1378: Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) | Skeptical Sunday

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 https://jessicawynn.substack.com/! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1378 https://jordanharbinger.com/1378 On 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 https://twitter.com/JordanHarbinger, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jordanharbinger, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/THEJORDANHARBINGERSHOW. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] and let him know! Connect with Jessica Wynn at Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamjessicawynn/ (and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/NeverMetJessicas!), and subscribe to her newsletters: Between the Lines https://jessicawynn.substack.com/ and Where the Shadows Linger https://storiesbywynn.substack.com/! And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1344999619?mt=2&ls=1 — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking https://jordanharbinger.com/course — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course https://jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser https://www.jordanharbinger.com/news/ newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanHarbinger/! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors https://www.jordanharbinger.com/deals/: Xero: Learn more: xero.com https://www.xero.com/The Cybersecurity Tapes: Listen here: thecybersecuritytapes.com https://thecybersecuritytapes.com/Quince: Free shipping & 365-day returns: quince.com/jordan https://www.quince.com/jordan ConciergeMD: 20% off all services/memberships: conciergemdla.com/jordan, code JORDAN https://conciergemdla.com/?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=Jordan&utm_campaign=JordanHarbinger+Progressive Insurance: Free online quote: progressive.com https://www.progressive.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 1:29Speaker 00

  Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today, I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer and researcher, Jessica Nguyen. 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.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  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/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.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  So we're all just gonna 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 Nguyen. 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.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  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.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  What do you mean?

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Well, survivors are often expected not to talk about it. Families who are involved don't talk about it. Governments underfunds 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.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  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.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  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.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  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 that's, it's just fine after that and it's a medical thing.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Anatomically, that's just not what's happening.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  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. And so they were just like, oh, you unfortunately have a seven-inch, we're gonna have to cut this thing down. And what we're gonna 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.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's so gross, Jordan.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's very gross. That, by design, though, that's, 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.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  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.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Every society has practices that may feel so normal that people just stop questioning them. And that, 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 gonna guess that the cultures that do it don't call it FGM.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  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.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  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?

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Let's just go FGM from here out, because it's, it's even uncomfortable to say, yeah.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  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.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  So this isn't one single procedure? There's different kinds of cutting?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  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, you know, the inner lips of the vulva, sometimes also including the labia majora. Then 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.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  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.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  My gag reflex is kicking in on this.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's rough.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  That is all horrifying. Do we even need to categorize them from least to most? Like, what's, I'm surprised they have types. Is there a reason for that, I guess? Is that what's going on here?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  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.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  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, again, menstruation, and childbirth.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  There's just no mild version of genital mutilation.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I guess that was my objection, is 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.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  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.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  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. It's really.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's gnarly.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Gnarly, 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?

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Correct, yeah. FGM is normally carried out between infancy and age 15.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, though older girls and women, they can be subjected to it. It's most often performed by traditional practitioners on really young girls.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  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.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  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.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  Sure, where would they even get it? And how would they put it into practice? That's a whole specialty of medicine.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Right, which, you know, leads to, you know, the sterile conditions are usually absent.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  There's been a disturbing development, though, within healthcare 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.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  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?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  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 Stone Age ass religious psycho or whatever. There are just some traditions that deserve to be judged out of existence.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  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.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  So now we're balancing two things, moral clarity and actually persuading people to stop this madness.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  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.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's funny because I'll admit it, 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.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Back then.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  It was just done.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  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 you got to do. My son is not circumcised. Sorry, Jayden, 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.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  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.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  That's actually a perfect example. Nobody told your parents that they were monsters for circumcising you.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  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.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, I, when I was an exchange student in Germany, it was 1997, 1998, and they have coed saunas 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?

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Why is every, and then I was like, oh, right, that's what a 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, it's, 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 we had, 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, this is your chance, you know, you get to like just whip it out in the, in the living room.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  It's science, it's science.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  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, you have to do this. Like, 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.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  And you didn't have to worry about people posting pics of your dick.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  There was no camera phones back then, nothing. So it was just like, no one had seen it and nobody, and 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, in the 90s. So, yeah, that was my introduction to the fact that there's other, there's a whole world of other dicks out there that just look like alien, look like anteater trunks to me.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  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.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Was not circumcised at birth. He does.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Comedy bits about it, so we're not talking out of turn here.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  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?

