

 

Speaking of opinions, if male legislators are obligated to abstain from votes that affect women's bodies and women's lives (as the first meme urges), presumably, male jurists, too, should be expected to recuse themselves from any legal proceedings concerning abortion and abortion rights (hence my allusion in the title to Harry Blackmun, the author of the 1973 Roe v. Wade opinion).  By that logic, no woman jurist could fairly preside over a case concerning male bodies, no LGBTQIA+ judge should rule on a case concerning a hetero person (and vice versa), etc.  But what is the argument that a judge should be disqualified on the basis of sex, religion, ethnicity or any other characteristic if not a validation of Trump's claim that he could not get a fair trial from a judge who is "of Mexican heritage"?

I do not mean to create a straw-man argument here, nor am I so naive as to think that these memes do not arise from the sense of injustice that I described at the beginning of this essay when I alluded to the practice of the police not being subject to the same parking rules (or to the same penalties for violating them) as the rest of us are.  When someone says "He who is without ovaries shall not make laws for those who do," it's probably a safe bet that she is referring not to any law on abortion but only to laws restricting or banning abortion.  Likewise, I'd like to think that the person who posted the meme just above was reacting to the expression of anti-choice opinions by men who will never need an abortion rather than to opinions by men that express support for a woman's right to choose.  But if that's the case, why post these memes to spaces on social media where the vast majority of men who are likely to see them are supporters of abortion rights?

Wittingly or unwittingly, memes that lay the blame for abortion restrictions at the feet of men while making no mention of the role that women, themselves, have played in restricting abortion rights reinforces the false and unproductive notion that it is not sexism that is the problem but men who are the problem.  I am reminded by this of something one of my favorite feminist authors, bell hooks, wrote in her Introduction to Feminism Is for Everybody (which is true).  I will give her the last word.

"Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression."  I love this definition, which I first offered more than 10 years ago in my book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center.  I love it because it so clearly states that the movement is not about being anti-male.  It makes it clear that the problem is sexism.  And that clarity helps us remember that all of us, female and male, have been socialized from birth on to accept sexist thought and action.  As a consequence, females can be just as sexist as men.  And while that does not excuse of justify male domination, it does mean that it would be naive and wrongminded for feminist thinkers to see the movement as simplistically being for women against men.  To end patriarchy (another way of naming the institutionalized sexism) we need to be clear that we are all participants in perpetuating sexism until we change our minds and hearts, until we let go of sexist thought and action and replace it with feminist thought and action.

 

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About me: I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York.  I am a licensed physical therapist and I write about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, and politics.  I currently serve on the board of directors for the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and the leadership team for Bruchim.

Because Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right: Why GALDEF Stands with TERRE DES FEMMES in Urging The Gambia Not to Repeal Its FGC Ban

by David Balashinsky

Female genital cutting (FGC - also known as female genital mutilation, or FGM) has been illegal in The Gambia since 2015.  This past March, however, in response to the convictions of three women for violating The Gambia's anti-FGM law, Member of Parliament, Almaneh Gibba, introduced legislation that would repeal this West African nation's ban on the practice.  If the bill passes, it would be the first instance of an FGC ban being reversed.  Understandably, many human rights activists and organizations - in The Gambia and around the world - have been both outraged and alarmed by this development and have publicly urged the government of the The Gambia not to repeal its law outlawing female genital cutting.  

Recently, the Berlin-based TERRE DES FEMMES, an organization that focuses on girls' and women's rights, also expressed its opposition to repealing the FGC ban in an Open Letter addressed to the president and National Assembly of The Gambia.  When TERRE DES FEMMES (TDF) reached out to the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund (GALDEF) requesting that we add our name in support of this initiative, we agreed to do so. (Intact Denmark and 15Sqaure are also among the more than fifty human-rights organizations that have signed the letter.)

