New York Times Won't Use Term "Female Genital Mutilation" - Too "Culturally Loaded"

The U.S. Congress has long declared female genital mutilation illegal in the country. The Department of Justice has said it is committed to stopping female genital mutilation in the U.S. They vowed to use the full power of the law to ensure that no girls suffer such physical and emotional abuse.

At least two doctors in the country have been criminally charged for performing the illegal procedure on women and girls. Even the United Nations has also declared that the procedure is an extreme form of discrimination against women and girls. There is no ambiguity or confusion that female genital mutilation is a condemnable act no girl or woman should go through, no matter the reason. It simply is not just justifiable in a civilized, democratic and humane country as the U.S.

Yet almost laughable in its absurdity but also exasperating, if not deplorable in its hypocrisy and for being so utterly misguided, some members of the media for the sake of so-called political correctness are refusing to even use the term "female genital mutilation" in their reports. And their reasons for making it a taboo term? Because the phrase is supposedly "culturally loaded" and "widens a divide between the Western world and "people who follow the rite". That is their bigger concern and perhaps more pressing priority, instead of calling a stop to the deplorable practice.

One of those members of the media who is so obsessed with using politically correct language to the point of almost being in denial of the problem and the reality of the criminal act is New York Times health and science editor Celia Dugger. Dugger decided that their so-called 'prestigious' paper should not use the term "female genital mutilation" for being culturally loaded. As far as Dugger is concerned it is far better and more acceptable to refer to the brutal and barbaric act of removing the female genitalia of young girls as "genital cutting". She said she came to that oh so enlightening realization during a trip to Africa in the 1990s.

While the editor said she was aware of the terrible damage such act can inflict, she chose to use the "less culturally loaded term, genital cutting, because there's a gulf between the Western advocates who campaign against the practice and the people who follow the rite". She felt that using female genital mutilation widened the "chasm".

The Times has used the term " female genital mutilation" in six articles in 2017, according to a web search; however the instances it was used are extremely restricted like in the context of a quoted speech, in opinion columns, in a book review, and others.

Even the United Nations Population Fund ( UNFPA), an organization that can not be accused of being politically incorrect, does not favor The New York Times' practice of calling female genital mutilation by any other name such as the neutral and safe-sounding "cutting". The UNFPA website says "UNFPA embraces a human rights perspective on the issue, and the term 'female genital mutilation' more accurately describes the practice from a human rights viewpoint."

Perhaps Dugger ought to be more concerned about these alarming data from UNFPA rather than be fixated with politically correct language for such a politically and morally wrong act of female genital mutilation: UNFPA estimates around 200 million women worldwide have been subjected to FGM, and though the procedure is commonly practiced in African or Middle Eastern cultures, it's spreading westward. 6,000 cases of FGM have been reported in Britain from April 2015 to March 2016. And in the country, there's of course the case of an Islamic doctor criminally charged earlier this month with performing the procedure on a pair of 7-year-old girls.

Imagine the horrors those 7-year-old girls had to go through- that should be the more concerning part of the report. The New York Times reported on the case but said the doctor has been "accused of performing genital cutting."

Genital cutting? One use "cutting" on leaves, flower, papers, even ties but do one really "cut" genitals instead of mutilating it? Odd and vicious even that for some obsession with misplaced political correctness, even logic and sense of truth are being unnecessarily and unjustifiably "cut".

Source:

www.foxnews.com/us/2017/04/24/new-york-times-scraps-female-genital-mutilation-for-being-culturally-loaded-term.html