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would imagine he regrets that as an adult, or maybe doesn't care.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  He does, and I will, it does make him have a very unique penis, I will say. I've heard, I've heard.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  Uh, so I've heard, yeah. Unlike the rest of this entire episode, the following ads are safe for work. We'll be right back.

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• 21:20Speaker 00

  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?

• 21:30Speaker 02

  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.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Wait, 230 million currently alive? Not like throughout all of human history?

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Currently, today.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  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.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  I mean, that's what most people think. That's what I thought before I dove into this, for sure.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  I thought you were gonna say a few hundred thousand or like, single-digit millions, not 230. 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.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that figure has increased by 15%. That's like, 30 million more cases over the past eight years alone. So, more than 2 million girls undergo FGM every single year, often before their fifth birthday, sometimes within just days of being born.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Days of being born. That has to be a dangerous procedure for a newborn, come on. And by the way, the population of the US, 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.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  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 4.5 million girls

• 23:44Speaker 02

  are at risk of undergoing FGM. More than half of them are under five years old.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  And if the current trends hold?

• 23:52Speaker 02

  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.

• 24:15Speaker 00

  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?

• 24:28Speaker 02

  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.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  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?

• 25:05Speaker 02

  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, oh, 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, Jahad DeKore, who is a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and 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.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  But she underwent FGM in Gambia when she was one week old. She spent her adult life fighting to end the practice everywhere.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Well, in fairness, there's a disconnect between Western culture and communities where FGM is practiced, obviously, right?

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Well, not always. I mean, FGM is documented in 94 countries. That's a lot.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  That's a lot.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Most of the world.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  Again, I thought you were gonna say five. This is prevalent in five countries. But once you said 230 million, I was thinking, where the heck are they doing this?

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, it happens in parts of Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas. So, for example, Miriam 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. And she was seven years old. So, she doesn't fit the picture most people carry around and that's exactly why her story matters.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  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.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  And he would remember that, for sure.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  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 gotta be illegal. It's certainly horrible.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Oh, God, trip and snip, that's...

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Sorry.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  That's, yeah. It's actually sometimes called vacation cutting. And this is a documented phenomenon where families living in Western countries, like the US, 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.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  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 gotta 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.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  I mean, it's so muddy. So, some countries have extraterritorial legislation, meaning their laws technically apply to what their citizens do abroad. But prosecution is extraordinarily difficult. So, you need someone to report it, first of all. If you do this to an infant or toddler, they don't...

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Right, who's gonna report it?

• 28:33Speaker 02

  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.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  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, I don't know.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  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.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  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.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  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.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  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. Religious leaders can be among the most powerful forces for ending FGM or for keeping it alive.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  So why does the religious justification persist?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  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 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 Imam in the village of Tongoy in Mali, who has made it his mission to speak against FGM

• 31:19Speaker 02

  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.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  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.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  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.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Who was the first person to do that? I mean, it's just so bizarre.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a good question.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  I know. This seems like a good idea.

• 32:14Speaker 00

  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. Depends how old the practice is. 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.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  I mean, that's probably so close. 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.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, that sounds insane to me, but is not super shocking, I guess.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  I mean, today, about a quarter of all girls who have recently undergone FGM were cut by healthcare workers. And in Egypt, it's as high as like 75%.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  And when you say in Egypt, 75%, does this mean they were being cut by doctors now? Or what's going on here?

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, doctors, nurses, other licensed healthcare providers. I mean, this is a really new trend.

• 33:45Speaker 00

  I see. I guess I would have assumed medicine would have killed this practice and not adopted it.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  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.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  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.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Actually, that happens. It happens very quietly, very secretly. So there are documented cases of midwives and healthcare providers performing a symbolic ritual, what's called mock FGM, or I've seen it called Whisper of the Blade.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  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.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  So they convince the family the procedure happened when it actually didn't?

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, correct. So the girl comes back out with a bandage 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.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  So I read some accounts that in communities where the secret gets out, it's 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.

• 35:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, you'd 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?

• 35:49Speaker 02

  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 family somewhere more dangerous.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's just an impossible position to be in.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  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 healthcare 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.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  That's one of those ethical problems where I can see why good people end up on different sides of the issue.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. But it's completely categorically wrong to cut a girl. 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. There was a 12-year-old girl named Nada Hassan Abdel Maksoud. She bled to death at a private clinic in the

• 37:32Speaker 02

  town of Manfoul 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. 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.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  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. Doctors who do this lose their license in the United States. They can't just make up a procedure.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, accountability is almost nonexistent. 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.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  Do the doctors who are doing this often genuinely believe they're helping, or are they just doing it for the money?