This was not a difficult decision for GALDEF.  As we commented in this space last year on the occasion of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (an annual observance that was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2012), 

GALDEF supports the . . . goal of ending female genital cutting (FGC) worldwide.  We agree that FGC is an inherently harmful practice that violates the fundamental right to bodily integrity of those who are subjected to it.  As our Values Statement makes clear, GALDEF stands in full “solidarity with female and intersex victims of genital cutting. . . .”  Likewise, the United Nations’ goal of eradicating FGC is consistent with GALDEF‘s Vision: “To create a world where the right of everyone to bodily integrity and the freedom to choose what's done to their genitals is legally protected.”

GALDEF does not see any moral ambiguity in the matter of forced genital cutting.  We oppose all forms of non-consensual genital cutting regardless of the sex of the victim.  The right to genital integrity and the right to genital autonomy are among the most basic and important rights that people possess.   However, because we consider these rights universal - belonging, that is, to every human being, regardless of sex - we view sex-exclusive genital-cutting bans as morally problematic.  To be clear, GALDEF does not oppose FGC bans.  But we are opposed to FGC-only bans.  This can put us in a morally ambiguous position when the question is whether to endorse a sex-specific genital-cutting ban or, as in the present case, to lend our name in support of opposition to the repeal of one.  

The obvious and overriding concern is whether or not to support what can only be described as a half measure.  When an organization endorses a female-only genital-cutting ban, that organization is implicitly - or, at the very least, may appear to be - endorsing the genital cutting of everyone else.  The question, then, turns on the inherent tension that often exists between the good and the perfect.  It is further complicated by questions of cultural context, political strategy and the principle of moral consistency.  All of these factors were uppermost in our thoughts as GALDEF weighed TDF's request to sign its letter.  

The purpose of this post is to explain the reasoning behind GALDEF's decision.  Any opportunity to contribute something to the conversation on how to eradicate the genital cutting of all children is welcome, of course.  But, more importantly, as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization, GALDEF depends on the financial support of its donors.  Because they (and others, too) have a right to expect transparency of GALDEF, an airing of the philosophical and strategic considerations that informed our deliberations on TDF's request seems warranted.  All the more so as GALDEF is currently soliciting support for an equal protection lawsuit here in the United States that we hope will result in the invalidation, on constitutional grounds, of a statewide ban on genital cutting that protects girls but not boys or intersex children.  This means that, by signing TDF's letter, we are actively opposing the repeal of a sex-specific (female-only) genital-cutting ban in The Gambia while supporting a future effort to have a court strike down a similar law here.  How, some may wonder, do we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory strategies?

The first and most important answer to that arises from the fact that GALDEF and the legislators in The Gambia who support re-legalizing FGC are motivated by and working toward fundamentally different objectives.  The  goal of an equal-protection lawsuit here in the United States is not to deprive girls of legal protection against genital cutting but simply to obtain a judicial decision instructing a state legislature that, in order not to run afoul of that state's constitutional mandate of equal protection on the basis of sex, it must rewrite its anti-genital-cutting statute using sex-neutral language so that the law protects every child - not just those born with vulvas.  The ultimate goal of this strategy is not to "lower the ceiling" for every child so that none is protected from genital cutting but, rather, to "raise the floor" so that every child is protected against genital cutting.  The goal of those behind the repeal of the FGC ban in The Gambia is diametrically opposite to this.  Thus, while these two strategies may, at face value, seem similar, the objectives behind them could not be more dissimilar.

Perhaps equally critical to an understanding of how and why these initiatives differ fundamentally from one another is an appreciation of the radically different cultural contexts of The Gambia and the United States, especially with respect to genital cutting.  In The Gambia, FGC is a "deeply rooted cultural practice" with as many as 73% of girls and women between the ages of 15 and 49 having been subjected to it.  As explained in a comprehensive government-issued report (National Policy for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation in The Gambia 2022-2026), 

Communities perform FGM for various reasons.  The retention and preservation of social heritage, family pride, prestige, community acceptance, avoidance of stigma, marriageability, and inclusion are among the main reasons why FGM is still practiced and perpetuated.  Rejecting FGM has cultural, social, economic, and political consequences including stigmatization and discrimination.  FGM is also considered a cultural identifier among the practicing communities distinguishing their daughters from those of communities who do not circumcise their girls and women. 

