FGM in Minnesota
The Minnesota Star Tribute has a bizarre story entitled Minnesota bill against female genital mutilation raises opposition.
It begins:
Opposition from some members of Minnesota’s immigrant and refugee communities is slowing the momentum of a bill that would impose stiff penalties for parents involved in cases of female genital mutilation.
Let’s call it like it is: there are people who are opposed to a law designed to reduce child abuse, and in particular, the abuse of girls.
The Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage, a nonprofit called Isuroon and other groups argue that the legislation carries overly harsh punishment and unintended consequences, including the possibility that newcomers from countries where genital cutting is widespread would not seek medical care and other services for their children. They call for a less punitive approach focused on educating parents.
How about just educating parents that this sort of child abuse is illegal and anyone participating will get in a lot of trouble.
Now, the author of the Senate version is voicing second thoughts about approving the legislation yet this session, though Senate GOP leadership have not committed to a course of action. “We all agree this practice is absolutely horrible, and something needs to be done,” said the author, Sen. Karin Housley. “How can we empower communities to address this practice from within rather than having Big Brother come down and say, ‘This is wrong?’ ”
Who says nonsense like this? Empower communities to address this practice from within? How exactly are these communities “unempowered?” What exactly is preventing the community from having the discussion? Do they get struck by lighting when they bring up certain topics and they need a Faraday Cage to avoid getting fried? Does thinking certain thoughts attract a herd of rabid wolverines?
Imagine if the same statement was brought up about other forms of child abuse: “How can we empower child molesters to address this practice from within rather than having Big Brother come down and say, ‘This is wrong?’ ” Sounds insane, doesn’t it?
Obviously, the issue is not figuring out how to empower the community to discuss the issue. The issue is that people who are engaging in the practice don’t see a problem with it. Some may, in fact, advocate for it publicly.
Here’s what the bill does:
Franson’s bill makes it a felony for parents to subject their daughters to the procedure and calls for loss of custody and prison terms from five to 20 years, depending on the extent of the injuries. It also increases penalties for those who perform the procedure, which has been illegal since pioneering Minnesota legislation in the 1990s.
And here’s some discussion from within the community, demonstrating that the Senator calling for empowerment is way too late:
Lul Hersi, a St. Cloud mother of four and a supporter of the bill, says the United States should warn refugee parents against rushing to have their daughters cut before traveling to the United States — and disqualify them from resettlement if they do: “The parents know the risks they’re putting their kids in.”
Fartun Weli of Isuroon, which won a $180,000 federal grant this winter to educate health care providers about the procedure, stresses that she does not condone the practice.
But she and other critics balk at separating girls from their families, which they argue victimizes them a second time. They say they worry about families arriving from places where the practice is deeply rooted. An amendment to Franson’s bill states the penalties apply only if the ritual is practiced in the United States. But Haji Yusuf, a Somali community leader in St. Cloud, questions whether authorities can always readily determine that.
For parents who came to the United States with girls who’d already undergone the procedure, the bill, which mandates reporting to authorities by health care providers and others, could discourage doctor visits.
More problems noticed by the community:
“How can you protect children when you take them away from their families and put them in foster care?” she said.
Because we all know that little girls are better off with parents who will cut them. And we know there is no way that parents who cut their daughter will also marry her off while she is still a child. And even less chance they will perform an honor killing if the girl objects to being married off to one of the community’s elders.
More objections being raised include:
Hodan Hassan, a mental health clinician, also argues for a less punitive approach.
“When I read the bill, my heart sank,” Hassan said. “It criminalizes parents who don’t understand the legality of their actions and don’t have the ability to advocate for themselves.”
I can understand having trouble with some arcane accounting regulations, or difficulty understanding precisely how much weight you are allowed to tow behind a pickup truck, but it shouldn’t be too hard to remember that you can’t perform FGM on your daughter. And what is this nonsense about not being able to advocate for themselves? The practice has been illegal in the state for a couple of decades. The best way a parent can advocate for him or herself is to avoid engaging in this practice.
And apparently there are more ways the community is being victimized:
Weli says she worries the House discussion framed the issue as a Somali community problem when almost a dozen immigrant communities in Minnesota hail from countries that practice genital cutting. At least one of the Minnesota girls whose parents took them to a Michigan doctor now charged with performing the procedure — the case that inspired the House bill — was not Somali, according to child protection documents.
