The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1378: Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: September 6, 2026

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is happening right now to girls worldwide. Jessica Wynn explains why — and what stops it — on Skeptical Sunday.Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by writer and researcher Jessica Wynn!Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1378On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:Female Genital Mutilation isn't a fringe practice — an estimated 230 million women and girls alive today have undergone FGM, and the number is climbing, up 15 percent in eight years. More than two million girls are cut each year, most before their fifth birthday, some within days of being born.FGM isn't Islamic — it predates Islam and appears among Christian and non-religious communities alike; the common thread is culture, not theology. "God requires this" is used as control, which is also why trusted religious leaders are among the strongest voices for ending it.The decision is overwhelmingly made by women — mothers, grandmothers, aunts — not fathers. But they act inside a system where marriage, status, and inheritance hinge on being cut, so it isn't simply men oppressing women. FGM and child marriage are two gears in one machine.The fastest-growing myth is that cutting is safer in a clinic — about one in four recent cases were done by healthcare workers, up to 75 percent in Egypt. There is no safe version. Medicalizing FGM doesn't reduce harm; it lends the practice a veil of legitimacy that helps it survive.Here's what actually works: change from the inside out. When communities talk their own way to abandoning FGM, as in Somaliland and Tostan's villages, it sticks. You can help: fund survivor-led groups, check whether your state bans FGM, back healthcare training, and keep the conversation alive.Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know!Connect with Jessica Wynn at Instagram (and Instagram!), and subscribe to her newsletters: Between the Lines and Where the Shadows Linger!And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: Xero: One month of Xero for free: xero.comThe Cybersecurity Tapes: Listen here: thecybersecuritytapes.comQuince: Free shipping & 365-day returns: quince.com/jordan ConciergeMD: 20% off all services/memberships: conciergemdla.com/jordan, code JORDANProgressive Insurance: Free online quote: progressive.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with Airbnb. This summer, we spent an entire month in China with the kids, and it was an incredible experience. They attended summer camps, practiced their Mandarin Chinese, tried new foods, got to experience everyday life in another country. Meanwhile, our poor home was sitting here completely empty, and it made me think, while we're away having that experience, we could list our home on Airbnb and give another family the chance to experience our neighborhood like a local too. Our neighborhood is incredibly walkable.

You can head to the movie theater, grab coffee, stop it. What I would argue is the best boba shop anywhere. or choose between some fantastic Korean and Ethiopian restaurants, all without having to plan your entire day around getting in the car. A family staying in our home could settle in, explore the area, discover their own favorite spots, and get a real sense of the community rather than just passing through. Meanwhile, we could earn some extra income,

maybe help cover the kids' camps or at least a good part of the trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com. Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host writer and researcher Jessica Wynn. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. On Sundays, though, we do Skeptical Sunday. A rotating guest co-host, and I'll break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as, why tipping makes no sense, astrology, recycling, internet porn, GMOs, toothpaste, and more. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show,

I suggest our episode starter packs. These are some of our favorite episodes on persuasion, negotiation, psychology, disinformation, junk science, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Before we jump in today, I need to give a real warning here. What we are covering in this episode is brutal, not edgy, not merely provocative, but actually just brutal and horrifying.

We're going to discuss the deliberate cutting of female genitals, a practice that is happening somewhere in this world as you listen to this episode right now. And if this one isn't for you, I completely understand. But I hope that you'll stay with us because this practice survives partly because most of us would rather just not even think about it. So we're all just going to be uncomfortable together, I think, on this one. Now, today we're examining the myths, justifications, and power structures that have allowed female genital mutilation or FGM to persist for centuries.

Many of us don't know exactly what it is, why it's done, or who advocates for this procedure in the first place. Here to make us squirm in our seats is writer and researcher Jessica Wynn. Jess, thanks for being here for what I confess is already kind of a horror movie of an episode, and I haven't even asked a question yet. I mean, this is unpleasant for sure, but I actually think that discomfort is useful. Most people look away from FGM because it's almost unbearable to think about. The problem is when everybody looks away, silence stops being accidental.

It becomes part of the machinery that keeps the practice going. What do you mean? Well, survivors are often expected not to talk about it. Families who are involved don't talk about it. governments underfund efforts to stop it. Even journalists and researchers sometimes struggle to cover it without turning entire cultures into caricatures. And the rest of us just file it away as something awful happening somewhere else. When everybody has a reason not to look too closely, that collective silence doesn't just surround FGM.

It protects it. And that's why we're talking about it. And we're not talking about a few isolated cases here. we're talking hundreds of millions of women and girls. Damn, okay. So, okay, before we go any further here, I know some people will compare this to male circumcision, and I'm not saying circumcision and FGM are the same thing,

but I think it highlights the bigger question of who decides what counts as an acceptable cultural practice involving a child's body. And again, to be clear, these are not the same thing. Sure, but the comparison, it's worth holding on to. Not because it's the same thing. it definitely isn't, but because it forces us to consider both practices. But I want to underline the difference immediately. So male circumcision, it may be unnecessary and it raises

real consent questions, but it's not the same as removing a girl's clitoris, narrowing a vaginal opening, or cutting healthy genital tissue from a child outside medical necessity. I think part of why people struggle with this is they hear female circumcision and they imagine the female version of removing a foreskin and they think like, oh, they trim something and it hurts and it's just fine after that and it's a medical thing. Anatomically, that's just not what's happening. So I think a better analogy here is imagine if it was decided medically or culturally, I should say, that you only needed a one inch penis, right?

Like, okay, if you have one, one and a half inch penis, that's all you need to reproduce. We don't want people enjoying sex. We don't want people masturbating or whatever. they were just like, oh, you unfortunately have a seven inch, we're going to have to cut this thing down. And what we're going to do is trick you into it or do it when you're a kid, when you have no choice. And that's kind of what we're talking about. That's a more apt analogy, I think, than comparing it to circumcision. Oh, yeah, that's so gross.

Yeah, it's very gross. By design, though, that's the point. Otherwise, guys are like, oh, they're just trimming some part of your labia. Like, oh, it sounds bad, but it's not that bad. Yeah, it's really hard, especially for men to imagine, because there's just no real comparison. It's not about equivalence. It's about the normalization of it. Every society has practices that may feel so normal that people just stop questioning them. And that does not make those practices harmless. Even the name is controversial. Female genital mutilation. Female circumcision, genital cutting. The word

choice here matters too. And I'm going to guess that the cultures that do it don't call it FGM. Correct. Yeah. But all of those terms are squirmy. But mutilation is the term preferred by the human rights organizations whose data I've drawn from. I also think it best reflects the severity of what's actually happening. So some find the term mutilation is an external judgment that shuts down the conversation, but we should sit with the tension of that vocabulary. Sure. Well, for now, let's start with the most basic question. What are we actually talking about? Because we said, oh, it's not the same thing, and it's so bad. But what is female genital mutilation? Let's just go FGM from here out, because it's It's even uncomfortable to say, yeah.

Yes. But it refers to a variety of procedures involving the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. And that's the official definition used by the World Health Organization and the United Nations. And as you mentioned, it's also referred to as female circumcision or female genital cutting, just depending on context and who's speaking. So this isn't one single procedure. There's different kinds of cutting.

The World Health Organization classifies FGM into four types. So type one is called a clitoridectomy. That's the partial or sometimes total removal of the clitoris and potentially the hood of skin surrounding it. Then type two is called excision. And that involves removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, which are the inner lips of the vulva, sometimes also including the labia majora.

