The New York Times is now using “genital cutting” in place of “female genital mutilation,” because the latter phrase is “culturally loaded” and thus too insensitive to use.
In a news article titled “Michigan Doctor Is Accused of Genital Cutting of 2 Girls,” the Times refrained from using the conventional “female genital mutilation” phrase except when quoting a Department of Justice official on the practice. When asked about it, the editor on the story responded that describing the practice as “mutilation” would “widen” the “chasm” between people who support it and Westerners who are against it.
“There’s a gulf between the Western and some African advocates who campaign against the practice and people who follow the rite, and I felt the language used widened that chasm,” said Times editor of Health and Science, Celia Dugger, who describes “genital cutting” a “less culturally loaded term.”
Earlier this month, Dugger criticized President Trump for cutting off funding for contraceptives to women in third-world countries. Nonetheless, she refrains from criticizing the people who ritually remove female clitorises because doing so would further push the two world views apart.
In an interview she herself conducted in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa, a religious leader of female genital mutilation said it “helps insure a girl’s virginity before marriage and fidelity afterward by reducing sex to a marital obligation.” A female there told her a “woman’s role in life is to care for her children, keep house and cook. If she has not been cut, [she] might think about her own sexual pleasure.”