If the majority of the cases of FGM in Minnesota are in the Somali (I would have thought it was the “Somali-American” community and not the “Somali” community), doesn’t it make sense to focus on that community? Right at the moment there is also an outbreak of measles in Minnesota, and it too is <a href = ” https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/08/measles-vaccines-somali/”>heavily concentrated in the Somali-American community</a>due to that community’s fear of being vaccinated. Due to the concentration of the problem, there’s a lot more bang for the buck in trying to get Somali-American kids vaccinated then there is in pretending everyone in all the places to visit in Minnesota has an equal likelihood of contracting diseases that could mostly be avoided through innoculation.
The last word on the issue, at least as far as the article is concerned, goes to the author of the bill:
Franson says the bill’s intent is clear: protecting girls. So is the language in the bill that limits penalties to those who live in the United States when the practice takes place. She says loss of custody must be a consequence of a procedure that causes girls lifelong harm.
“America is the land of the brave and the home of the free,” she said. “Little girls who moved here from other countries have the right to be free from the oppression of female genital mutilation.”
That doesn’t make any sense at all. I can understand protecting little girls from FGM and other barbaric practices, I am all in favor of it. But if the last paragraph isn’t a giant non-sequitur, I don’t know what is. After all, one would think little girls should have the right to be free of FGM regardless of what country they’re in.
Update: Minor edits in one sentence for clarity.
Somali immigrants have been heavily targeted by anti-vaxxer evangelists in Minnesota, not so much by anti-genital mutilation activists, someone should certainly get out ahead of that and reverse the angles of integration.
As someone whose genitals were mutilated in Minnesota without my consent and who grew up with a lot of kids in the foster care system there I have to say harm reduction makes a lot more sense than punitive measures targeting parents’ resources for child rearing or stripping children from their birth parents. Granted the barbarity of child mutilation that persists in many cultures, to greater or lesser extent, what doesn’t make sense here is that you would prefer to compound the error.
Since you happen to mention vaccination, it turns out that the biggest community of anti-vaxers is among upper middle class white families who hold unconventional beliefs.
Do you also propose that they have loss of custody and prison terms from five to 20 years? There are thousands more lives lost to anti-vaccination practices than genital mutilation.
Funny, but instead of putting anti-vaxers in jail, they receive waivers for their unconventional beliefs. Funny, which topics you choose as scratching your itch. Actually it isn’t funny at all and your twisted obsessions are tiresome.
” harm reduction makes a lot more sense than punitive measures targeting parents’ resources for child rearing or stripping children from their birth parents.”
And what exactly is harm reduction in this context? Leaving children under the control of their abusers? And how does that dissuade other parents thinking of abusing their children in the same way?
Many kidnapping victims seem to end up with Stockholm Syndrome, but that isn’t a reasonable argument that leaving kidnapping victims with their kidnappers qualifies as harm reduction.
BillB,
“Funny, which topics you choose as scratching your itch.”
I’ve been writing a while, and have had many itches over the years. Some itches don’t get scratched often, and only get scratched lightly, but have gotten itched multiple times throughout the years. Try Google before you come out and state I’ve never mentioned a given topic before because I sure as hell am not going to catalog every topic I’ve ever discussed at the bottom of every post I write.
Now, that said, I’ll admit I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned a specific punishment for anti-vaxxers, but then, I wasn’t reacting to a newspaper discussing punishment at the time. But if you ask me, yes, if it was up to me I would favor a loss of custody and prison terms for anti-vaxxers.
That said, there are a number of reasons to express an opinion on FGM relative to anti-vaxx:
1. FGM is a new problem in this country. Anti-vaxx is an old one. New problems without a strong constituent base are often easier to root out. (Or as I put it often, the fact that problem X exists in this country is not a good reason to also import problem Y.)
2. The anti-vaxxers have figured out how to tie anti-vaxx to religious freedom which makes them somewhat entrenched and hard to dislodge. There are enough people denying that FGM is tied to a religion that there’s a chance of rooting it out before the FGM proponents wise up to the fact that they are carrying that they are holding a pair of aces.