And type three is called infibulation, and it's the most severe. So it involves cutting and repositioning the labia to create a seal, deliberately narrowing the vaginal opening. And type four is like a catch-all for any other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes,

things like pricking, piercing, scraping, burning happens. All of it's done to healthy, functional tissue with no medical reason. My gag reflex is kicking in on this. So that is all horrifying. Do we even need to categorize them from least to most of it? Like what's, I'm surprised they have types. Is there a reason for that, I guess? Is that what's going on here? Yeah, they just exist to help researchers and policymakers understand the different forms of FGM and the harms associated with each. So it's not like a hierarchy in which some forms are acceptable. Okay. Every type is usually performed on a child who cannot consent. Every type can cause severe pain, bleeding, infection, urinary and menstrual problems, and just lifelong complications. So since

some or all of the labia is removed or the vaginal opening is deliberately narrowed, it creates serious risks during sex, but again, menstruation, and childbirth. Oh, yeah, sure. There's just no mild version of genital mutilation. Yeah, I guess that was my objection. I was like, whoa, it's almost like you're saying. I didn't, I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but it was almost like, these are all so bad.

Why is there a pyramid or whatever? But it's not a pyramid. It's just a different categorization. I see. So how does anyone function normally after having the labia removed or the vaginal opening sewn nearly shut? How do you recover from that? I mean, that stuff is all there for a reason, and it's set up the way that it's set up for a reason.

I mean, many survivors don't recover, you know, depending on the type, they may live with chronic pain, difficulty urinating, menstruating. Again, there's painful sex. There can be recurrent infections. You know, childbirth is just complicated and dangerous. That you mentioned, and I was like, oh, yeah, if you, that, it's already got to dilate from whatever it is to, accommodate a baby. And if you're like, oh, we're going to half-size it for cultural reasons, we're not really evolved to give birth and deal with that effectively, I would imagine. This is really... Yeah, it's gnarly.

Narly, yeah. And just to be clear, who we're talking about, you said this is done on children who cannot... So this is primarily done on literal children, actual kids. Correct. Yeah, FGM is normally carried out between infancy and age 15. Oh, God. Yeah, though older girls and women, they can be subjected to it. It's most often performed by traditional practitioners on really young girls. When I hear traditional practitioner, I'm thinking that means not a medical doctor, right? We're not talking about this is not happening in a hospital operating room with a surgeon. Usually not, no.

So in many communities, it has traditionally been performed by self-proclaimed circumcisers, you know, elders or other respected members of the community, often with no formal medical training. And they're using razors, knives, scissors, or, yeah, whatever instruments are available. And anesthesia, really uncommon. Sure. Where would they even get it? And how would they put it into practice? That's a whole specialty of medicine. Right, which, you know, leads to, you know, the sterile conditions are usually absent. Oh, God. There's been a disturbing development, though, within health care professionals who are increasingly performing it, but that's a very recent change. Either way, it infringes on the most fundamental human rights, the right to health, to security,

to dignity, to bodily autonomy, and in cases where the procedure leads to death, which it does, the right to life itself, you know, that's why organizations around the world consider this a human rights issue. Geez, wow. Okay, so the language really does matter here. Mutilation versus cutting versus circumcision, those aren't interchangeable. So what's actually at stake in what we call it? You know, the human rights organizations focus on mutilation, and I agree with that. But why doesn't everybody just do that? Well, you know, the word you choose, it tells people what kind of conversation you're trying to have. You know, who's in the room here? Mutilation is the term used by most international human rights organizations because, you know, They want to make one thing unmistakably clear. This is a human rights violation involving a child's body. It's child abuse. It's not simply a cultural tradition people happen to disagree about. And there's a strong argument for that framing because softening the language risks

softening the moral clarity of it all. So why does it matter what we call it? Honestly, I'm not losing sleep over offending anybody about this. If you're cutting little girls, I'm calling it mutilation by some something. Stone Age as religious psycho or whatever. There are just some traditions that deserve to be judged out of existence. Absolutely. And you're in really good company thinking that. That's exactly why the World Health Organization, the UN, most human rights organizations use the word mutilation. They want to make it just so clear that this isn't a cultural curiosity. It's certainly not

a medical procedure. There's no bones about it. It is a human rights violation. So the debate isn't whether the practice is horrific. It's about how to have the conversation about it that doesn't make practicing communities feel attacked. So now we're balancing two things, moral clarity and actually persuading people to stop this madness. Exactly. And human rights organizations tend to prioritize moral clarity. Some community health workers prioritize persuasion because, you know, in some communities, the word mutilation, it sounds like a personal accusation

instead of an invitation to reconsider the practice. You know, tell parents here in America that male circumcision is mutilation and watch how quickly people stop listening. Yeah, so it's funny because I'll admit if this exact type of conversation

did change my mind. I was, when I was born in 1980, I was circumcised, I guess, because everyone was probably. Right, back then. It was just done. Yeah, and my mom was Jewish, but non-practicing.

I don't think that played any role in it. I think the doctor was just like, all right, we're going to do this unless you have some weird objection. She was like, I don't know, I'm loopy on fentanyl or whatever they give you when you give a birth. So do what he got to do. My son is not circumcised. Sorry, Jaden, I'm putting your business out there. But basically we did, I would say a lot of research, but even a couple of hours. Like the most cursory amount of research will show you that the procedure is quite antiquated and mostly unnecessary.

If you don't have some other issues and you live in the Western world and you wash yourself and stuff like that. So we just, we opted out of it. I just felt like there was no real medical reason for it here in the 21st century. And if that changes, you can always get circumcised as an adolescent or a teenager or an adult, but you can't go the other way. There's no restoration, there's no reliable way to restore it. I know people try, but it's, you know, it's not quite the same. That's actually a perfect example.

Nobody told your parents that they were monsters for circumcising you. Right. But when presented with information, you'd never really considered before, you know, When it came time to make that decision yourself, you made a different one. So there's another side to all this when the idea of circumcision surprises people, too, in other cultures. Well, yeah, when I was an exchange student in Germany, it was 1997, 1998, and they have co-ed sonnas there, which was really surprising. I walked into the sauna, and there was a bunch of old ladies in there, and I was like, oh, my God, I'm sorry. And they're like, what? And I was like, wait, and I went out, and I came back in, and then there was an old man in there.

And I was like, okay, so everybody's just mixed, huh? And they were like, yeah, oh, you're American, ha-ha. And I remember looking around and all the, you know, everyone's naked. I remember this exact moment because I was like, what is wrong with everyone's penis? You're 18, 17, whatever years old. And you're like, I've seen almost everything in the world. Why am I seeing something that I just is so confusing that I haven't? What, like, what is going on here?

