GZ: Goran A. Sabir Zangana
MM: Maria Frederika Malmström
MM: Yes, at the same time male circumcision is also painful and problematic on several levels. It is something that adults are doing against children.
In Sweden, there is a very interesting debate. Female circumcision is not only considered a mutilation, but
is a practice that subordinates women and is totally forbidden, with prison sentences to parents if they decide to to let their daughters be circumcised, whereas male circumcision by the vast majority (including state /authority/ the legal system) is seen as
traditional and [part of the] culture.
GZ:... The debate in Germany about male Circumcision is also interesting. In June 2012 a court in Cologne banned
circumcision for boys following the fact that the procedure resulted in profuse bleeding in a four-year-old boy. Consequently, the public prosecutor filed charges against the doctor who conducted the procedure. So probably the situation with male circumcision is changing as well, where safety and harm prevention will perhaps take precede over tradition an culture.
MM: In Egypt it is very interesting - activists and policymakers, or people in general who are egainst FGC, are not against male circumcision. It is unthinkable.
There are few exceptions, such as the feminists and scholars Nawal el Sadaawi and Seham Saneya Abd el Salam, for example. Also, people within the United Nations are much more ambivalent - the same problem exists in realtion to "designer vaginas" in Europe and the U.S., where FGC is seen as mutilation and designer vaginas are something that the individual decides. In Sweden, for example, cosmetic vaginal surgery is not forbidden by law; at he same time we have legislation against FGC that says it is totally forbidden.