3. People susceptible to FGM are susceptible to anti-vaxx. If you kill FGM, and do it the right way, you might be able to get those who would otherwise cut their daughters to also vaccinate them.
“Actually it isn’t funny at all and your twisted obsessions are tiresome.”
And you propose what with respect to FGM? Letting it go because it fits into one of my tiresome twisted obsessions?
I think the “twisted obsession” is your finding fault with immigrants, particularly those from places where Islam is the dominant religion. Understand I would like to see FGM eliminated just as I would like to see all children vaccinated, but your rationale that you picked on FGM because it is not as well entrenched as anti vaxxers rings hollow given your past posts. I really do not know whether the punitive measures you support are the way to go because I do not know the issue in Minnesota well enough to express an opinion. I do think that it is a worthwhile debate for Minnesota lawmakers to have or are you of the Sessions view that punishment is the best approach regardless of the facts even when any number of GOP controlled states have concluded it is not and fiscally imprudent to boot?
Terry,
Based on material I have covered over the years, an unbiased observer would conclude my biggest obsessions is economic growth, and to a large degree, how taxes affect that growth. The performance of Presidents along a range of issues would be a distant second. I have written some on immigration, but the reaction here seems to be due to the “whose ox is gored”
My views on immigration tend to be geared toward how immigration affects economic growth and security, though this post is not written with that in mind. My posts can generally be summarized thusly:
1. A country has a right to pick who immigrates in, and it should do so based on what is good for the existing population.
2. There are more people who want to immigrate into the US than we accept at any time.
3. Some immigrants are beneficial to the existing population, and some aren’t. Whether a particular immigrant benefits the existing population economically or not depends on his/her skillsets and ability to integrate into the existing population.
4. Because of 1, 2 and 3, the US should pick immigrants whose skillsets and ability to integrate make them likely to provide a net positive to the existing population.
5. Different countries vary in the proportion of immigrants they can send to the US (or the West – I have looked at immigration into other countries and found similar things) who will be able to provide a positive net benefit to their new country. Some countries generate a disproportionate number of immigrants who, in Western countries, end up a) on the public dole and b) create anti-social problems.
6) Which countries fall into those from whom immigrants are economically beneficial can vary over time.
Now, I’ve posted information from the Census about immigrants by country and their outcome in the US: http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2016/11/the-bottom-10-performing-immigrant-groups-in-the-us-lessons-learned.html
The Census data shows that Somalis are the worst performing immigrant group into the US if measured by income per capita, and, again, according to US Census data, two out of three Somali immigrants in the US are on food stamps / SNAP. Economic outcomes often aren’t divorced from social outcomes, and I don’t think its a stretch to think of FGM and susceptibility to fall for anti-vax nonsense as a social outcome. Another social outcome I’ve noted is the relatively disproporationate share of young men who have gone off to fight for Al Shabaab and ISIS.
I hope for the success of any person, immigrant or not, who isn’t out trying to harm other people. But I am not willing to pretend that culture isn’t strongly correlated with outcomes.
So what does that have to do with FGM? Eliminating FGM from the culture may is unlikely to be anything close to a sufficient condition for generating growth, but I am fairly certain it is a necessary condition for doing so. And there are a lot of other necessary conditions too.
Isn’t it already illegal to mutilate children in Minnesota?
Joel,
Yes. This bill is intended to up the consequences because the current approach is not perceived to be doing the trick.
According to whom in legislative Minnesota would it be considered “doing the trick”? What does “doing the trick” mean in objective terms… n /1000 residents? n/1000 former Sommaliess now resident in the US?
If it is presently percieived (by whom exectly?) as “not doing the trick” what is their measure of what “not doing the trick” means?
If you don’t know what not “doing the trick” means then who’s to say what it means or doesn’t mean in objective terms.
What are the objective measures?
Who provides them?
Is who provides them state or federal government agency? or
Is who provides them a special interest group with a vested emotional or ideological interest one way or another?
Where are the measures freely publically available?
Is there a document that describes how the measures were acquired?
Yes, Mr. Tooth. The National Bureau of Doing the Trick, and it’s leader, the Grand Poobah of Trick Doing, have been officially in charge of maintaining standards on Doing the Trick since the Spring of 1983. Those standards were since updated seven times, most recently on January 19, 2016. You may recall the acrimonious debates.