Why is every? And then I was like, oh, right. That's what a fourth. foreskin looks like I've never seen one before, right? I just never knew about it. And so then I told my host brother, I was like, hey, the circumcision thing is crazy. And he's like, yeah, it kind of looks like, you're like this oddity. And we must look like aliens too. And I was like, yeah, it's so weird. And so he had a birthday party at the house. And we were talking about how weird it is that everyone's circumcised and I'm not circumcised. And I remember the girls were like, well, I want to see it. I've

never seen a circumcised penis before. And I was like, what? And I remember my brother was like, dude, you have, this is your chance. You know, you get to like just whip it out in the living room. It's science. It's science. It's for science. So I remember one of my friends was like, wait, let me get you another beer because you're definitely, we, you have to do this. And it wasn't just the girls, by the way. It was the guys were like, I'm also curious. Because remember, this is like, maybe you could download your email from AOL if you had internet, but there wasn't like, you couldn't just Google what this looked like. There wasn't international porn everywhere that you could see on the internet, right? This is like way before that. And you didn't have to worry about people posting

picks of your dick. There was no camera phones back then, nothing. So it was just like no one had seen it and nobody, the curiosity was overwhelming and it was, there was no consequence other than people talking about my penis at school, which was like, I would pay to have that kind of publicity, right, in the 90s. So yeah, that was my introduction to the fact that there's, There's a whole world of other dicks out there that just look like alien, look like an eater trunks to me. Right. And it happens on the other extreme, too, where when circumcision's really normal in America, I mean, we both know a gentleman who was not circumcised at birth. He does comedy bits about it, so we're not talking out of turn here. Sure. But when he was a teenager and he started seeing other guys in the locker room, he felt out of place because he wasn't circumcised and everybody else was.

I mean, I just think it's so wild. He went to his parents as a teenager and was circumcised at 16. I mean, it's astounding what we'll do to our bodies to fit in, you know. I would imagine he regrets that as an adult or maybe he doesn't care. He does, and it does make him. have a very unique penis, I will say. I've heard. I've heard. So I've heard, yeah. Unlike the rest of this entire episode, the following ads are safe for work.

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we bit wiser. It's a two-minute read every Wednesday almost, highly practical, and something that'll change the course of your week, day, or possibly even the whole month, Jordan Harbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Okay, so with the female genital mutilation, back to the topic at hand here, which is not the same thing as circumcision, how big of a problem are we actually talking about here? What are the, what's the scale of this? I mean, the numbers are staggering. I was blown away, and the statistics are actually getting worse, not better. So the United Nations estimates 230 million, girls and women alive today have undergone FGM.

Wait, 230 million currently alive, not like throughout all of human history. Currently today. I guess I just thought it was a tiny isolated practice in a handful of sub-Saharan African villages in Sudan or something. I just thought this was much more niche. I mean, that's what most people think. That's what I thought before I dove into this, for sure. I thought you were going to say a few hundred thousand or like single-digit millions, not

230 million. So 230 million, that's really hard to wrap your mind around. I mean, that's like close to the population of the United States. You know, it's crazy to me. Yeah. And that figure has increased by 15%. That's like 30 million more cases over the past eight years alone. So more than two million girls undergo FGM every single year, often before their fifth birthday. Sometimes within just days of being born. Days of being born. That has to be a dangerous procedure for a newborn. Come on. And by the way, the population of the U.S. for those wondering is like 345 million. So 230 million women is more women that are in the United States have had this done. This is crazy to me. So days of being

born, again, like that sounds super dangerous to me. It definitely is. And the reason the numbers keep climbing isn't because the rate is necessarily increasing everywhere. It's because the population in the places where FGM is most common are growing rapidly. Like sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Arab states, they're experiencing, you know, the fastest population growth on earth. And by 2050, the number of girls born annually in those regions is projected to increase by over 60%. So even if the rate of FGM slowly falls, the number of girls affected can still go up. So in 2026, in this year, nearly four and a half million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM. More than half of them are under five years old. And if the current trends hold?

If things continue at the current pace, the numbers will rise and millions of girls will continue to be subjected to FGM. The global target is elimination by 2030, which that's approaching fast. So to meet that target, progress needs to accelerate 27 times faster than it's currently moving. That's a whole generation of girls. An entire generation. So FGM probably is not a standalone practice. I have a feeling if a culture is doing this to girls, it's probably not the only terrible thing happening to these girls in that culture. Is that safe?

Yeah. Unfortunately, yeah, you're right. One of the strongest connections is child marriage. FGM and child marriage are often two parts of the same system. So the cutting is meant just to prepare the girl. And the marriage reinforces the social value of the cutting. So you really can't understand one without the other. So it's not just about one cultural practice.

It's about a whole infrastructure of beliefs, about what girls and women are for. Is FGM happening only in poor villages where people just don't know any better and a little education might fix it? Is that the basic story here or what? I mean, that's the stereotype, right? But it's wrong in two important ways.

So first, that thinking lets people in wealthy countries think, well, it's somebody else's problem. And second, it reduces a deeply complex practice down to ignorance. And that's not just inaccurate. It blinds us to what's actually keeping it alive. So Jaha Decorre, who is a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, an FGM survivor, she's spoken about this directly. She says there are still a lot of misconceptions about FGM, like it's practiced by ignorant Africans and people, you know, quote unquote, over there who are uneducated. But she underwent FGM in Gambia when she was one week old. She spent her adult life fighting to end the practice everywhere.

Well, in fairness, there's a disconnect between Western culture and communities where FGM is practiced, obviously, right? Well, not always. I mean, FGM is documented in 94 countries. That's a lot. Most of the world. Again, I thought you were going to say five. This is prevalent in five countries. But once you said $230 million, I was thinking, where the heck are they doing this? Yeah. It happens in parts of Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. So for example, Mariam Safi, She was born in Texas. She was cut at age seven on a family vacation to India. Her aunt apparently lured her into a basement clinic with the offer of a chocolate bar or something. I mean, she was seven years old.

So she doesn't fit the picture most people carry around, and that's exactly why her story matters. Yeah, that's super sad. My son isn't even seven. So the idea of luring him into the basement and cutting his wiener off or something like that is just makes me so angry. And he would remember that for sure. Of course, yeah. I'll never complain about family vacations again, that's for sure.

So I can't believe this is a thing, the little going on a little trip and snip. It just seems like that's got to be illegal. It's certainly horrible. Oh, God, trip and snip. Sorry. That's, yeah. It's actually sometimes called vacation cutting. And this is a documented phenomenon where families living in Western countries, like the U.S., the UK,

Australia, Canada, France, wherever, they take their daughters away specifically to have FGM performed knowing it's illegal where they live. And then the cutting happens in a jurisdiction where it may be legal or where enforcement is weak. And by the time the family returns, it's done. You know, Safi's story is just one of many, many vacation cutting stories.

Makes me so angry that they bring that stuff here and then also it's just, I hate this so much. Okay, is there a legal response to this? I feel like it's just got to be illegal to take your kid on a trip abroad, mutilate their genitals, and then come home like nothing happened and be like, well, you can't do anything, France, because we did this back in, I don't know, Somalia or whatever. So suck it. I mean, it's so muddy. So some countries have extra territorial legislation, meaning their laws technically apply to what their citizens do abroad.

