Mike Buchanan: This video was drawn from the end of an episode of BBC News at Ten. It follows time-honoured feminist narratives on FGM. It conflates FGM with forced marriage, and starting at 2:52 there's an outright lie - 'In these deeply traditional, patriarchal communities, away from the big cosmopolitan cities, many men still demand that women are cut.'- Wherever it is carried out, FGM is performed at the behest of women, and almost always BY women. Men don't demand that women are cut. You have to wonder if the Maasai warrior interviewed at the end is curious about why MGM continues unchallenged. He's surely a victim of the butchery himself. The pretext for the piece was a report by the United Nations, the body (along with the WHO) sponsoring the FHM (circumcision) of 20 million men in sub-Saharan Africa, in a futile (possibly even counter-productive) bid to halt the spread of AIDS.
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