The National Policy report emphasizes that, 

FGM is a social norm that is deeply entrenched in the cultural, and historical beliefs of certain ethnic groups in The Gambia and has religious connotations.  In many practicing communities, parents practice FGM on their daughters because they believe that it is a religious obligation to do so.  Consequently, parents and traditional and religious leaders continue to promote, perpetuate, and defend the practice.  Statistically, in The Gambia, only about one-third of women (34%) and men (31%) believe that FGM is not a religious requirement.  Less than half of women (46%) and men (42%) believe that female circumcision should not . . . continue [citation omitted].

This report further notes that,

Another reason why [FGC] is practiced is that it is considered a rite of passage into womanhood.  There is a general belief amongst practicing communities that FGM prepares girls for womanhood, for their life ahead as wives, mothers and caregivers.

In contrast to The Gambia, FGC is neither a deeply embedded nor a widespread cultural or religious practice in the United States.  The same cultural forces that make FGC prevalent in The Gambia are what make FGC rare here.  A statutory ban, in other words, is not all that is standing between girls' genital integrity and their being subjected to routine genital cutting in the U.S.   

That is not to say that the U.S. does not have its own shameful history of female genital cutting.  Clitoridectomy was regarded as an appropriate "treatment" for masturbation - a medicalized form of genital cutting that arose in parallel with male genital cutting (MGC) for the same purpose - and was imposed on girls in the U.S. during much of the nineteenth and  twentieth centuries.  (Intersex genital cutting, of course, continues to this day, although it is finally falling out of favor among the medical establishment.)  Even worse (if only because one might hope to expect better of contemporary society), there now appears to be a resurgence of FGC in the United States.  One widely-quoted study estimated that, by 2012, a half million girls were at risk for FGC - a threefold increase over 1990 estimates.  As alarming as these statistics are, however, they also represent the exception that proves the rule.  As the authors of this study concluded, the increase in risk of FGC between 1990 and 2012 "was wholly a result of [the] rapid growth in the number of immigrants from FGM/C practicing countries living in the United States. . . ."  There is no reason to believe, therefore, that a temporary invalidation on equal-protection grounds of an FGC ban would result in open season for FGC in the U.S. or that it would increase the risk to girls of being subjected to FGC beyond girls who already are at risk, ban or no ban.  Again, that is in no way to suggest that girls should not be legally protected against genital cutting.  Of course they should - as all children should.

It is also important to bear in mind that, as high as the prevalence of FGC is in The Gambia, the prevalence of MGC in that nation is even higher: 99.2%, according to the 2018 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey for The Gambia.  As this report explains,

Circumcision in The Gambia is both [a] cultural and religious practice and is observed by all ethnic groups.  In the past, boys were circumcised very late in their life and the practice is seen as a transformation [from] boyhood to manhood.  Furthermore, it was done by traditional circumcisers in overcrowded ritual sites under unhygienic conditions increasing the risk of infection among the children.  Recently trained health professional's [sic] involvement in male circumcision is gaining momentum, however traditional circumcisers still continue to practice in some communities.

The near universal prevalence of genital cutting for religious and cultural reasons across the entire population - male and female - of The Gambia represents another crucial distinction between the proposed legislation repealing the FGC ban there and an equal-protection lawsuit here, and this also explains why GALDEF can oppose the former while supporting the latter.  Unlike the ultimate goal of an equal-protection lawsuit in the U.S. - which, again, is to codify legal protection against genital cutting for all children - the goal of the pending legislation in The Gambia is effectively to deny legal protection against genital cutting for all children.  If The Gambia repeals its anti-FGC law, it won't be because legislators there want to protect boys and intersex children from genital cutting.  Far from it.  With near-universal penile circumcision in The Gambia, an MGC ban isn't even on the table.  The point of the legislation is simply to protect those who practice FGG from prosecution.  That necessarily entails ending legal protection from genital cutting for girls.  That's not a step forward for boys; it's a step backward for girls.  And, just as repealing the anti-FGM law in The Gambia will do nothing to protect boys there, preserving it would do nothing to harm them.  If anything, a repeal of The Gambia's anti-FGC ban will indirectly harm boys by reinforcing the legality and social acceptability of genital cutting in principle.  This will only make it harder to expand protection from genital cutting in the future to boys and intersex children in The Gambia.  It is because of these different cultural contexts, then, that opposing the repeal of an FGC ban in The Gambia while supporting the overturning of a girls-only genital-cutting ban here in the U.S. is logically, strategically, and morally consistent. 