But prosecution is extraordinary. ordinarily difficult. So you need someone to report it, first of all. If you do this to an infant or toddler, they don't. Right, who's going to report it? Yeah, they don't have the means to do that. You need evidence across international jurisdictions. You need cooperation between legal systems that may have very different approaches to the practice. The UK has had laws against FGM since 1985 and didn't secure its first conviction until 2019. So that's one conviction in 34 years. I mean, that's not real enforcement. No. Wow. So how are people escaping consequences? I guess, you know, lack of reporting and stuff, but are there religious arguments for this? I think a lot of people assume this is like some kind of Islamic

practice or something like that or I don't know. Yeah, that's another one of the biggest misconceptions. So FGM isn't an Islamic practice. It actually predates Islam. by centuries. It's also been practiced by some Christian communities and by communities with no particular religion at all. So the common thread isn't theology, it's culture. And in fact, many Muslim religious leaders have been among the loudest voices condemning FGM. In 2024, the organization of Islamic cooperation or the OIC, which represents 57 Muslim majority countries, They formally condemned FGM and called on member states to eliminate it. Wait, so the biggest organization representing Muslim majority countries is saying,

hey, guys, don't do this. That is very reassuring, and I hope that that message is effective. Absolutely. I mean, it's encouraging, but it's not the whole picture. So in 2024, for example, some influential religious leaders in Gambia publicly argued the exact opposite, issuing a religious opinion, defending FGM, and supporting. efforts to roll back the country's ban. That's why this matters so much. You know, religious leaders can be among the most powerful forces for ending FGM or for keeping it alive. So why does the religious

justification persist? Well, because it's a useful mechanism of controlling a woman's body, right? Saying God requires this is a much more powerful enforcer than saying our tradition requires this. It puts the practice beyond question, beyond the reach of ordinary social debate, because, you know, if it's a divine mandate, opposition becomes dissent. But the good news is religious leaders are among the most effective allies in ending FGM precisely because of this dynamic. So when the framing is religious, the counter framing also needs to be religious. there's an Umam in the village of Tongoy and Mali who has made it his mission to speak against FGM every single Friday before prayer and his community has completely abandoned the practice. So when the most trusted religious voice in a community says, hey, this is messed up.

This is not what our faith requires. The ground shifts. That is remarkable power used for good. It shows people change fastest when the message comes from somebody that they already trust, which makes sense. So do people also claim there are medical reasons for the practice as well? I mean, that's kind of what it is with circumcision, right? It's like, oh, something, something hygiene.

And when you talk to, let's say, religious Jews, sometimes they'll just say, oh, it's in the book. And so we do it. But other times it's like, oh, well, it's more hygienic. And that was true for thousands of years. But now it's like, hey, soap and water, go ahead and use some of that. And you should be all right most of the time. Who was the first person to do that?

I mean, it's just so bizarre. Yeah, that's a good question. I know. This seems like a good idea. It would have been a healer tens of thousands of years ago or, I don't know, even just maybe 5,000 years ago, I suppose. It depends how old the practices. I really don't know.

I assumed it was older than when it was written down by some years, but I guess we can't ever know. But yeah, they probably went, hey, these things keep getting infected and whenever we peel it back, it's pretty gross in there. What happens if we just cut this thing off? And, oh, look, that ceases to be an issue. You know what? why don't we just cut it off from the jump? It's not supposed to be. And then somebody was like,

we need a real reason for this because people don't understand. Just tell them God said to do it and they won't, we'll stop getting so much pushback. I mean, that's probably so close. It's just, it's so hard to wrap my mind around that somebody wouldn't be like, or we could wash more thoroughly. I don't know. But, I mean, one of the more harmful myths of FGM is the medicalization of it. And that's accelerating. So earlier I mentioned, this is usually done by traditional practitioners, but one of the biggest changes in recent years is that FGM has become increasingly medicalized. Yeah, that sounds insane to me, but it's not super shocking, I guess. I mean, today about a quarter of all girls who have recently undergone FGM were cut by health care workers. And in Egypt, it's as high as like 75%.

And when you say in Egypt, 75%, does this mean they were being cut by doctors now or what's going on here? Yeah, doctors, nurses, other licensed health care providers. I mean, this is a really new trend. I see. I guess I would have assumed medicine would have killed this practice and not adopted it. Well, that's what makes the trend so disturbing, right? I mean, the logic is if it's going to happen anyway, better that it happened in a clean clinic than on a dirt floor. I can almost see how somebody talks themselves into medicalizing it, right? It sounds compassionate on the surface. But let's say you're the healthcare worker or community member who performs FGM and come to understand the practice is wrong. But then, you know, if you refuse,

the family's going to walk down the road to somebody with a rusty pair of pliers and a razor blade. Oh, my God. Is there a clinic where they could just kind of fake it? I don't know. I'm thinking out loud here. Yeah. Actually, that happens. It happens very quietly, very secretly. So there are documented cases of midwives and health care providers performing a symbolic ritual, what's called Mock FGM, or I've seen it called Whisper of the Blade, which means no cutting at all. So they bring a girl into the room, they close the door, they let everyone outside believe the ritual is happening, but they never make a cut. So they convince the family the procedure happened when it actually didn't? Yeah, correct. So the girl comes back out with, you know, a band. or whatever. Everyone believes the obligation's been fulfilled, but the provider has secretly

spared the child. And in communities where FGM is normalized, it's an incredibly controversial form of harm reduction. So I read some accounts that in communities where the secret gets out, it's, you know, bad news for the provider, but it's also secretive. I haven't been able to verify specific cases. Plus, if you're not doing the cut to a five-year-old, they don't know the difference. So unless you're being inspected by your parents after, nobody's the wiser. Yeah, you think that would happen. Like, let's see how this is healing. Oh, perfectly intact. I mean, how do they not figure that out right away? I mean, maybe they're relieved. Maybe they're in on it. It's really hard to get the information clearly. But UNICEF has interviewed several anonymous

midwives who admitted they felt conflicted about lying to the families, but believed refusing outright would just simply send the families somewhere more dangerous. Yeah, that's just an impossible position to be in. I mean, it really is. And it's why organizations like the WHO and UNICEF ultimately oppose even symbolic procedures. So their concern is that if health care workers participate in any version of FGM, even one that causes no physical injury, it risks reinforcing the idea that the practice itself is acceptable. So everyone agrees the child should be protected. The disagreement is whether harm reduction today delays ending the practice tomorrow. That's one of those ethical

problems where I can see why good people end up on different sides of the issue. Yeah, sure, but it's completely categorically wrong to cut a girl. You know, there's just no safe form of genital mutilation. Medicalization doesn't eliminate the harm. So the goal can't just be to prevent the next injury. It has to be ending the practice altogether. So arguably, it makes it more harmful because it's a veil of legitimacy. But the WHO's position is that it actually legitimizes the practice instead of ending it. So even though we think it's compassionate, it's not the best solution. You know, there was a 12th. year old girl named Nada Hassan

Abdel-Makshud. She bled to death at a private clinic in the town of Manful Out in Egypt. So it's awful, and it would have been better if it was a mock FGM, but that still happens

because the practice is still done. You know, her family took her there for the procedure, thinking they were doing the right thing by getting it done by a medical professional, and she still died. So there's just no clinical context in which cutting healthy genital tissue from a non-consenting child is medicine. Isn't there professional accountability when a doctor does this?

I feel like in most places, I should say most civilized places, and that answers the question I'm about to ask, I guess. But you can't just do your own pseudo-medical procedures and be like, well, that's how we do things around here, where I pretend that what I do is medicine, even if it's not. Like, doctors who do this lose their license in the United States. They can't just make up a procedure. Unfortunately, accountability is almost non-existent. So in most countries where medicalization is common, doctors face little or no professional discipline. Medical schools should train students explicitly that this isn't medicine, but I couldn't find any medical school that covers FGM even a little bit. So you're not reducing harm by performing it.

