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briandavidearp's profile
Brian D. Earp
Brian D. Earp
Brian D. Earp
@briandavidearp

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Brian D. Earp

@briandavidearp

@Yale; @UniofOxford; @hastingscenter; @TheAtlantic - psychology, philosophy of science, bioethics, tech, politics, gender and sexuality, etc. RT ≠ endorsement.

oxford.academia.edu/BrianEarp
Joined July 2011

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    1. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

      OK folks, time for another thread. This doctor, @DrChaya, is apparently running for Senate against @SenatorCollins (https://bit.ly/2TsgmSd ). I was copied into a thread where someone had drawn a comparison between female & male genital cutting, which @DrChaya, like most people,pic.twitter.com/NUbpcpc3TH

      23 replies . 108 retweets 210 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

      found astonishing & offensive, claiming "FGM removes the clitoris." It is understandable why she would think this, because even the @WHO states that at least some forms of FGM involve "partial or total removal of the clitoris."pic.twitter.com/aMxauHAMnc

      1 reply . 6 retweets 43 likes
      Show this thread
      Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

      The @WHO also states that "FGM is rooted in gender inequalities" and "constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women" (https://bit.ly/1qUplWF ). It also states that, unlike male circumcision, FGM has "no known health benefits." So, the prevailing view in Westernpic.twitter.com/zDMK8gUT2H

      2:58 pm - 3 Jan 2019
      • 4 Retweets
      • 34 Likes
      • Steffen Wasmund Little Miss Anonymous armed leukocyte Kyle Chen Sceptical Canuck ProtectChildren 🇷🇺🤖 Rob Kiser Reyos Blackwoood
      2 replies . 4 retweets 34 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          discourses is that FGM is like "cutting off the entire penis" as a way to sexually disable young boys. What most people don't know is the @WHO policy is funded primarily by anti-FGM activist groups, is not written by experts, is incoherent, & gets basic facts wrong. I'll explain.

          1 reply . 8 retweets 45 likes
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        3. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          First, there is *literally no form* of FGM, anywhere in the world, that removes the clitoris. The clitoris is a very large, complex organ that is mostly inside the body, like an iceberg, with a very small portion that protrudes outside. To remove it would require major surgery.pic.twitter.com/MOnzcMuVJH

          2 replies . 11 retweets 48 likes
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        4. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          As my brilliant colleague Dr. Jasmine Abdulcadir shows in the below MRI, the most extreme forms of FGM affect the glans of the clitoris, leaving most of its erectile tissues & structures relevant for orgasm intact (https://bit.ly/2QpBzdK , https://bit.ly/2Tqgfq2 ). Moreover,pic.twitter.com/z7SFCHTCaX

          1 reply . 6 retweets 36 likes
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        5. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          the @WHO typology for FGM includes more than a dozen distinct procedures (https://bit.ly/2iI2QaL ), several of which do not affect any part of the clitoris, such as FGM Type IIa & some of FGM Type IV. In my own work, I argue it is *morally wrong* to cut the genitals of a childpic.twitter.com/QXQcH0yDXF

          1 reply . 8 retweets 41 likes
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        6. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          *regardless* of which exact tissues or structures are affected & *whether or not* they will be able to experience pleasure or orgasm (as most women with FGM can!), simply because the child is defenseless, it is their most private body part, & they are incapable of giving consent.pic.twitter.com/J2ye7VzR9H

          1 reply . 18 retweets 59 likes
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        7. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          Even the *risk* of sexual or psychological harm due to a 'ritual nick' (FGM Type IV, which does not remove tissue or typically alter the morphology of the vulva) is *unacceptable* if the child is healthy & cannot evaluate such risk for herself. After all, the knife could slip, or

          1 reply . 6 retweets 44 likes
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        8. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          nerve damage could occur; she might get an infection, etc. Even if these risks could be 'minimized' through medicalization, as is increasingly common in societies that practice FGM - taking their cue from US cutting of boys in hospitals - it is rational to prefer that *no* sharp

