Mary Nyangweso

The author is earnest in her intentions, but in many ways she is out of her depth. Her training is in religious studies, and the sections bearing on that discipline are the stronger part of the book. However, she veers out of her expertise and fumbles discussions on culture, law, and medicine. One senses her desire to be thorough, but always after presenting what are good summaries of the contrary arguments to those she favors, she ignores them. For example, she never explains why the least form of female genital cutting (the nick) is always to be condemned, while male circumcision, which inflicts more damage, is uncontroversial. She is ambivalent on many important topics. For example, while she says that what separates cutting from Westerners' cosmetic surgery is consent, the laws she favors explicitly rule out consent as a defense. In the end, she has an array of responses to isolated criticisms of her position, but they do not cohere into an consistent, intelligible statement concerning the practice.

She can be rightly criticized for asserting conclusions she claims were defended earlier ("it is erroneous to compare female genital cutting to male circumcision, given the difference in health and moral implications, as discussed earlier"), when in fact they were not. She provides no information about the health implications of male circumcisions, much less a comparative overview of these to female cutting. While her glosses of female cuttings always highlight the most extreme forms, infibulation, by her own account these account for only about 10-15% of all cases and thus should hardly serve as the generic instance on which to build a universal condemnation, especially when she ignores entirely the comparable extreme form for males, subincision.

There are other failings in this account, but again, the author does appear to intend an objective discussion, but her preconceived opinions prevent her from presenting the data in a dispassionate and evenhanded manner.… (meer)