And participation in this practice should and must be grounds for losing your license. And that institutional failure is a serious accountability gap. Do the doctors who are doing this often genuinely believe they're helping or are they just doing it for the money? I mean, both probably exist, right? So we know from interviews and the WHO that many health care providers genuinely believe they're reducing. reducing harm. Others are responding to patient demand or community pressure. And yeah, sometimes financial incentives. So human motivation in general, it's just messier than simply one explanation. Yeah, that's honestly scarier somehow. Yeah, I think so too. But, you know, because of people are doing

something horrific while believing they're helping, simply telling them they're evil, it's not going to change their behavior. The WHO addresses this directly, and they actually created an international day of zero tolerance for FGM. Medical practitioners carrying out FGM, you know, they're only causing harm, full stop. But it's practiced surprisingly in the UK, in Europe, and in the United States. So assuming modernization fixes it is dangerous because it makes everyone think someone else will solve it. Are there any hopeful signs in the younger generation, though? I mean, there is good news, sure. Young people are significantly less supportive of FGM than their parents and grandparents. The problem is, like we mentioned before, the population growth is happening faster than attitudes

are changing. So researchers estimate that the number of girls who are expected to undergo FGM each year will rise to about 4.6 million by 2030, even though there's FGM. efforts to eliminate it, and not because support for FGM is growing, but because there are simply more girls being born in the regions where the practice is most common. That's why changing minds matters, but, you know, it just isn't enough on its own. Apparently, tradition is the preferred euphemism when felony committed by grandma sounds too judgmental. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Concierge MD. I've tried plenty of telehealth and concierge services over the years and a lot of them sound great until you actually need something. Then you're waiting

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You can discuss the show, get some dank memes. and or interact with other show fans that's over on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. And now, back to Skeptical Sunday. So what keeps this going? Because at this point, this feels less like ignorance. It's obviously not as simple as, well, people just don't know any better, right? If they're going to a hospital where a health care worker is doing it, I mean, they, oh, yeah, some people die while doing this and there's no medical, like, they have to know that.

It isn't one thing that makes it keep going. It's like five or six things stacked on top of each other. you know, it's marriage, it's about sexuality, family honor. In some places, it's tied to inheritance rights because being cut is a prerequisite for a girl's right to inherit property. You know, it's an economic livelihood for a lot of practitioners who are often women who depend on it for income, but underneath all of it is the same fear that a girl who isn't cut may be considered unmarriable, ostracized, or worse? What's happening to boys in these same communities at the same time?

This is actually crucial. So in many of the communities where FGM is most prevalent, boys are also undergoing severe initiation rights involving their own bodies, often around the same ages. When you say initiation rights, what are we talking about? You know, those things you see on Discovery Channel where they make a glove and they fill it with bullet ants or something like that, or they bunch of things. jump with a vine into some dirt, I mean, that kind of stuff? It depends. There's so many different things.

And in some communities, you know, boys are taken away from their families for days or weeks as part of a broader initiation, right? And the circumcision is only one piece of it. So they undergo circumcision, usually without anesthesia, sometimes in groups. And they're expected to endure the pain without showing fear, you know, to be a man. The ordeal is often tied to learning cultural traditions. They're expected to prove their toughness and they're formally welcomed into adulthood. It's about courage, masculinity, and just becoming an adult, but infections, injuries and even deaths are documented in some of these ceremonies. So this isn't a doctor in a hospital with a newborn? No, not in these communities. It's a cultural right of passage that

usually happens, you know, at 12 or 13. So they're older. They are fully. They are fully. aware of what's happening. And the point here isn't that boys and girls experience the same thing because they don't. FGM causes dramatically greater lifelong harm. The point is that these societies often see physical suffering as the gateway to adulthood for both sexes. Now, this doesn't justify FGM or circumcision, but it changes the story to something more complicated than just men oppressing women, you know. So who's usually driving this? Is it the father's? Surprisingly, no. It's mostly women. So the decision is overwhelmingly made by women, mothers, grandmothers, aunts. The older women in a girl's life are often the ones who insist it happens. The men

pretty much stay silent and the women often perform it as well. That's really the last answer I expected. But at the same time, if families believe a girl won't get married unless she's cut, men are still part of the equation for sort of, I guess, demanding that, or allowing people to think that they're demanding that? Yeah. I mean, that's an important distinction. So in many communities, the immediate decision is often made by older women in a girl's life, but they're making that decision inside a system that's shaped by expectations about marriage, about status, and what they believe men want. So it's not as simple as saying women do this or men do this.

The system depends on both. And although women often make the decisions, you know, they're not creating the whole system. I see. Well, that's not where most people's heads go, I think. I mean, not at all. It's because it's so hard to wrap our heads around this, right? Most people imagine this as men forcing women to do something.

The reality, it's much more complicated. The system is. is maintained by women who genuinely believe that they're protecting their daughter's future in a society where marriage, status, and security are all tied to whether or not she's been cut. It seems more logical that if you underwent FGM as an adult woman, you would spare the younger generation of the same horrific ordeal. Well, sure, but think about it from the perspective of a mother in a community where FGM is universal. If her daughter isn't cut, she may never marry.

No marriage means no economic security, no social standing, maybe no future at all. So from inside that worldview, FGM doesn't feel cruel. It feels like you're protecting your daughter. Yeah, I mean, that's incredibly depressing, though. This is all pretty depressing. It is, yeah, that's true. You know, she's trying to protect her daughter with the very thing that's hurting her, which is heartbreaking. And that's precisely why the interventions that work are the ones that change the social calculation, not just the legal status.

So laws matter, but if the social incentives stay the same, people just take the practice underground. And the communities that have made the biggest progress change the incentives, not just the laws. And that's a much more challenging project. But it's the one that actually delivers change, right? and it requires working with women, not just talking about them. Let's return to child marriage here because I think the connection is deeper

than just it sometimes happens in places where FGM exists. Yeah, I mean, think of FGM and child marriage as like two gears in the same machine. One prepares the girl, the other completes the transaction. So is that the same logic behind male circumcision too? To some degree in some societies,

but the degree of harm is categorically different. So FGM, particularly types 2 and 3, they involve the removal of functional pleasure-producing tissue in ways that cause lifelong pain, permanently impair sexual function, and create serious complications in childbirth and just beyond. The medical evidence on male circumcision, that's genuinely mixed. There are some studies suggesting marginal protective effects against certain infections. in certain contexts. I personally think that's all very questionable. But in 2026, in a Western society, those reasons they become less and less convincing. The long-term harm profile for most men who undergo routine circumcision, it's considerably less severe than FGM, though, but it's not nothing.

So we're butering boys for all the wrong reasons as well. I think so. And a big similarity between what girls and boys go through is consent or lack of consent. So neither the infant boy nor the infant girl asked for this. Both are having irreversible procedures performed on healthy genital tissue based on their parents' cultural preferences, religious beliefs, or just aesthetic choices. Neither boys or girls have any capacity to meaningfully participate in the decision about their own body. the question isn't whether male circumcision is as harmful as FGM, it almost certainly isn't. The question is, do we believe people have the right to decide what happens to their own bodies? And if so, you know, at what age does that right begin?

And is our answer to those questions consistent? Or does it depend on whose culture and whose religion we happen to be evaluating? I mean, imagine taking your kid, like, I love tattoos. I'm not going to take a three-year-old to go get tattooed. Yeah. It's just crazy. Yeah, I'm not going to pretend I have a simple solution to all that. The idea of a three-year-old getting a tat is kind of funny.

I think about that sometimes, too. I'm like, oh, man, I wish I had gotten a bunch of tattoos when I was younger and I could have enjoyed them. And, like, you know, I really like them. And then I was thinking like, hey, why don't I take Jaden? We'll go get some matching tats. Why not at age six? Right. And then when he becomes an adult, he's like, that's super f*** up.