• 39:08Speaker 02

  I mean, both probably exist, right? So we know from interviews and the WHO that many healthcare providers genuinely believe they're 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.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's honestly scary. Or somehow.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so too. But you know, because if 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.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  Are there any hopeful signs in the younger generation, though?

• 40:16Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Apparently, tradition is the preferred euphemism when felony committed by grandma sounds too judgmental. We'll be right back.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Come join us on our subreddit, the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. 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.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  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 healthcare 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.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  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 unmarried, ostracized, or worse.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  What's happening to boys in these same communities at the same time?

• 42:18Speaker 02

  This is actually crucial. So in many of the communities where FGM is most prevalent, boys are also undergoing severe initiation rites involving their own bodies, often around the same ages.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  When you say initiation rites, what are we talking about? You know, those, 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 jump with a vine into some dirt? I mean, that kind of stuff?

• 42:43Speaker 02

  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 rite. 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.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  So this isn't a doctor in a hospital with a newborn?

• 43:30Speaker 02

  No, not in these communities. It's a cultural rite of passage that usually happens, you know, at 12 or 13. So they're, they're older. 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?

• 44:08Speaker 00

  So who's usually driving this? Is it the fathers?

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Surprisingly, no. It's mostly women.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  Huh.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  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.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  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?

• 44:46Speaker 02

  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.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  I see. Well, that's not where most people's heads go, I think.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  It seems more logical that if you underwent FGM as an adult woman, you would spare the younger generation of the same horrific ordeal.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  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.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, that's incredibly depressing, though.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  This is all pretty depressing.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  It is, yeah. That's true.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  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 changed 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.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  Let's return to child marriage here, because I think the connection is deeper than just it sometimes happens in places where FGM exists.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  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.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  So is that the same logic behind male circumcision, too?

• 47:17Speaker 02

  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.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  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.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  So we're butchering boys for all the wrong reasons as well?

• 48:16Speaker 02

  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

• 48:58Speaker 02

  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. You know?

• 49:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  It's just crazy.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  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. Like, 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, really, I really like them. And then it's, I was thinking like, hey, why don't I take Jaden? We'll go get some matching tats. Why not? At age six?

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Right. And then when he becomes an adult, he's like, that's super [BLEEP] up.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, bro. What was that all about? You got me a tribal band? You loser. Like, what the cliche is this, dad? Come on.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  And I bet you would be immediately prosecuted.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  Oh, I would hope so. I would hope so.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  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.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  So within the anti-FGM movement, who's trying to change these practices?

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Most powerfully, it's being done by African feminist scholars and activists. And that's exactly who should be leading it.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, that definitely makes sense to me.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  Of course, the money doesn't always go where the expertise actually is.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  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, you know, savage and in need of civilizing from the outside. That framing's not just offensive. It's totally counterproductive

• 51:42Speaker 02

  because it triggers entirely rational resistance from communities that have experienced colonialism and know exactly what that civilizing rhetoric sounds like.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  So the answer isn't to stop the campaigns. It's to run them differently.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Absolutely. The answer is to fund local women's organizations, to let these communities lead, to listen 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.

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, 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 is it like to have this done to you? What are you dealing with?

• 52:54Speaker 02

  God, I can't, it's so hard to think about.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  I know.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  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 infibulation, 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.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  How do you contend with that without using it as a justification for the practice?

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Very carefully, I guess. I think the first thing to recognize is that the capacity to internalize and find meaning in 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.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  They're objective. And so it doesn't really matter about the survivor's subjective experience of them.

• 54:30Speaker 00

  But the existence of these voices matters for how we approach the campaign to end it, right?

• 54:35Speaker 02

  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.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  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.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  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.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  And it goes into shock and girls die from this.

• 55:54Speaker 00

  Geez.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's just the beginning. So chronic pain is ongoing, daily, for the rest of a woman's life. Sists 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.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  And this is forever?

• 56:22Speaker 02

  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 3. So the narrowed vaginal opening that infibulation creates, you can imagine that makes labor extraordinarily dangerous.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  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 a, 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.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  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 FGM's practiced. Some of these complications are fatal to the woman herself, obviously.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  What happens after childbirth?

• 57:52Speaker 02

  So this is pretty brutal.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  Part for the course.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  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 3,

• 58:42Speaker 02

  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.

• 58:52Speaker 00

  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.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Women suffer from PTSD.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  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 mothers 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.

