Ethical consistency and decolonial approaches
Recent scholarship calls for greater ethical consistency and a decolonised approach to studying genital cutting practices across genders (Ahmadu and Kamau 2022; Earp 2022; Johnsdotter 2019). Bioethicists, anthropologists, and historians have increasingly critiqued the polarised treatment of male circumcision and FGM/C. While FGM/C is often condemned outright as a violation of human rights, male circumcision is largely medicalised, normalised, and promoted by global health initiatives, leading to double standards in scholarly and policy discourse (Earp and Johnsdotter 2021). This distinction reveals deeper biases in how these practices are perceived and regulated.
The case of Juliano Kanyonyo exemplifies these contradictions. His death, a few days after his circumcision, provoked not only a localised outcry and activism, but also drew attention to the politics of past and present regulations. The response of mothers from Kanyonyo’s home area, alongside MPs like Chege and Wahome, was to express their anger over the lack of community care and government oversight during the male circumcision periods of December and April. Such activism was unprecedented. Women – acting politically as mothers – sought to bring attention to an elephant in the room: while zero-tolerance approaches to FGM/C had become the norm in Kenyan communities, their sons were continuing to endure violent hazing,
1 Hazing refers to the ‘abuse of new or prospective group members’ (Cimino 2011:241) that individuals are compelled to undergo as part of an initiation into an extant coalition, organisation, or society. These practices are difficult to separate from initiation and work to establish hierarchy, test loyalty, or foster a sense of belonging, but they can often result in psychological or physical harm. botched circumcisions, and infections, all in the name of preserving an increasingly ambivalent ‘culture’. Mothers’ activism exemplifies the gendered dimensions of debates on genital cutting, where mothers become vocal advocates for reform in the face of state-sponsored medicalisation initiatives.
Michela Fusaschi (2023) provides a critical lens through which to view this differentiation between male circumcision and FGM/C. She argues that the reclassification of female genital cutting as Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) by the WHO has led to its isolation from its complementary male rite, further entrenching a biased framework that condemns one practice while normalising the other. The global health agenda has prioritised the medicalisation of male circumcision through programmes like VMMC, which were rapidly scaled up through non-circumcising communities in Kenya from about 2010 to 2016, while female genital cutting has been criminalised, perpetuating ethical inconsistencies and neocolonial cultural biases.
A decolonial approach to this issue interrogates the power dynamics inherent in these frameworks, emphasising that colonial legacies continue to shape contemporary discourse and policy. This chapter argues that a situated, decolonised ethics must engage with the complexities of both practices without falling into the traps of either cultural relativism or ethnocentrism.
Brian Earp (2020) describes this selective reasoning as a form of ‘moral occlusion’, where ethical inconsistencies lead to the production of social policies that are often incoherent and harmful to the very groups they aim to protect. In the Kenyan context, the legal framework surrounding male circumcision, particularly following the 2020 Act, reveals how state power, influenced by global health institutions, continues to regulate cultural practices in ways that reinforce colonial hierarchies.
By reflecting on these authors’ views, while grounding analysis in a case study, the chapter contributes to broader debates about the role of state power in shaping cultural practices, particularly in postcolonial contexts where the scaffolding of colonial laws is still very much in evidence.