Yeah, bro. What was that all about? You got me a tribal ban? You loser? Like, what a cliche is this, dad? Come on. And I bet you would be immediately prosecuted. Oh, I would hope so. I would hope so. I mean, I think the honest answer here is that understanding something isn't the same as excusing it. So if you don't understand why people keep doing it, you're probably not going to stop it. So within the anti-FGM movement, who's trying to change these practices?

Most powerfully, it's being done by African feminist scholars and activists, and that's exactly who should be leading it. Yeah, that definitely makes sense to me. Yeah, I mean, the international response to FGM has been shaped primarily by Western governments and Western headquartered UN bodies. The funding flows through Western institutions. The frameworks for defining harm, measuring progress, and designing interventions are the law. largely set in Geneva, New York, and London. The problem is the people best positioned to end FGM often get the least funding while these large international organizations get most of the money. Of course, the money doesn't always go where the expertise actually is. I know, right? And

there's a long history of large amounts of money going to large international organizations and then, you know, a trickle reaching the grassroots groups that are actually doing the work. But Survivor-led organizations, community-based activists, local women's movements. These groups, unfortunately, they're chronically underfunded, while these institutional machinery around them is very well-resourced. And some anti-FGM campaigns have, consciously or not, portrayed African cultures as savage and in need of civilizing from the outside. That framing's not just offensive.

It's totally counterproductive, because it triggers entirely rational resistance from communities that have experienced colonialism and know exactly what that civilizing rhetoric sounds like. So the answer isn't to stop the campaigns, it's to run them differently? Absolutely. The answer is to fund local women's organizations,

to let these communities lead, to listen to African feminists and survivor advocates who are fighting this battle from the inside. So many have lived with the consequences of FGM themselves or they've spent their lives working in the communities where it persists. And that kind of lived experience and local credibility is something no international organization can just, you know, parachute in. So the goal's the same, ending FGM. The question is who's leading the effort. And the evidence is very clear that community-led, locally owned campaigns

are the ones that actually produce durable change. Yeah. It's very easy. It's very easy. to list medical complications and have them land as abstract data points rather than affecting real women's lives. But I'm curious, what are the consequences for FGM survivors? I mean, what does it like to have this done to you? What are you dealing with? God, I can't. It's so hard to think about. I know. I think the most difficult part about survivors is that not all FGM survivors identify as victims and not all of them want it to end. That's what happens in your world and you know, no different. I mean, there are women who have undergone FGM, including the type 3 in fibrillation, with that most severe form, who will describe the experience as meaningful, identity affirming,

and culturally central to who they are. So they express pride in having undergone it, and they want their daughters to undergo it. That can't be dismissed. How do you contend with that without using it as a justification for the practice? Very carefully, I guess. I think the first thing to recognize is that the capacity to internalize and find meaning and something that was done to you without your consent is one of the most profound things human beings do. We are meaning-making creatures. You know, people find pride, identity, and community in all kinds of experiences that outsiders might categorize as harmful. That is real and it deserves respect. You know, the second, thing to recognize is that this doesn't resolve the question of harm or consent. The fact that some survivors don't identify as victims, it doesn't mean the harm isn't real. I mean, we've established. The health consequences are documented. They're objective. And so it doesn't really matter about the survivor's subjective experience of them. But the existence of these voices matters for how we approach

the campaign to end it, right? Oh, enormously. If the anti-FGM movement is perceived, as saying to women who support the practice, you're a victim who doesn't know you're a victim, that's going to fail. I mean, that framing is both, it's condescending and it's ineffective. It's condescending because it denies women the complexity of their own experience, but it's ineffective because you can't build community consensus by telling half the community their perspective doesn't count. So the goal is to create conditions in which communities choose to stop, not to lecture survivors about what their lives mean. Yeah, you gave an overview earlier, but let's, I want to slow down and walk through what actually happens to the body,

because unfortunately, I don't think people really appreciate how severe this is, and the only way to do it is to get kind of gross and graphic with it, I think. Yeah, I mean, it is horrific. So in the immediate aftermath of FGM, and it doesn't matter which type, there is severe bleeding, sometimes fatal. There's a very high rate of infection, intense pain. It makes urinating problematic. And there's shock. I mean, your body's been through something traumatic. And it goes into shock. And girls die from this. Jeez. Yeah. I mean, that's just the beginning. So chronic pain is ongoing daily for the rest of a woman's life. Cists are very common in women who've undergone FGM. There's abnormal scarring and keloid formation.

Menstrual problems occur because, you know, the outflow of blood can be obstructed if you're narrowing the vagina. It's really dangerous. And this is forever. Oh, for many women, yes. And then it causes sexual problems. Like, you just don't get joy out of sex. I guess that's the point for a lot of people. There's a lot of pain during intercourse, significantly decreased.

sexual satisfaction, there's loss of a lot of function, and infertility is actually quite common, and then childbirth complications that can just be catastrophic, particularly for women who have undergone type three. So the narrowed vaginal opening that infibulation creates, you can imagine that makes labor extraordinarily dangerous. Yeah, I think I brought that up before because it's like, you're not, that's already not wide enough. There's a whole process we go through to make sure that the baby can come out and it's still, you know, it doesn't exactly slide right out. I've seen two births. It's, uh, you still got to push pretty hard. So if that has been narrowed manually for no good reason, really, that's not going to be good at all. Oh, right. I mean, it's just going to

cause obstructed labor. And in these communities, women are expected to have many children. So it's, it's so problematic. Many will suffer from postpartum hemorrhage because the body's just, not working like it should be. And this makes stillbirths and newborn death rates higher in places where FGMs practiced. Some of these complications are fatal to the woman herself, obviously. What happens after childbirth? So this is pretty brutal. Part for the course. Yeah. But, okay, so you've had FGM. Now you've had a baby, which opens you back up in a way. But then they will perform what's called re-infibulation. So after a woman who has undergone type 3 infibulation gives birth, a birth that's already traumatic and dangerous, she may be re-infibulated,

meaning her wound is sewn back up. And because the social and cultural logic that demanded the original closing of her body demands it again after it has been opened, it causes even more problems. So one of the most important things to understand about FGM is that for women with type three, the harm's not just this one single event that happened in childhood. It's a recurring one, redone at some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives. That is somehow so much worse than just thinking of it as an irreversible procedure because I can, oh gosh, I just can't even imagine this. This must cause psychological distress for these women as well. I mean, imagine you give the traumatic birth and they're like, yeah, okay, we're not just going to help you heal. We're going to do that

horrific operation again where we close you back up. I mean, that's just... Yeah, absolutely. Women suffer from PTSD. Sure. They have a lot of depression, anxiety, the postpartum depression rates are really high. One thing that really struck me is how many survivors talk about losing trust in the people who are supposed to protect them. Because the people arranging these procedures, they're often their own others and aunts and, you know, people they're closest with. So it can affect a woman's ability to form trusting relationships for the rest of her life. And the physical and psychological consequences of FGM, they're not separate categories. You know, they go hand in hand. A woman in chronic pain is more likely to withdraw from work and social life. That deepens isolation,

which worsens mental health. It's just this system, of harm. It's not like a list of independent symptoms. Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. The funding goal is billions. The actual funding, though, is pocketlint and a panel discussion. Speaking of funding, I should probably get on that myself. We'll be right back. All of the advertisers are searchable and clickable on the deals page at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. Do survivors who do see themselves as victims, do they ever seek medical help outside of their communities?