          1 reply . 6 retweets 42 likes
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        9. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          object be brought anywhere near one's intimate sexual anatomy unless it is *absolutely medically required* & the cutting cannot be delayed to an age of consent without putting one's life in danger. Of course, these same principles apply to medically unnecessary male circumcisionpic.twitter.com/gnbDRjiJEI

          2 replies . 16 retweets 53 likes
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        10. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          and to some surgeries, like "feminizing cliteroplasty" performed on children with ambiguous genitalia (see screenshot, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D1LPT_P7_o …). But these are accepted practices in Western societies, so we don't tend to think of them as harmful or ethically problematic.pic.twitter.com/KiQNKvTVZw

          1 reply . 5 retweets 42 likes
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        11. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          Indeed, @DrChaya herself has performed medically unnecessary circumcisions on non-consenting, healthy patients, & had this done to her sons. So she may be highly motivated to find a clear distinction between this practice and "FGM" which she agrees is morally wrong (see below).pic.twitter.com/9QEgWHhHCy

          1 reply . 8 retweets 49 likes
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        12. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          Her main approach is to cite "health benefits." However, removing any tissue from the body will have some "health benefits" because the tissue cannot become infected or have other problems. But surgery is not without risk. Whatever benefits there are must be weighed against risks

          1 reply . 7 retweets 54 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          & as I pointed out, *every* international pediatric society or comparable medical org apart from @AmerAcadPeds has concluded the benefits of newborn circ do NOT outweigh risks (https://bit.ly/2AgagNF ). Her response was to pull up PubMed & literally count articles that appear topic.twitter.com/C0LxdnwDeH

          2 replies . 9 retweets 47 likes
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        14. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          support circumcision, which is almost the definition of confirmation bias, and, needless to say, not how an MD should evaluate evidence for *any* claim, especially in a polarized literature where the data are regularly 'rigged' by partisan researchers (https://bit.ly/2ToqJX9 ).pic.twitter.com/DsylACCH3M

          1 reply . 6 retweets 48 likes
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        15. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          But there is a deeper problem. If we want to say the sheer existence of "health benefits" (especially when these can be achieved through much less invasive, non-surgical means!) justifies cutting a healthy child's genitals without consent, we create an incentive for defenders

          2 replies . 3 retweets 51 likes
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        16. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          of what they call "female circumcision" to try to find "health benefits" for their *own* culturally favored rituals, which is exactly what some are now doing (see screen shots below, from my discussion here https://bit.ly/2F78yCl ). But this is to miss the point. Genital cuttingpic.twitter.com/HwxcIEsqEw

          2 replies . 6 retweets 43 likes
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        17. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          is wrong to do to children, not because it does or doesn't confer (contestable) health benefits, but because it affects the most psychosexually significant part of a vulnerable person's body without their consent in a way they may later rationally grow up to resent.

          2 replies . 13 retweets 64 likes
          Show this thread
        18. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          If 'minor' or sterilized forms of FGM *did* have health benefits -- for example, neonatal labiaplasty might reduce the risk of labial cancer -- presumably no Western observer would then say, "Oh, in that case, I guess it's okay to do." See below (from https://bit.ly/2F78yCl ).pic.twitter.com/pj1kalDcXV

          2 replies . 3 retweets 38 likes
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        19. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          Okay, what about the claim that FGM is a form of gender-based discrimination? This is another claim by the @WHO I am astonished gets uncritically repeated. There are *no societies* that single out girls for cutting. As far as anthropologists are aware, virtually every group that

          3 replies . 10 retweets 51 likes
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        20. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          practices ritual female genital cutting ALSO practices male genital cutting, often in parallel ceremonies for similar reasons (https://bit.ly/2F4Sv7g ). Depending on the details of what is done, the male version of the ritual is often *much* more severe, as @Ayaan Hirsi Alipic.twitter.com/YBeNGcpprb