Still another compelling reason to sign on to TDF's letter is simply because they asked us to.  GALDEF recognizes the importance - both on principle and strategically - of making common cause with other organizations that are pursuing similar goals.  Our view is "that all genital autonomy movements stand on the same philosophical foundation."   That means not merely opposing FGC in the abstract - which we do -  but supporting organizations - when we can - that are actively working to end FGC.

Moreover, TDF is not just any girls' and women's rights organization.  TDF has long been a vocal supporter of genital autonomy for boys.  In fact, it might be the only women's rights organization that has had the courage, the moral integrity and the philosophical consistency to publicly articulate its support for the right of all children, regardless of sex, not to be subjected to medically-unnecessary genital cutting.  TDF was a supporter of the Worldwide Day of Genital Autonomy even before there was a Worldwide Day of Genital Autonomy (WWDOGA).  Not long after a district court in Cologne, Germany ruled (on May 7th, 2012) that the circumcision to which a four-year-old had been subjected amounted to an "illegal bodily harm" that violated his right to "physical integrity" (a milestone in the ongoing struggle for human rights that has been commemorated annually ever since as the WWDOGA), Irmingard Schewe-Gerigk, TDF's chairwoman at the time, was interviewed by Choices (an online magazine) and had this to say about penile circumcision and the Cologne ruling:

We welcomed the fact that the Cologne Regional Court made it clear that the physical integrity of children must not be violated using religious arguments. When balancing the interests of two constitutionally protected legal interests, it made it clear: the right to the undisturbed practice of religion and the parental right of parents do not take precedence over the child's right to [bodily] integrity and self-determination.  Furthermore, by ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Germany has committed itself to abolishing customs that are harmful to children. The fact that this irreversible procedure cannot be in the best interests of the child is clearly demonstrated. . . .  [Original in German; this translation via Google Translate.]

To the extent that penile circumcision is comparable to some forms of FGC,  Schewe-Gerigk notes that,

there are definitely parallels. In some regions, only the clitoral [hood] or the inner labia are removed. That's comparable.  I recently looked at circumcision because I, too, imagined it to be more harmless.  After that I can only say: Anyone who trivializes this doesn't know what's happening or doesn't want to know.  My concern is that similar procedures that are prohibited for girls will be permitted for boys.  I fight for equal rights for boys and girls.  [Original in German; this translation via Google Translate.]

In 2016,  the fourth anniversary of the Cologne ruling, Ida Nabaterrega, TDF's former FGM Policy Specialist, issued the following statement in support of that year's WWDOGA commemoration:

TERRE DES FEMMES, as a human rights organization, is fundamentally concerned with the physical integrity of children as a human right that applies equally to all children, regardless of their origin or religion and what gender they are.  Irreversible interventions in the [bodily] integrity of children - with the exception of medically necessary treatments - must not be justified by religion or tradition - not even between girls, boys and intersex children.  [Original in German; this translation via Google Translate.]

TDF's longstanding public opposition to MGC was not solicited by any anti-MGC organization.  Rather, it was an exercise on TDF's part in principled advocacy for an equal right to genital autonomy for all children regardless of sex.  Notwithstanding the fact that GALDEF continues to entertain serious and substantive objections to The Gambia's anti-FGM statute as written, to have rebuffed TDF's request for support in its current anti-FGM initiative would have been a betrayal not just of a longtime and esteemed ally in the cause of universal genital autonomy but, under the present circumstances, of our own values which, as noted above, include "solidarity with female and intersex victims of genital cutting." 