Because it seems like if you had this done, let's say, and you're living in the UK, you could go to a real doctor or something, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, they do. And it's often thought of by these doctors as some kind of, like, second wound. You know, healthcare providers in the United States, the UK, Australia, Canada, they receive. No training in FGM. Like I said before, it is I can't find it in any, mentioned in any medical school. So they may not even recognize what they're looking at anatomically. They could misdiagnose symptoms.

They may ask inappropriate or re-traumatizing questions. And some survivors have reported they have to explain to their own doctors what FGM is, what's been done to their bodies and what the clinical implications are. So think about what that asks of a person to be the expert witness on your own trauma in the moment when you're seeking care. So is culturally competent FGM care available anywhere? Because if it's not available in the West, where can you go for help? In very small pockets. The UK has developed more specialist capacity than most countries, largely because it has a sizable Somali and Sudanese community.

both Somalia and Sudan have historically had some of the highest rates of FGM in the world. So British health care providers have spent decades building specialist clinics, training midwives and nurses, and learning how to care for women who have survived FGM. Even so, those services are unevenly distributed, they're chronically underfunded, and they exist nowhere near the scale that's needed. in the United States, even more fragmented. And this connects directly to the funding gap because the money to train health care providers,

to build specialist services, to support survivor-led mental health programs, it just simply isn't there at the scale required. I see. So is there hope? I mean, not just what's being done, but what's actually working? Because it just sounds awful that people have to live with this.

Yeah, I mean, there are concrete models of success. So Cameroon, Ghana, and Uganda have already achieved their FGM elimination targets ahead of the 2030 deadline. Budin, the Maldives, Niger, and Togo, they're all on track to achieve zero cases by the end of the decade. I mean, these are actual results. And the pattern that emerges from every place that has succeeded is consistent. Change happens from the inside out, not the outside. in. Yeah. Well, some of these places are authoritarian, right? So I would imagine in a place like Cameroon, the dictator just says, hey, don't do this anymore. We'll throw your whole family in a

gulag forever and kill you. And that will get to that 2030 deadline ahead of time, I suppose. Yeah, wow. But they probably have high rates of back alley FGM, you know. Sure. I was going to say that, yeah, these are they just, or they said, okay, don't report these anymore so that it looks like we hit our goal. If you've ever met anyone from Cameroon, they're always like, oh, no, it's like a it's like North Korea, but it's in Africa. It's probably a really interesting place to visit, actually. Tell me about it. I will not join you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll send you a postcard. What is, you said it happens from the inside out, not the outside end? What does inside out look like in practice, though? The gold standard is Tostan, which is a West African NGO whose community

empowerment program has helped nearly 9,000 communities completely abandon FGM. That's remarkable. Yeah. And their approach is not to arrive and announce that FGM is wrong and demand change. They facilitate conversations about health, human rights, and what families actually want for their daughters. So this encourages communities to reach their own conclusions. And when the decision comes from inside the community, it's much more likely to last.

You know, when elders and mothers and religious leaders collectively decide this is not who we are anymore, that change is durable. And it holds because, you know, it belongs to them. Does this kind of change take generations? Because it seems like it's going to take generations. Yeah, I mean, sometimes, sure, but not always. Somaliland is an extraordinary example. So through the UN Trust Fund to end violence against women, grassroots organizations in Somaliland led a program of education, dialogue, and community engagement.

And within the last 30 years, parental support for ending infibulation surged nearly 100%. And the number of religious leaders who recognized infibulations harmful effects went from 52 to 96%. You know, those are near total community transformations. And they happen through patient, respectful, locally led conversation, not legislation, not external pressure, just real conversation, which, as we're finding out, is really hard to have. And in 2018, they banned infibulation. Unfortunately, the other types are still practiced, but, you know, progress is progress. Oh, man. You said no major religion actually requires FGM. So why are religious leaders important in ending it? Because it seems like they're not the authority on this. Yeah, well, although FGM isn't required by scripture, there are communities where it's justified using religious or traditional arguments. But there's a small village in Mali called Tongoi. And when their very respected, powerful religious leaders change their position and publicly declared.

an end to FGM, the social permission structure changed with them. So these religious leaders have influence that no external organization can replicate. So working with them, equipping them with accurate information about what FGM is, and then it's not required by their faith and what the health consequences are. That's not just useful. That's often the determinative factor. You know, I mean, think of it, a community that just does everything their religious leader says. That's a powerful place for them. That's true. It's ironic that it seems to be men declaring this.

So it seems that the narrative around men and FGM is more complicated than men are the problem or men, you know, men bad. Yeah. I mean, I really don't find that to be the case. I honestly don't think a lot of men, first of all, understand the anatomy and really don't understand what's happening. And it's, yeah, it's just way more complicated. So one of the biggest misconceptions is that all the men in these communities support FGM. They don't. Surveys from practicing countries in Africa and the Middle East suggest that roughly, you know, 200 million boys and men, they want the practice to end.

And in many communities, parents with young daughters, they don't want it to continue. So why doesn't it stop? Nobody wants this. So why is it still happening? Because people aren't just responding to what they personally, believe, they're responding to what they think everyone else believes. You know, one of the strongest drivers of FGM is the assumption that men will only marry girls who've been cut, that a girl who is not cut will not find a husband. So when men in a community publicly and visibly say,

I will marry an uncut woman, they are directly dismantling the social math that makes FGM feel like a necessary protection for girls' futures. That can change everything. So the fathers and brothers need to speak up, but do they, would they face consequences socially for speaking out about this kind of thing? It's got to be really hard. You know, we have to take ourselves out of our lifestyle and think how difficult that probably is for them to speak up.

But in many households, fathers and brothers are aware that FGM is happening to their daughters and sisters, but they stay silent. sometimes out of deference to the women in the family who are driving the decision, sometimes because speaking up feels like a violation of the gender norms that define their role. You know, the moral weight of that silence and what it costs men psychologically to carry it, that's real. And the path to male allyship runs through creating space for those men to break that silence, to name what they know is wrong, to say, not my daughter.

So men who speak up aren't just protecting individual girls. They're like fracturing the consensus that the practice depends on. But the legal picture here, that's mixed. So what is the legal landscape? Is there legislation for and against FGM? I mean, it really depends on where you are. Egypt has made FGM a federal crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison, though enforcement, you know, remains kind of uneven.

In 2024, the European Parliament adopted a new directive requiring all EU member states to criminalize FGM, increase public awareness, and provide support to survivors. That means 27 countries. That's huge. In the United States, of course, the situation is more complicated. So a federal law banning FGM was effectively struck down in 2018 when a federal judge, in Michigan ruled that criminal law on this issue should be left to individual states. He was ruling on a specific case involving this Detroit doctor who was accused of mutilating the genitals of multiple girls. I'm not super surprised this happened in the United States, but it is shocking how many holes are in the law about this.

I mean, it shocked a lot of people because it just shattered the assumption that this was only happening overseas. And there was no federal law here to enforce it. So it shaped the legal landscape with the result that some states have explicit bans. Others don't. Advocates are working state by state to close those gaps. I mean, it is crazy that we don't have a federal law banning this. I agree.