          2 replies . 12 retweets 48 likes
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        21. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          discusses in this interview (https://bit.ly/2BW7w88 ). By far the most deadly form of genital cutting anywhere in the world is "tribal" male circumcision as it is practiced in many of the same regions that practice female genital cutting; among the Xhosa of South Africa,pic.twitter.com/FDjybBUqwt

          1 reply . 7 retweets 42 likes
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        22. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          dozens of boys die each year from their initiation rites, with multiple penile amputations and hospitalizations (https://bit.ly/2VtYoQV ). Extensive, gruesome photographic evidence is available at http://ulwaluko.co.za/  - random sub-set below. Among the Xhosa,pic.twitter.com/l2OBR0IEM5

          1 reply . 11 retweets 44 likes
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        23. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          as in many groups (Jews, US Americans, some Muslim sects but not others), *only* the boys are subjected to genital cutting, & women openly discriminate against 'uncircumcised' men as undesirable, unworthy of marriage, and so on (see screenshot, from https://bit.ly/2Qiyufm ).pic.twitter.com/hGTGpTyCRL

          2 replies . 7 retweets 46 likes
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        24. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          When most Westerners think of "male circumcision," they think of medicalized US newborn circumcision or perhaps Jewish circumcision at a bris; they don't think of "tribal" male circumcision with the highest death rate of any form of genital cutting. Similarly, when they think of

          1 reply . 11 retweets 40 likes
          Show this thread
        25. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          "FGM," they think of the most extreme forms of female genital cutting (FGC) done with non-sterile equipment in rural Africa - because this is the form the Western media focuses on & with which the @WHO brazenly conflates *all* forms of FGC, collapsing multiple distinct practices

          1 reply . 8 retweets 42 likes
          Show this thread
        26. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          with wildly different physical & sexual effects, risk profiles, symbolic meanings, parental intentions, religious significance, and so on, into a single label, falsely implying that *all* are done to "control the sexuality of girls" and have severe adverse health consequences.

          2 replies . 6 retweets 35 likes
          Show this thread
        27. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          It is no surprise, then, that Westerners fail to think of, say, 'sunnah' female circumcision in Malaysia (https://bit.ly/2F4x6Mj ) or khatna among Dawoodi Bohra (https://bit.ly/2lgnX51 ), which are often done by doctors w sterile equipment & remove no tissue. But these are stillpic.twitter.com/O4J6QI3LUQ

          1 reply . 5 retweets 32 likes
          Show this thread
        28. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          *wrong* to inflict on a young girl w/o her consent, I claim, for the reasons I have already given. Yet other scholars who work in this area, aware that "zero tolerance" for even 'minor' FGM means male circumcision might also be seen as wrong, are making the opposite argument.

          1 reply . 4 retweets 37 likes
          Show this thread
        29. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          For example, Arora & Jacobs, previously known 4 defending ritual male circ, have recently argued in top-ranked @JME_BMJ that Western countries should allow "de minimis" forms of FGM, as a way of creating a buffer of protection around male circumcision (https://bit.ly/2F6OZcm ).pic.twitter.com/skGGmSWTXh

          2 replies . 4 retweets 31 likes
          Show this thread
        30. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          Their argument was then picked up by @TheEconomist, whose editors argued that, yes, we should allow "minor" FGM to be performed; otherwise, on pain of inconsistency, we might have 2 rethink medically unnecessary male circ, which no one wants to do (https://econ.st/2COqYFE ).pic.twitter.com/SNEcfKhmZ6

          1 reply . 5 retweets 31 likes
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        31. Brian D. Earp‏ @briandavidearp Jan 3

          Defenders of "female circumcision" have grown emboldened, setting up professional websites quoting directly from @AmerAcadPeds support for "parental rights" in male circumcision for "religious or cultural" reasons & calling out Western double standards (https://femalecircumcision.org/ )pic.twitter.com/nappnxbfj9

          1 reply . 3 retweets 29 likes
          Show this thread
        32. 8 more replies

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