The United Nations General Assembly's human rights committee unanimously voted to enact a global ban against female circumcision, instructing the UN's 193 member states to take direct action by enacting legislation and leading education campaigns for both young women and men in order to penalize violators and protect…
Given over a century's worth of pleasure that followed its invention, history may easily forget that development of the vibrator in Victorian England was just one salvo in a larger culture war fought over women's bodies. (Sound familiar?) While some doctors were figuring out how to give women orgasms, others were…
For years human rights organizations have been working to put an end to the tradition of cutting off a girl's clitoris, which an estimated 92 million African women and girls have been subjected to. Particularly rapid progress is being made in Senegal, thanks to a local movement that addresses the problem with…
San Francisco's municipal ballot this year may include a measure to ban the circumcision of baby boys. Considering some of the other things banned in San Francisco, it might actually have a shot.
Alice Dreger and Ellen K. Feder from Bioethics Forum have unearthed a 2007 study in which a doctor from Cornell University defends the practice of surgically cutting girls' clitorises. Disturbing, but his follow-up treatment is even worse.
Comparing male circumcision to abortion may seem like a stretch, but Freddie at L'Hote actually has a pretty decent argument.
When Senegalese activist Marietou Diarra began to tell the story of the two daughters she lost to genital mutilation, it didn't matter that almost no one else in the room spoke Wolof. You could have heard a pin drop.
A tipster calls this piece of junk the "Worst Google Ad Ever". We'll have to agree with her on that.
Report spam, indeed.
Promising news in the campaign against female genital mutilation: 10 villages in Niger have publicly denounced the practice and the parliament in Iraq's northern autonomous region of Kurdistan is preparing to issue a ban.
It's time for another installment of Pot Psychology, the biweekly "advice" column in which we attempt to solve everyone's problems with an herbal remedy.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey, after getting pressure from Congress, has reversed a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals that would have sent an unnamed 28-year-old asylum-seeker back to to her home country of Mali. The woman was seeking asylum based on the fact that her tribe, the Bambara, would force her…
A grass-roots movement against female circumcision in Egypt (where 96% of married women are circumcised) is gaining momentum with mothers considering circumcision for their daughters. • Male contraceptive options will "perpetually remain five to 10 years away." Why? Pharmaceutical companies believe they aren't…
The Tasaru Girls Rescue Center offers a refuge for girls who want to escape a destiny of female circumcision. The Christian Science Monitor reports on a girl named Milicent, whose cousin helped her flee when her mother and grandmother insisted she be circumcised. "In my community, it is difficult for a girl who is not…
So... "female genital mutilation." Sorta hard to type the words without getting weak in the lungs! (Especially with the memory of the wine I consumed following Fatima's wrenching revelation she'd had her clit removed and her labia sewn together as a child last night on Top Model still so fresh in my gut; oh god, room…
There's a whole new dimension added to this upcoming cycle of America's Next Top Model—genital mutilation. According to Us Weekly, one of the contestants, Fatima, has quite a horrific past. Growing up in Somalia, she underwent a female circumcision, and then two of her sisters were murdered before she fled the country…
"When a girl is taken — usually by her mother — to a free circumcision event held each spring in Bandung, Indonesia, she is handed over to a small group of women who, swiftly and yet with apparent affection, cut off a small piece of her genitals."
