The British Medical Journal Group has published an article defending female genital mutilation (FGM).

Researchers from 25 different global institutions claim the widespread condemnation of the practice is based on “misleading, often racialised, stereotypes” and “Western sensationalism”.

FGM involves the partial or total removal of a female’s external genitalia, or other cutting of the organs, for non-medical reasons.

More than 230 million girls and women around the world have had their genitalia mutilated, mostly commonly in Africa, but also in parts of Asia and the Middle East, usually on historic religious or cultural grounds.

The practice is condemned by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and most of the Western world.

Unicef, the global children’s charity, says it is “a violation of girls’ and women’s human rights”.

Researchers claim characterisation of FGM is ‘misleading’

However, writing in the BMJ Group’s Journal of Medical Ethics, researchers from around the world, including the UK, have defended FGM and “rejected” the use of the word “mutilation”.

Instead, they label it “female genital practices” so they can “refer inclusively and descriptively to a diverse set of practices without prejudging their ethical, medical or cultural status”.

They claim that “any broad characterisation of ‘FGM’ as first and foremost traumatic is problematic and misleading for a number of reasons”.

And that it is “often presumed rather than investigated” that those who have undergone female genital mutilation have suffered trauma.

Instead, they argue that the “derision” that FGM receives from the West and the belief that it occurs because of “a kind of brainwashing or subjugation” may actually be what is “traumatic”.

“Most affected women themselves rarely use the word ‘trauma’ to describe their experiences of the practices. If they describe the experiences in negative terms, they may use words such as ‘difficult’ or ‘painful’,” the authors write.

“Even if women report unwanted upsetting memories, heightened vigilance, sleep disturbance, recurrent memories or flashbacks during medical consultations, a prior genital procedure may not be the primary cause for their distress,” they add.

‘Inflated statistical projections cause alarming public perceptions’

Among the authors are researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Bristol, and the Brighton and Sussex Medical School.

They criticise the treatment of migrants and assumptions that they continue FGM traditions after moving to another country.

They say that most migrants stop FGM once arriving in the West, but many of these places count “all daughters of migrants from ‘FGM’-practising countries” as being at risk of harm.

These “inflated statistical projections contribute to alarming public perceptions”, they argue.

The authors are also critical of healthcare workers being asked to gather information on FGM cases which might be “reduced to disrespectful or humiliating interrogations about their genitals”.

Negative mainstream media coverage to blame

The essay also blames the “mainstream media coverage of female genital practices in Africa” for relying on “sources from within a well-organised opposition”.

“In North America, Australia and European countries like the UK and Sweden, such coverage has frequently fallen short of journalistic standards of impartiality, often using stigmatising and denigrating language that fuels suspicion and surveillance of migrant communities,” the authors write.

They add that the press has “played a central role” in the “abolitionist narrative of ‘FGM’”, and call out the Guardian newspaper’s “Global Media Campaign to End FGM”, as well as the BBC and CNN’s “advocacy-driven coverage focused on eradication, often lacking cultural nuance”.

They say the discourse condemning FGM is an “effective galvaniser of the zero-tolerance eradication campaigns it was designed to motivate”.

And likened some of the “practices” as being similar to those “gaining in popularity among cosmetic surgeons and majority populations in North America and Europe” but instead using the expression “designer vagina”.

Coutinho: ‘Abhorrent act should be called mutilation’

“We believe the harms, injustices and costs associated with [the discourse] must be taken seriously,” they conclude.

“The harms and injustices we describe are real and serious. They are damaging to medical care and professional ethics in medicine, to fairness in the way crimes are defined and prosecuted in our legal systems, to the parental rights and family life privacy of immigrant minority groups, to democratic principles of equal citizenship, to journalistic impartiality, and to the self-esteem of women from targeted ethnic and religious heritage communities.”

Shadow equalities secretary Claire Coutinho said: “This is an abhorrent act and we should call it what it is: mutilation.

“It is beyond belief that members of the medical profession would want to smooth out the harsh realities that face young girls undergoing this awful practice in the name of ‘diversity’.”

Reform MP Sarah Pochin said: “FGM is a barbaric practice and is rightly illegal. The doctors who authored this should be placed under investigation.”