• 59:58Speaker 02

  That deepens isolation, which worsens mental health. It's just this system of harm. It's not like a list of independent symptoms.

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. The funding goal is billions. The actual funding, though, is pocket lint and a panel discussion. Speaking of funding, I should probably get on that myself. We'll be right back.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  All of the advertisers are searchable and clickable on the deals page at jordanharbinger.com/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?

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  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, it 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

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  So is culturally competent FGM care available anywhere? Because if it's not available in the West, where can you go for help?

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  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 healthcare 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

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  directly to the funding gap because the money to train healthcare providers, to build specialist services, to support survivor-led mental health programs, it just simply isn't there at the scale required.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  I see. So is there hope? I mean, not just what's being done, but what's actually working? Because it's, it just sounds awful that people have to live with this.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  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. Benin, 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.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  But they probably have high rates of back alley FGM, you know?

• 1:03:46Speaker 00

  Sure. I was gonna say that, yeah, these, 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, it's like North Korea, but it's in Africa. It's probably a really interesting place to visit, actually.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Tell me about it. I will not join you.

• 1:04:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll send you a postcard. What, what is, you said it happens from the inside out, not the outside in. What does inside out look like in practice, though?

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:05:02Speaker 00

  Does this kind of change take generations? Because it seems like it's gonna take generations.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  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 infibulation's harmful effects went from 52 to 96%. You know, those are near total community transformations. And they happen

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  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 Tongue, and when their very respected, powerful religious leaders changed 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 that it's not required by their faith, and what the health consequences are,

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:07:11Speaker 00

  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, you know, men bad.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I really don't find that to be the, 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.

• 1:07:54Speaker 00

  So why doesn't it stop? Nobody wants this. So why is it still happening?

• 1:07:59Speaker 02

  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're directly dismantling the social math that makes FGM feel like a necessary protection for girls' futures. That can change everything.

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  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?

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  It's gotta be really hard. You know, we're, 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

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  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, you know, that's mixed.

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  So what is the legal landscape? Is there legislation for and against FGM?

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  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's more complicated. So a federal law banning FGM was effectively struck down in 2018, when a federal judge

• 1:10:27Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:10:41Speaker 00

  I'm not super surprised this happened in the United States, but it is shocking how many holes are in the law about this.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:11:13Speaker 00

  I agree. I think it's crazy that this is not banned in the United States. It's, makes no sense to me. And legislation without enforcement in places does absolutely nothing. Like, I get, 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, huh, okay, you know, this is gonna 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.

• 1:11:39Speaker 02

  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 end them. And the legal framework, it's necessary, but it's just not sufficient. So it has to be accompanied by training for healthcare 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.

• 1:12:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a pathway I hadn't considered, and it's something the US or the UK 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 gonna torture you. I mean, that whole thing is just totally psycho to me.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  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 US, 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 lifesaving work.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  So supporting FGM asylum legal aid organizations, that's one of the most concrete things someone can do to help.

• 1:13:24Speaker 00

  So what is happening with young people? Does 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, ah, yeah, this is some barbaric-ish that we're not doing anymore.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  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-olds 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, you know, to talk about FGM in ways that would have just been unthinkable a generation ago.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:14:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's the inside-out model you described, is the one that actually works.

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:15:10Speaker 00

  So all this requires resources. Where does the money for these anti-FGM campaigns, where's that coming from?

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:15:37Speaker 00

  Okay, well, that's a huge gap. Come on.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  And the funding that does exist has been declining, particularly for the survivor-led organizations and local women's movements that are doing the most effective work. The gap just isn't closing.

• 1:15:52Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:16:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, are there examples of what proper funding can actually do, or is this kind of a money pit?

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  And the Liberia model recognized this and addressed it directly. That's a model worth replicating.

• 1:17:15Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  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, is 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.

• 1:18:04Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  I would add that the people who are living with it most honestly are the survivors. So we mentioned Jahah Dukuri, cut at 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. Maryam 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 happening to girls who look like the people you think are safe.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  So these women refused the silence, and that refusal is, you know, the engine of everything.

• 1:19:18Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:19:57Speaker 00

  I have no idea.

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:20:50Speaker 00

  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 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, [email protected]. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm @jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

• 1:21:32Speaker 00

  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, @nevermetjesica's, plural. And this show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tadisidlouskas, Robert Fogarty, 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. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today.

• 1:22:15Speaker 00

  In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.