None of this, however, alters our view that The Gambia's current anti-FGM law has major flaws - first and foremost, that it discriminates against boys by failing to include them in its proscription of genital cutting.  Additionally, the law bans not only forced genital cutting of girls but even consensual genital cutting that may be sought by adult women.  In denying women the right to alter their own bodies in conformity with their cultural values and religious beliefs, this law violates their right to bodily autonomy.  In that respect, this law is at odds with GALDEF's core Vision which, to repeat, is "To create a world in which the right of everyone to bodily integrity and the freedom to choose what's done to their genitals is legally protected."

This brings us back to the most basic and important question concerning the ethics of supporting a statute that, by explicitly protecting only one class of persons, denies protection to everyone else.  Under what circumstances is it appropriate to support a measure that is intended to advance a basic human right for some but not others?  Consider, as an analogy, the debate over the 15th amendment to the U.S. constitution that prohibited denying someone the right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude" but not on account of sex.  Faced with a gross injustice to two broad classes of persons - Black men and all women - but presented with an opportunity to rectify that injustice for only one of these classes, what was the more ethical course of action: to hold out for eventual universal suffrage at the cost of near-term suffrage for Black men?  Or to do what one could, given the political and cultural realities of nineteenth-century America, to gain voting rights for Black men and seem, thereby, to implicitly support the continued denial of that right to women?  (This debate actually resulted in a rift in the women's suffrage movement at the time, although it was not shaped exclusively by such noble considerations as utilitarianism, strategy, and idealism but also by less honorable beliefs about who was more "deserving of the vote.")  

Other analogies might be found in the conundrum of "harm reduction."  Harm-reduction strategies are practical approaches that are intended to mitigate rather than eliminate  inherently harmful practices.  Yet the very thing that may make harm reduction effective - being nonjudgmental - strikes critics of this approach as constituting implicit approval of the underlying practice.  Thus, for example, controversy inevitably accompanies proposals to legalize  Supervised Injection Facilities (also known as Safe Injection Sites): locations where people who inject drugs can do so under the supervision of healthcare professionals.  If people are going to inject dangerous drugs, isn't it preferable that they don't die from doing it?  Or is it rather the case that the mere existence of such facilities will "normalize" IV drug use and result in a higher incidence of substance use (and other social ills) with even more fatalities in the long run? 

Closer to home, rather than a blanket ban, should some limited forms of FGC (see, in particular, pp. 506-510), performed under appropriately sterile conditions, be permitted in order not to drive the practice "underground"?  Covert and unregulated, FGC would inevitably result in even greater harm to the victims.  But wouldn't this strategy merely "enable" and perpetuate the practice?  

Then there is the approach that seeks to limit overall harm across a population rather than the degree of harm to any one individual.  Such an approach might incorporate a prohibition of medically unnecessary penile circumcision but with a religious exception.  In the United States alone, this could spare over one million boys every year the trauma and irreversible effects of genital cutting while side-stepping the objection that an MGC ban would violate the free exercise of religion and, therefore, the first amendment.  But don't children who are born into families that practice genital cutting have the same fundamental human rights - and the same constitutional rights - as every other child?  And wouldn't a religious exception have to apply equally to families who sincerely believe FGC to be a religious requirement?  

Finally, what about a genital-cutting ban that protects only girls?  Aren't boys and intersex children born with the same fundamental human rights?

Sometimes, when working toward a particular goal, the quandary consists in there being too many variables to know which course of action is most likely to bring about the desired result.  There are other times when social and political realities simply require us to settle for incremental changes rather than broad, fundamental change all at once.  But there are also times when it is not an expected or even a hoped-for outcome that decides us on what to do but our principles, even though the result is likely to be less than ideal.   With an unprecedented rescinding of an FGC ban looming over the girls of The Gambia and over the broad social movement to end all forms of genital cutting, we believe that this is one of those times.  Whatever The Gambia legislature chooses to do, GALDEF chooses to stand on the right side of history.  Genital cutting of all children will come to an end.  It's not a question of "if" but of "when" and of "how."  Faced with an actual choice rather than a purely theoretical one - the choice between remaining silent or adding our voice to the international chorus urging The Gambia not to repeal its FGC ban - GALDEF can come to only one set of reciprocal conclusions.  For The Gambia, repealing the FGC ban is the wrong thing to do.  For GALDEF, opposing that repeal is the right thing to do.

 

 

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