I think it's crazy that this is not banned in the United States. It makes no sense to me. And legislation without enforcement in places does absolutely nothing. Like, I kind of get the argument. that it should be left to the States, but that seems more like a legal technicality to me. Like the judge said, okay, you know, this is going to cause a bunch of problems. But yeah, it should have been fairly easy for somebody to propose a federal ban on this. I don't know.

Come on, man. Yeah, it's just wild. So they just criminalize a practice, but they're not protecting anyone, you know, laws without political will and social support behind them. They tend to push these kinds of practices underground rather than. and end them. And the legal framework, it's necessary, but it's just not sufficient. So it has to be accompanied by training for health care workers and even teachers who can identify at-risk girls. You know, there needs to be support for survivors who come forward. And crucially, for diaspora communities in Western countries, immigration and asylum protections need to be happening for

girls at risk. Yeah, that's a pathway I hadn't considered. And it's something the U.S. or the U.K. could actually act on. Like, hey, if your parents are trying to take you, trick you into a basement to get your parts cut, you can apply for asylum because they're basically going to torture you. I mean, that whole thing is just totally psycho to me. Some girls have successfully fled FGM through asylum claims. I mean, I guess they were lucky that it didn't happen when they were a baby and they had the autonomy to leave. But the argument is that they face a well-founded fear of persecution and that their home country is unable or unwilling to protect them. So courts in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia, they have all granted asylum on these grounds. There are NGOs that specifically work on FGM asylum

cases and help girls and families navigate the legal process. And these organizations, they're underfunded, but they are doing life-saving work. So supporting FGM Asylum Legal Aid Organizations, that's one of the most concrete things someone can do to help. So what is happening with young people? Just social media? I wonder, have campaigns against FGM that affect the younger generation. Because it seems like the more people get connected to the internet,

the more they're like, yeah, this is some barbaric-ish that we're not doing anymore. I actually, once I started doing the research, was amazed and sort of pleased by how many, like, reels and posts started popping up that were against this. So data shows that 15- and 19-year-old, in affected countries are way less supportive of FGM than older generations. But we don't really know how that shift is happening if it's social media or other things.

I think, you know, social media is definitely swaying opinion. There's youth activists in Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt, and they're using TikTok and Instagram and YouTube to talk about FGM in ways that would have just been unthinkable a generation ago. So they're sharing their stories, they're debunking myths in local languages, they're organizing, they're building communities of solidarity for survivors and girls who are resisting. So this is young women and men in affected communities deciding on their own terms in their own languages and cultural contexts that this practice ends with them. And that's enormously powerful. Yeah, that's the inside out model you described is the one that actually works. Absolutely.

And it's even better because it's the inside out model running at the speed of the internet. You know, I think there is genuine reason to believe that this generation that grew up with smartphones and access to global conversations may be the one that tips it, not without all the other work, but they are a force that wasn't there 20 years ago and it would be a mistake to underestimate them. So all this requires resources. Where does the money for these anti-FGM campaigns? Where's that coming from? So the funding picture is pretty alarming.

I mean, by the end of this decade, an estimated $275 million will have been spent globally on addressing FGM. The amount that researchers estimate is needed to actually eliminate the practice by 2030 is $2.4 billion. Okay. Well, that's a huge gap. Come on. Yeah. And the funding that does exist has been declining, particularly for the surveillance. survivor-led organizations and local women's movements that are doing the most effective work,

the gap just isn't closing. Yeah, the funding gap's not just a number. It's a reflection of a set of political choices about whose safety is worth funding. Yeah, and it has a human face. You know, it's the survivor sitting in a doctor's office who has to explain her own trauma. It's the FGM asylum case that doesn't get the legal representation it needs. It's the youth activists in Nairobi who's doing extraordinary. work on a mobile phone with no organizational support. So the money is the politics made concrete.

Yeah. Are there examples of what proper funding can actually do or is this kind of a money pit? Yeah. No, I mean, there are legitimate organizations like through the spotlight initiative. The UN worked with the National Traditional Council of Chiefs and Elders in Liberia to extend a national ban on FGM. 300 traditional FGM. practitioners were helped to transition to new livelihoods through training for other occupations. Because for many of these women, performing FGM, that's their income. So they have no incentive to stop it, right? It's how they feed their families. You can't remove a practice that someone depends on economically without offering an alternative. And the Liberia model recognized this and addressed it directly. That's a model worth replicating.

FGM persists because it's surrounded by this silence, right? The silence is not accidental. It's structural. It's enforced. And the first condition, well, it's really the first condition that has to change. Yeah. I mean, I think the silence exists too because it's hard to talk about, right? I mean, in communities where FGM has been normalized for generations,

some people don't really understand what FGM is. And they've just never talked about it. They've never questioned the practice. That moment of recognition when the silence breaks and someone who is inside it finally sees it's not this small thing, that's how cultural change begins. So it's one conversation at a time. It's one person saying, this happened to me and it was wrong and I'm not going to pretend it didn't. The question about all this, both male and female cutting, is what is the principle by which we decide? Do we believe in bodily autonomy?

do we believe that children have the right to have their bodies respected until they can decide for themselves? Because if we are serious about protecting children's bodies, the principle has to be a principle, not like a preference that we apply selectively based on cultural proximity. Obviously, I don't have a clean answer. I don't think anyone does. But I think these kinds of questions are worth sitting with. I would add that the people who are living with it most honestly are the survivors. So we mentioned Jaha Dukuri, cut it one week old. She spent her adult life asking the hardest version of this question from inside the community where it happened to her and where she's trying to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else.

Mariam Safi lured into the basement in India at seven years old. She stood up at the UN and said, I don't fit the profile. Like this is a bigger problem than you think, meaning we can't be protecting a practice that's happened. to girls who look like the people you think are safe. So these women refused the silence, and that refusal is, you know, the engine of everything. Yeah. What can someone listening to this do practically right now? Because it's, again, it still seems like it happens over there, even though I know it's happened in the city where I grew up. I mean, there's several things. So you can support survivor-led organizations. There's something called safe hands for girls,

Tostan, there's the Desert Flower Foundation, there's Integrate UK. I mean, there are these grassroots organizations that are doing the most effective work with the least resources. If you're in the United States, find out whether your state has an explicit FGM ban. I mean, do you know if California does? I don't. I have no idea. Yeah, exactly. You know, many of us don't. So contact your state legislators. If you're in a state that it's, legal in. And if you work in healthcare, push for FGM training in your institution, it's not standard and it should be. If you encounter someone who might be at risk, know that the National FGM Center and similar organizations, they can advise you on how to respond safely. And if you're in a position to

support asylum seekers, know that FGM asylum cases are real and a viable pathway, and that legal aid organizations working on them are chronically underfunded. And finally, most basically, and perhaps most powerfully, have this conversation. Don't treat FGM as too disturbing to mention. You know, every conversation matters. Jess, thank you. This has definitely been one of the hardest and most important conversations we've had on this show. It's hard, because you want to like make jokes and make it light and keep people interested. But I said it's really, really hard to do on this one. Thank you for not looking away and for cutting through the noise. Yeah, I'll see myself out. We'll link to the organizations doing the work in the show notes. If this episode moved you, please share it. That's how

the silence breaks. And thank you all for sticking with us and listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find Jessica on her substacks between the lines and where shadows linger. We'll link to those in the show notes. Her work is also on Instagram at Never Met Jessica's, plural. In this show is created an association with podcast one.

My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace, Sanderson, Tata Sadlowskis, Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I might be a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. I'm certainly not a doctor, and we, of course, try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked. So consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

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