Mr. Kimel, can you answer the questions though?
Mr. Kimel, one more thing. Should I refer to you as Mr. Kim? or Mr. m?
Just out of curiosity and similarities of genital cutting does anybody know why male circumcision is legal n the U.S.? I thought it was because of cultural traditions perhaps originally practiced by Jews at some ancient point in time but I actually don’t know the origins at al. So I’m asking since I thought FGM practiced in other nations is also a cultural tradition. Am I wrong?
Wouldn’t MGM be the appropriate acronym for male circumcision if FGM is the appropriate acronym for female genital cuttingi? I mean if it’s called a “mutilation” for one gender, why isn’t it called that for the other gender?
Maybe “mutilation” isn’t the proper or best term to describe genital cutting, though…. perhaps this term is used to pre-ordain it as something some people don’t like or want done.. hence putting the “cutting” into a pejorative form of “mutilation” … while the same practice done on males is traditional … perhaps even a religiously prescribed act in some cultures, and it isn’t even called “genital cutting” much less “genital mutilation” which is what it must also be if that’s what its called for females.
But of course we also have a large segment or U.S. society (“culture” if you will) that’s vehemently opposed to birth control methods as well. I mean even full state legislators shutting down as many Planned Parenthood clinics as they possibly can… independent of whether Planned Parenthood also provides females the option of abortion.
I wonder if there’s some connection?
I mean is it genital cutting that’s the issue or just female genital cutting? Is this a purely cultural thing… like racism is part of the US culture and is widely practiced, and male genital cutting is as well, but female genital cutting is not and therefore it’s “bad” and thus we make it illegal?
Wasn’t male and female homosexualism and acts also “bad” and thus also made illegal until just recently? Now it’s not “bad” so no longer illegal. What actually changed? Homosexualism has been the same since before antiquity and it hasn’t changed an iota since.. so since that didn’t change from “bad” to “good” then it must be that the public changed their minds about what was “bad” rather than anything material having changed at all.
So isn’t female and male genital cutting the same thing…. it’s “bad” or “not bad” depending only on public opinion rather than any material reasons. I recall some relatively recent history in the U.S. when the public opinion made alcohol “bad” and even went so far as to make a constitutional amendment to make it really, really “bad”. And then there’s the recent marijuana is “bad” but which is now “good” in some places. Marijuana is no different now than it was when I used it a hundred years ago (and a month ago) but it’s now a lot more bang for the buck and sweeter than it ever was. So it can’t be that marijuana changed but that the public’s opinion changed.
In other words arbitrary and capreciious. Isn’t that what female and male genital cutting is also?
Just by the way how many readers of AB had throat mutilation done to them when they were kids… an extremely painful experience because it was “good” for us or so the medical community of doctorss told us at the time. Why isn’t that the case now? Did humans suddenly mutate to make throat mutilation unnecessary? I mean because almost no kid today goes through throat mutilation.
Also btw, who came up with the term female genital mutilation in the first place? It certainly isn’t how the people in their own cultures describe it so who decided to call it a “mutilation”? Clearly it had to be somebody that was vehemently opposed to the practice and from some culture that doesn’t practice it and wanted to make it sound like it was a terrible offense.
But if it’s so terrible, then why would several cultures practice it for thousands of generations?… I mean any culture will modify and adjust it’s traditions over time if they aren’t serving a purpose that the culture approves of or that doesn’t serve the cultures own interests and beliefs.
I have been keeping track of how you comment and there’s an obvious pattern. Given how many comments in a row you put up in defense of FGM, I assume we would have had to send away for more pixels if this post had involved a condemnation of bacha bazi.
But you still didn’t answer the questions, did you?
Correct, Tooth, I didn’t. Normally, I would treat you the same as I would anyone else who repeatedly posts comments defending abhorrent practices like mutilating little girls, raping little boys and killing women who object to being sold off like cattle and then turns around and calls me a racist for objecting to those practices. But the wall-of-text obfuscations and the sleight of hand makes even those sorts of interactions wearying. So for the moment, I am just not going to join you in the sewer. Think of the bright side: that just leaves more excrement for you.